Magpie

Saturday, April 12, 2003

Night train through the Homeland.

Writing for Pacific New Service, Antonia Gustaitis tells of a rude awakening one night on a train from Chicago to New York. The train had been halted, and agents of the Border Patrol were passing through the cars, questioning passengers.

Having just recently worked in an immigration law office, I thought I should pay close attention to what the Border Patrol was doing on this train. To my knowledge, we were not near a border, for only later that morning did we pass through Buffalo, N.Y., near the Canadian border. As the officers made their way down the aisle, the other passengers began to stir and awaken. A few seats in front of me were two men wearing large turbans and long white beards. The heightened tensions of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States after September 11th, especially with the implementation of special registration for those of Middle Eastern origin, made me particularly concerned with these two men. At the same time, I noticed the INS officers questioning a Latino family, not even giving them time to answer before asking them another question seeping with suspicion of their legality in the United States.

This family seemed not to understand what the officers were asking and began looking through their belongings. I think I overheard one of the officers asking them if they were legal.

Soon the officers approached the two men in turbans and their voices became louder, harsher, as they fired more questions at them than they had to anyone else within my earshot. I started getting nervous, as though I myself had something to hide. After some time they searched some documents that the men in turbans had produced and moved on to a Chinese family beside me.

"Where Are You Going Where Are You From?" one of them barked. The response was only a startled look. These passengers seemed not to understand English. At this point I noticed the Latino family down the aisle frantically fumbling with their belongings.

I was getting ready to get my ID out, but when my turn came all that the officers asked me was where I was born.

"San Francisco," I said.

Just like that, they moved on to the next person. They didn't ask for my ID or fire any questions at me, and I knew that my white skin was my ticket to credibility.

There's more to this story. You'll find it here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:53 PM | Get permalink

"Bush wanna kick me, I don't know why."

BBC Monitoring reports than an apparent CIA-operated radio station has been broadcasting anti-Saddam gangsta rap to listeners in Iraq.

"My days are finished and I will die - all I need is chilli fries."

Switching to Arabic, the singer calls on his audience to dance, then continues in English:

"I am so dead, I am so bad. Stop killing Iraqis... I am big daddy, this is my game. I don't have feelings, I don't have shame.

"Forty-eight hours left, Bush said, all my troops left me and fled

"Now I am sitting by myself... I am going to hell."

Interrupted by his backing group, he responds with "May God curse you" in Arabic, then reverts to English for the second part of the song, which begins:

"I am for adoption, anybody wanna adopt me?"

Via Null Device.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:33 PM | Get permalink

Opening the Pandora's box of war.

Daily Kos points a finger at the "morally bankrupt leadership" in Washington, as they try to overlook and/or avoid responsibility for the increasingly bad situation in "liberated" Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:23 PM | Get permalink

8Ucolrm?

Gaelic-speaking Scots are adapting their endangered language to text messaging:

A tiny Gaelic guide to texting has even been published in Skye, baffling non-Gaels and some Gaelic speakers alike with its mixture of figures and abbreviations.

Asking someone out on a date has been cut down from An téid thu còmhla rium? (Will you go along with me?) to 8Ucolrm?

Deireadh na seachdainn, for weekend, has been cut down to dn7n. And the Gaelic for thank you, tapadh leat, has been contracted to tap l@.

Tellingly, however, while the vocabulary list has phrases for bad weather, such as ha flch for it’s wet and ha grnda for it’s grim, the phrases for good weather are non-existent.

If you're curious about the language spoken by 58,000 Scots, one place to start is with the information at Gaelic Scotland.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:55 PM | Get permalink

What happens after the new sheriff cleans up the town?

Likening the US to a "new sheriff who does not hesitate to use his pistol," Aviad Kleinberg of Haaretz shows how the fortunes of Israel may change dramatically as a result of the war:

There is only one country in the world that has not yet fully grasped the implications of the American invasion of Iraq, and that country is Israel. From certain points of view, the invasion worked in Israel's favor. The work of the just is always done by others. Iraq, despite all the bombastic pronouncements by President Bush, is not a strategic threat to the United States or to the free world, but it is definitely a threat to Israel. That threat has been removed, more or less.

However, the invasion of Iraq dramatically lowers Israel's stock as a strategic asset. And not because Israel is not loyal to Uncle Sam; on the contrary, it is a most obedient and faithful vassal.

It's just that Israel is not really needed. Israel's great strategic weight stemmed from its ability to act - or to constitute a potential threat - in a region in which the United States did not want to intervene directly. Israel was a regional mini-power through which it was possible to threaten the Soviet bloc and its satellites, or the Arab world. Israel preserved American interests.

If American involvement becomes direct, there is no further need for mediators. The United States does the dirty work itself. Moreover, as I have argued, American intervention in the Middle East was chosen less for any salient interest (that is, an economic-strategic interest) and more because it is easy to carry out.

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

More on the looting of the Iraqi National Museum.

The BBC has this story.

A museum guard said that since Thursday, hundreds of looters had carried away artefacts on carts and wheelbarrows.

The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years.

"They were worth billions of dollars," she said

"The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened."

Reporters who visited the museum on Saturday saw smashed display cases and broken pieces of pottery.

The San Jose (CA) Mercury News has more details here, including the response of the US military to charges that they should have prevented the looting. And you'll find more details and some background in this story from the LA Times and this one from the Toronto Star.

For a different spin on the looting of the museum, look at this story in The Hindu.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:31 AM | Get permalink

Friday, April 11, 2003

Oooooh. Shiny!

A digital photo of London, taken from the International Space Station back in February.

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:35 PM | Get permalink

She's at it again.

Wampum continues to dig into the past, today posting a whole slew of headlines and news story excerpts from 1991. Nothing ever changes, it seems.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:41 PM | Get permalink

Vendor lawsuit throws book at city.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has the story of two street vendors who are suing the city to force it to give them a permit to sell used books from a sidewalk table.

After moving to New Orleans in August 2001, Blanton and Wexler began calling various city offices to find out what they needed to sell books on the street legally, but they were repeatedly told no such vending permit was available, the lawsuit says.

Indeed, the city's fee schedule for street vending permits doesn't list books and blank journals, and Blanton and Wexler have been told they cannot sell such items without a permit, according to their lawsuit.

The code does list a wide range of other goods and services for which street vendor permits are available. According to the lawsuit, the city code does allow payment of a fee to get permits to sell novelties, candles, homegrown products, razor blades, toiletries, pencils and shoelaces; to demonstrate food products; to distribute commercial literature and advertising; to take and sell photographs; to offer weighing devices; to engage in exhibitions; to provide entertainment; and to hold a rummage sale.

But you can't sell books? Very strange.

(By the way, this magpie filched her headline from the Times-Picayune. There's no way to top it.) Via New Pages.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:19 PM | Get permalink

Pulling out the "long knives of ethnic politics" in Kurdistan

The Internet's unembedded correspondent in Iraq, Chris Allbritton, files a new dispatch from Arbil, Kurdistan. He reports on the jockeying for power among Kurdish factions and Turkomens in northern Iraq, while the spectre of Turkish intervention lurks in the background.

At this point, it’s probably a good idea just to tell you that I don’t believe what anyone is telling me at face value. The Kurds, deep in their hearts, really do want an independent Kurdistan and this talk of federalism is the practical side of Kurdish nationalism. If they thought they could get away with it, they would bolt Iraq and never look back, I think. The Turkomen don’t really feel that threatened, but they see the Kurds with their new buddies, the Americans, and worry they’ll be left out of any settlement and development plans in the north. So, they’re trying to play the Turks off the Americans to keep the Kurds in check. And the Turks … Well, actually, I believe them when they say they’re worried about their security. They’re a truly paranoid bunch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:00 PM | Get permalink

How should Arabs respond to the fall of Baghdad?

An editorial in the Saudi paper Arab News lays out one answer:

The fall of Baghdad is no reason for loss of Arab pride. There is no national Arab humiliation. This is not a war between Arabs and the US, or between a faithful Muslim state and a crusading, militant Christian West. It is a war between a dangerous tyrant — Saddam Hussein — whom Iraqis are glad to see the back of, and the US, whose motives for carrying it out are dubious.

That is not to ignore potential future dangers for Iraq — the danger that the US will be loath to hand over control to the Iraqis. A stable, law-abiding Iraq, too, may take considerable time to rebuild. But that the US involvement might possibly lead to occupation is not to say that it definitely will. That stability may take time to achieve is not to say that tyranny should not have been overthrown.

Iraq is not the black-and-white issue presented by some Arab politicians and people in the media — of Zionist-supporting Americans invading and occupying an independent Arab state. The issues are far more complex. To look at things in black and white rather than deal with complexities is blinkered — and those who are blinkered will never see the real picture. The Arab world needs to be more sophisticated in its judgments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:27 PM | Get permalink

It didn't take long.

Yesterday Magpie looked at a report on how the Dubya regime is being pressured to loosen Iraq's strict antiquities laws during the US occupation. Today, as seems too common with the news from Iraq, that country's heritage is under siege from another quarter. South Africa's News24 reports on today's looting of archaeological treasures in Baghdad:

A dozen looters helped themselves undisturbed in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned and administrative offices were wrecked.

Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor. Other items yanked from the walls were lying on the ground.

Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being, however.

The museum housed a major collection of antiquities, including a 4 000-year-old silver harp from Ur.

Iraq, among the earliest cradles of civilization and home to the remains of such ancient Mesopotamian cities as Babylon, Ur and Nineveh, has one of the richest archaeological heritages in the world.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Washington is dealing with the chaos in Baghdad by blaming the press:

In Washington on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied Iraq was falling into chaos, saying at a news conference television images of isolated acts of looting and violence were being played "over and over again" for sensational effect.

"The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture, of some person walking out of some building with a vase," said Rumsfeld. "Where they (U.S. forces) see looting, they're stopping it. And they will be doing so."

And here's how ABC News (US) reported the same part of Rumsfeld's remarks:

Rumsfeld suggested that many of the television images beamed around the world showing acts of looting were being shown repeatedly, exaggerating the effect. Even so, he said, looting is common problem worldwide at times and in places where law enforcement has broken down.

"Stuff happens," he said.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:52 PM | Get permalink

Another lesson from Iraq.

And it's not one that the US thought it was sending, according to Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector.

By attacking Iraq, Washington had sent the wrong message - that if a country did not possess biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, it risked being attacked.

"The US maintains that the war on Iraq is designed to send a signal to other countries to keep away from weapons of mass destruction. But people are getting a different message. Take the announcement North Korea has just made. It's tantamount to saying 'if you let in the inspectors, like Iraq did, you get attacked'.

North Korea accused the United States on Sunday of using a UN Security Council discussion of its nuclear programme as a "prelude to war" and warned that it would fully mobilise and strengthen its forces.

"It's an important problem," Blix continued. "If a country perceives that its security is guaranteed, it won't need to consider weapons of mass destruction. This security guarantee is the first line of defence against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

In the same interview, Blix told the Spanish paper El Pais that:

There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their [the US and UK] attitude to the (weapons) inspections.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:57 PM | Get permalink

Not just a war for oil.

An article in The Hindu by Kannan Srinivasan suggests that a main reason for the war in Iraq is the weakness of the US economy. According to Srinivasan, the US is caught in a crisis of overproduction. Because the economy produces far more goods and services than can possibly be consumed, demand for those goods and services has weakened. This causes prices to drop, and makes corporations reluctant to invest in research or capital improvements. As a result, new jobs are not created and existing jobs are cut, raising the unemployment rate. This further weakens demand and intensifies the crisis.

Indeed, over-capacities today plague all the major developed economies — the U.S., Europe and Japan. For the first time since the 1970s, the three are in recession at the same time. Japan has been in this state since the start of the 1990s, while the U.S. economy has acted as the global motor of demand, taking in the world's goods and pumping out dollars. Now that motor is sputtering, and there is no sign of a powerful demand-impulse from any other quarter. The International Labour Organisation says in its latest Global Employment Trends that "the world employment situation is deteriorating dramatically", with 20 million added to the ranks of the unemployed last year, and vast numbers of underemployed or "working poor".

The Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy's paper "Behind the Invasion of Iraq" (Monthly Review Press, New York) argues that there is a connection between these over-capacities and the current U.S. drive to occupy the Middle East. In order to stave off recession, the U.S. central bank has been boosting demand by pumping in unprecedented amounts of credit. Indeed, the U.S. economy's remarkable boom of the 1990s occurred even as corporate profits were falling sharply. Demand and investment were only sustained by an explosion of cheap debt.

The U.S. has the funds to do this because foreigners put their savings in dollar assets. Since the dollar is used for most international payments, the U.S. can pay for its huge trade deficit — now running at $500 billion — by merely printing more dollars. It is the U.S.' superpower status and in particular its control over the world's oil that have sustained its status as the safest harbour for international capital. However, the U.S.' ability to soak up the world's savings is a double-edged sword. If foreigners, who hold half or more of the entire U.S. currency, should decide to dump the dollar, its value would plummet, leading to yet more capital flying from the country. In order to prevent that, and to get foreign capital to return, the U.S. would have to raise its interest rates steeply. But given the vast addition to U.S. debt in the last two decades, a steep interest rate hike could have far more disastrous consequences for its economy than it did in 1980 — the severest American recession since World War II. Debt-laden U.S. corporations and consumers would be unable to service their debts, and their assets would flood the market; asset prices would collapse, and banks — swamped with worthless assets instead of income — would, in turn, collapse.

If it is to continue to boost domestic demand with debt, then, the U.S. must prevent the flight of the dollar. That task is made vastly more difficult by the emergence of the euro. Europe's economy is comparable in size and character to that of the U.S. As a matter of sheer prudence, countries would wish to shift a portion of their foreign exchange reserves from the currency of an economy which has a runaway national debt. Moreover, a number of economies, which have been at the receiving end of U.S.' bullying, may demand payment in euros and shift their reserves to that currency in a deliberate attempt to harm the U.S. economy.

Via Undernews.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:16 PM | Get permalink

Parsing patriotism.

A retired English professor tries to sort out the meaning of patriotic slogans.

Because I have spent much of my life studying and teaching language, I respond inappropriately to patriotic slogans: I parse them grammatically and try to explicate them the way I would an obscure fragment in an essay. Like Hamlet, I sometimes become sicklied over with the pale cast of thought when I shouldn't be thinking at all. The slogans are designed to evoke warm feelings of camaraderie and unity, not grimaces and cocked brows. [...]

Are "Let Freedom Ring" and "United We Stand" logically compatible? If everyone exercises freedom of speech and conscience, will we all stand united? Instead of assenting to the war against Iraq, some may opt to ring their dissent. How does one "Support the Troops"? Letters? Pep rallies? Boxes of homemade cookies? Can one support the troops by urging them to obey their consciences even if their consciences conflict with their orders?

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 PM | Get permalink

Let's bash Fox News again.

LA Times television critic Howard Rosenberg has an excellent article on how Fox News mixes fact and opinion, including lots of examples from the network's war coverage.

"We report, you decide" with anchor John Gibson, wondering "what the French are gonna do to try to screw up" Iraq's coming post-Hussein period. As for the U.N. wanting a central role in postwar reconstruction, Gibson added: "Americans think it's an absolute joke that the U.N. is so presumptuous to think that it could run Iraq. The idea that we would turn it over to the U.N. to fumble seems incomprehensible." When a Gibson guest argued that many Arabs oppose long-term U.S. involvement in postwar Iraq, he cut him off.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:35 AM | Get permalink

The lowest prices in town.

If you go over to Re-code.com and scoot past the entry page, you'll see a site that's obviously a take-off on Priceline.com—a well-known Web retailer whose hook is that you can "name your own price" for various travel-related products and services. Re-code.com's hook, however, is that it tells you how to engage in "tactical shopping" by changing the barcodes on stuff you buy. The site not only includes a barcode generator, but a database of products with known barcodes. Re-code says that the site is political satire and that they aren't suggesting that people actually go out and alter prices.

Giant retailer Wal-Mart is far from amused, however. Instead, the chain's lawyers have sent a letter to Re-code's domain registrar, alleging that Re-code.com is "encouraging theft and fraud against Wal-Mart." Wal-Mart is demanding that the Re-code site be shut down within 48 hours.

This Salon article has the rest of the story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:58 AM | Get permalink

Hmmm.

Magpie was visited today by someone using the search terms "las vegas thin walls hotels." Go figure.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:19 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, April 10, 2003

The moral decline of a superpower.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Nobel Prize-winning German writer Gunter Grass wants to know: Is this really the United States of America, the country we fondly remember?

No, it is not anti-Americanism that is damaging the image of the United States; nor do the dictator Saddam Hussein and his extensively disarmed country endanger the most powerful country in the world. It is President Bush and his government that are diminishing democratic values, bringing sure disaster to their own country, ignoring the United Nations, and that are now terrifying the world with a war in violation of international law.

We Germans are often asked if we are proud of our country. To answer this question has always been a burden. There were reasons for our doubts. But now I can say that the rejection of this preemptive war by a majority in my country has made me proud of Germany. After having been largely responsible for two world wars and their criminal consequences, we have made a difficult step. We seem to have learned from history.

The Federal Republic of Germany has been a sovereign country since 1990. Our government made use of this sovereignty by having the courage to object to those allied in this cause, the courage to protect Germany from a step back to a kind of adolescent behavior.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:23 PM | Get permalink

Mass kleptomania in Baghdad.

Robert Fisk of the UK Independent describes the chaos in Baghdad in the wake of the US "liberation" of the city:

It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later.

At the headquarters of Unicef, which has been trying to save and improve the lives of millions of Iraqi children since the 1980s, an army of thieves stormed the building, throwing brand new photocopiers on top of each other and sending cascades of UN files on child diseases, pregnancy death rates and nutrition across the floors. [...]

Every government ministry in the city has now been denuded of its files, computers, reference books, furnishings and cars. To all this, the Americans have turned a blind eye, indeed stated specifically that they had no intention of preventing the "liberation" of this property. One can hardly be moralistic about the spoils of Saddam's henchmen but how is the government of America's so-called "New Iraq" supposed to operate now that the state's property has been so comprehensively looted? And what is one to make of the scene on the Hillah road yesterday where I found the owner of a grain silo and factory ordering his armed guards to fire on the looters who were trying to steal his lorries. This desperate and armed attempt to preserve the very basis of Baghdad's bread supply was being observed from just 100 metres away by eight soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who were sitting on their tanks – doing nothing. The UN offices that were looted downtown are 200 metres from a US Marine checkpoint.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:02 PM | Get permalink

Finally, some Irish music content.

The Ottawa Citizen reports that a group of musicians who play Irish music in a jam session at an local pub is being asked to pay performanace royalties for tunes they play at their session.

"This is ridiculous," said Keven Dooley, arguing that he is simply trying to "express his culture. "I am not a professional musician." The society defends its position, saying it is responsible for collecting royalties on behalf of performing artists. Every Thursday for almost a year, Mr. Dooley and his son, Ciaran, have been strolling into Daniel O'Connell's Irish Pub on Wellington Street with their flutes, bodhrans and harps to meet friends and play the night away. The two join local musicians, some older than 80, who gather at the pub to play "true Irish" music. Many of the songs have been performed for centuries. On some nights there are as many as 12 people on stage, and none of the performers is paid. Any gratuities are donated to the Rideau Canal Celtic Cross Committee, an organization that wants to erect a memorial to Irishmen who died during the construction of the Rideau Canal. But the letter from SOCAN [the Canadian performing rights organization—equivalent to ASCAP in the US], demanding that Mr. Dooley pay for performing live music at the bar, could put an abrupt end to their weekly gathering.

This seems very strange to me. While I certainly believe that composers should be paid for their work, the bulk of the tunes that Irish musicians play have been in the tradition for years, and frequently there is no identifiable composer. And of the more recent tunes where the composer is known, almost all of them were written for the purpose of entering the tradition and being played at—you guessed it—Irish music sessions like the one at Daniel O'Connell's.

I really wonder how SOCAN got this particular burr under its saddle.

The Ottawa Citizen story is in the print version of the paper only. You can find the full text quoted in the first post of this discussion thread at The Session, followed by some responses.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:15 PM | Get permalink

"I hate Bush plenty, but that doesn't mean I liked Clinton."

Mikhaela Reid has a new cartoon. And if you missed her last one, here's a direct link.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:40 PM | Get permalink

Writing headlines.

It's a tough job, y'know? For example, this one from the AP probably doesn't mean exactly what it says.

Marines Told to Stop Looting, Enforce Curfew in Baghdad

I guess they should give those marines bigger paychecks, eh?

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:21 PM | Get permalink

Big Tim Tam battle brewing?

One of the really unfortunate things about living in the US is the difficulty of getting Tim Tams. For the uninitiated, Tim Tams are one of the highest forms of chocolate on the planet. Imagine a couple of chocolate biscuits (in the non-US sense), with chocolate creme between, and covered (most commonly) by dark chocolate or milk chocolate. My aussie friend Ali says that if Tim Tams were marketed properly, they'd be shelved next to the tampons. Get the picture?

While Tim Tams showed up briefly on the west coast of North America under at least two other names, they are currently unavailable except by mail order or by paying usurious prices at stores dealing in Australian foods. Many, including this crowgirl, suffer greatly from this deprivation.

At any rate, Tim Tams are made by Arnott's, which makes the claim that it is "more than a biscuit company. It's part of Australian culture." Despite this claim, however, Arnott's has been wholly owned by the US-based Campbell Soup Company since the 1990s. Enter the competitor, a much smaller Australian company called Dick Smith's, which claims to be "as Australian as you can get." Dick Smith's has started selling a biscuit very much like Tim Tams called Temptin's. Arnott's is not amused, and is threatening to sue Dick Smith's for infringing on the Tim Tam trademark.

Dick Smith's seems to be up for the fight.

Mr Dick Smith, the founder of Dick Smith Foods said that the case was likely to go to court as he felt that as a small Australian company they had an obligation to protect themselves against a giant multi-national like Arnott’s, which is owned by the US based Campbells Soup.

Dick says that “Arnott’s are not satisfied with their domination of the biscuit market and want to crush a small Aussie company like Dick Smith Foods.”

He refuted the assertion that any reasonable Aussie could mistake his Temptin’s biscuit pack for a Tim Tam pack. Dick says that “for a start, our Temptin’s taste far better, and the presentation on the pack, with my face on it, cannot possibly be mistaken for a foreign owned Arnott’s biscuit.”

Dick suggested a compromise: “We’ll add the words ‘not foreign owned Tim Tams, but genuine Aussie owned Temptin’s’ to our pack.

Magpie will keep you posted on this critical issue.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:52 PM | Get permalink

The more things stay the same.

When this magpie was about 12 years old, she remembers a favorite uncle telling her that while people in the US were lied to as much as the people of any other country, we had an advantage that many of the others didn't: In a free country, he said, you can almost always find out the truth with a little research. You might have to dig, but the truth will be there someplace.

Well, Wampum's favorite uncle must have told her something similar, because she has definitely been doing her research. She found an op-ed piece from a 1991 Boston Globe, which sums up the way that that Bush admistration manipulated the media during the first Gulf War. It sounds like it could have run in the paper this morning:

The press was had, as the editors have been had, as the people were had. The neat little war gave us this terribly nasty peace. How come? The Bush administration sewed us all up in the old trick bag, early on, and didn't let us out till it was all but over.

The whole op-ed piece is on Wampum, right here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:25 PM | Get permalink

Pizzas for choice.

A pizza joint in Portland, Oregon is being threated with a boycott by a national anti-choice organization. Flying Pie Pizza pissed off Life Decisions International because of its practice of giving $20 gift certificates to community groups, including Planned Parenthood.

In a testy written response, [Flying Pie owner Ty] DuPuis gave the pro-life group a slice of his mind, maintaining that his two Portland-area pizzerias would continue to support a wide range of community groups--including Planned Parenthood. [LDI president Douglas] Scott replied, DuPuis says, comparing the $20 pizza gift certificates to donations to the Ku Klux Klan.

Thanks Vicki Jean!

An interesting aside: I notice that the Internet filter at my job site lets me access LDI's website, but not Planned Parenthood's. I'm sure that's just an oversight, aren't you?

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:11 PM | Get permalink

So where are we now?

I was going to write a post trying to figure out what happens next in Iraq, but the Daily Kos has already covered that ground quite nicely.

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

That big crowd watching the Saddam statue come down in Baghdad.

It wasn't. Take a look at these pictures here. Especially this one of the whole of the square where the event took place. And CalPundit has a screen grab of what it looked like to Fox News viewers.

Can we say "staged for the media"? I knew we could.

Via NYC Indymedia, Shock, and skippy.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:29 PM | Get permalink

Do guns make you free?

And if they do, how come the fact that most households in Iraq have a gun didn't avert a dictatorship? Slate's Timothy Noah (Chatterbox) posed that question a few weeks ago, and ran readers' answers a few days ago. (Okay, I'm late with this one. I admit it.)

No ammo. Several readers, including Michael Dolan, author of The American Porch, noticed that Chatterbox didn't specifically mention that ammunition was also widely available. He should have. It is.

Via Alas, a Blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:34 PM | Get permalink

Bloody war pictures and the lack of them.

Photojournalist Peter Howe is no stranger to battlefields—he photographed the war in El Salvador and the continuing intercommunal violence in Northern Ireland. In this commentary, he talks about photographing the horrors of war and about what goes into the decisions that editors make as to whether the public should see those pictures.

In the thousands of images I looked at while authoring a new book about war photographers, I never saw anything that compared with the sight of the dazed soldier holding his severed arm in Saving Private Ryan; I also have yet to see photographs that are as bloody and violent as many of the graphics in the video games that our children play for hours on end.

The answer has to be that editors have a duty to perform the difficult task of producing a balanced view of extremely unbalanced times. As journalists, they have to decide whether a photograph appropriately communicates the reality of the situation and doesn't stray into the voyeuristic area that I did while photographing that Salvadoran victim.

This is hard under normal circumstances, and more so when passions run high, but it is a duty vital to a democracy. Either willingly or unwillingly, every American taxpayer is involved in this war, and it is important for us to have accurate information as to the price we pay for such involvement, not only through our dollars but also through the sacrifice of the young men and women we send into battle on our behalf. We do a disservice to their courage and commitment if we think that smart bombs can do their job.

President Franklin Roosevelt lifted the embargo against the publication of photographs showing American war dead because he thought the nation was becoming too complacent.

If you go here, Peter Howe talks more about war photography in his introduction to a portfolio of pictures from Shooting Under Fire, a collection of photographs of war that he edited. The main site for the Digital Journalist is worth checking out as well.

Howe commentary via Romenesko.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:33 AM | Get permalink

The cost of the war. Right this moment.

You'll find a running tally here. It had just passed US $37 billion when I checked.

Via This Modern World.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:03 AM | Get permalink

Next stop: Syria?

Newsday reports on the "menacing public remarks" about Syria coming from Washington now that Iraq has been taken care of.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and their main ideological ally at the State Department, undersecretary John Bolton, have all made menacing public remarks about Syria in recent days.

Yesterday, Rumsfeld said Syria was harboring lower-level members of Saddam Hussein's regime. He said Syria had ignored his warnings not to help Iraq militarily and, in response to a question as to whether Syria was "next," said ominously, "It depends on people's behavior. Certainly I have nothing to announce."

One intelligence source with good access to Pentagon civilian authorities said that Rumsfeld last week ordered the drawing up of contingency plans for a possible invasion of Syria and that Defense undersecretary Douglas Feith is working on a policy paper highlighting how Syria's support of terrorist groups is a threat to the region.

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

Iraq's future.

A gloomy, acerbic assessment from Seumas Milne of the UK Guardian.

The most that could eventually be hoped for from US plans is a "managed" form of democracy in a US protectorate, with key economic and strategic decisions taken in advance by the occupiers. Given the likely result of genuinely free elections in any Arab country, it is little wonder that the US would have such problems accepting them - just as they collude with torture and dictatorship by their client states in the region. Anyone who imagines the US is gagging for independent media in the Middle East should ponder Tuesday's attacks on the al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV offices in Baghdad.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:55 AM | Get permalink

This is not good.

Ayatollah Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a senior Shi'ite cleric, has been assassinated in Najaf, the Shi'ite holy city in southern Iraq. See this Newsday article from earlier today for background about the struggle between al-Khoei and Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim (currently in exile in Iran) for leadership of Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

Their competition for support among devout Iraqi Shiites could have profound consequences for the shape of a new government in Baghdad, and for any long-term American plans for Iraq. Shiites are the dominant group in Iraq, making up 60 percent of a total population of 24 million. But since Iraq gained independence in 1932, it has been ruled by a minority from the Sunni branch of Islam. The Shiites have been waiting 70 years to gain a voice equal to their numbers.

If the Shiites support a new government it would ensure stability in their stronghold of southern Iraq. Opposition from Shiite leaders could lead to a bloody confrontation with the United States, as it has in Iran and Lebanon.

And this Associated Press story from Monday discusses the two Shi'ite clerics in the broader context of returning Iraqi opposition leaders.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:32 AM | Get permalink

Losing a war and losing the past.

Archaeologists and scholars are worried that the confusion and disorder of post-war Iraq will provide an excellent environment in which to loot the country's antiquities. As this article in the UK Guardian points out, looting increased in Iraq after the first Gulf War, and has increased dramatically in Afghanistan since the US intervention there.

Dominque Collon, assistant keeper in the department of the ancient near east at the British Museum, said today that alarm bells had been set ringing by reports of a meeting between a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), with US defence and state department officials before the start of the war. The group offered help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam.

The ACCP's treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as "retentionist", and the group includes influential dealers who favour a relaxation of the current tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities.

Dr Collon said: "This is just the sort of thing that will encourage looting. Once there is American blessing they have got a market for these antiquities and it becomes open season. The last thing we want is condoned looting."

Via Paper Chase.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:12 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

Aw shucks.

skippy the bush kangaroo and Wampum have added Magpie to their respective blogrolls. Never having been on any blogrolls before, this crowgirl is not quite sure she belongs in such distinguished company. Nonetheless, she's very pleased to be there.

If you're not reading Wampum or skippy yet, you should definitely change your ways.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:33 PM | Get permalink

Get Your War On.

There's a new one.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:32 PM | Get permalink

Secretary of Christian Education?

Dubya's secretary of education, Rod Paige, is taking heat for saying that he prefers Christian schools over others.

"The reason that Christian schools and Christian universities are growing is a result of a strong value system,'' Paige said in a story run by the Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"In a religious environment the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school, where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values,'' he said.

Needless to say, his remarks have not been appreciated by all, and calls for Paige to repudiate them have come from Senator Edward Kennedy, the Anti-Defamation League, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, among others.

An Education Department spokesperson says that Paige's remarks were taken out of context, and that the secretary was referring to colleges and universities, not grade schools and high schools. The original story on the Baptist Press news service does not bear this out, however.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:21 PM | Get permalink

What's that tune?

New Scientist reports that Dutch scientists have sorted music by genre and composer using a standard data-compression program.

Rudi Cilibrasi, Paul Vitÿnyi and Ronald de Wolf of the Dutch National Research Institute in Amsterdam wondered if such compression could also help distinguish between musical genres. So they tried it out on digital files of various pieces, including some from Beethoven, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. [...]

When applied to 32 classical pieces, the technique clustered each composer on a separate branch. Vitÿnyi thinks the trick could help identify a plausible composer for works of unknown origin, as long as they have written several known works for comparison. It could also help online music stores, for example by classifying music files.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:41 PM | Get permalink

My cynicism just can't keep up.

From The Memory Hole:

The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed on April 7, 2003, that it is withholding in full the CIA Headquarters Handbook on the subject of release of information to the public.

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

Freedom to read (the continuing story).

More on how US libraries are protecting their patrons from the Patriot Act. Via NewPages.

One librarian at the New Jersey Library Association convention last week said she is torn between her own obligation to protect her patrons' privacy and the trustees of her library who want to assist law enforcement in catching terrorists.

"We are grappling with this -- we are a country at war and everyone wants to be patriotic, but they're forgetting the First Amendment," said the librarian, who asked not to be identified.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:43 PM | Get permalink

Spiritual warfare.

If you don't know what that means, you will after you read Natasha's thoughtful post on the subject over at The Watch. (The permalink doesn't seem to be working, so just scroll down to the post, "Spiritual warfare, a chorus.")

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:27 PM | Get permalink

Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.

Given its general toeing of Dubya's party line on Iraq, the fact that the Washington Post is both reporting on the increasingly bad situation in Afghanistan and blaming that situation on administration policies is probably not a good sign.

Seen from a complacent Washington, Afghanistan still may look better than it did before the U.S. intervention. But experts following the country say they worry about a steady unraveling, much like that which preceded the Taliban's seizure of power in the mid-1990s. The symptoms are similar: Outside the capital, warlords and bandits rule the country, sometimes battling each other and regularly robbing their fellow citizens at highway checkpoints. At the borders, aid shipments and "customs collections" on imported goods are diverted to the warlords, depriving the central government of resources and revenue. The opium trade is booming. In some places, the Taliban's extreme practices, including the persecution of women, have been reimposed.

Via Stand Down.

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

Watching Wal-Mart.

Last fall, I drove across Canada and back across the US. One of the most frequent sights on the trip was the Wal-Mart store I saw in pretty much every town of any size whatsoever. In both countries, mind you. When I needed to buy minidiscs in Sydney, Nova Scotia, for example, almost the only place in town I could look for them was the Wal-Mart store just down the road from the University College of Cape Breton.

Over the last 30 years or so, Wal-Mart has grown from a regional player based in Arkansas to the largest employer in the US, and one of the largest corporations in the world. What Wal-Mart decides to do shapes the entire US economy and—increasingly— the politics of the country as well.

In this guest editorial in the Puget Sound Business Journal, the owner of a (relatively) small grocery chain talks about what it's like to have Wal-Mart for a competitor, and what Wal-Mart's retailing success means to the rest of us.

Wal-Mart seeks to reshape the competitive structure of retailing to suit its ends. Its business model is to prey upon small communities, dislodging economic activity from a variety of traditional venues (often locally-owned firms) and concentrating it under one roof, where it can be serviced with fewer jobs overall. Because of its global nature, Wal-Mart stands apart from the local economy, relying on comparatively few local suppliers. The natural result is the decline of Main Street, reduction of overall employment opportunity, the concentration of wealth in an out-of-state enterprise, and fewer benefits to the local economy.

Wal-Mart's standard response is that consumers like their low prices. The brilliance of this strategy is that by ravaging the landscape of small business and playing hardball with employees who want to unionize (the company would rather shut down an operation than have to negotiate wages and working conditions), it creates more Wal-Mart shoppers — people who can afford only the low-end of consumer offerings.

Wal-Mart downgrades the standard of living throughout retailing by offering wage and benefit packages that are inferior to those provided by unionized companies. This places cost pressure on competitors and encourages them to streamline employment expenses. In a sense, Wal-Mart is like competing with a Third World country — it drags the standard of living for retail workers down to the lowest common denominator. Everyone but Wal-Mart is worse off, in exchange for the promise of cheaper tennis shoes.

For more information about Wal-Mart's business practices and what people are doing to combat Wal-Mart's expansion, take a look at Wal-Mart Watch. Via Alas, a Blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:41 AM | Get permalink

Are you getting the big picture?

When it comes to the war in Iraq, the US Office of Global Communications is doing its best to make sure that you do. Since its creation in January, the OGC has been scripting the messages delivered by US spokespeople and PR flacks around the world. This Chicago Tribune story gives an overview of this star-spangled propaganda machine. (Note: Registration required by the Tribune website.)

So controlled is the administration's message that officials from Bush on down often use identical anecdotes to make their points, for example about Hussein's brutality. But the White House sometimes has been unable to provide details or documentation to back up those stories, and some human-rights activists have expressed skepticism about them.

One oft-repeated anecdote, for example, concerned an Iraqi woman who ostensibly waved at a U.S. military unit. When the unit returned to the area, the story goes, it found the woman hanged from a lamppost.

Yet U.S. officials never specified where that happened or gave any further details, and they declined to say how they know about it beyond citing "intelligence reports."

A second story involved an Iraqi man who, having criticized Hussein's regime, was tied to a post in a Baghdad square after his tongue was cut out and bled to death. "That's how Saddam Hussein retains power," Bush said at Camp David on March 27.

The story was repeated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon briefers during the next several days. But administration officials have declined to say when the incident occurred or who saw it.

Although the chilling stories sound familiar to those who have documented Hussein's atrocities, the specific anecdotes could not be corroborated by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, journalists in the region or U.S. intelligence sources.

On a side note, there's a page for the OGC over at Whitehouse.org, too. Theirs is considerably more honest than the "real" one.

Via Undernews.

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

No war tax.

With the US income tax deadline coming up on the 15th, some people are thinking about registering their opposition to the war in Iraq, or to military spending in general, by withholding all or part of their income taxes. Alternet has a guide for to how to resist war taxes and what to expect from the government if you do.

When it comes right down to it, much of the IRS's power comes from fear – the fear accrued by hyping their ability to find you, pin you down, take your money, and send you off to prison.

The reality is that the IRS is chronically underfunded, faces a mountain of work for a relatively small staff, and even when tax evaders are caught, prison is rarely the result. When deciding to become a war tax resister, if you are committed to the effort, do some planning for the eventuality of tax collection and join a community of resisters, the biggest threat you face will be the worry of when they'll catch on to you, and not what you'll do when that happens.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:48 AM | Get permalink

Just when you think things couldn't get much worse.

The NY Times reports this:

Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.

You may remember that, before the Patriot Act was passed by Congress, pressure from civil liberties groups made it necessary for the administration to agree to make some of the act's more odious provisions temporary. Unless Congress extends them, many of the surveillance and eavesdropping powers given to the government will expire in 2005.

You can read more about the plans to make these powers permanent here.

Update: The ACLU of Illinois has already responded to the possibility of congressional action with a letter to the state's two senators, asking them to oppose any Patriot Act extensions:

We believe that not enough time has passed to evaluate the intrusive impact of these provisions, and that the Bush Administration’s reticence to share information about the implementation of powers authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act should be addressed before any consideration of legislation to make these expansive new powers permanent.

Via Paper Chase.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:30 AM | Get permalink

Free-fall in Baghdad.

From Reuters:

"You are a journalist. Please tell me what is going on. Where is our government? To whom do we belong now? I don't know," said Ammar Moussa, a shopkeeper visiting his wounded son at a Baghdad hospital. "I want to know when all this mess is going to finish. There is no radio, no television. Is our government still in control or not?" asked Sarmed Shakir, a cleaner at the hospital.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:18 AM | Get permalink

"An amazing lesson in media hypocrisy."

Israeli journalist Rogel Alper has a few choice words about Fox News. As he notes, Fox News has been a big hit with the powers that be, including those who decide what foreign media is available via cable in Israel. The BBC has been dropped from the cable package, and CNN was almost dropped.

As far as the war's motives are concerned, Fox looks like part of the propagandistic campaign of systematic disinformation by the Bush administration, while it accuses the Iraqi regime of disseminating false information about the situation on the battlefield. The motives for the war and measure of its justice are at the heart of the current conflict between the United States and its European allies, and has ramifications over its relations with Russia, China and the Arab world as well as its position as the global superpower. Just as the Iraqi TV deceives its viewers about the situation on the battlefield, Fox misleads its American viewers about the reasons for the war. If only the issue of the human rights of the Iraqi people was at stake, there never would have been a war.

But Fox broadcasts to the entire world. Like CNN, it presents to the globe the face of America and its perception of reality, and it exports its dark side, the infuriating side that inspires so much hostility: the self-righteousness, the brutality, the pretension, hubris, and simplicity, the feverish faith in its moral superiority, the saccharine and infantile patriotism, and the deep self-persuasion that America is not only the most powerful of the nations, but also that the truth is always American. Fox looks like the media arm of the superpower mentality, indifferent to any perspective that is not American and alienating vast portions of the world. Its war coverage is as governmental as that of Iraqi TV. This is American TV.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:04 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Just how many Big Brothers do we need, anyway?

GovExec reports that the FBI is testing a new database called Terrorism Intelligence and Data (TID).

As part of an ongoing technology upgrade, the FBI is building a massive database to store case information, leads, intelligence and even newspaper and magazine articles related to terrorism. Articles, the names of suspected terrorists on watch lists and terrorism-related message traffic from the Defense Department and the CIA have been placed into the database, which is being tested by some agents, according to Wilson Lowery, the FBI executive assistant director leading the project. Visa information from the State Department will be added to the database within 60 days, he said. [...]

The database also would store information from state and local law enforcement agencies, records of telephone calls and terrorism-related information from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Defense agencies. It would also contain data from the 66 joint terrorism task forces at FBI field offices, as well as from the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, an interagency group formed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001 to keep known terrorists and suspects out of the United States and to track them if they do enter the country.

An FBI spokesperson has admitted that the database might raise privacy concerns.

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:43 PM | Get permalink

Sad but (apparently) true.

From Duncan Campbell of the UK Guardian, reporting from Los Angeles:

I was buying some groceries in a store just after the war in Iraq had started when the man taking my money asked whether or not I thought we were about to come under attack.

I can understand that being a topic of conversation in Basra, but we were in LA - the sun was shining and there were surfers heading for the beach.

I assured him he need not worry, the Iraqis were not about to mount an invasion on California. Yes, he said, but what about the French?

It was only when I was about to tell him that French troops were already making their way south from Quebec and that Napoleon was confident they would be in Long Beach by Easter that I realised he was serious.

Campbell goes on to castigate the US media for coverage that could lead a person to believe that the US and France are at war—especially that carried by Fox News and Clear Channel.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:26 PM | Get permalink

This speaks for itself.

From the UK Independent:

The Sky News correspondent David Chater was in the Palestine Hotel when the hotel was hit by American tank fire. This is his account of what happened.

"I was about to go out on to the balcony when there was a huge explosion, then shouts and screams from people along our corridor. They were shouting, 'Somebody's been hit. Can somebody find a doctor?' They were saying they could see blood and bone.

"There were a lot of French journalists screaming, 'Get a doctor, get a doctor'. There was a great sense of panic because these walls are very thin. "We saw the tanks up on the bridge. They started firing across the bank. The shells were landing either side of us at what we thought were military targets. Then we were hit. We are in the middle of a tank battle.

"I don't understand why they were doing that. There was no fire coming out of this hotel – everyone knows it's full of journalists.

"Everybody is putting on flak jackets. Everybody is running for cover. We now feel extremely vulnerable and we are now going to say goodbye to you." The line was cut but minutes later Chater resumed his report, saying journalists had been watching American forces from their balconies and the troops had surely been aware of their presence.

"They knew exactly what this hotel is. They know the press corps is here. I don't know why they are trying to target journalists. There are awful scenes around me. There's a Reuters tent just a few yards away from me where people are in tears. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to carry on if American shells are targeting Western journalists?"

This account is at the end of a commentary by Robert Fisk in which he goes over the events around the two US attacks on journalists in Baghdad earlier today.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:09 PM | Get permalink

A terrible beauty.

A satellite image of Iraq and surrounding countries.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:25 PM | Get permalink

A pox on all of them.

The International Federation of Journalists has fired a broadside against both sides for their attacks on journalists covering the Iraq war:

The IFJ is calling for an independent international inquiry after an attack on a hotel where journalists are staying in Baghdad and after US troops allegedly destroyed the offices of Al Jazeera Television and Abu Dhabi Television.

"There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists. If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law," said Aidan White, General Secretary of the IFJ. "The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy. Those who are responsible must be brought to justice".

At the same time the IFJ condemns what appears to be Iraqi tactics of using civilians and journalists as a "human shield" against attack. "The Baghdad authorities are just as culpable with their reckless disregard for civilian lives," said White.

Other journalists' organizations have been quick to condemn the killings of the Al-Jazeera correspondent and two other journalists yesterday in Baghdad. This Al-Jazeera story details these responses.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:03 PM | Get permalink

The killing of that Al-Jazeera journalist in Baghdad.

Here's the official response from CENTCOM. Notice how CENTCOM spins the story even in the title it gave to the press release.

UPDATE ON JOURNALISTS CAUGHT IN CROSSFIRE

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar – U.S. Central Command has received further clarification on two incidents of journalists being harmed during combat operations in Baghdad today.

The first incident involved reporters from Al Jazeera. According to commanders on the ground, Coalition forces came under significant enemy fire from the building where the Al Jazeera journalists were working and, consistent with the inherent right of self-defense, Coalition forces returned fire. Sadly, an Al Jazeera correspondent was killed in this exchange.

In the second incident, commanders on the ground reported that Coalition forces received significant enemy fire from the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad and, consistent with their inherent right of self defense, Coalition forces returned fire. Sadly, a Reuters and a Tele 5 (Spain) journalist were killed in this exchange.

Unfortunately, both of these buildings were being used by journalists reporting on the war.

These tragic incidents appear to be the latest example of the Iraqi regime’s continued strategy of using civilian facilities for regime military purposes. The Coalition regrets the loss of innocent life and will continue its efforts to protect the innocent from harm.

To date, at least two journalists embedded with Coalition forces have also died as a result of enemy fire. These events serve as a tragic reminder of just how dangerous life is on the battlefield.

Coalition forces target only legitimate military targets and go to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian facilities.

None of the independent reports I've seen has backed up the CENTCOM claim that there was firing from either building. Check out this AP story for more of the official line, and what journalists who were on the scene had to say in response.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:59 PM | Get permalink

Union maids.

In The Nation, Marc Cooper has the story of the drive to unionize strippers in Las Vegas. Spurred by the county government's attempt to regulate stripping and lap dancing, dancers have flocked to the newly formed Las Vegas Dancers Alliance. Under the leadership of dancer and labor activist Andrea Hackett, the LVDA is battling against gambling interests, club owners, and the county to improve the pay and working conditions of the 15,000 dancers in the area.

The LVDA has affiliated unofficially with almost fifty other groups, including the Sierra Club and the northern Nevada NAACP, that make up the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), and Hackett has forged a close working relationship with the local ACLU. "She's got the energy of ten organizers and the skills to go along with it," says Paul Brown, southern Nevada director of PLAN. "The County Commission has set off a spark that has turned into a firestorm. This basically comes down to an important issue of labor practices." In the past few weeks Hackett has also met with state AFL-CIO officials and other union activists exploring affiliation. "Do we want to become a union?" she asks and then answers her own query. "Let's just say that all roads are leading to the same conclusion." One organizer for a major international industrial union who met with Hackett says his organization is looking seriously into some form of collaboration. "We'd love to have these dancers eventually in our union, and we're going to help out every way we can," he says. [...]

Hackett, meanwhile, has found fertile organizing territory among the dancers, who have also been feeling the economic pinch of the past two years. While in the salad days of the dot.com bubble a top dancer could count on maybe forty to fifty lap dances a night at $25 each, today she is lucky to do ten. "You might think that's a lot of money either way," says Hackett. "But we are exploited by everybody." Vegas's exotic dancers are treated as "independent contractors" by club owners, meaning not only are they not on the payroll, thus receiving no benefits or insurance, but they have to pay the owners as much as $70 a night just for the right to perform. Then there are payoffs to the bouncers, the deejays and sometimes even to the parking valets. And whatever money is generated by the dancers has to be split with the club owners, sometimes on a 50-50 basis.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:51 AM | Get permalink

Wartime ABCs.

You probably didn't know that there were any. But there are.

Via This Modern World.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:29 AM | Get permalink

Free speech during wartime.

Writing in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman lays into the Republicans (and others) who have been criticizing Senator John Kerry over his suggestion that the US needs a regime change. You really should read the whole thing—Krugman's columns are almost always worth the time— but here are a couple of excerpts:

Anyway, what defines patriotism? Talk is cheap; so is putting a flag in your lapel. Citizens prove their patriotism when they make sacrifices for the sake of their country. Mr. Kerry, a decorated veteran, has met that test. Most of his critics haven't.

I'm not just talking about military service — though it's striking how few of our biggest hawks have served. Nor am I talking only about financial sacrifice — though profiting from public office seems to be the norm, not the exception, among those who wrap themselves in the flag. . . .

The biggest test of a politician's patriotism is whether he is willing to sacrifice some of his political agenda for the sake of the nation. And that's a test our current leaders have failed with flying colors. [...]

Some timid souls will suggest that critics of the Bush administration hold off until the war is over. But that's not the American tradition — and anyway, when will this war be over? Baghdad will fall, but during the occupation that follows American soldiers will still be in harm's way. Also, a strong faction within the administration wants to go on to Syria, to Iran and beyond. And Al Qaeda is still out there.

For years to come, then, this country may be, in some sense, at war. And all that time, if Mr. Racicot and his party are allowed to set the ground rules, nobody will be allowed to criticize the president or call for his electoral defeat. You know what? If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:20 AM | Get permalink

Okay, maybe National Public Radio isn't all bad.

Newsies at NPR affiliate WBUR in Boston have put up a very nice blog about the war in Iraq. Via Current.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:57 AM | Get permalink

Where's Saddam?

Carol Lay thinks she knows.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:32 AM | Get permalink

More on Al-Jazeera bombing.

Al-Jazeera reports that correspondent Tariq Ayoub died when US aircraft bombed the broadcaster's offices in Baghdad yesterday. The broadcaster also reports that US aircraft returned shortly afterwards and hit the Abu Dhabi TV offices nearby.

"It seems that we have become a target,” said [correspondent Tayseer] Allouni. Al Jazeera had informed US authorities of the location of its offices and the station said they were clearly marked.

Another of Jazeera's Baghdad correspondents Majed Abdel Hadi called the U.S. missile strike and Ayoub's death a "crime".

"I will not be objective about this because we have been dragged into this conflict," he said, visibly upset. "We were targeted because the Americans don't want the world to see the crimes they are committing against the Iraqi people." [...]

"Al-Jazeera team has no role in the war. We are only witnesses and are reporting objectively. This proves that the US is trying to cover the crime it commits in its war on Iraq. Targeting witnesses is the biggest crime," said Abdel-Hadi, visibly upset.

(If the Al-Jazeera website is unavailable, another copy of the story is at ElectronicIraq.net.)

However, the US seems to have two stories about the bombing. The first says that the bombing was not deliberate:

A U.S. military spokeswoman denied Tuesday, April 8, that U.S. forces had targeted the Al-Jazeera television station in Baghdad, which the network said was hit by U.S. missiles killing a correspondent.

"We did not target Al-Jazeera," Major Rumi Nielson-Green said at the US base directing the Iraq invasion. "We only target legitimate military targets."

And the second says that it was deliberate:

Central Command in Qatar said U.S. forces had come under "significant enemy fire" from the Jazeera building and had returned fire in self-defense.

Meanwhile, the international journalists' organization Reporters Sans Frontieres has condemned the bombing:

"We strongly condemn this attack on an neighbourhood known to include the offices of several TV stations," said secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of US military operations in Iraq.

"To ensure the safety of its journalists, Al-Jazeera's management has been careful to inform the Americans of the exact location of its crews right from the start of the war. The US army cannot therefore claim it did not know where the Baghdad offices were.

"Did it at least warn the journalists about an imminent bombing? The outcome was predictable: yet another journalist was killed covering this very deadly war for the media," Ménard said.

He called on Franks to make a serious and thorough investigation of who was responsible for the attack and why it was carried out.

Reporters Sans Frontieres info via Canada News Wire.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:41 AM | Get permalink

Monday, April 7, 2003

US missile hits Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad.

One person injured, another missing. More here. And an update here:

Footage from fellow Arab network Abu Dhabi TV showed a fire blazing in the Jazeera office, which is in a multi-story building. Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni, who made his name covering the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan, was seen carrying a wounded colleague into an Abu Dhabi TV car.

This is the second time that the Al-Jazeera offices have been shelled or bombed in the last week.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:39 PM | Get permalink

How significant is the antiwar movement?

Kieran Healy takes on critics who have dismissed the US antiwar movement as narcissism and gimmickry (among other things). Relying on partial data from a National Science Foundation-funded study of collective social action from 1950 to 1995, he shows that the recent antiwar mobilizations are easily at the top of the list in terms of size when compared to those that took place at the height of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. Says Healy:

The sheer size of a protest event is only one indicator of the vitality of a social movement and its capacity to effect social change. Timothy Burke and Dan Drezner are right to say that a successful social movement does things other than just protest in the streets. Nevertheless, getting people to turn out in large numbers remains a very useful index of popular discontent because it is so hard to do. Based on the size of the typical protest, it is just not plausible to say that there are very large numbers of people who choose to indulge their narcissism by showing up for protests. If there were, we’d see them out on the streets in large numbers far more often than we actually do — particularly given that the data considered here cover what we might think of as a “golden age” of public protest in the United States. When set in the context of the history of mobilization for protest, the anti-war movement has generated a turnout for protests on a scale rivalled by only a very few social movement organizations on a very tiny number of occasions. That’s worth bearing in mind the next time you’re tempted to dismiss it as a failure or write off its participants as out-of-touch peaceniks.

Via Electrolite.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:09 PM | Get permalink

Why is the Magpie archive page blank?

I sure wish I knew. I've told Blogger about the problem.

Update: They're working just fine again.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:57 PM | Get permalink

Is Al-Jazeera a miners' canary?

In this article at The Register, John Lettice looks at the difficulties that Al-Jazeera has had over the past few weeks, trying to keep an English-language website available online. These difficulties have included hacking, denial of service attacks, domain hijacking, and getting dumped by network service provider Akamai. Why should any of this matter to the rest of us on the Internet? Lettice says this:

The Internet is different, however, in that despite it being, allegedly, the New Frontier, the ultimate medium for free speech, it's also eminently suited to the suppression of free speech. Sure, anybody can set up a web site and say whatever they like, but only if not too many people read what they say, and only if they're careful about what it is they say. Say something controversial that enough people don't like, and you'll get attacked. Say something particular pressure groups don't like, and you'll get attacked on multiple fronts, bombarded via email, mail and voice phone, indirectly via your neighbours, other people in your organisation, hosts your organisation deals with, other outfits using the same hosts who don't like the publicity...

Even before patriotism and peddling enemy propaganda come into the equation, controversy plus high profile plus the Internet adds up to a great deal of expense and considerable difficulty in finding outfits brave/foolhardy enough and technically robust enough to do business with you. There's a clear hypocrisy to this, because the outfits who'll terminate your contracts are precisely the same outfits who'll have been taking your money so long as nobody noticed, or at least so long as only Arabic speakers noticed. And these are also the outfits who'll protest that they're only the plumbers and the message has nothing to do with them, and who'll howl freedom of speech when it suits them, yet shut it down if it looks like being bad for business.

It can be like this for TV and print media too, but Al Jazeera's satellite TV operations are to a great extent proof against such perils. The signals can't be stopped readily, unless you jam them, ban dishes or get them kicked out of their satellite deals, and you can't readily get to the company for as long as it has tolerant governments prepared to host it. That doesn't amount to complete invulnerability, because political and commercial pressures can still be exerted in order to quieten it down, but the position is a hell of a lot more favourable than is the case for the Internet. Think about the lengths you'd have to go to in order to produce a similar level of invulnerability via the Internet, and you'll maybe conclude that free speech is a lot less freer than you thought.

A side note: As I write this, Al-Jazeera appears to be down yet again.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:02 PM | Get permalink

That other war.

You know, the one in Afghanistan? And how the US made big promises for how it was going to rebuild the country after the Taliban government was gone?

There have been any number of stories in the past several months describing, to pick just a few topics: the Afghanistan government's pleas for the US to deliver the promised aid; the continuing discrimination against women in most of the country; and the return to rule by warlords outside of the government-controlled area around Kabul. Counterspin points to this CBS news report on how things continue to fall apart.

If I lived in Iraq, I would not be holding my breath waiting for the US to deliver on all the promises it's made about the aid to be delivered after the current Iraqi government falls.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:15 PM | Get permalink

Kerry still on the defensive.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry continues to defend himself against Republican attacks on him for his suggestion in a campaign speech that the US, like Iraq, needs a regime change. Republican leaders, including Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, have claimed that Kerry was irresponsible for suggesting "the replacement of the commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war."

Traveling through Iowa, Kerry rejected what he called ``phony arguments'' from the GOP that political candidates should mute their criticism of the commander in chief.

``This is a democracy,'' Kerry said. ``We could be at war a year from now. Would we put the election on hold?''

More on Kerry's remarks in Iowa can be found here.

What I'm having trouble understanding is exactly why, in a country that supposedly has freedom of speech and democratic elections, a candidate for office should be expected to apologize for criticizing the performance of that office's current occupant. Perhaps Kerry's Republican critics recall that two of the last three presidents who were in office during a major war were not re-elected (Lyndon Johnson and Bush the First).

Of course, the third wartime president was Richard Nixon, and he was impeached. But we won't go there.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:36 PM | Get permalink

Another Magpie blog.

And that Magpie is lucky enough to be in Canada. (whine)

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:04 PM | Get permalink

Freedom to read.

Librarians in Santa Cruz, California are among the forefront of their profession's opposition to the provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the government to obtain the records of what books people read or buy. And makes it illegal for librarians or booksellers to say that government agents have come 'round to get those records. The New York Times has a story about how these West Coast librarians are shredding patron's records to protect them from government snooping.

You can find more information about what libararians (and others) around the US are doing to oppose the Patriot Act here, here, and here. And especially here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:50 PM | Get permalink

The war hits Iraq's health care system hard.

From New Scientist:

With health resources diverted to treating direct casualties of war, Popal fears the rise of diarrhoeal diseases like cholera, typhoid and measles. And confirmed cases of diarrhoeal disease in Baghdad are increasing, says Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On Saturday, the ICRC said about 100 wounded patients were arriving at the Al Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad every hour. But as the numbers rose, the authorities lost count. Doumani warns that hospitals are "stretched to the limit", with some Iraqi surgeons working 24 consecutive hours

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:22 PM | Get permalink

The reign in Spain.

Spain's ruling Popular Party has had better months. Already fighting widespread popular opposition to its support for the Iraq war, the center-right party has had one of its offices petrol-bombed. In this article in the UK Observer, Emma Daly uses the bombing as a hook on which to hang a story about the the Popular Party's broader problems:

The question nagging at members of the Popular Party now is whether anger over the war, which is opposed by more than 90 per cent of the population, may translate into defeat for them in the local and regional elections on 25 May.

During the countdown to war, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar basked in the glow of international attention - a privileged visitor to George Bush's Texas ranch, he was an A-list summiteer, invited to Anglo-American meetings on Iraq.

But two weeks into a conflict that was supposed to be over almost before it began, and with little to show for his fervent support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Aznar is under intense fire that threatens to crack his party in two.

Millions of Spaniards have taken to the streets to protest against the conflict and to insult their leader as an 'imperialist lackey', while graffiti spread across the country condemning members of the Popular Party as 'murderers'.

Via The Watch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:40 PM | Get permalink

Another sigh.

Sean-Paul Kelley at the Agonist has apparently been careless in giving proper attributions to the sources of the Iraq war information and analysis on his site. This Wired News article describes Kelley's run-in with Stratfor, an outfit that sells intelligence.

I don't think Kelley's plagiarism should outweigh the tremendous service he's done for the rest of us in amassing tremendous amounts of information quickly, while trying to provide context at the same time. But you always cite your sources.

Via This Modern World.

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

Upping the protest ante?

Oakland (CA) police open fire on protesters with "non-lethal" bullets—but hit dock workers instead.

Police were trying to clear protesters from an entrance to the docks when they opened fire and the longshoremen apparently were caught in the line of fire.

Six longshoremen were treated by paramedics and at least one was expected to be taken to a hospital. It was unclear if any of the protesters was injured.

"I was standing as far back as I could," said longshoreman Kevin Wilson. "It was very scary. All of that force wasn't necessary."

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the "non-lethal" bullets were made of wood.

Thanks, Kathleen!

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

Sigh.

The bottom crawlers haven't wasted any time in getting out that Operation Iraqi Freedom merchandise. Check out Ebay.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:32 AM | Get permalink

Is Iraq another Vietnam?

US television journalist Bill Moyers answers that question with a qualified, but emphatic, Yes. And given that he was President Johnson's press secretary during the height of US involvement in Vietnam, the man has some idea of what he's talking about. Among his many journalistic credits over the years is his current program on public television, NOW with Bill Moyers, which is presenting some of the finest oppositional reporting in the country, on or off TV.

Moyers recently gave a wide-ranging interview to Salon, in which he talked about how well journalists are doing their task of reporting on the war; the current state of US party politics; the forces that shape history; fundamentalisms (Islamic and other); and more. The whole interview is here. Some excerpts are below:

So politically, the analogy with Vietnam is appropriate. Although we got out of Vietnam politically at the same time we got out militarily, we will not be able to get out of the Middle East politically at the same time we get out of Iraq militarily. The whole issue of reconstruction and nation-building that they're talking about, although I'm not sure how serious that is, could bog us down for a long time.

I did a little piece at the end of last week's broadcast, a little essay. I saw the headline, "Marines cross the Euphrates." And it just hit me, because my graduate work was in theology and I had to take five years of Greek, so I studied all that history -- so did Alexander the Great! So I went back to the books and, sure enough, 5,000 years ago the story is the same. The defeat of this one, the victory of that one. The Marines cross the Euphrates, but the United States will not be able to get out. And the last word is always written in the sand.

So yes, the military analogy breaks down -- there's no way Iraq can hold out for 10 years or five years or even a year. But you can be in an Israeli-like situation in the Middle East that will make life very, very miserable.

And every day we're there increases the pan-Arabism, gives the other side, the extremist Muslims, their argument. The Saudis are allowing their press, which is very controlled, to start chastising America. And the clerics in Saudi Arabia, who've been kept quiet since 9/11, have been allowed to go back to the pulpit and castigate America. At the same time, the targeting of Iraq is taking place from an underground bunker in Saudi Arabia. I mean, the Saudis are playing both ends against each other. That may last for the moment. But one of the main reasons that Osama bin Laden and the extremist Muslims give for their resentment of America is the stationing of American troops near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. We didn't have anything like that situation in Vietnam. [...]

I think democracy is in danger. I think democracy is gasping at the moment. The money people primarily determine who runs and wins in both parties. George W. Bush simply outspent John McCain in 2000; when Bush was in trouble in South Carolina, he was able to pour money in. Increasingly a small number of people determine who runs and therefore who wins. The participatory process is in paralysis. The mainstream press is largely owned by a handful of major corporations, so the debate is only on the periphery. It's on the Internet or out in the streets.

I do believe that the oxygen is going out of democracy. Slowly, but at an accelerating pace, the democratic institutions of this country are being bought off or traded off or allowed to atrophy. Political participation is one of them. There simply isn't any way for political candidates to engage in a true debate that people can watch and respond to. We don't hear many ideas anymore, just sound bites. Democracy is in great difficulty right now, and this troubles me about our country.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:51 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, April 6, 2003

Cooking the books.

Wampum makes a persuasive argument that Washington is "adjusting" the unemployment statistics to help make the US economic picture look less bleak than it actually is:

Since January I've been watching the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] unemployment summaries closely, after I first noted what seemed to be an unlikely three-tenths of a percent drop in the unemployment rate in January, particularly when employment only increased by 143,000. After some digging, I noticed that the the BLS had instituted a whole series of changes, which the bureau admitted would "affect the comparability of the January 2003 estimates with those for earlier months". They also shifted 200,000 worker off the books by declaring that they were not actively seeking work. The total of these "adjustments" made a somewhat bleak economic picture look much rosier than expected, even as other worrisome news was rolling off the presses.

In February, the economy lost a whopping 357,000 jobs; that is the newly released "revised" number, up 49,000 from the original 308,000 in March 6th report. How the Bush Administration happened to forget to count those 49,000 lost jobs is beyond my comprehension, and I wonder if they'll just happen to find more lost jobs to supplement the March numbers. Reviewing the details of the February unemployment report, I found more machinations, and even with the surge in actual numbers, few seemed to question the highly touted "rate" of 5.8%.

But even with a loss of close to a half a million jobs in two months, the unemployment rate has increase a mere tenth of a percent. To put that in perspective, since the beginning of 2001, the economy has shed nearly 2 million jobs, and unemployment has risen from a December 2000 rate of 3.9% to a December 2002 rate of 6.0%, and now stands at 5.8. Doesn't it seem at all suspect that a loss over 1.5 million jobs corresponds with an increase of 2 whole percentage points, but a half million job loss equates to a tenth of a percent rise?

Go here for the full post, which includes a number of links not duplicated in my excerpt.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:14 PM | Get permalink

A dangerous stage in Iraq.

Writing in Haaretz, Zvi Bar'el analyzes the propaganda war being waged by Iraq and the US/UK as the situation in Baghdad heats up. Each side is trying to woo public opinion in the city so that it won't have to fight two wars: one against its opponent's military and another against the people of Baghdad.

No less important than these decrees is the character of the wake left behind by the coalition advance in other parts of Iraq. According to media reports, the Iraqi public is beginning to show its displeasure with the coalition forces over the non-functioning of civilian infrastructure.

"This is a dangerous stage of the war," said a Jordanian commentator. "In such a stage, the population begins to lay the blame for all its troubles on the conquering force. If the civilian problems are not dealt with immediately, they are likely to determine the future of the battle for Baghdad."

Given what's already happened in Zubair; Umm Qasr and Basra; and Nasiriyah, the odds that the coalition will be handling things differently in Bagdad do not appear particularly good.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:58 AM | Get permalink