ANOTHER LOOTING SCANDAL:

Euro MPs accused the European Commission yesterday of trying to cover up a “vast enterprise of looting” by top officials in Luxembourg.

Three European commissioners, including the vice-president, Neil Kinnock, were hauled up by the European Parliament’s budget control committee, accused of ignoring warnings dating back to the 1990s of widespread corruption in Eurostat, the European Union’s data office.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a Tory MEP, said millions of pounds of public money had vanished into the hands of a clique of officals serving as directors of related companies.

“I’m convinced this has been a huge cover-up and the commission never had any intention of solving any of these problems until forced to by allegations in the press,” he said.

Obviously, there aren’t enough American troops to keep order over there.

THE GALLOWAY SCANDAL CONTINUES TO UNFOLD:

George Galloway confirmed for the first time yesterday that he was in Iraq on the day that documents found by The Telegraph allege he met an Iraqi intelligence officer there to discuss “continuous financial support”.

The suspended Labour MP also admitted that he was “not yet” in a position to disprove the documents, which he claimed were forgeries and which were discovered in the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad.

The papers purport to show that Mr Galloway received money from Saddam Hussein’s regime – a slice of oil earnings worth at least £375,000 a year.

It’s always the money with these people.

SILFLAY HRAKA HAS MOVED to a spiffy Movable Type setup.

DONALD SENSING has a bunch of good stuff. Just keep scrolling.

ORRIN HATCH must be smoking some of whatever Bill O’Reilly had, because now he’s making an idiot of himself:

“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”

In the spirit of the Framers, I’m tempted to endorse a more traditional remedy: twice warning a politician about threatening people’s rights and property, and then running him out of town on a rail.

That’s one, Orrin.

And if I were the DNC, I’d already have started shooting the attack ad: Orrin Hatch and the Republicans want to wreck your computer so that Big Business can get rich!

UPDATE: Ryan Macri emails: “…what’s next? Can copyright holders legally break into your home and destroy your music collection and stereo system if you shoplift CDs?”

Don’t give ’em ideas.

ANN CLWYD WRITES IN THE TIMES:

The UN could have gone on passing resolutions and sending in inspectors and rapporteurs for the next 50 years, but in the end there was no realistic alternative to war. Those who bleat about weapons of mass destruction or question the legality of war should talk to the Iraqi people. They are irritated. They ask, “Don’t they care about us? About mass graves? About torture?” Stand at the mass grave at al-Hillah where up to 15,000 people are buried, hands tied behind their backs, bullets through their brains. Examine the pitiful possessions found so far: a watch, a faded ID card, a comb, a ring, a clump of black hair. Watch the old woman in her black chador, tattoos on her gnarled hands, looking through the plastic bags on top of unidentified, reburied bodies, for something that will help her to find her son, who disappeared in 1991.

Stand at the mass grave near Kirkuk, where huge mechanised trucks churn the earth in clouds of dust. Look at the skeletons now tenderly reburied in simple wooden coffins. Talk to Nasir al-Hussein, who was only 12 at the time of the 1991 mass arrests. He, his mother, uncle and cousins were piled on buses. They turned off on to a farm road and the executions started. People were thrown into a pit, machinegunned and then buried with a bulldozer. Nasir crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind.

The director of this self-help centre, Ibrahim al-Idrissi, was in prison eight times. Once they took off all his toenails. He shows me photographs of executions and the bloodied, battered body of a university lecturer from Basra, still alive, his sawn-off arm lying by his side.

On the streets of Baghdad, WMD is not an issue. “Thanks to Bush and Blair,” they cry. I ask what would have happened if they had spoken to me like this in the past on the streets of Baghdad. One man slowly drew his hand, palm down, across his throat.

I wonder if they mentioned that on the BBC’s program about America tonight?

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, this time at Yale.

UPDATE: Apparently, the Yale I.T. people say the email in question was a hoax.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Or maybe not. Eliana Johnson emails:

Ithought you might be interested to know, though, that the e-mail was not a hoax. I’m not sure where the message you posted came from, but professor Qumsiyeh admitted he sent the e-mail, sent a number of inadequate retractions and apologies, and was interviewed about the incident in a story for the NY Sun written a couple weeks ago. The administration initially told me that it may be a hoax the day after it went out–I guess somebody’d sent inflammatory e-mails from Qumsiyeh’s e-mail account earlier in the year–but there’s no question he wrote this one. Not even he denies it!

I’ve asked her for links.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. The “hoax” link is to an email dated June of 2002, not 2003 — something I missed because the date was so close and, well, I’m an idiot. So all it proves is that his email was spoofed in the past. Other readers also say that Qumsiyeh admits sending this one. Here’s a link to a story in which he admits sending the email.

See, O’Reilly: here in the blogosphere we run corrections pretty damn fast — even when we were right to begin with!

IAIN MURRAY HAS MOVED. Adjust your blogrolls accordingly.

RAND SIMBERG SAYS THAT BILL O’REILLY IS RIGHT — Free Speech should be a collective right!

Make this your next FoxNews column, Rand. I double-dog dare you.

ANTI-AMERICANISM AT THE BBC? A reader emails:

Watching this BBC thing? It’s bloody remarkable. We’re more dangerous than the N. Koreans. And we were assholes EVEN under Clinton. A truly sad spectacle.

I missed it, but that sounds typical.

UPDATE: David Carr saw it, and reports:

What amused me most was general agreement that the USA was rich because of its economic model and, at the same time, a complete rejection of the idea of copying it.

In fact, it was rather dull, equivocal and not quite sure of itself. The underlying theme was largely one of self-pity and petty jealousy culminating it a morose admission that America was the unchallengable world superpower and there isn’t much the likes of France can do about it except whine and bitch. They may as well have called it ‘Inferiority Complex – The Movie’.

Carr’s final suggestion:

Perhaps some Americans might waggishly suggest an US TV special called ‘What Americans Think of the EU’. Now that I would pay to see.

Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers think that the latter special would resemble Humphrey Bogart’s remarks to Peter Lorre: “I might despise you, if I gave you any thought.”

Group Captain Mandrake live-blogged the program.

THERE ARE 20,000 IRANIAN WEBLOGS. Jeff Jarvis has links to some of them. One of the most popular is by a former prostitute. Here’s more:

Iranian youths have launched 20,000 active Web logs, or “blogs,” — online diaries which range in topic from simple musings on life to political discussions to sports.

In April, Sina Motallebi became the first blogger to be arrested in Iran where dozens of reformist journalists have been charged by hardline courts. He was freed on bail three weeks later but still faces undisclosed charges.

Women have been especially active bloggers, seizing the opportunity to speak out freely and anonymously on subjects such as dating and romance.

Besides popular political and news sites, half of the 10 most visited Persian blogs are about sex, according to figures from a service providing statistics on Web usage.

“Blogs show us a new generation . . . that is self-expressive, tolerant and individualistic,” said Hossein Derakhshan, a Toronto-based veteran Iranian blogger.

“Many are lonely and hopeless to the point of depression. They seem to be frustrated and have a problem with sex,” said Derakhshan, who presented a study on Iranian blogs at a conference in Vienna in late May.

Azadi, Arak, Eshgh!

UPDATE: Arthur Silber has more thoughts on blogging ex-prostitutes and revolution.

EUGENE VOLOKH IS Fisking a gun study from the University of Pennsylvania, which he calls biased and inaccurate:

The study, however, completely failed to control for what might well be the most important factors: whether the household contained violent criminals, gang members, drug dealers, and the like. These are the very factors that might cause both gun ownership and gun death. And because the study didn’t control for them, it says nothing about whether gun ownership really “increases the odds” that a law-abiding citizen will be killed. The study’s results could easily flow simply from the huge set of homicide victims who are themselves criminals.

He’s got more on his weblog.

BILL O’REILLY DOESN’T LIKE BEING CRITICIZED BY INDEPENDENT INTERNET SITES — so I’ve written about him over on my MSNBC site just to be accommodating. We aim to please. . . .

UPDATE: Michele has a nice compilation of links to commentary on O’Reilly’s screed.

IRANIAN EXILES ARE vandalizing Iranian consulates. What? Iranians violate diplomatic sanctity?

Of course, I guess it’s not really a violation of diplomatic immunity when it’s your own consulate. . . .

(Via Zach Barbera — who is also deeply, and I think rightly, suspicious of the French for choosing this particular moment to crack down on Iranian exiles they’ve tolerated for 20 years. I don’t think this particular group is especially savory, but as Barbera points out, France didn’t mind them before, and doesn’t mind Hamas now. And didn’t mind sheltering Khomeini, back in the day. Why, it’s almost as if they’re waging a proxy war to undermine Anglo-Saxon influence in the mideast. . . .)

ANDREW SULLIVAN is calling for bloggers to focus on Iran on July 9. I think that’s a great idea, though I don’t think we should skip coverage in the meantime.

Meanwhile Pejman Yousefzadeh and Matthew Yglesias wonder why the story of Iranians’ struggle for freedom is seen by some as a “right wing” issue. And Don Watkins observes:

I mean, shouldn’t this be the story for anti-war liberals? Here are a bunch of brave souls fighting a tyrannical regime through the old liberal favorite of massive protests. Here’s the chance for them to get behind the cause of freedom without having to support war. Here’s the chance for liberals to support the potentially most important win in the war against terrorism and they are hesitant to do it. Why? Because the “right wingers” (of which I am not one, by the way) were there first.

Which raises a number of questions: Why were they there first? And what does it say about liberals when differentiating and distancing themselves from conservatives becomes more important than the cause of human freedom? And why the hell is it that conservatives are having to explain to liberals that there are times when we must put our differences aside in the name of higher values? I mean, Jesus, since when did this become Bizzaro World?

Good questions, all. But I hope they won’t discourage lefty bloggers from standing up for freedom against fundamentalist theocrats.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs predicts that Noam Chomsky, et al., will soon be saying that the Iranian protests are all about oil. Meanwhile, Oxblog counts the ways in which Iran has been interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and NRO runs an Iranian student’s account of the protests.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meryl Yourish wonders why the Iranian protests aren’t getting play on IndyMedia.

THE BAD NEWS: John Hawkins had a nasty automobile accident. The good news: He lived to blog about it.

REID STOTT ON BILL O’REILLY:

Yeah, that unrestrained free speech is dangerous, it ought to be eliminated from the Constitution. And it’s especially suspect when someone is doing it for free. Even more so when they claim they do it … for fun. Clearly, any act lacking financial motivation is Libel and/or Insurrection. So just shut your lowly peasant mouth, and believe what you’re told by the people on TV who know better. . . .

Bill, in this case, when you rattle the cage, the cage rattles back.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Phelps thinks that O’Reilly wants attention to shore up sagging ratings, but suggests that he’s misunderstood the Internet badly:

Unfortunately for him, he is still stuck in the TV mentality of “any press is good press.” Bill has decided to apply that philosophy to the blogosphere, and I think it is going to bite him in the ass. . . .

I think that Bill has missed the effect of reputation on the Internet. Reputation is important. The people on the internet are not TV drones. They don’t remember just that a name is familiar and watch what is familiar; they remember why that person is familiar, and if they don’t there is a link there to remind them. He complains that you don’t get corrections on the internet; he is right. What you get is immediate editing or withdrawl of incorrect facts. If you don’t, then the person screwing up gets fisked and everyone laughs at him.

Pay attention to that word. When you screw up on the internet, people remember. Robert Fisk screwed up, and he did it often enough that he has a word named after him that embodies incompetence. He’s gaining company. Maureen Dowd has her own word now (Dowdification), and I’m sure that there will be more. If O’Reilly wants to keep tugging this chain, he might be the next one.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kevin Drum writes: “Jeez, what’s the point of even mocking him over this when he’s practically engaging in auto-mockery these days?”

Yeah, as Lileks put it: “The minute you act as though you’ve earned the listeners’ ears, you start to lose them.”

But so that O’Reilly won’t be mocked solely by Little Media, I’ve got a post on his remarks coming later today over at GlennReynolds.com too!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: You want Big Media standards of excellence? Okay — now O’Reilly’s rant has been Dowdified!

CAN A BLOG ENTRY COUNT AS SCHOLARSHIP? I think that this post by Lawrence Solum should count.

GOOD GRIEF: Last week it was Andrew Sullivan. This week National Review Online is rattling the tipjar. And with some success — scroll up from this entry. I think we’re seeing the growth of a new revenue model for the Internet before our very eyes.

BILL O’REILLY’S SCREECHY SCREED AGAINST THE INTERNET (discussed below) isn’t impressing many people. After saying that O’Reilly is coming to resemble Dr. Laura (ouch!) James Lileks notes: “Oh, get a grip.”

Eugene Volokh, meanwhile, administers a polite Fisking, pointing out, well, just how dumb O’Reilly’s criticism of “the Internet” really is.

And Matt Welch drives in the stake:

Among Bungalow Bill’s more confident assertions is that “you can bet you won’t be seeing many corrections on the net.” This is true, narrowly — O’Reilly’s June 7 column misidentifying Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll as John “Roberts” has yet to be corrected on the Web sites of either Creators Syndicate or AOL’s Intellivu.

Ouch, again.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And “ouch” one more time.

UPDATE ON THE HOUSTON K-MART RAID SCREWUP: The captain involved — who some think was put forward as a sacrificial lamb — has been acquitted of “official oppression” charges. Civil suits are still pending.

LOOTING UPDATE:

Iraq’s national museum, home to many priceless artefacts which were thought to have been looted after the fall of Baghdad, has been plunged into a new crisis because of a revolt by staff.

More than 130 of the 185 staff of Iraq’s state board of antiquities office in Baghdad, which runs the museum, have signed a petition demanding the resignation of its directors.

Staff said they believed that some of the thefts from the museum were an inside job. They also accused Dony George, the board’s head of research, of arming them and ordering them to fight US forces.

Funny, all the early press reports identified him as a selfless lover of knowledge.

NOTE TO ERIC ALTERMAN: Don’t get those truck-driver types riled — they’re killers!

HERE’S MORE ON PFC JESSICA LYNCH: Still no blanks. But guess where the “Hollywood extravaganza” came from. . . .

UPDATE: My, here’s a novel approach. “Your story is so compelling, it deserves more than a movie, an MTV special, and a line of action figures with combat gear and strapless evening wear. Your story deserves factual coverage like you would get from old-fashioned journalists.”

It’ll never fly.

STEPHEN GREEN IS BACK, with an explanation.