Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
When Harvey Pitt nominated William Webster to be the new head of the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board, he neglected to tell one thing to his four fellow members of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Judge Webster, contrary to popular belief, was not without experience in overseeing accounting. Rather, he had headed the audit committee of a public company, US Technologies. His oversight, however, in this case seems to have been poor. During his tenure, the audit committee fired the company's auditor, BDO Seidman, which had criticized the company's internal controls. Subsequently, according to suits filed by shareholders, the company's chief executive defrauded the company of millions of dollars. Sources: New York Times, 31 October 2002.

**This week's columns**
Pitt Falls and Cowboy Regulation Paul Corrigan Harvey Pitt and William Webster personify the disdain of the Bush administration for regulating business.	Honoring Paul Wellstone Tim Francis-Wright To truly honor Paul Wellstone, his Democratic colleagues need to let their principles, not political calculation, guide their actions. John Kerry, take note.

Red Pepper news on Iraq.
No Rush to War: a collection of articles from The Nation.
Target: Iraq from GlobalSecurity.org.
Iraq's Nuclear Weapon Programme from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iraq dossier presented to Parliament by Tony Blair.
New York Times op-ed ad signed by 33 international relations scholars (HTML version of the ad).
Stand Down cross-ideological, anti-war weblog.
Alternative Resources on the US-Iraq Conflict: like it says, from the American Library Association.
Iraq War Debate: a huge collection of links from the University of Michigan.
More, alas, likely to come.

Board Was Told of Risks Before Bush Stock Sales: The lawyers for Harken Energy warned George Bush and other Harken directors against selling shares one week before he did so (Michael Kranish and Beth Healy, Boston Globe).
Bush and Iraq: President Bush wants to overthrow the rules that have governed international life for the last fifty years. (Anthony Lewis, New York Review of Books).
Carve-Up of Oil Riches Begins: The United States plans to ditch industry rivals and force the end of OPEC (Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam, The Observer).
Thatcher, the Miners' Strike and Heroin: Many British mining towns are in worse shape than even Arthur Scargill predicted (Matthew Collin, YearZero.org).
Party of Lincoln: If the Senate splits 50-50 on 5 November, liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee may switch parties (Mary Lynn Jones, American Prospect Online).
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Jim Bromgard was wrongly convicted on suspect scientific evidence and sent to jail for 15 years; there are thousands of others like him still in jail in the US (Caroline Overington, The Age).
US Weapons Secrets Exposed: The US is developing new weapons that undermine and may violate pacts on biological and chemical warfare (Julian Borger, The Guardian).

"Bear left!"/"Right, Frog!" (Kermit and Fozzie, The Muppet Movie)

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