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POPSAP: Palin's flawed pipeline * Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group - the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas. * Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada. *The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. ... * Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.
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POPSLawyers accuse judge of lying, bungling Roman Polanski case The famous film director Roman Polanski fled the US in 1977 because he was charged for statutory rape. Twenty years later, Polanski's lawyer and prosecutors made a deal that would have allowed Polanski to return to the US. Polanski refused the deal because the judge wanted the proceedings televised. Fast forward to now, when HBO releases its Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired documentary which contains this little tidbit. The judge calls the story completely fabricated. Both the defense and prosecuting attorney go on the record calling the judge a liar.
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POPSSenators tried to suppress CIA testimony in Plame affair Jim Marcinkowski is a former CIA official who trained with Valerie Plame. He wanted to testify before Senate committees about the exposure of Plame. After he testified before the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence committee, Pat Roberts declared his testimony secret, so he couldn't testify before the Democratic Policy Committee. Marcinkowski, the lawyer and deputy city attorney, was stunned. "I sat on the park bench, in a daze. I didn't know what the hell to do. Now it hits me, that is why the Senate Select Intelligence Committee had scheduled their testimony for the day before the Senate Democratic public hearing. Until that happened we didn't hear shit from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. They slapped the secrecy thing on it, that was their intention," to try to prevent Valerie's CIA colleagues from testifying publicly about what had happened to her, and why it was a betrayal of everyone in the CIA.
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POPSAmericans can't trust General Petraeus Blogger Glenn Greenwald has compiled a list of Daivd Petraeus' optimistic portrayals of our progress in Iraq, spanning from late 2003 to, well, last Wednesday, when he was interviewed by Republican commentator Hugh Hewitt. Lawrence Korb also notes that Petraeus wrote an op-ed six weeks before the 2004 Presidential election talking about how great a job we were doing training Iraqis..
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POPSHow Republican Senators broke their promise to investigate Iraq intelligence First Roberts said publicly that he'd "try" to have Phase II available to the public before the 2004 election. He didn't. Roberts then gave his word, in writing, that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee would have a draft report on controversial "public statements" from administration officials. That didn't happen either.Then Roberts indicated that he might just give up on the second part of the investigation altogether, because, he argued, there was nothing left to learn. Under pressure to release Phase II before the 2006 elections, Roberts agreed to release subparts of the report, which documented...nothing about the White House's mistakes. One reason why we should be skeptical of Republican reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee. In this instance, they were shamefully negligent in overseeing the executive branch.
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POPSWhite House backtracking on temporary surge Basra, Iraq (AHN)-During a news conference with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the top U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. George Casey estimated that the 21,500 additional U.S. troops sent to Iraq will only need to stay until around late summer . 1 ]
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POPSPetraeus wants to drop ban on domestic propaganda According to this article, General Petraeus wants to tear down the wall between the military's public affairs operation, which is supposed to truthfully communicate with the US media and public, and the military's information operations, which is given leeway to use deception and propaganda to communicate with foreign populations. I don't understand why we tolerate the use of deception in any kind of public communications whatsoever, with the US public or with the publics of other countries. Via Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise
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POPSChomsky misrepresents Kennan This clip is Chomsky quoting a State Dept memo, written in 1948 by George Kennan, that makes it appear as if Kennan is endorsing the US engaging on a sinister plan to maintain economic disparities between itself and other countries. Chomsky wrote this in his 1993 book What Uncle Sam Really Wants . In fact, Chomsky omits the fact that Kennan was really arguing against the US trying to beat back communism in Asia. Kennan was really advocating letting Asia go and maintaining a sphere of influence limited to Japan and the Philippines.
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POPSReports of progress in Iraq challenged If violence is down in Baghdad, analysts said, it is likely because the Shiite militias operating there are waiting out the buildup in U.S. troops, nearly all of whom are being deployed in the capital. At the same time, Sunni insurgents have escalated their operations elsewhere.
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POPSWhen Hamas Learns How to Adapt Argues that Hamas is more interested in pursuing patronage politics than in resisting the Israeli occupation & settlements. Via Amal A at Improvisations
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POPSThe Attack on Human Rights Watch Good overview of the controversies over HRW's reporting of the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Neier deals with the following arguments: * HRW devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to Israel (false) * HRW did not declare Hezbollah an aggressor (HRW never declares aggressors in its reporting, because it realizes that "aggression" is an inherently political concept, as Israel and the US pointed out when they protested the creation of the International Criminal Court) * He also takes down Dershowitz's argument that because sometimes Hezbollah mingled with civilians, Israel should be exonerated for all civilian deaths caused by its air strikes. Dershowitz failed to note that HRW documented two dozen cases where Israeli strikes killed civilians where there was no evidence of a Hezbollah presence. Moreover, Dershowitz himself used sloppy evidence to overstate the presence of Hezbollah among civilians. Via http://www.matthewyglesias.com/
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POPSEric Ambler and the British Espionage Novel Eric Ambler is considered to be the grand doyen of spy novelists. As this essay points out, he didn't invent the genre, but he made a lasting impact on it. I have been reading some of his novels lately (Dark Frontier and A Coffin for Dmitrios). For some reason I find them pretty slow going however. Still, this essay helps me appreciate his contribution
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POPSBorat - The story of Vanilla Face The hotel manager ("Vanilla Face") who was accosted by Borat was friends with this blogger, who shares his story. I have to confess being disturbed by the amount of deception the film crew used to persuade the manager to participate in the film, especially since the guy was dealing with the loss of his father. EDIT: Via digg
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POPSSettlements grow on Arab land, despite vow to US Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory. In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for.
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POPS"Have we done compassion or haven't we?" Bush's entire 2000 campaign was organized around the "compassionate conservative" theme. Yet midway through his first term, Bush had no idea whether he was living up to his label--and his aides wouldn't even tell him the truth was quite the opposite.
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POPSThe deceptive advocacy of Stephen Moore Stephen Moore just wrote this editorial touting his statistical "expertise" to cast doubt on the Lancet study showing that the number of deaths in Iraq have increased by 650,000 since the US invasion. See also Tim Lambert on Moore's editorial.
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