Irish Political News

that he would be ineligible for health insurance under his own healthcare plan. John McCain, that is. Paul Krugman notes the silence of McCain's "plan" (which is, as Krugman says, a list of bullet points) on people with pre-existing conditions who get denied private insurance coverage. McCain, as a skin cancer survivor would be one such person. Except that as an old person, he could always go into Medicare. Which is a government program that he presumably opposes.

But perhaps the Maverick deserves some credit. He has shown his opposition to Medicare (and Medicaid, the government program for low income people) by proposing to bankrupt it. On January 5, 2008, McCain told a questioner at a townhall meeting in Peterborough New Hampshire that he would dump people with pre-existing conditions into a Medicare/Medicaid trust fund.

As the Boston Globe noted recently, similar answers that he has offered before have left experts confused. Anyway, the result would be to ruin the programs financially, since they'd get all the people likely to have the highest costs. So he could abolish the programs that way.

George Bush has "issued" a statement on the Taiwan election, although since he's probably mountain biking around Camp David, the statement has actually been waiting to go for a few days with an {insert victor name} field once the result was in. And quite a diplomatic dance it is, especially for someone with zero willingness to confront China over Tibet. Of particular note --

Once again, Taiwan has demonstrated the strength and vitality of its democracy ... Taiwan is a beacon of democracy to Asia and the world. I am confident that the election and the democratic process it represents will advance Taiwan as a prosperous, secure, and well-governed society.

As in, not like the other place.

It falls to Taiwan and Beijing to build the essential foundations for peace and stability by pursuing dialogue through all available means and refraining from unilateral steps that would alter the cross-Strait situation.

No reference to "China" at all. Just Beijing. Two places disputing a single title.

The maintenance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the welfare of the people on Taiwan remain of profound importance to the United States.

Not "people of Taiwan" (a usage shared by the State Department). But on balance, a pro-Taiwan statement. Yet, is there really anything that the US could do if things got ugly between China and its "renegade province"? And one hopes Bush doesn't think this compensates for his silence on Tibet.

George Bush --

The situation in Tibet* remains deplorable. The regime has rejected calls from its own people and the international community to begin a genuine dialogue with the opposition and ethnic minority groups. Arrests and secret trials of peaceful political activists continue, such as the recent arrest of journalists Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung.

No, wait. That's his most recent statement on Burma, the other monk-beating regime. But Burma is not a huge net lender to the USA and is not hosting the Olympics. So that's different.

Photo: AFP/Mark Ralston

So it turns out that extradition from Britain to the USA is not open-ended after all. Ian Norris has won his appeal to the House of Lords against extradition on the basis of a wheeze in which price-fixing -- not a crime in the UK when he allegedly committed it -- was redefined by the US Justice Department as "conspiracy to defraud" so as to meet the requirement that the alleged criminal act must be an offence in both countries.

The US will apparently still try to extradite him for obstruction of justice. Hopefully the Norris lawyers will have a field day with the arguments made during the Scooter Libby case that if there is no underlying crime, there can't be obstruction of justice. The argument was of course shite, since the point of obstruction of justice is to obscure determination of whether there was an underlying crime, but for Ian Norris, it seems by definition there was no underlying crime under UK law.

It's not much help to Babar Ahmad, who faces a whole different class of problems, being accused of terrorism-related offences, but at least it means that the UK courts, unlike the government, are alert to the problems that the aggressive extradition policies of the US have created.

We've had multiple central fronts in the War on Terror. We've had various decisive blows against al-Qaeda. Now the US military has come up several centers of al-Qaeda gravity: Baghdad, where the Surge was concentrated, but also northern Iraq, where the bad guys are concentrated --

"Mosul is the center of al-Qaida's terrorist activities today. Mosul is a critical crossroads for al-Qaida in Iraq. Baghdad has always been al-Qaida's operational center of gravity, but Mosul remains their strategic center of gravity as it provides access to the flow of foreign fighters," [US Navy Rear Admiral] Smith said.

Mosul is located at the locus of roads that connect Iraq with Syria to the west, Turkey to the north and Iran to the east. Many fighters smuggled in from Syria make their way through Mosul, where they can easily blend in with city's ethnically and religiously diverse population.

"It is their strategic center of gravity. One-half to two-thirds of attacks in Iraq today are in and around Mosul," Smith said.

Of course one problem with these centers of gravity is that the US attempts to chase them brings the opposite polarity (to botch the physics metaphors) and the centre of gravity moves. Does John McCain really think this futility will not be an issue in the November election?

Incidentally, the news story linked above has a little detail at the end symbolic of the quagmire. A US helicopter fired at teenagers digging at a roadside in the belief they were planting a bomb. They were looking for roots to burn as fuel. In oil rich Iraq.

If Jordan's King Abdullah really believes that the Israeli military operation in Gaza is "a massacre" and "a violation of all international conventions", why doesn't he tell George Bush that on Tuesday when he meets him at the White House? Better still, why doesn't he say it in public if the visit includes the customary brief Q&A with reporters?

AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici

So the man who didn't get elected President in 2004 manages to be in Pakistan for a crucial election, survives an emergency helicopter landing in Afghanistan while checking up on the very fragile central front in the war on al-Qaeda, and gets a meeting with the Turkish Prime Minister on the day that Turkey launches a full-scale ground invasion of northern Iraq. Senator John Kerry above, with his colleagues Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel. Not many George Bush fans there.

Meanwhile, George Bush, where is he? Sleeping off the jet lag after the flight from Liberia. The Swiftboaters must be so happy.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said that "the great George Bush" assured him that no rendition flights had used or would use Shannon airport for the extra-judicial transfer of prisoners. Tony Blair's government had claimed similar assurances and only cited evidence of pre 9/11 transfers that might have used British facilities.

The claim about British facilities now turns out to be false --

CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees in a message Thursday that information previously provided to the British "turned out to be wrong."

The spy agency reviewed rendition records late last year and discovered that in 2002 the CIA had in fact refueled two separate planes carrying two alleged terrorists on Diego Garcia, a British island territory in the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia is a disgrace all of its own, since the natives were kicked off the island to make room for the base. But anyway, if a plane needed to refuel in Diego Garcia en route to or from the USA, it had to have needed to refuel somewhere else as well. So the Shannon question comes back.

It's St Patrick's Day in less than a month. Bertie will be in America. It will be during Holy Week. If ever there was a time for confession and atonement, this might be it.

UPDATE: In a press briefing, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack comes very close to implying that the US has something more than an informal arrangement but less than a treaty with the UK about the use of military bases for rendition flights. How much less than a treaty? Is George Bush again entering into quasi-treaties without Senate advice and consent?

With Air Force 1 doing its one day stints in various African countries, a rare music video plug (for this blog): John Legend's "Show Me". One perspective on what flashy jet planes mean to poverty-stricken Africans.

His only mistake was sequencing the BBC interview before the full speech. The former was a highly condensed version of the latter, which then got condensed even more in the summarising and became the narrative through which the subsequent uproar was mediated.

The line in the interview about aspects of Sharia being "inevitable" made sense in the broader context of the speech but was a gift to the haters. Responsible people are of course reading the transcript of the speech but it's even better to listen to it (54 Mb MP3 file, about 55 minutes long), because that captures the understated and cautious tone of what he was saying -- as does the lack of reaction from the crowd, many of whom must be surprised at how what they heard had turned into such a caricature within 24 hours.

The over-the-top reaction from the American right is something to keep in mind for the next controversy about a pharmacist who won't sell birth control pills or the next time that George Bush says he needs an exemption from federal law to allow some faith-based initiative to receive government funding.


A less serious Rowan Williams post

A couple of days ago the New York Times had an excellent but depressing story about the first death from natural causes at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp -- a milestone in someone dying before getting to see an independent judge. Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was an Afghan war hero from the struggle against the Taliban and got landed in Gitmo almost solely on the world of people who had a grudge against him. No serious effort was made to get supporting witnesses for him, and there he stayed.

Today the New York Times has an editor's note for the story. Such a note is usually reserved for some major error or oversight in the story. So what is it? --

Andy Worthington, a freelance journalist who worked on the article under contract with The New York Times and was listed as its co-author, did some of the initial reporting but was not involved in all of it, and The Times verified the information he provided ... Mr. Worthington has written a book, “The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison,” in which he takes the position that Guantánamo is part of what he describes as a cruel and misguided response by the Bush administration to the Sept. 11 attacks. He has also expressed strong criticism of Guantánamo in articles published elsewhere.

The editors were not aware of Mr. Worthington’s outspoken position on Guantánamo. They should have described his contribution to the reporting instead of listing him as co-author, and noted that he had a point of view.

So someone with an expertise and, God forbid, a "point of view" is disqualified from the byline even when they supply verified facts?

So it's official. CIA Director General Michael Hayden has told the US Senate Intelligence Committee that waterboarding (also known as partial drowning interrogation, or, to Dick Cheney "dunking in water") was used on 3 detainees. Waterboarding is torture. Or else it's not, in which case the global understanding of what constitutes torture is officially in tatters.

It's not too late to impeach George Bush. Remember, he gets nearly 3 months in power after the election in November. That's a lot of pardoning and shredding time.

UPDATE: To its credit, National Public Radio news has developed the usage "controlled drowning, better known as waterboarding".

One thing that the dropping of eaves on Sadiq Khan MP as he spoke to his detained constituent Babar Ahmad shows is that if the term securocrat did not already exist from activities in Northern Ireland, it would have to be invented. In fact the new situation is tailor-made for the expression, as it now appears that no elected official had any say in the decision to snoop on the conversation.

At some point it might be in the interest of each candidate on the Democratic and Republican side to ask for the French presidential debate rule that there be no cut-away shots of one candidate while another candidate is speaking. Rudy is looking particularly bad in such shots in the Florida debate tonight. The pundits love it because it gives them something to write about, such as with the infamous (in pundit eyes) Al Gore expressions of exasperation while George W. Bush was speaking in 2000. For some reason, the pundits thought that it was Gore making a fool of himself. But anyway. The French rule is a good one. Let the debates be decided on what the person speaking says and does (McCain: "We lost the election because of the bridge to nowhere"), and not the inevitable sighs, grimaces and random twitches of the other candidates.

Dick Cheney, perhaps feeling that he has some catching up to do having accounted for only 48 of the administration's 935 lies about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, was at the right-wing Heritage Foundation yesterday to argue in favour of the War on Terror in general and George Bush's right to engage in warrantless electronic snooping on Americans in particular. Using his standard "serious" monotone for which the pundits are suckers, this was among his arguments --

In addition, a small number of terrorists, high-value targets held overseas, have gone through a tougher interrogation program run by the CIA. These include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. The procedures of the CIA program are designed to be safe.

Think about the actual meaning of that last sentence. One only has to design something to be safe if there's a possibility that otherwise it could be fatal. So what are they doing that has to be designed to be safe?

The Irish News is appealing the finding of libel against them over their review of the restaurant Goodfellas. The essence of their appeal --

Lord Lester QC insisted the review had been written in good faith and without malice. As he opened a hearing, the barrister claimed issues of great public importance dealing with the right to freedom of expression were at stake. "Although it was about a review by a food critic, it could as well have been a review written by a theatre or film critic." ... He told the court: "It [ the review] did not purport to be a factual report by a food scientist. It was a personal description by a food critic explaining why she formed a poor opinion of the restaurant based on her experience as a customer on the evening in question."

One little bit of information in the reporting of the appeal is that the original verdict had an element of a self-inflicted wound for the Irish News, as they were the ones that pushed for a trial.

AFP/Said Khatib

Amid several candidates for the honour, the most insidious aspect of George Bush's Middle East visit was his clear nod to Israel -- and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank -- that he was dumping the Gaza strip overboard as an object of his peace efforts:

PRESIDENT BUSH: First of all, Gaza is a tough situation. I don't know whether you can solve it in a year, or not ... There is a competing vision taking place in Gaza. And in my judgment, Hamas, which I felt ran on a campaign of, we're going to improve your lives through better education and better health, have delivered nothing but misery ... And there's going to be -- there will be no better difference, a clear difference, than the vision of Hamas in Gaza and the vision of the President and the Prime Minister and his team based here in Ramallah. And to me, that's how you solve the issue in the long-term. And the definition of long-term, I don't know what it means. I'm not a timetable person -- actually, I am on a timetable -- got 12 months. (Laughter.) ...

PRESIDENT ABBAS: (As translated.) Gaza it is considered a coup by us, we consider it a coup d'etat what happened in Gaza. Now -- we consider it a coup d'etat. (Laughter.) And we deal with Gaza at two levels. The first is that we deal with the people as part of us and we take full responsibility that is necessary towards our people. We spend in Gaza 58 percent of our budget. This is not to -- it is our duty towards our people that we provide them with all the need.

Thus Israel and the West Bank authorities were told to keep working on their own track and let Gaza sort itself out, whatever that means.

Among the things it means is the current fuel blockade, which imposes a punishment on civilians. Israel has a two part strategy of noting the problems with rocket fire while claiming that it hasn't cut off its direct electricity supplies to the strip, which is true. But the directly supplied electricity is irrelevant to many in Gaza because they are not connected to the electricity network (which in some cases has been damaged by air raids). If you're relying on your own water pump or diesel generator, the state of power lines to which you're not connected is irrelevant.

Of course Israel's strategy shouldn't be a surprise and they may yet work out some kind of compromise to let monitored fuel supplies back in. The bigger disgraces are Bush's attempt to peddle himself as someone who cares about the Palestinian people -- and the pathetic crew thereof in Ramallah who in effect signed off on this stunt knowing full well what it would mean for Gaza.

UPDATE: Here's a good example from The Corner of the propagation of the Israeli spin which never mentions the key issue of the electricity grid. Meanwhile, Israel has allowed a slight relaxation of the blockade.

Only George Bush could make one of his boilerplate proclamations irritating. The proclamation of the King Holiday --

Our Nation has made progress toward realizing Dr. King's dream, yet the work to achieve liberty and justice for all is never-ending. In July of 2006, I was honored to sign the "Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006," to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and reaffirm our commitment to securing the voting rights of all Americans.

This would be the dude in office due to uncounted votes in Florida in 2000 and/or Supreme Court intervention to complain about the lack of a uniform standard for counting votes in Florida in 2000 but not about any other aspect of America's patchwork voting system. And this would be the dude whose party yells about "voter fraud" any time an election goes against them, and indeed who yelled themselves into the scandal about the fired US Attorneys, since the fired Attorneys were the ones insufficiently zealous about chasing down those voter fraudsters.

But he'll have his best solemn face on for the King ceremonies. At least Dr King gets more than the phone-in appearance that he'll be doing the next day for the Roe v Wade observance, in keeping with his tradition of being out of town when the pro-lifers are in town.

The only question about an opening passage like this from the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) today (the usually sane, news side of the paper, article by Siobhan Gorman) is whether it'll bother Ron Paul even more than it should bother any other person waiting for January 20, 2009 --

As the presidential campaign accelerates, Homeland Security has begun an unusual -- and potentially controversial -- effort to smooth the transition to a new administration, a time in which the country has traditionally been vulnerable.

The department is already beginning to position career staffers to move into some of the key jobs held by political appointees set to depart with President Bush in January 2009. The change in power will mark the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that the reins of government will change hands.

So whoever comes in will have people who moved up the system through 8 years of Bush sitting at security desks on the first day. And there until they can get their own people installed, which takes time.

What's the rationale? That elections are a time of vulnerability --

Transitions can be highly partisan, even childish, affairs. In 2001, staffers damaged or removed "w" keys from White House computer keyboards. Frequently, outgoing officials leave little more than empty desks for their successors, particularly when another party comes to power. That period is "an area where traditionally there's a danger," Mr. Chertoff said.

President Clinton faced the 1993 World Trade Center bombing within his first two months in office, and Sept. 11 came within President Bush's first eight months. Mr. Light estimates that half the political appointees relating to terrorism were not in place that day. The 2004 Madrid bombings and the botched car bombings in the United Kingdom last summer occurred within days of national elections.

The facts: The Madrid 11-M bombings occurred with Jose Maria Aznar's PP government still in power, and thus with zero transition in the security apparatus. And there was no election in the UK last summer. There was the transition from Blair to Brown, the only candidate to replace Blair. And the entire apparatus below the Cabinet in the UK remained unchanged (unlike in the USA, where the top civil service spots are political appointments).

But worst of all, note the free pass given to Bush. 8 months is not just after an election. It's a long time. And some of the instability was caused by Bush himself, when he dumped Clinton's anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan because it "wasn't part of a strategy". The phrase was ABC -- anything but Clinton.

And now it's the excuse to keep the Bush hacks sitting in homeland security into the next administration. Or else a set up to blame the next administration for "instability" if something bad does happen.

AP Photo

In a land with a history of divine intervention, severe fog forced George Bush to change his original plan to treat the West Bank like he did Lousiana when Katrina hit -- as flyover country. Hence his 45 car motorcade en route to Ramallah got to see the road and barrier carve-up of the West Bank up close, albeit without the endless delays at checkpoints. It may actually have made an impression as Bush brought it up several times at his news conference with Mahmoud Abbas.

Friday White House news dump --

The President intends to designate Richard Stickler, of West Virginia, to be Acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health.

That would be the dude who was doing the same job for the last year and a half as a recess appointment i.e. without Congressional approval, and for an administration whose record on mine safety has been disastrous (unless the benchmark is China). So Bush keeps him on the job as "acting" rather than finding someone that the Senate might actually approve i.e. not a creature of the mining companies. A reminder of the stakes in these primaries.

You lose track so easily of your infant hostages.

Washington Post

It's a bit weird when in the joint statement from David Miliband and Condi Rice regarding the Kenyan electoral crisis that they call for "an intensive political and legal process that can build a united and peaceful future for Kenya" when the lesson of the 2000 electoral crisis in Florida was that whoever shouts loudest and longest has the inside track in determining the eventual outcome -- such as with the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" at the count centre in Miami, featuring flown-in Republican staffers to create the appearance of popular outrage, when of course the actual outrage was those still uncounted votes for Al Gore.

Kenya clearly needs to find some process for figuring out who won without any more people getting killed. But it shouldn't be the American model.

George Bush manages to get in one last signing statement for 2007 -- these are statements which accompanies legislation that he signs in which he outlines which part of that legislation he won't be obeying. This time, if the Democrats had any sense, the talking point should be "Why does George Bush hate Darfur refugees?" --

Today, I have signed into law S. 2271, the "Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007." ... This Act purports to authorize [US] State and local governments to divest from companies doing business in named sectors in Sudan and thus risks being interpreted as insulating from Federal oversight State and local divestment actions that could interfere with implementation of national foreign policy. However, as the Constitution vests the exclusive authority to conduct foreign relations with the Federal Government, the executive branch shall construe and enforce this legislation in a manner that does not conflict with that authority.

There's no reason to believe that 2008 will be any different.