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TODAY IN TAP ONLINE. Reporting from Iraqi Kurdistan, Jason Motlagh notes that the fight over Kirkuk -- and its oil -- threatens to derail the region's relative stability.
The Kurdish region may, however, be hostage to its own ambitions, and set on a collision course with troubles it has so far managed to avoid. The major issue is Kirkuk. Kurds want to absorb the oil-rich, ethnically combustible city, located less than a two-hour drive south of Irbil, by the end of the year in a local referendum. After a forced "Arabization" campaign under Saddam that imported tens of thousands of Shiite Arabs to displace the Kurdish population, an estimated 350,000 Kurds have moved back since April 2003. They are said to now hold a majority that would carry the vote.This prospect has united Arab and Turkoman Iraqis against the Kurds and sparked a row in Baghdad, where a plan endorsed in late March by the central government to "voluntarily" relocate these groups prompted some officials to resign in protest. Two days later, a suicide truck bomber slammed into a police station in a Kurdish neighborhood of Kirkuk, killing 15 and wounding more than 200 people. A March 16 attack left three more dead.Also, Rina Palta reports that Tyson Foods and ConocoPhillips are exploiting a nice bit of pork in the 2005 Energy Bill that gives tax breaks to manufacturers of certain "renewable fuels" by combining 20% rendered animal parts with 80% plain ol' diesel. The resulting biofuel takes more than 4.3 times the energy to produce than it yields, and has not been proven to have lower emissions that diesel fuel without chicken fat in it. But legislation introduced today aims to remove the tax credit for animal-fat fuel. As Palta told me, "It appears that I'm not the only one who's noticed that the circularity of using crunched up chickens to fuel the same trucks that carry their brethren to slaughter has a creepy utilitarian, progress-gone-awry feel to it."Plus, Sarah Posner points out that, while Jerry Falwell got the connection between politics and religion, he never fully grasped the importance of media and pop culture. And Harold Meyerson opines that the Republican "voter fraud" myth is the real scandal behind the U.S. attorney purge.--The Editors
