Perhaps some of you noticed Bill Clinton's $15,000-a-head confab at a Midtown Manhattan Sheraton hotel last week to raise funds and awareness to tackle global poverty and climate change. Hillary, Colin Powell and even Laura Bush were all on hand. (NYT, Sept. 23) We can't help but feel that this elite exploitation does more harm than good. Sarah Ferguson wrote for the Village Voice Sept. 18 that Clinton's ex-veep Al Gore is also on the stump to promote supposed green solutions—with none other than ex-CIA chief James Woolsey:

After Richard Armitage was named as the source in the Valerie Plame leak, there was a paroxysm of unseemly crowing from the right-wing pundits, who predicted that Plame would not now sue Armitage because he is such a handsome, straight-shooting unimpeachable kinda guy. Well, now it turns out that Plame is suing Armitage. And, better yet, this comes to light. From BBC, Sept. 22:

The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

The irony is certainly not lost on Iran. From Business in Africa, Sept. 22:

Cairo - The United States ambassador to Egypt, Francis Ricciardone, said his country has no problem with an Egyptian nuclear programme and was ready to supply nuclear technology to help.

From the LA Times, Sept. 25:

BAGHDAD - Iraq's sectarian leaders stepped back from a simmering constitutional crisis yesterday, agreeing to wait at least 18 months before setting up autonomous regions that would shift power away from the central government.

Don't you just love it when the government contradicts itself? The White House responds to the National Intelligence Estimate report finding the Iraq war is fueling global terrorism. From the LA Times, Sept. 25:

White House: Terrorism not linked to invasion
WASHINGTON - The White House yesterday sharply disagreed with a new U.S. intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq is encouraging global terrorism, as Bush administration officials stressed that anti-American fervor in the Muslim world began long before the Sept. 11 attacks.

From Shared Responsibilites, a Colombia-led international initiative to find solutions to the global problem of narcotics trafficking, Sept. 25:

A recently dismantled cocaine and heroine trafficking ring tricked indigenous people into transporting drugs within Colombia.

Yeah, but they'll probably have their own website. From BBC, Sept. 24, emphasis added:

Internet's future in 2020 debated
The internet will be a thriving, low-cost network of billions of devices by 2020, says a major survey of leading technology thinkers. The Pew report on the future internet surveyed 742 experts in the fields of computing, politics and business. More than half of respondents had a positive vision of the net's future but 46% had serious reservations. Almost 60% said that a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.

C'mon Bernard, don't you think they're just waiting for Yom Kippur? Baruch Kimmerling writes for Haartez, Sept. 25:

Thus spoke Bernard Lewis
On September 22, 2006, Iran was supposed to attack Israel and perhaps the entire Western world. And why precisely on this specific day? Because it is the 27th day of the month of Rajab (in the year 1427, according to the Muslim calendar), the same day Mohammed ascended to heaven on his legendary horse Buraq. And why attack on this day? Because this is what the well-known Orientalist Bernard Lewis said. One could have dismissed this prophecy with a grin had it not aroused a dispute among a number of renowned scholars, had respected newspapers (like the Wall Street Journal) not published it prominently and had statesmen not regarded it as intelligence requiring study.