Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Perjury, He Spoke

This could be it, if it holds up. Rove should bring a toothbruth and clean underwear to the office tomorrow.

Time Magazine broke the story, or at least, the basics of the real story behind the Plame outing and it’s not pretty for the Administration at all.

BEFORE Joe Wilson wrote his Op Ed piece on Niger in July, 2003, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post inquired about the “unnamed former diplomat” who had gone to Niger and come back with a negative report on the yellowcake uranium story.

According to Massimo Calabresi at Time, this is what set off the White House into circling the wagons and looking for ways to discredit the Pincus report, now known to be true, that the Niger deal with Iraq for WMD had never gone down.

This effort is what unearthed Plame’s CIA identity and Rove apparently would have known about it, as would Libby. No unnamed journalist, as Rove claimed in the Grand Jury hearing, just a good old fashioned White House damage control cabal blew Plame's cover, it seems.

According to Time:

"When Pincus' article ran on June 12, the circle of senior officials who knew about the identity of Wilson's wife expanded. "After Pincus," a former intelligence officer says, "there was general discussion with the National Security Council and the White House and State Department and others" about Wilson's trip and its origins. A source familiar with the memo says neither Powell nor Armitage spoke to the White House about it until after July 6. John McLaughlin, then deputy head of the CIA, confirms that the White House asked about the Wilson trip, but can't remember exactly when. One thing he's sure of, says McLaughlin, who has been interviewed by prosecutors, is that "we looked into it and found the facts of it, and passed it on.""

Hat tips to Crooks and Liars and Think Progress.

Khalid's Account of Iraq Detention

Khalid Jarrar has posted a lengthy account of his recent detention and interrogation in Iraq. Go there.

We thought maybe Khalid was detained and kept in prison for blogging...no, it was for READING the wrong blogs. He learned this (the hard way):

“All what it takes to put someone in jail is to call anonymously and claim that he is a terrorist, and that’s it, he will be tortured and put in jail for 45 days, so you, “the secret informer” can chose to come to the court during this period and swear that he is a terrorist, if so, that’s it, he will be legally accused of terrorism and might spend the rest of his life in jail, or he maybe executed, or maybe set free, its totally up to the judge to decide that, or maybe its up to the CIA, which I knew later that they occupy the floor that was above us in the building, where the orders come from.”

Fences and Neighbors

65 is a number that indicates the level of segregation between blacks and whites in American homes. 65 is the percentage of black people now living in the United States who would have to move in order to be evenly distributed with whites.

It’s a good number to remember the next times someone talks about the civil rights movement in the past tense.

(from 2000 census figures via Sheryll Cashin, The Failures of Integration)

Telesur

This week, Telesur, a new satellite news broadcast network, centered on Latin American news, went on the air. Beginning with a four-hour broadcast day, the network aims to expand quickly. Telesur is financed jointly through the governments of Venezuela, the majority shareholder, Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay.

Telesur is headed by Uraguayan journalist Aram Aharonian, who says the new station, "is the only alternative to the hegemonic message with which they bombard us from the North." Telesur broadcasts currently on New Skies Satellite 806, but expects jamming from the US government. Telesur is planning alternate means of transmission as well.

Telesur has sparked a debate over whether the effort represents an opening for more diversity of viewpoints on the television airwaves or simply another propaganda channel. Andres Canizalez, a researcher at the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas and the director of the Jesuit magazine "Comunicacion", remarked to IPS from Caracas that the project deserves "the benefit of the doubt" because it is aimed at countering a real problem: U.S. control of televised images in Latin America.

Partially in response to Telesur, Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack’s legislation passed the US House of Representatives last week. His bill is designed to create a US information channel aimed at Venezuela. Mack introduced his concept by saying, “The United States should promote the creation of institutions that will foster a free press, free markets, the freedom of speech and religion, and free and fair elections for Venezuela, including the establishment of a Venezuelan counterpart to Radio and TV Marti.”

Venezuela’s Ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, said that this amendment “reflects a total lack of knowledge about Venezuelan reality.”

A hat tip to Raed in the Middle, who posted on the similarities between Telesur and Al Jazeera news as regional competitors with CNN and the BBC.

Latoyia Figueroa

Sadly, crimes against people of color that occur with startling regularity in the U.S. are not generally ‘interesting’ enough to the mainstream media to publicize. What’s worse, there are occasions when publicity is exactly what’s needed to save a life or put a family’s anguish and uncertainty to an end.

It seems that if a bride-to-be with blond hair and a fair complexion decides not to show up for her wedding, the nation’s tabloid press is all over the story and every right wing talk show host in America is waiting in the wings to deliver a crank advance verdict on what happened. But let a pregnant African American mother go missing and somehow, it doesn’t seem to make the news.

It’s good to know that somebody noticed when Latoyia Figueroa went missing in Philadelphia. The All Spin Zone blog pushed the national media to sit up and take a look by shaming them into action. If you live anywhere near Philly, you might want to take a look at the site and send the blog a note of encouragement for doing a good thing. You might want to contribute to the reward for information as well.

Let’s hope she’s OK, and that nothing happened to her while the big boys of the mainstream media couldn’t be bothered.

The Aristocrats

Don’t you want to know how this joke goes?

A. O. Scott tempts you to hear the comics spin it all out, omitting nothing for the censor’s sake.

IRA Peace Declaration

Hopefully, this marks a great advance for peace and justice in Northern Ireland:

"All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.”

"The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible."

UPDATE- Blair's response: "Today may be the day that peace replaced war, that politics replaced terror, on the island of Ireland."

Hackett: Antiwar Marine for Congress

With a hat tip to Crooks and Liars, here’s a refreshing endorsement from the heartland of America— for a Marine back fresh from Iraq who wants to get us out.

The Cincinnati Post is backing Paul Hackett, a Democrat, in a special election for Congress. Hackett spent much of the last year in Baghdad wearing a Marine Major’s uniform and wants to bring American troops home. He’d rather be breaking off our cozy relationship with the dictator running Pakistan and getting back to finding Osama bin Laden than keeping American troops at risk in Iraq.

Interestingly, if elected in this traditionally Republican district, Hackett would be the only member of Congress to have served in Iraq.

PS- Hackett’s getting attention here and here

...And Throwing Away the Key

…and here’s an excellent reason to deny this man parole— forever.

"I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same."
- Mohammed Bouyer, who confessed to killing Theo van Gogh

reported on the BBC

Camporee Night at Scooter's Office

Jesus' General has Gonzales' "12 Hour Gap" covered...in some pretty interesting substances.

A hat tip to sukabi at ASZ.