ANOTHER STORM, ANOTHER EVACUATION
KAREN HUGHES SELLS THE USA
COUNTING THE MARCHERS

A typhoon was looming off the coast of Vietnam, a country far poorer than our own. Somehow, that country managed to get many of its people out of harm’s way. BBC reports: “Nearly 300,000 people were moved from the Vietnamese coast before the typhoon hit on Tuesday morning, one of the largest such operations ever undertaken.”

Typhoon Damrey, which left 16 people dead on China’s island province of Hainan, brought torrential rain and 100 km/h (60 mph) winds.

Homes and rice crops in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa and Nam Dinh provinces have been flooded after sea dykes were breached.

“The priority is to evacuate people in danger and then to reinforce dykes,” Prime Minister Phan Van Khai said.

DELAY THE CONSPIRATOR

The Exterminator may be in danger of getting snuffed. The New York Times reports it this way:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme.

Mr. DeLay was indicted on one count charging that he violated state election laws in September 2002. Two political associates, John D. Colyandro and James W.
Ellis, were indicted with him.

KAREN THE COMMUNICATOR

President Bush’s closest advisor, Karen Hughes, is touring the Muslim World. The Washington Post reports on her reception in Turkey:

ISTANBUL, Sept. 28 — A group of Turkish female activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes Wednesday with heated complaints about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowering of women into a raw display of the anger at U.S. policy in the region.

“This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero,” said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women’s Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092801429_pf.html

INNOCENT ABROAD?

Sidney Blumenthal calls Hughes an “innocent abroad” in a commentary for Salon:

President Bush has no advisor more loyal and less self-serving than Karen Hughes. As governor of Texas he implicitly trusted the former Dallas television reporter turned press secretary with the tending of his image and words. She was mother hen of his persona. In the White House, Hughes devoted heart and soul to Bush as his communications director, until, suddenly, she returned home to Texas in 2002, citing her son’s homesickness. There were reports that Karl Rove, jealous of power, had been sniping at her…

After two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned in frustration in the face of the precipitous loss of U.S. prestige around the globe, Bush found a new slot for Hughes this year. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior State Department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the United States…

Hughes appeared to be one of the pilgrims satirized by Mark Twain in his 1869 book, “Innocents Abroad,” about his trip on “The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion.” “None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to us… We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans — Americans.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/09/29/hughes_diplomacy/print.html

LYNNDIE TAKES THE FALL, PART 2

Derrick Jackson writes in the Boston Globe:

Lynndie England is convicted. Donald Rumsfeld cackles. England, the 22-year-old private, was found guilty as prosecutors convinced an all-male Army jury that she bore full responsibility for “her own sick humor” in the infamous photographs of her at Abu Ghraib holding a naked prisoner on a leash and smiling as she pointed at a prisoner’s genitals.

Defense lawyers depicted England as a depressed reservist, a mere file clerk who was compliant to authority and easy to manipulate. The defense failed as a prosecuting lawyer stained England for life with, “What soldier wouldn’t know that’s illegal?”

Off in much higher, more stainproof places, Rumsfeld behaved as if he were carving President Bush into Mt. Rushmore.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/28/the_buck_stops_with_lynndie/

SCOTT RITTER: THE PLOT

Ironically, it was Scott Ritter’s first testimony to Congress that first planted the idea that the Iraqi regime was hiding WMDs. But then he became a critic. This is his latest on the subject:

Scott Ritter, reveals how the CIA plotted to use a UN weapons inspection to overthrow the Iraqi regime — and how fiasco turned to tragedy when it failed.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10427.htm

John Pilger denounces “a monumental Act of terrorism” by Britain in Iraq:

John Pilger questions the British version of sinister events in Basra, Iraq, on 19 September, and fills in the gaps in news that has become “like watching a satire” of the war — more evidence, he suggests, of “a monumental act of terrorism.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10425.htm

EJC: TELESUR CHALLENGING U.S. MEDIA

U.S. Congressional leaders are all atwitter over Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez’ new satellite television station, Telesur, which has begun broadcasting four hours a day, financed by its host country and also Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba. Telesur hopes to be accepted regionally, and promises news through Latin American eyes, produced by professional journalists from the region.

Telesur, al Jazeera and other non-Western broadcasters are trying to combat what media researchers call the “North-South flow” of news and images. South American leaders have long been concerned about accuracy in U.S. media reports on the region. Now the U.S. Congress is worried about Telesur’s accuracy.

“It is simply wrong to believe that only Americans can practice honest journalism and that only corporate-owned media can serve the people. If Telesur turns out to be only a propaganda organ it will fail to penetrate beyond Venezuela, but if it proves to be more than that, it will give the region a new, Latin voice,” says Floyd J. McKay, journalism professor at Western Washington University.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com