Mpelembe Blog

I Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, who is chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was a source for a story surrounding the leaking of the name of a CIA operative.

The New York Times named Libby on Friday after he released the journalist from the confidentiality promised him. The journalist, Judith Miller, however had to spend the past twelve weeks in jail for refusing to disclose her source, before Libby stepped in.

Miller has now been released from jail and will testify before a grand jury on Friday morning.

The case has important implications for the Bush administration, the CIA, and the media. The story began when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate a document that had surfaced from foreign sources which alleged Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium enrichment for a nuclear bomb. The CIA had been requested to initiate an investigation on the instructions of Vice President Dick Cheney's office, after Cheney himself had raised the matter at a briefing.

Wilson subsequently visited Niger and reported back that the document could not be substantiated, nor could the allegation, which he declared was baseless. Despite Wilson's report, the claim was used by President Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2003 to bolster support for the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson subsequently went public to denounce the claim, and at the same time denouncing the war in Iraq.

Shortly after, Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was named by two journalists, Miller and Bob Cooper of Time magazine, as a CIA operative. Wilson alleged his wife's 'outing' was in retribution for his going public, and alleged the White House was behind it. The disclosure of a CIA agent's name is a Federal offence.

Karl Rove has already been named.

"What's real? Is wrestling real? NO. Is boxing real? Not anymore. The Ultimate Fighting is real, and it's coming to ____ tv station..."

LOS ANGELES - The woman whose son accused Michael Jackson of child molestation in a trial that led to Jackson's acquittal was charged with welfare fraud Tuesday in a five-count complaint alleging she collected $18,782 in payments while making false claims she was indigent.
At Jackson's trial, the woman invoked her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination and refused to testify about the welfare matter.

But Jackson's lawyers presented evidence that she and her family had received a $150,000 settlement in a 2001 lawsuit against a department store at a time when she was claiming to be indigent.

They also showed the woman was receiving money from her boyfriend to pay the rent on her apartment.
The Associated Press is withholding the name of the woman to protect the identity of her son.

The five-count complaint filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Fraud and Corruption Prosecutions alleged that the woman hid from authorities the fact that she had received the settlement and also failed to report the receipt of $637 for payment of her rent in January 2003.

It said the payment occurred in February 2003 but was not discovered until a social services investigator received a tip from a private investigator on Feb. 2, 2005. That was just before the Jackson trial began.

The woman was a key witness for the prosecution against Jackson. Many jurors said her lack of credibility on the witness stand was a major factor in their verdict of not guilty.

Associated Press

:: rogerebert.com :: (xhtml)

All this week the BBC News website is speaking to people whose creativity has been transformed in the digital age.
From blogging to podcasting, millions of ordinary people are becoming writers, journalists, broadcasters and film-makers thanks to increasingly affordable and accessible tools.

Here is today's featured blog:

The New York Times reports:

"A federal judge today ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times to be jailed immediately after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative.

Another reporter who had been facing jail time on the same matter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, agreed today to testify to a grand jury about his confidential source on the same matter, thus avoiding jail. Mr. Cooper said he had decided to do so only because his source specifically released him from promises of confidentiality just before today's hearing."

On 14 June 2005, Lusaka police questioned Anthony Mukwita, a Radio Phoenix 'Let the People Talk' programme host, over a fax anonymously sent, which he had read on air during the 10 June edition of the programme. The fax accused the government of condoning corruption and warned that the country might slip into anarchy as a result.

Mukwita told MISA that a chief investigations officer for Lusaka Division and two detectives followed him to the MISA Zambia offices from where he operates and questioned him in connection with the fax, signed only 'Annoyed Zambians'.
'They demanded to have a copy of the fax, which cautioned the Mwanawasa administration to be responsive to the people's needs or risk throwing the country into anarchy through another attempted coup, similar to the one staged by Captain Stephen in 1997,' Mukwita told MISA Zambia.
Mukwita said the police wanted him to give a statement but he refused, insisting that he would only do so in the presence of his lawyer. The interview was done in the presence of MISA Zambia's chairperson, Kellys Kaunda.

In a related development, Radio Phoenix has terminated Mukwita's contract as of 16 June, citing his decision to read the controversial fax on the 'Let the People Talk' programme, among other reasons.
In a 15 June statement, Kaunda condemned the police action saying it was part of a grand scheme to silence the 'Let The People Talk' forum, the only platform available to the Zambian people to air their views freely.
Mukwita will be questioned again in the presence of a lawyer at the MISA Zambia secretariat on 16 June.

BACKGROUND
The fax was sparked off by a Radio Phoenix programme which broadcast a discussion of the state's 17 May decision to not proceed with its case against former health permanent secretary Kashiwa Bulaya. Bulaya was being prosecuted for alleged abuse of office involving the allocation of K3 billion Kwacha (approx. US$640,000) for the government purchase of anti-retroviral drugs from a Bulgarian company in which he allegedly has financial interests.

The state's decision had resulted in Bulaya's discharge, which was met by sharp criticism from "The Post" newspaper and other quarters.

On 14 June, Justice Minister George Kunda instructed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Chalwe Mchenga to resume Bulaya's prosecution due to public outcry and the need to avoid anarchy in the country.

"Let the People Talk" is a popular interactive discussion programme on public affairs.


Media Institute of Southern Africa
(Windhoek)
PRESS RELEASE
June 15, 2005

"The world does not make sense, nothing makes sense anymore. While I was trying to make sense of the sudden rush of kindness from the G8, I stumbled on the following notable quotes;

'I am sure that there must be sound economic reasons - and purpose - for these snapshots of the world we live in. The list is longer than just these dozen (+1)facts, and I am still trying to figure out a rationale why these happen.

The World Bank praised the privatization of public health in Zambia: 'It is a model for the rest of Africa. There are no more waiting lines at hospitals.' The Zambian Post daily completes the idea: 'There are no more waiting lines at hospitals because now people die at home.'


The annual market value of the world's water supplies is estimated at about US 1 trillion dollars. In the year 2000, for example, 12 countries received IMF loans - negotiated under the new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility - on the condition that they privatize their water services. Eight of these were in sub-Saharan Africa.

I hope that one day I - and you - will be able to understand these, and make sense out of these kind of things happening around us. Till then, we will continue to live in this topsy-turvy world.

Read the rest at Alternative Perspectived

So what's the fuss?"

The world does not make sense, nothing makes sense anymore. While I was trying to make sense of the sudden rush of kindness from the G8, I stumbled on the following notable quotes;

"I am sure that there must be sound economic reasons - and purpose - for these snapshots of the world we live in. The list is longer than just these dozen (+1)facts, and I am still trying to figure out a rationale why these happen.

The World Bank praised the privatization of public health in Zambia: 'It is a model for the rest of Africa. There are no more waiting lines at hospitals.' The Zambian Post daily completes the idea: 'There are no more waiting lines at hospitals because now people die at home.'


The annual market value of the world's water supplies is estimated at about US 1 trillion dollars. In the year 2000, for example, 12 countries received IMF loans - negotiated under the new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility - on the condition that they privatize their water services. Eight of these were in sub-Saharan Africa.

I hope that one day I - and you - will be able to understand these, and make sense out of these kind of things happening around us. Till then, we will continue to live in this topsy-turvy world.

Read the rest at Alternative Perspectived

So what's the fuss?

The web has become very glamorous. I have not done any serious Web development lately mainly because I have become a blogging addict. I have recently been try to keep up with the developer world. Since I have been playing away, I learnt that a new kid on block, Ajax is taking the web developer world by storm. This is not the household bleach cleanser in this case. It is an abbreviation for Asynchronous Javascript Technology and XML.

Ajax has moved from an obscure and rarely used technology to the hottest thing since sliced bread. In case you have not heard of Ajax, Curt Hibbs narrates the history of Ajax in 60 seconds or less:

In the beginning, there was the World Wide Web. Compared with desktop applications, web applications were slow and clunky. People liked web applications anyway because they were conveniently available from anywhere, on any computer that had a browser. Then Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in Internet Explorer 5, which let browser-side JavaScript communicate with the web server in the background without requiring the browser to display a new web page. That made it possible to develop more fluid and responsive web applications. Mozilla soon implemented XMLHttpRequest in its browsers, as did Apple (in the Safari browser) and Opera.

XMLHttpRequest must have been one of the Web's best kept secrets. Since its debut in 1998, few sites have used it at all, and most developers, if they even knew about it, never used it. Google started to change that when it released a series of high-profile web applications with sleek new UIs powered by XMLHttpRequest. The most visually impressive of these is Google Maps, which gives you the illusion of being able to drag around an infinitely sizable map in its little map window.

While Google's prominent use of XMLHttpRequest dramatically demonstrated that vastly improved UIs for web apps were possible, it was Jesse James Garrett's February 18 essay that finally gave this technique a usable name: Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). That was the tipping point. Without knowing it, we as an industry had been waiting for this, and the new Ajax name spread like wildfire. I have never seen such rapid and near universal adoption of a new technology moniker!

Ajax on Rails has useful information on how to pimp your web.

I sat through the G8 finance ministers press conference on BBC News today. It appears that Africa is the new black. Africa is very fashionable among politicians, musicians and even ordinary people. The welcoming news is that Africa is getting attention, the bad news is; at what cost?