ChezLark

This is a little strange.

In my original blog entry about all of the Afghani election candidates, other than Karzai, withdrawing from the Afghanistan presidential election in October, I linked to a wire story carried by MSNBC. At the time I wrote my blog entry, the link led to a story about the boycott. However, it seems to now have been changed to a story posted two or three days later about the opposition members recanting and deciding not to boycott the election after all, after the UN stepped in and established a panel to investigate allegations of voting irregularities.

I found other instances of the original wire story: you can read the original story at RedNova, The Holland Sentinel and some site called PBC access.

For good measure, here are some quotes from the original story:

Afghans packed polling stations on Saturday for a historic presidential election that was blemished when all 15 candidates opposing U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew, charging the government and the U.N. with fraud and incompetence.
[...]
In St. Louis, the president exulted in the Afghan vote as a “marvelous thing” and said his administration should receive at least partial credit.

“Freedom is powerful,” Bush told a Republican breakfast fund-raiser. “Think about a society in which young girls couldn’t go to school, and their mothers were whipped in the public square, and today they’re holding a presidential election.”

It was a starkly different scene in Kabul, where the opposition candidates met at the house of Uzbek candidate Abdul Satar Sirat and signed a petition saying they would not recognize the vote results.

Sirat, an ex-aide to Afghanistan’s last king and a minor candidate expected to poll in the low single-digits, said all 15 challengers to Karzai agreed to the boycott.

“Today’s election is not a legitimate election. It should be stopped and we don’t recognize the results,” Sirat said. “This vote is a fraud and any government formed from it is illegitimate.”

Islamic poet Abdul Latif Padran, another minor candidate, said, “Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections.”

Election officials acknowledged that workers at some voting stations mistakenly swapped the permanent ink meant to mark thumbs with normal ink meant for ballots but insisted the problem was caught quickly.
[...]
“It is not surprising that some of the candidates are raising the question (about the ink),” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aaronson, the team’s co-leader. “Perhaps some of those who don’t do so well are trying to provide an excuse for why they didn’t do so well.”

What I discovered today, that I didn’t hear about in October, is that the opposition members largely recanted their boycott. This is covered in the story on MSNBC that seems to have replaced the original boycott story:

Chances for a conclusive result to Afghanistan’s landmark election were on firmer ground Tuesday after President Hamid Karzai’s main challenger backed away from a boycott, indicating he’d accept an independent commission to probe vote-fraud charges.
[...]
The announcement followed similar statements Sunday by Massooda Jalal, the only female presidential hopeful, and ethnic Hazara candidate Mohammed Mohaqeq.
[...]
He said he made his decision after a meeting with U.N. representative Jean Arnault and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Another news site has a similar story:

A day after 15 candidates claimed they were boycotting the Presidential elections in Afghanistan, a change of heart for some after election observers said they would launch an investigation into reported flaws in the voting procedure.
[...]
But today some hinted they would back down after assurances of a joint UN-Afghan investigation.

“I am in the middle position, I am not too unhappy at the result of the election, but not as happy as Mr. Karzai is. I don’t know what cheating went on,” said Haji Mohammed Mohaqeq, one of the presidential candidates.

Now, it’s anyone’s guess what the opposition candidates’ original motivation was for announcing the boycott, or their motives for later recanting. Perhaps they were pressured into recanting. Maybe they realized they were making fools of themselves. Maybe they were just posturing.

One thing I’m particularly interested in, though, is why the original boycott story disappeared from MSNBC and was replaced by the recantation story. I’m not sure if MSNBC links are generally unstable and subject to being replaced, but I can no longer find the original boycott story on MSNBC.

I wonder why it was pulled.

As a New Year’s resolution, I intend to post to my blog more frequently, if only to rant about the Bush administration for the next four years ((shudder))

Slate is running an interesting article about how the administration continues to pursue a policy of secrecy whenever possible. In particular, Ashcroft reversed the Clinton-era administration stance of “when in doubt, let it out” and adopted a default stance of withholding information when faced with Freedom of Information requests in a 2001 memo setting policy

The article links to some egregious examples of secrecy. In particular, check out the FBI memo recently obtained by the ACLU after winning a lawsuit to force the administration to conform to a FOIA request. The memo is a report of an unnamed observer’s account of prisoner abuse at an undisclosed facility in Iraq. Much of the memo is redacted, but interestingly, many of the redacted portions seem to bear on the observer’s report of a deliberate cover-up of the abuse:

[~6 LINES REDACTED]observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees conducted in [REDACTED] Iraq. He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations. [~3 1/2 LINES REDACTED]

[REDACTED] was providing this information to the FBI based on his knowledge that [REDACTED] were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses. He stated that these cover-up efforts included [ROUGHLY TWO PARAGRAPHS REDACTED]

I suppose it was too much to ask that the administration actually release documents implicating it in a cover-up of detainee abuse.

In another hilarious example, a set of emails from the Defense Department was released under the FOIA. The entirety of the four-page email thread was redacted, except for the thread subject header, which reads “Potential torture involving Iraqi detainees”.

MSNBC article reveals that a New Mexico company is selling a “Go Canadian” kit, which includes a “T-shirt, flag pin, patch and window decal. A quick reference guide titled ‘How to Speak Canadian, Eh?’ is also thrown in.”

The kit is to assist Americans travelling abroad to disguise themselves. The article quotes some random Americans:

When lifelong Democrat Dani Delaney saw the package, she was immediately sold. After the general election, she said, “if I could move to Canada, I would.”

“I admire their liberal, progressive stand on things,” said the 57-year-old writing instructor at the University of New Mexico. “And I thought, ’Well, that’s a good way to peacefully protest.”’

While I think it’s fine for Americans to think that Canada has a better attitude lately on progressive topics than the USA, am I the only one bothered by the idea of Americans actively pretending to be Canadian? I mean, what if some Canadian company sold a similar “Go American” kit with some kind of promotion along the lines of

Tired of being embarassed when you make severe social missteps abroad, or mangle foreign languages? Go American! Everone already hates Americans and expects them to be crude, ill-informed and boorish, so why not indulge yourself? Stop worrying about making a good impression and relax in your comfy 100% cotton “USA Rulez — get used to it or we’ll bomb you” T-shirt. Includes a free “how to mispronounce most words” guide to post-Bush American diction.