Magpie

Saturday, April 5, 2003

Iraq war in black & white.

A March 28 Gallup poll showed a huge gap between the attitude toward the war in Iraq among white and black Americans. While whites overwhelmingly support the war—78 percent, according to the poll—only 29 percent of black Americans favor it. This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer examines some of the reasons for this difference.

The American decision to attack Iraq pre-emptively, without proof that Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction, reminds some black people of hostile police behavior. "It rings of the experience of cops' saying, `I thought I saw a gun' to justify the shooting of an unarmed black suspect," says the Urban League's Spriggs. "You gotta give us more evidence than, `I thought I saw a gun.'"

The thing I find most interesting about this story isn't the huge difference between white and black opinion on the war, but why the US media (as well as most white Americans) always seem so surprised when they notice that blacks and whites don't see the world in the same way.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:14 PM | Get permalink

Name that tune!

I don't know about you, but I frequently have some tune running around in my head, but I have no idea what it's called. This is particularly a pain if I'm interested in the tune enough to want to learn it, but know that I won't be able to sort out a tricky part without seeing sheet music. Melodyhound is a site that helps you find the tune that's been driving you nuts, even if you don't have a clue how to write or read music.

It give you two main choices: You can download a Java applet and then "whistle" the tune to your computer. Or you can write down the tune in Parsons code, which only requires you to tell Melodyhound whether each pair of notes in the tune goes up, goes down, or repeats.

In both cases, Melodyhound then searches its database and comes up with a list of possible tunes. The databases for folk tunes has over 15,000 entries, so the odds of finding what you're looking for are pretty good.

Melodyhound also lets you search for popular songs by words in the lyrics, but the database for this genre seems rather small. A search using louie turned up "Brother Louie" but not "Louie Louie."

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:29 PM | Get permalink

Rights & wrongs.

Stand Down evaluates the pre-war claims of the anti-war movement and war supporters given events up to this point. The condensed version: "This war is still a crock."

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:37 PM | Get permalink

A ripping yarn.

An Arab News journalist tells how his group of unembedded reporters crept back into Iraq on the sly. Via The Agonist.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:30 PM | Get permalink

Some good news.

Cartoonist and blogger Tom Tomorrow has won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his cartoons during 2002:

Cartoon Winner: “This Modern World” by Dan Perkins (alias “Tom Tomorrow”) showcases multilayered satirical commentary on economic inequality in the United States, as well as the inaction of the politicians who have the power to change it. Perkins’ body of work also addresses subjects such as access to health care and the gradual erosion of civil liberties in today’s post-9/11 world.

Says the man himself: "A good way to close out the week."

A full list of this year's award winners is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:19 PM | Get permalink

"The color is jolly."

A small town in Russia takes the heat for putting cannabis on its flag.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:39 AM | Get permalink

Why some of them enlist.

A couple of interesting articles on why people join the US military: In the Globe & Mail, Roy MacGregor's story uses the rescue of Jessica Lynch as a springboard to reflect on the link between military service and poverty. And this story from Inter Press Service looks at the attraction military service has for Latin American men who want to emigrate to the US.

Via also not found in nature and Rabble.ca.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:26 AM | Get permalink

The current unpleasantness, seen by someone who's been around the block a few times.

For the historically impaired, George McGovern was a long-time senator from South Dakota. He was a leader of the reform movement that made the Democratic Party more responsive to its grass roots (those reforms have since been rolled back), and won the party's nomination for president in 1972 on an anti-Vietnam War platform. Things in the US might be very different now if McGovern, not Richard Nixon, had won that election.

In The Nation, McGovern has an excellent piece on the current occupant of the White House and his war. You can read the full article here. But for those who tend not to follow links, here are a couple of extended excerpts:

Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation's true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule.

He treads carelessly on the Bill of Rights, the United Nations and international law while creating a costly but largely useless new federal bureaucracy loosely called "Homeland Security." Meanwhile, such fundamental building blocks of national security as full employment and a strong labor movement are of no concern. The nearly $1.5 trillion tax giveaway, largely for the further enrichment of those already rich, will have to be made up by cutting government services and shifting a larger share of the tax burden to workers and the elderly. This President and his advisers know well how to get us involved in imperial crusades abroad while pillaging the ordinary American at home. The same families who are exploited by a rich man's government find their sons and daughters being called to war, as they were in Vietnam--but not the sons of the rich and well connected. . . .

The invasion of Iraq and other costly wars now being planned in secret are fattening the ever-growing military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned in his great farewell address. War profits are booming, as is the case in all wars. While young Americans die, profits go up. But our economy is not booming, and our stock market is not booming. Our wages and incomes are not booming. While waging a war against Iraq, the Bush Administration is waging another war against the well-being of America. . . .

We hear much talk these days, as we did during the Vietnam War, of "supporting our troops." Like most Americans, I have always supported our troops, and I have always believed we had the best fighting forces in the world--with the possible exception of the Vietnamese, who were fortified by their hunger for national independence, whereas we placed our troops in the impossible position of opposing an independent Vietnam, albeit a Communist one. But I believed then as I do now that the best way to support our troops is to avoid sending them on mistaken military campaigns that needlessly endanger their lives and limbs. That is what went on in Vietnam for nearly thirty years--first as we financed the French in their failing effort to regain control of their colonial empire in Southeast Asia, 1946-54, and then for the next twenty years as we sought unsuccessfully to stop the Vietnamese independence struggle led by Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap--two great men whom we should have accepted as the legitimate leaders of Vietnam at the end of World War II. I should add that Ho and his men were our allies against the Japanese in World War II. Some of my fellow pilots who were shot down by Japanese gunners over Vietnam were brought safely back to American lines by Ho's guerrilla forces.

During the long years of my opposition to that war, including a presidential campaign dedicated to ending the American involvement, I said in a moment of disgust: "I'm sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars in which young men do the dying." That terrible American blunder, in which 58,000 of our bravest young men died, and many times that number were crippled physically or psychologically, also cost the lives of some 2 million Vietnamese as well as a similar number of Cambodians and Laotians, in addition to laying waste most of Indochina--its villages, fields, trees and waterways; its schools, churches, markets and hospitals.

I had thought after that horrible tragedy--sold to the American people by our policy-makers as a mission of freedom and mercy--that we never again would carry out a needless, ill-conceived invasion of another country that had done us no harm and posed no threat to our security. I was wrong in that assumption.

The President and his team, building on the trauma of 9/11, have falsely linked Saddam Hussein's Iraq to that tragedy and then falsely built him up as a deadly threat to America and to world peace. These falsehoods are rejected by the UN and nearly all of the world's people. We will, of course, win the war with Iraq. But what of the question raised in the Bible that both George Bush and I read: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul," or the soul of his nation?

Via also not found in nature.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:47 AM | Get permalink

Chough watch.

Being a member of the crow family ourself, Magpie is always interested in news about the relatives:

A pair of rare wild birds breeding on the Cornish cliffs are under 24-hour guard to protect them from egg thieves.

The chough, considered the emblem of Cornwall, had not bred in the county for 50 years until last summer when three chicks were born. The return of the chough is considered highly important in Cornish mythology because it is thought to signify the resurgence of Cornish independence.

A member of the crow family, the chough has distinctive red legs and a long red bill. The nesting site is on a remote and windswept clifftop spot on the Lizard peninsula, whose cliffs are home to many wild varieties of plants not found anywhere else in the country.

More here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:49 AM | Get permalink

Friday, April 4, 2003

The intimacy of traditional Irish music.

Over on the website for the NPR program, Thistle & Shamrock, there's an interesting interview with Liam O'Flynn, one of the most influential Irish pipers of the last couple of decades. I particularly what he had to say here:

Traditional music is inherently intimate for a variety of reasons: the tunes are short and, some would say, simple, but the ornamentation is what makes them special and creates that intimacy. There's a comparison to be made between the music and works of Irish art, with minute ornamentation on the lettering such as in The Book of Kells.

Traditional music began to evolve in the 17th century at a time when people's circumstances were ferocious and terrible. They lived in complete poverty, with all their rights taken away and they had absolutely nothing. The only way that they could express themselves, was through the intimate arts, through music and poetry. That accounts for the particular type of intimacy that's in the music.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:54 PM | Get permalink

Al-Jazeera's English website.

It's back.

Despite Akamai's refusal to help.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:39 PM | Get permalink

Where is Raed?

The Toronto Star has a nice article about the absence from the Web of Salam Pax.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 PM | Get permalink

"Caste system" for journalists in Iraq?

The European Broadcast Union charges that the US and UK are "freezing out" non-embedded journalists:

"We have independent information that broadcasters can work safely in many areas, so we do not understand why the military is putting so many obstacles in the path of journalists," said the EBU's head of news, Tony Naets.

They have created a caste system with embedded journalists - usually from countries in the so-called coalition who can associate with the troops - and the truly unilateral broadcaster who is prevented from coming anywhere near the news."

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 PM | Get permalink

It's the economy, stupid.

Economist Paul Krugman says that the war news is distracting peoples' attention from what they really should be worrying about: the economy. A couple of tidbits:

Still, the latest data suggest that the rate at which things are getting worse is accelerating. In February, payroll employment fell by 308,000 — the worst reading since November 2001. Some analysts suggested that number was a fluke, distorted by bad weather, but yesterday there were two more worrying indicators: new claims for unemployment insurance jumped, and a survey of service sector companies suggests that the economy as a whole is contracting. . . .

Even if SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] doesn't become widespread here — and that's not a safe bet — it can do a lot of damage to our own economy because the world has grown so interdependent. Consider this: the most likely engine of a vigorous U.S. recovery would be a renewed surge in technology spending, and Guangdong is now the workshop of the information technology world, the place where a lot of the equipment that we would expect businesses to buy if there was an investment boom — for example, components for wireless computer networks — is assembled. The virus is already hampering production, not so much because workers have become sick as because Taiwan-based managers and engineers are afraid to visit their plants. The result may be to stall an investment recovery before it starts.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:36 AM | Get permalink

More "news" from the frontlines.

When I woke up this morning, one of the big stories on the news was the discovery of massive amounts of suspicious white powder at a site south of Baghdad. While the US military couldn't say for sure that they'd finally found evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the news stories carried broad hints that the white powder might be a nerve agent.

Well, guess what? And of course, everyone will remember the discovery of the suspicous powder that might be a nerve agent, not the identification of the powder as explosives.

Via Eschaton.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:24 AM | Get permalink

A bunch of cheap shots at Dubya.

Just the kind I like.

They tell me the US Marines are the few and the proud. I don't really "get" that, but whatever makes you grunts happy and easier to manipulate into a frothing rage. Remember – I am sending you to decimate Iraq and teach those ignorant shitwater-swilling sewer rats a lesson in USA-style fear, and to make sure that fifty years from now, history records that America's values were as wholesome, healthy, and true as the ingredients in an All-American Moon Pie.

The rest is here. Via Bitter Shack.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:05 AM | Get permalink

Erasing the rough draft of history?

The Memory Hole notes the deletion from the CBS News website of two stories about the Iraq War. Maybe not sinister, but definitely peculiar.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:41 AM | Get permalink

We're being watched.

Last Fall, the American Civil Liberties Union and three other groups filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, asking the FBI to provide figures on how often it's using the surveillance powers granted to the government by the Patriot Act. After several months of foot-dragging by the Justice Department, the ACLU finally got some documents, but not much information:

The Attorney General has refused to disclose basic statistical information about the FBI's use of new surveillance powers. We asked in particular for the statistical information that the Attorney General reluctantly provided in response to the House Judiciary Committee's June 2002 oversight letter. Most of the records released to us in response are internal e-mails discussing the DOJ's response to the letter. The important content of the e-mails has been blacked out, and as a result most of the e-mails are meaningless.

Despite this, analysis of the documents leads the ACLU to conclude that:

1. The FBI is aggressively using National Security Letters - with no judicial oversight - to obtain sensitive records from banks, credit reporting agencies, and Internet service providers.

2. The FBI is conducting wiretaps and secret searches in criminal investigations without complying with probable cause.

3. The government has begun to use an extraordinarily broad surveillance provision that could be used to force libraries and bookstores to report on their patrons and customers' reading habits.

4. The FBI is aggressively using its power to install pen registers and trap and trace devices. . . . (These devices let the FBI track the calls to and from a particular phone, or the e-mails to and from a particular computer.)

The ACLU is currently in federal court, trying to force Attorney General Ashcroft to release specific information on its activities in these and related areas.

The ACLU has put a detailed report report on its FOIA request online. The section on the government's response includes images of some of the documents the ACLU has received so far, including this one, which certainly seems to contain a rather long list.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:11 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, April 3, 2003

Let's keep 'em nervous.

Despite the lack of any credible threats of domestic terrorism, there aren't any plans to reduce the terror alert level. (It's that lovely orange color right now, in case you'd forgotten.)

The nation will probably remain on high alert for the duration of hostilities with Iraq even if no evidence surfaces of an impending terrorist attack, said law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Authorities are convinced there exists a ``hidden network of cold-blooded killers,'' as Attorney General John Ashcroft recently put it. But they acknowledge being pleasantly surprised that the war has not so far triggered a response by terror groups or so-called ``lone wolf'' extremists.

They're convinced there's a hidden network of terrorists, despite the lack of activity? I love that logic. Perhaps the terrorists are all hiding under our beds, right next to those communists that J. Edgar Hoover was always warning us about.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:08 PM | Get permalink

The cost of the war.

I see that the House of Representatives has approved US $80 billion for the war and "anti-terrorism" stuff. A little over a week ago, that figure was US $74.7 billion. I wonder what the real cost will finally be?

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:57 PM | Get permalink

Meanwhile, back in Korea.

Things are still bad.

The standoff between the United States and North Korea over the Asian nation's nuclear ambitions could escalate into war, a U.N. envoy warned Thursday.

``I think a war is unnecessary. It is unthinkable in its consequences, and yet it's entirely possible,'' Maurice Strong said upon returning from the Korean peninsula.

Strong, a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said he believed North Korea was ``prepared to go to war if they believe the security and the integrity of their nation is really threatened, and they do.''

More here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:47 PM | Get permalink

That really big squid.

If you haven't already heard about it, here's the BBC story.

Wow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:52 PM | Get permalink

Moderation vs extremism.

Jeanne d'Arc has been musing on the subject for a few days now over at Body and Soul. The reader letters she's posted today are very thoughtful. Here's part of the one from Donald Johnson:

2. Sins of commission, Type A (helping our murderous allies) The US mainstream isn't so eager to talk about how we support mass murderers overseas and the more direct the support, the less they want to talk about it. Another rule of thumb -- past irrelevant crimes can be discussed, but current crimes, or past crimes of current relevance are likely to be ignored. At no time is anyone ever allowed to point out that support for mass murderers overseas is the moral equivalent of supporting terrorists, except that terrorists usually kill fewer people. In fact, for a centrist, accusing someone of "moral equivalence" is the most devastating charge in their arsenal. To the extent that there is any argument here, it seems to be that our support for murderers can't be compared to other people's support for murderers, because we have supposedly legitimate foreign policy goals and our enemies do not. Being a democracy means we are the good guys and have a special dispensation to do whatever we think is in "our" interests. (Scare quotes should be placed around all pronouns in foreign policy discussions, but it would get very cluttered-looking.)

The real reason behind the "moral equivalence" charge is that it diverts attention from America's crimes and forces the leftwing extremist to defend himself. No, we don't think America's brutal crimes justify 9/11, etc, etc. Of course, if a few leftwingers do defend terrorist attacks as some sort of justified retaliation, then they deserve to be denounced. But the idea behind the cry of "moral equivalence", which goes back to the days when Reagan was supporting death squads, is to put critics of American crimes on the defensive. It's a very crude propaganda technique, but with centrists it seems to work.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:11 PM | Get permalink

Pax Americana.

One of the funniest websites I've run into over the years is Canadian World Domination, which lays out a plan for "demonstrating to the world that Canada is the final and ultimate power." (I particularly like their plan for a "redesigned" US.) Unfortunately, a similar idea is afloat among foreign policy geeks in the Dubya regime and on the US right. They're hoping that the current show of US might in Iraq will lead to a world in which nobody messes with the biggest kid on the block.

In this article, Bill Berkowitz suggests that the road to such a "Pax Americana" will be much bumpier than its advocates believe. The main target of his ire is another article, written by Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute. Here's some of what ticked Berkowitz off:

Having become a test of American power and purpose in the world, war in Iraq will have consequences not simply for Saddam and his regime, or the Iraqi people, or the security balance in the Persian Gulf. A U.S. victory--measured also by the planting of the seeds of liberty and democracy in Baghdad--will define the start of a truly new world order; to steal Dean Acheson's famous phrase, we are present at the creation. What, exactly, we are creating we do not know. It will be necessary to create international institutions that reflect the new realities, and they may even be called the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But if so, those organizations will have to be fundamentally transformed to reestablish the link between the right to make international law and the responsibility to enforce it.

In fact, the world that is now suffering its birth pangs in the skies over Iraq and on the ground there is even more likely than the one it grew out of to be a unipolar world, marked by an even greater degree of American primacy and leadership than before. It may further accelerate the stunning spread of democracy and political liberty that has occurred since the collapse of the Soviet empire. We appear to be moving at last from the post-cold-war era--a time defined negatively by what it is not--to the time of an enduring Pax Americana.

Berkowitz offers a pithier summary:

F**k France and F**k the European Union (Rumsfeld's "old" Europe, not Tony Blair this time around); F**k Russia; totally F**k the United Nations; after we finish F*****g Iraq, it's time to commence F*****g Syria and Iran; plan on F*****g North Korea; and in the future, it may necessary to F**k China.

Both articles are well worth your time.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:46 AM | Get permalink

Feeling pretty good today?

This op-ed piece from Haaretz will put your mood into a tailspin. An excerpt:

The reality that we are trying to keep at a distance is that the United States has become a theocracy and a pathocracy. It has become a theocracy because nearly all the important decisions of President George W. Bush's administration are taken "in the name of God" - an angry and vengeful God, not a God of love and compassion - and because this system is not encountering any serious opposition on the part of the legislative and legal institutions, not to mention the media.

We are Democracy, by the will of our angry God, and our role is to promote it in His name and for His sake. The fact that this democracy has only a marginal and metaphorical connection to 2,5000 years of political tradition is of no importance. The self-definition and the self-justification are the two breasts of the empire. Just as the United Nations is a negligible factor that can be ignored when it opposes our plans, we were established in order to impose on the rest of the world the idea of democracy that corresponds only to our convictions.

For two years now - and increasingly since September 11, 2001, there has been a great deal of focus in the discourse on the subject of "good and evil" and the strategy derived from it with respect to the "axis of evil." This has generally been based on the return, in full force, of the primitive moralizing that runs through a large part of the political and intellectual history of the United States. But in fact, it is something of an entirely different nature. It is the brutal transformation of an oligarchic republic tinged with democracy into a republic that is essentially theocratic.

If we realize this, then it is possible to understand that everything becomes possible from the point of view of Bush's administration, from the rejection of the Kyoto treaty to the perpetuation of the death penalty, from the attempt to marginalize the UN to the approaching exit from the World Trade Organization, from the war in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq.

Via Rabble.ca

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:10 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Are they real or is it memorex?

The Dick Cheney simulator is about as real as the man gets, I suspect. And if Cheney's not enough for you, go Ask Don Rumsfeld. Via somebody or other.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:24 PM | Get permalink

You can't tell the pots from the kettles without a scorecard.

Every year, China's human rights record is (rightfully) condemned in the Country Reports on Human Rights issued by the US State Department. The 2002 report came out a few days ago and, in response, China has released its own report: The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2002.

Here's a tidbit:

The rights of ordinary Americans have met with challenge after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The anti-terrorism law USA Patriot Act, which took effect on October 26, 2001, provides law enforcement agencies with greater powers for investigation, including wiretapping of phone calls and Internet E-mail communications by suspect terrorists.

A Federal Court of Appeals on November 18 ruled that the Department of Justice asking for expanding its investigative powers is constitutional, and therefore should not be restricted. It aroused great concern among the American public that the DOJ would encroach upon their right of privacy in its work.

Commenting on the court ruling, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Representative John Conyers said in a statement the same day, "Piece by piece, this Administration is dismantling the basic rights afforded to every American under the Constitution." Some civil rights and electronic information organizations worried that there [sic] would have no effective protection of civil rights after the ruling.

A summary of the report is here. It makes for interesting reading.

Via Xinhua News Agency.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:02 PM | Get permalink

The new colonialists?

In this article for Pacific News Service, Jordanian/Palestinian journalist Fami Khouri suggests that the US is stepping into a role that is familiar to Arabs—that of an invading colonial power:

Arabs and many others who oppose the American-British invasion do not defend Saddam Hussein, but rather defend the right of the Iraqi people to be spared from such unilateral assaults. The American-British armada also is being viewed increasingly in this region as an army of occupation -- and in some important ways it is behaving accordingly.

The suicide bombing has led American and British troops to be much more careful about coming into contact with Iraqis. The troops are more nervous and more trigger happy, as we witnessed when American soldiers shot and killed a number of women and children in a van at a checkpoint Monday. Television pictures show columns of young American and British troops walking through Iraqi villages with their guns drawn and loaded. Men who approach the soldiers have to take their shirts off, to show that they are not carrying bombs. Troops break down doors and rush into Iraqi houses, guns drawn and sometimes blazing. American and British guns shell entire Iraqi neighborhoods.

Tommy Franks, welcome to Nablus, the historic Palestinian West Bank city that became a symbol for Israeli bombardment, destruction and occupation last year.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:13 PM | Get permalink

It just doesn't stop, does it?

From the AP:

A Colorado congressman is asking the Bush administration to stop making headstones for military veterans from marble bought from a French-owned company.

If the Veterans Administration agrees to Rep. Scott McInnis' request, the additional marble would come from two other quarries -- one a Swiss-owned operation in the Colorado Republican's district.

[Exasperated sigh and much eye-rolling from CrowGirl]

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:42 PM | Get permalink

More proof of Al-Jazeera's bias.

Against Iraq, that is.

According to this AP story:

The station interrupted a regular newscast to announce that Iraq's Information Ministry had informed it that correspondent Diar al-Omari, an Iraqi, could no longer report for the network and that visiting correspondent Tayseer Allouni must leave the country.

``Regretting this decision, Al-Jazeera has decided to suspend its live broadcast from Iraq and will only broadcast recorded items received from Iraq,'' the station announced.

Update: Iraq lifts the ban without explanation.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:01 PM | Get permalink

SARS virus identified.

So reports New Scientist:

Scientists have satisfied key tests that confirm that the virus causing the global outbreak of severe pneumonia is a new type of coronavirus. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has so far struck down more than 2300 people, and killed 78.

The identification will speed up the testing of victims and their contacts to see how the disease spreads, and how it might be contained. That is badly needed, with new cases being announced each day in Hong Kong and China, and in previously unaffected countries, such as South Africa, the Philippines and Malaysia.

And there are some encouraging steps toward a vaccine and toward treatment of people who've contracted the disease. See this article for details.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:55 PM | Get permalink

Follow the money.

How much is the US spending in Iraq? And on what? A visual aid for those of us who have trouble envisioning big numbers. Via Robot Wisdom.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 PM | Get permalink

Another bad day for Al-Jazeera.

According to this report in the UK Guardian, the Basra hotel that houses Al-Jazeera's correspondents was shelled earlier today:

The Basra Sheraton, whose only guests are al-Jazeera journalists, received four direct hits this morning during a heavy artillery bombardment, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.

No casualties were reported in the incident, but al-Jazeera said it would be writing to the Pentagon again to provide full details of the location of all its journalists and bureaux in Iraq.

This is not the first time something like this has happened to Al-Jazeera. You might remember that a bomb dropped by US forces destroyed their office in Kabul in November 2001.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:10 AM | Get permalink

Someone's making a little list.

Damn. I'm not on it. Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:56 AM | Get permalink

More of what we're not seeing from Iraq.

Steve Perry points out how—despite Al-Jazeera's English-language site being down—it's easy to access the broadcaster's Arabic site. There is a page of photos there that I don't have words to describe.

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera is by some measures the most sought-after site on the Web, despite the efforts of pro-war hackers. The manager of the English site says it may be back online as early as today.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:13 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

Warning: Journalism may be hazardous to your freedom.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has released its annual Attacks on the Press report, and despite the fact that fewer reporters were killed in 2002 than in 2001, the situation of journalists is grim in many parts of the world:

For the second year in a row, the number of journalists in prison rose sharply. There were 136 journalists in jail at the end of 2002, a 15 percent increase from 2001 and a shocking 68 percent increase since the end of 2000, when only 81 journalists were imprisoned. China, already the world's leading jailer of journalists for the fourth year in a row, arrested five more, ending the year with a total of 39 journalists behind bars. In Eritrea, 18 journalists languish behind bars, and 16 journalists were incarcerated in Nepal.

CPJ's press release is here, and the full text of the report is here. Via OneWorld.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:32 PM | Get permalink

"The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime President."

Writing in The Nation, David Cole suggests that that Iraq is not the only dangerous place for Americans to be during this war:

War in America has always prompted government officials to adopt "preventive" measures that jettison principles of individual culpability, due process and political freedom. Punishing only the guilty seems suddenly antiquated in wartime, and procedures designed to protect the innocent seem dispensable luxuries. In prior wars, we have suspended habeas corpus, criminalized antiwar speech, locked up people because of their Japanese ancestry and indulged in guilt by association. . . .

But like the bombing of Iraq, most of these measures don't directly affect US citizens. What does affect the rest of us is the fast-developing culture of conformity, effected not by laws criminalizing speech but by more informal and less centralized means. My research assistant's landlord orders her to remove a small antiwar sign she has displayed in her window. Police tell two New Yorkers that they cannot stand in the Times Square subway station with a sign saying Discuss the War With Us. The Dixie Chicks, one of America's most popular bands, find themselves the subject of public CD burnings, radio boycotts and a 20 percent drop in airplay after their lead singer tells a British concert audience,"We're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." And Senate minority leader Tom Daschle is practically branded a traitor for attributing to the President a failure of diplomacy--no more than a statement of fact.

In his comic strip Bruno, Christopher Baldwin says much the same thing in fewer words (and more pictures). You want the second panel from the top.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:11 PM | Get permalink

That explosion in the Baghdad market last Friday.

The missile was American, according to this report in Wednesday's Independent:

The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Raytheon, the world's biggest producer of "smart" armaments.

You might remember that both the US and UK governments have suggested that Iraqi antiaircraft missiles were responsible for the Friday explosion and a similar one a few days earlier at another market.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday it was "increasingly probable" the first explosion was down to the Iraqis and Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, suggested on BBC's Newsnight last night that President Saddam sacked his head of air defences because they were not working properly.

One can only wonder how Washington and London are going to spin this story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:25 PM | Get permalink

Oh no. Tell me it's not true.

Irish music banned.

Or maybe not. :)

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:45 PM | Get permalink

Wars are really useful.

While the media is doing the play-by-plays on all the military action, the Dubya regime can sneak by all sorts of stuff that would usually make the news. Like a proposal that would eliminate overtime pay for millions of workers in the US. Luckily, the AFL-CIO has been keeping an eye on things. Check it out here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:03 PM | Get permalink

Uh-oh.

I think things are about to get much worse in Iraq.

CHENEY TO CALL ON NYARLATHOTEP TO HELP IN IRAQ
From the Dunwitch Times, 4/1/03

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Vice-President (Appointed) Dick Cheney revealed a new twist in the war effort when he announced he would beseech the Great Old Ones to assist in the capture and/or devouring of the essence of Saddam Hussein and associates.

Fengi has the complete story. And check out Neal Pollack, who organized Make Fun of the Cheneys Day. He has links to more of the mayhem, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:42 PM | Get permalink

From our "Those Who Ignore History Must Repeat It" file.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon says that Saddam Hussein is the worst ruler in the history of the world. Ladies & gents, I give you Victoria Clarke:

The Iraqi people will be free of decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before.

As a would-be historian (yes, I'll finish that thesis someday!), one of things that scares me the most about the adventure in Iraq is how ignorant US policymakers seem to be about the history of the region, and of what that history can tell us about the possible consequences of the war. For that matter, people like Rumsfeld and Dubya seen to be ignorant about any history.

Saddam is the equal of Hitler? of Stalin? Suharto, certainly, but hey, that guy was our friend. Oh yeah, so was Saddam.

Reuters, via Eschaton

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:59 PM | Get permalink

Another online poll.

They're statistically worthless as a gauge of public opinion, but the media outlets who run them love to trumpet the results. Worthless or not, the right wing knows a good way to get a cheap airing for their views, and they've been responding en masse to these polls for years.

Today, MSNBC wants to know whether people believe that Rumsfeld & the crowd at the Pentagon had any idea what they were doing when they began the current unpleasantness. Sadly, almost two-thirds of the current participants in the poll think they did.

You can change this: Vamoose!

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 PM | Get permalink

What about that biased media coverage, anyway?

Since well before the war started, Fox has distinguished itself by being the most vociferously pro-war of the major US networks, with reporting that has a careless disregard for facts. (If you're not familiar with what they do, a look at Fox's news website will give you an idea.)

United for Peace and Justice is joining several other anti-war groups in organizing protests at local Fox affiliates. And MoveOn.org is spearheading a ongoing effort to keep the media honest in their war reportage. Both effforts deserve your attention.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:52 AM | Get permalink

News during wartime.

In a column on listener reactions to National Public Radio's war coverage, NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorin does a good job of summarizing the pressures that journalists face during this or any other war:

Journalists have a duty to resist official spin and partisan pressures. But a free press must "serve the governed, not the governors," wrote Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Wartime will undoubtedly put extra demands on the ability of a free press to function as before. Journalists must be ready to make some very difficult choices.

To quote our colleagues at the Freedom Forum:

If the war goes well, the White House need not fear for a well-informed citizenry. If not, Americans will demand to know why. Either way, journalists will best serve the national interest by maintaining a patriotic skepticism.

Too bad Dvorin's view isn't reflected in NPR's coverage of the war (and of the Dubya regime generally), which so thoroughly lacks skepticism, patriotic or otherwise.

NPR, via Current