micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Sunday, November 16, 2003
micah holmquist's November 16 notes To follow up on Friday's "November 14 vision," here is the lead editorial in yesterday's Deer Digest: We here are Deer Digest are constantly under the threat of human repression but you can count on us to remain an independent advocate for our fellow deer. Just yesterday the humans tried to take over but we defeated them, 103-2.Today's lead editorial is simply: Not bad but more can be and must done.Strange. *** "Bush is the president so why shouldn't it be allowed to do whatever he wants?" is my latest contribution to HorowitzWatch. In it I mention Stephen F. Hayes' Weekly Standard story on connection between Saddam and al Qaeda: OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.Hayes goes into far more detail about the memo's contents, although he is regularly unclear about when certain interviews took place. I also find it a bit suspect that no qualifications are made as to whether or not any of these individuals that are considered to be reliable sources in this report gave information of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be inaccurate. Eric Garris has raised another doubt in an antiwar.com piece while the Department of Defense says: A letter was sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 27, 2003 from Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in response to follow-up questions from his July 10 testimony. One of the questions posed by the committee asked the Department to provide the reports from the Intelligence Community to which he referred in his testimony before the Committee. These reports dealt with the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.If the Bush Administration does in fact believe their is a definite link, a question I raised last year -why isn't Team Bush making a bigger deal of this?- seems as pertinent as ever. *** The Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi Governing Council's "Agreement on Political Process." *** "The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is ending its emergency food programme in the West Bank, saying the economic collapse there is the direct result of Israeli military closures and that Israel must live up to its responsibility as the occupying power for the economic needs of the Palestinians," Justin Huggler writes in today's Independent. "The move comes as the Israeli media reported that François Bellon, the Red Cross representative, told senior Israeli generals that the Palestinian Authority was on the verge of an 'explosion' that could lead to 'the worst ever humanitarian crisis' in the occupied territories." Also: The Palestinian economy has collapsed under the weight of military closures of Palestinian cities, making it impossible for Palestinians to move their produce or travel to jobs in other cities or in Israel. Last year and early this year, curfews imposed for all but a few hours a week by the Israeli army made it impossible for Palestinians to work at all..."The ICRC in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Autonomous Territories" *** *** "President George Bush and Tony Blair have agreed an exit strategy for pulling out of Iraq, officially ending the occupation next year while committing troops to the region until 2006," Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont write in today's Observer. "...the two leaders will make the blueprint the centrepiece of their discussions during Bush's state visit to Britain this week." *** "THE WHITE HOUSE always said it would never count how many Iraqi parents we killed to liberate their children. We would never count how many toddlers we blew to pieces to free their elders. We would never count how many nuclear families we vaporized. We would never know if we razed a village to save a child," Derrick Z. Jackson writes in Thursday's Boston Globe. "This is the most disgusting and least discussed aspect of President Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq." *** "Seven farmers told Reuters that U.S. soldiers, who are mounting a new crackdown against insurgents, have been pressuring them to help hunt down fighters," Michael Georgy writes in a November 14 Reuters story about Iraq. '''They came here and they told us to help them catch resistance fighters or their planes would destroy our homes and we would be arrested,' said Ahmed Mohammad, 30." *** The Central Eurasia Project's analysis of the new Afghan draft constitution. |