Magpie

Saturday, April 19, 2003

More evidence the looting could have been prevented.

The US military has admited that it knew that antiquities in Iraq's National Museum were worthy of protection, but that commanders decided that other tasks were more important when invading troops reached Baghdad. Now a report in the UK Observer says that this decision was made despite warnings in a March 26 memo from the US Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. In that memo, OHRA said that the national bank was the only site in Baghdad whose protection was more important that of the National Museum.

Looting of the museum could mean 'irreparable loss of cultural treasures of enormous importance to all humanity', the document concluded. But the US army still failed to post soldiers outside the museum, and it was ransacked, with more than 270,000 artefacts taken.

General Jay Garner, the head of ORHA, is said to be 'livid'. 'We asked for just a few soldiers at each building or, if they feared snipers, then just one or two tanks,' said one ORHA official. 'The tanks were doing nothing once they got inside the city, yet the generals refused to deploy them, and look what happened.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:40 PM | Get permalink

The Axis of Anti.

The UK Guardian has a story on how "heretical" books such as Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy are doing well on the US bestseller list.

'Michael Moore was the battering ram through the media Berlin Wall,' he [Palast] said, 'and Chomsky and I are rushing through.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:23 PM | Get permalink

Can we say "client state"?

This is not good news at all.

The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.

American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north. [...]

A military foothold in Iraq would be felt across the border in Syria, and, in combination with the continuing United States presence in Afghanistan, it would virtually surround Iran with a new web of American influence.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:04 PM | Get permalink

SARS rumours spread faster than the disease.

Reason looks at how misinformation about SARS may be outcompeting the truth, and at what bad information may lead politicans and governments to do.

SARS is the first epidemic of the Internet age, preying on the fact that as information becomes more communicable, rumors become more communicable too. A teenager's Web hoax claiming Hong Kong's borders would be closed prompted runs on canned foods and toilet paper. A supermarket owner in Sacramento spent two weeks arguing that, contrary to rumors, neither he nor his family is infected with SARS, and his stores are entirely safe. On Tuesday, a Sacramento city councilman tried to quell panic by bravely chewing a ceremonial Granny Smith apple from the produce section in front of reporters. [...]

A still-mysterious disease that spreads through unknown means may cause governments to overreact and unreasonably limit rights to privacy, property, and freedom of movement. President George W. Bush has signed an executive order triggering a 1917-era law that hands the Feds the power to appoint quarantine officers, create quarantine stations, and detain Americans "reasonably believed to be infected" with SARS. This power can be used carefully or wildly abused, and it's far too early to make predictions. The good news so far is that of about 200 cases of SARS in the U.S., there have been no deaths, and a chart prepared by the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that the worldwide SARS growth rate is closer to arithmetic than exponential.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:49 PM | Get permalink

Looting.

American as apple pie.

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

AP cameraman shot dead on West Bank.

After the recent deaths of journalists in Baghdad, this story from Israel about a journalist's death in Nablus is even more disturbing than it would be otherwise.

The [Reuters video] footage then showed a man with a rifle in green combat fatigues kneeling down between the armoured personnel carrier and the wall of a house at the top of the alley. Witnesses identified the man as an Israeli soldier.

The footage showed him pointing his weapon toward the journalists. Seconds later, Mr Darwazeh was seen lying in a doorway in a pool of blood.

He and other cameramen, still photographers and reporters had been at the bottom of the alley and were wearing brightly colored vests that said "Press." It was unclear whether there was anyone behind Darwazeh at whom the soldiers might have been aiming when he was shot.

"A soldier came from under the tank and shot towards us," said Hassan Titi, a Reuters cameraman who witnessed and filmed the shooting. Another witness, Sami al Assi, a cameraman with a local TV station, said "The Israelis shot him and aimed specifically at us."

So far, the Israel Defense Force has has had no response to the shooting other than to say that they will look into the incident.

The journalists' advocacy group Reporters without Borders has called for an immediate investigation into the shooting.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:54 PM | Get permalink

One of history's small turning points?

In this story in the UK Independent, Fergal Keane reports on yesterday's anti-US march in Bagdad, and then uses that event to ruminate on the growing resentment toward the occupation of Iraq that he sees building up in Baghdad.

Then came one of those moments that you live through with every nerve of your body vibrating. I saw young men breaking away from the main crowd and running toward a street corner. There was some shouting. Then I spotted American helmets bobbing above the crowd. "Look, buddy, I've got the gun – now back off," a voice shouted. An Iraqi man was confronting an American soldier. "Go ahead and shoot me. Go ahead," the man said. A woman shouted into my face: "It's about our pride. Its just about our pride."

In everything I have heard and seen in Iraq this past week, the words "pride" and "shame" recur. The elderly writer who was jailed under Saddam but wept when he saw the ransacked museum. It was looted by Iraqis under American eyes. The woman on the corner in Mansur whose husband vanished under Saddam but who railed with anger because Iraqis themselves could not do what America had done. The monster was driven away by foreigners, and Iraqis are as traumatised by this reality as they are by the presence of these strange, muscular, well-armed boys on their streets. So many of those I have spoken with are torn apart by the immense contradiction in their new lives: without American power, they would still live in fear of Saddam. With American power, they feel weak and humiliated.

Into this vacuum have come the clerics, both Shia and Sunni. I sensed it a week ago when we were stuck at an American checkpoint on the way into Baghdad. The troops smiled and were polite. They sunned themselves on top of their Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks. A voice crackled on a tannoy about a block away. "What is the voice saying?" I asked. Our translator said the imam at the local mosque was saying the occupiers should go home.

The Americans hadn't the slightest idea what was being said. It's too early to make definitive statements on how all of this is going, but the verbal incomprehension is a metaphor for much larger understandings. The men and boys from Wisconsin and Iowa and California have been unanimous in their earnest desire to be seen as liberators. But they know precisely nothing about the culture or language, and are genuinely surprised when they encounter hostility.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:41 PM | Get permalink

Welcome to Club Axis!

A letter to Syria, from the Iranian.

Dear Bashar,

I am very excited to give you a complimentary membership to the ever superlative Axis of Evil Benevolent Association. This club is a wonderful organization designed to teach rogue nations and evil empires about international affairs while at the same time, building life-long friendships.

I would understand your hesitation, but you have been recommended by honorable individuals, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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

Leave, please.

The notion of a long-term US/UK occupation of Iraq does not sit well with Iraq's neighbors.

At the opening of their summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday, leaders of Iraq's neighboring Arab states said American and British "occupying forces" forces had no right to exploit Iraqi oil and should leave the country as quickly as possible. They are insisting the United Nations should be given the task of creating a new Iraqi government.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:21 AM | Get permalink

Paying for that blank check.

Before the war in Iraq began, a persistent question among war critics (and some supporters) that of how the US could afford to pay for the war and the occupation of Iraq. (For examples, see this, this, and this.) In an article in the NY TImes, historian Niall Ferguson questions Washington's apparent belief that the reconstruction of Iraq can be done on the cheap, much like the war. The reconstruction will be expensive, he argues, and profits from Iraqi oil will not be enough to pay for it. Instead, foreign capital will underwrite the costs.

Foreign investors now have claims on the United States amounting to about $8 trillion of its financial assets. That's the result of the ever-larger American balance-of-payments deficits — totaling nearly $3 trillion — since 1982. Last year, the balance-of-payments deficit, the gap between the amount of money that flows into the country and the amount that flows out, was about 5 percent of gross national product. This year it may be larger still.

The Wall Street Journal recently asked: "Is the U.S. Hooked on Foreign Capital?" The answer is yes, and this applies to the government even more than the private sector. Foreign investors now hold about two-fifths of the federal debt in private hands — double the proportion they held 10 years ago, according to the Treasury Department.

At a recent press conference, Kenneth S. Rogoff, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, referred to American financial dependence on foreign investors, saying he would be "pretty concerned" about "a developing country that had gaping current account deficits year after year, as far as the eye can see, of 5 percent or more, with budget ink spinning from black into red." Of course, he hastily added, the United States is "not an emerging market." But, he concluded, "at least a little bit of that calculus still applies." [...]

There is, however, a glimmer of comfort. The good news is that in the past one great empire did rely on foreign loans. The bad news is that it was czarist Russia, which depended on a succession of huge foreign loans — largely from French investors — to modernize its military.

The only catch was that Russian dependence on French capital led the czarist government to heed advice from Paris — for example, about how many rail lines to build from Moscow to the Prussian border. Look where that ended: Russia was the first European empire to collapse — first militarily, then politically — as a result of the costs of World War I. You might call being a debtor empire the Nicholas II method.

Thus President Bush's vision of a world recast by military force to suit American tastes has a piquant corollary: the military effort involved will be (unwittingly) financed by the Europeans — including the much reviled French — and the Japanese. Does that not give them just a little leverage over American policy, on the principle that he who pays the piper calls the tune?

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

Friday, April 18, 2003

Happy birthday.

To rabble. The online lefty publication from Canada is two years old.

Our audience has grown to more than 100,000 unique visitors a month — making rabble the highest circulation progressive publication in the country. And our readers spend a long time on the site, too, reading about two million pages a month.

We’re proud of the original anti-war coverage we’ve provided leading up to and during the war against Iraq as well. rabble has been a welcome refuge from the pro-American boosterism of much mainstream media.

This crowgirl would be sad if she couldn't get the distinctly Canadian outlook of rabble every weekday.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:50 PM | Get permalink

If it's Friday.

The time machine must be running again over at Wampum.

REMINDERS OF BUSH'S BLINDERS
April 18, 1991
Mary McGrory, Washington Post

Two inconveniently charismatic foreign leaders came to town this week and, besides unsettling George Bush, reminded us of two strains in our foreign policy -- a short attention span and a tolerance of aggression against a country without oil.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:43 PM | Get permalink

Ooops.

I almost forgot to include a link to the Portland Mercury front page about the liberation of the Laurelhurst neighborhood. After massive airstrikes, of course.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:38 PM | Get permalink

No reefer madness in Canada.

The Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien plans to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana in June, according to a report in the Toronto Star:

The move has met serious objections around the cabinet table among senior government members who fear it will further chill Canada-U.S. relations. Others worry about potential effects on public health.

Still, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien backs the bill, which is expected to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a mere ticketing offence that would not carry the stigma of a criminal record, said a senior government source.

Chrétien views the sporadic and inconsistent enforcement of the current law against marijuana possession across the country as "a basic injustice" which not only stigmatizes some Canadians, but also breeds disrespect for the law, said the insider.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:16 PM | Get permalink

Some looted objects are returning.

Not many, according to this story in the Globe & Mail, but some.

Baghdad’s Muslim imams, encouraged by museum operators, had urged the faithful to return works. And on Friday, the first ones did.

“They come and say, ’Sir, sir, look in the bag,”’ said Army Lieutenant Eric Balascik, among the U.S. soldiers manning the museum gates. “And you look in the bag, and it’s a vase or something.”

The returned works included pottery and metal pieces. “It was their conscience that made them bring that stuff back,” Mr. Hilil said.

The article identifies Jabar Hilil as Iraq's 'antiquities chief.'

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

US military does damage control on the looting.

I certainly could have missed something elsewhere, but this article in the Portland Oregonian contains the first account I've seen of the spin that the US military is putting on its failure to prevent the looting of the National Museum and other sites in Baghdad.

Pentagon officials have acknowledged they were warned about the threat to Iraqi cultural sites. Those warnings pointed to the national museum, which houses one of the world's most extensive collection of artifacts from Mesopotamia.

But U.S. commanders now say they had already made a decision, one which doomed the museum: Lives would take precedence over property, even the priceless sort contained in the museum vaults.

"The guidance that was given is we didn't want to put the Iraqi people in harm's way," Kuttas said in a phone interview Thursday from Kuwait. "We are being criticized for any one of a number of things right now, but I would be having the same phone call with you if we had shot three looters and killed them."

Kuttas said in the days before U.S. troops entered Baghdad, commanders discussed responses if chaos erupted on the streets. They decided lethal force would not be an option to repel looters.

"It wasn't a matter of ground commanders not knowing what was there at the museum," said Kuttas, who is attached to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command in Kuwait City. "We simply did not have the ground power to establish immediate control over a city of 6.5 million. We weren't in a position to use deadly force against people as they went after antiquities."

This crowgirl notes that it's unlikely that US commanders could have decided on their own not to protect Iraqi antiquities unless their superiors in Washington had failed to indicate that such protection was important.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:43 PM | Get permalink

Found on the Web.

The first line from the first of today's posts at ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose:

Among the ancient artifacts missing from the looted Baghdad museum, and the only one known to be left in existence, is an actual Republican ethic.

[sounds of muffled crowgirl laughter]

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

Reefer madness.

The Nation looks at the continuing anti-marijuana crusade in the US, and how its attempts to frighten parents and teenagers are probably backfiring.

He'll huff, and he'll puff, and he'll blow your house down. He'll act out violently, get your next door neighbor's daughter pregnant, and he may even be supporting terrorism while he's at it.

This imaginary pot smoker composite is drug czar John Walters's big bad wolf, and only a duct-taped cottage window seems to stand in the path of the cannabis-fueled monster that lurks around the corner.

That, and $150 million earmarked in the current fiscal year to further a propagandistic anti-marijuana campaign, courtesy of Walters's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Full-page advertisements from the ONDCP in national newspapers and magazines (including The Nation) are just the latest gambit aimed at generating a heightened sense of parental anxiety and moral panic, suggesting that aggressive or violent behavior – and even psychoses – are among the consequences awaiting young people who try marijuana.

This crowgirl recalls sitting in several high school assemblies to hear anti-drug speakers and see the latest anti-drug films. Instead of getting the intended message, though, she and her friends spent most of the time poking each other in the ribs and laughing quietly at the rather transparent scare tactics being used on them. And they usually snuck off as soon as possible after the assembly to smoke the evil weed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:42 AM | Get permalink

New posts from Chris Allbritton.

The Internet's reporter in Iraq has departed Kurdistan and arrived in Baghdad. He has two new dispatches on his site.

Baghdad itself, low-slung and dusty brown, is bustling with activity. A haze of dust clings to the ground, and mixes with the auto exhaust from the thousands of vehicles on the street. Icons of Saddam are mostly lacking; I’ll bet they have been removed by U.S. troops and Baghdadis. The few posters and murals that remain are largely untouched, though. Driving in, we can see the effects of the looting and the bombing damage. Buildings marked with the Ba’ath Party eight-point star show scorch marks or are partially collapsed. Much of the city seems intact, however. Even downtown, a target-rich environment, seems more or less intact. The “precision bombing” seems to have been more or less aptly named.

The occupation is not making many friends among the Iraqis, however. In marked contrast to the welcome and friendliness we always receive in the north and in Kirkuk, the looks here are guarded and even cold. We smile and wave at people in the cars next to us when the traffic grinds to a halt, but our fellow drivers look at us and don’t smile back.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:31 AM | Get permalink

Merely a clerical error, I'm certain.

Back in 1998, Time magazine ran an essay in which the first President Bush and Brent Scowcroft explained why they didn't overthrow the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War. The Memory Hole has noticed that the essay recently disappeared from the Time website, leaving only a 404 error page.

Besides noting the removal, Memory Hole has thoughtfully posted the full text of the essay and a scan of the page it appeared on (scroll down a bit).

This crowgirl is reminded of that part of George Orwell's 1984 where the minions of the Ministry of Truth were changing the text of old books and newspapers so that it appeared that the current political line had always been the current political line.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:09 AM | Get permalink

Who did the best job of covering the war?

According to this commentary in Newsday, it was the Arabic satellite station Al-Jazeera.

Al-Jazeera's extended, uncensored, on-the-ground coverage of the invasion has demonstrated, contrary to U.S. and British claims, that this has not been a bloodless, costless and clean war. The coverage has reflected the Arab recognition that the Saddam Hussein dictatorship was a tragedy, but it has also questioned the claim that the war has been motivated by interest in regional democracy and liberation.

In addition to showing images largely censored by the U.S. media of the death, destruction and pain of war on all sides, al-Jazeera has conducted interviews with Kurdish leaders who have explained their alliance with the United States and Britain on the basis of the historic violence of Baathist Arabism, visited a small town in Iran that is the haven of Iraqi Shia refugees who fled Hussein's rule and shown the anger, as well as political sophistication, of anti-war demonstrators in the region.

Al-Jazeera viewers have also received live, full coverage of press statements and conferences held by U.S., Iraqi, United Nations, Arab League, European Union, French, British, Egyptian, Saudi and other officials, thus always reflecting multiple realities throughout the war that are once again not covered routinely by the U.S. news networks.

In covering the war, al-Jazeera was unique in the number of independent reporting teams distributed throughout the region, some of whom have been beaten by Kurdish forces, banned by Iraqi government officials, and reprimanded almost daily by U.S., Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Saudi, Jordanian and other state and military officials at press conferences. These states recognize the destabilizing potential of al-Jazeera's brash willingness to ask difficult questions and give voice to the marginalized majority.

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

Why? Because we don't have to.

Writing in Salon, Tim Grieve outlines how the US is becoming a secret society under the rubric of anti-terrorism and homeland security.

These aren't the only things the Bush administration won't say. It won't say why it's holding individual detainees at Guantánamo Bay; it won't disclose the factual basis for its prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui; and it won't say how many immigrants it has detained or deported in INS proceedings. It won't say how many of us are having our telephones tapped, our e-mail messages monitored or our library checkout records examined by federal agents. The administration's defenders say such secrecy is an unavoidable cost of the war on terror, but it's an orientation that predated Sept. 11 and that extends beyond the terror threat. The White House won't reveal who Vice President Dick Cheney consulted in concocting the administration's energy policy; it won't disclose what Miguel Estrada wrote while working for the solicitor general; it won't even release documents related to the pardons that former President Bill Clinton granted during his last days in office.

It won't disclose any of these things because it doesn't have to. In the war on terror -- and outside of it -- the Bush administration is finding increasing latitude to operate with secrecy as the norm, and accountability the exception. Congress has handed the administration broad new powers without requiring it to account for their use, while courts have repeatedly granted the government the right to operate outside the public view and -- at times -- without any possibility of judicial review.

And if Attorney General John Ashcroft and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch have their way, the situation may soon get much worse. Ashcroft's Justice Department is apparently eyeing legislation -- dubbed PATRIOT Act II -- that would further expand the administration's powers to act in unilateral silence. Meanwhile, Hatch is working to make PATRIOT Act I permanent now -- it is currently set to expire in 2005 -- before Congress can consider whether the Justice Department is making appropriate use of the broad surveillance powers provided by it.

Steven Aftergood, a researcher who monitors government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, calls Hatch's proposal a "direct assault" on Congress' ability to monitor the Justice Department. "If it goes through, we might as well go home," he told Salon. "The administration will have whatever authority it wants, and there won't be any separation of powers at all."

It is a dire prediction. But in some ways, it has already come true. Congressional aides complain that the Justice Department has denied Congress the information it needs to serve as a meaningful check on possible executive branch abuses, and the federal courts are increasingly refusing to involve themselves in cases in which the administration's policies -- on secrecy, on terror or on executive authority more generally -- have been questioned. As a result, the executive branch is increasingly free to act on its own, without the checks and balances typically imposed by a separated government.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:08 AM | Get permalink

No Bush, No Saddam.

Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to protest the US occupation of their country, according to this report from CBC News.

The demonstration was spurred on by Ahmed al-Kubaisi, a Sunni Muslim scholar who told Muslims during morning prayer to reject the occupation. He said the U.S. soldiers should leave before Iraqis throw them out.

Worshippers punctuated the harangue with cries of "Allah akbar" (God is great), then spilled into the streets calling for an end to the occupation and for solidarity between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Since the city fell under U.S. military control a week ago, resentment has been building among Iraqis.

The BBC also has a report on the demonstration.

The marchers carried flags and banners saying "No to occupation" and demanding that the unity of Iraq be preserved.

The BBC's Christian Fraser, who is at the scene, says it is the biggest demonstration of Arab nationalism since the end of the war, and shows what powerful sentiments the US-led invasion of Iraq has stirred up.

It came as foreign ministers from Egypt and the countries neighbouring Iraq held talks in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh to discuss how to influence the post-war situation in the region.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:54 AM | Get permalink

While you were out.

The FBI stopped by and rummaged through your house.

The American Civil Liberties Union has a new print ad warning about Attorney General Ashcroft's plans to increase the government's powers to spy on people in the US. You can see the ad here.

And the ACLU's press release about the ad and its "Keep America Safe and Free" ad campaign is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:35 AM | Get permalink

"It makes them feel less remote."

While the Highlands and the Hebrides Islands boast some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet, they are also the most thinly populated and remote parts of Scotland. And given that there ar e only eight cinemas for a region the size of Belgium, they're not exactly a cinema lover's paradise. When catching a movie not only means a long drive, but possibly a ferry ride as well, seeing a film is not something a person does on the spur of the moment.

Into this picture comes the Screen Machine, a mobile cinema that's been taking movies out to the towns and villages of the Highlands and Isles since 1998. Aida Edemariam of the UK Guardian met up with the Screen Machine as it rolled into Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. You can read the full story of the visit here.

People have been dropping by all day, slowing their cars and craning at the LED sign that now reads: "Welcome to the Screen Machine . . . Showing tonight . . . 5pm: The Wild Thornberries, U; 7.30pm: The Two Towers, 12A." Tomorrow it will be The Two Towers and Catch Me If You Can.

"We're slowly trying to introduce a broader range of films," says Graham Campbell. "But people ask for the big films. When you don't go very often, you want to watch a film you can talk about with your friends. Generally people want light entertainment, nothing too intellectually demanding. And they don't want to go away saying, 'That was a harrowing experience.' Comedies, family films, are our bread and butter." Also, if it's not a huge blockbuster, it's quite hard to let people know what it's about. "We have people who ask who Julia Roberts is. And some who have never been to the cinema."

The Perfect Storm, particularly, struck a chord in the fishing communities. "I was showing it in Orkney," says Stewart. "Forty minutes of the film is just pure wave action, going up and down all the time. And I had this fisherman come up to me at the end, and he says, 'You know, I've fished for 30 years' - and these are notorious rough waters - 'and that's the first time I've ever felt seasick.' It was just the visual effect. And I believed him," he adds, laughing, "because he was quite green."

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:28 AM | Get permalink

"We will kill them all one day, Rumsfeld and every one of them."

According to this story in the International Herald Tribune, the breakdown of public order in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq is alienating Iraq's cultural elite, a group that might otherwise have viewed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein with sympathy, if not approval.

Like many residents of Baghdad, [Amal] Khedairy has now spun any number of conspiracy theories about the intentions of the Americans. She is convinced, for instance, that the bombing of her house, the ransacking of her cultural center and the looting of the national museum are evidence of an American plan to deface Iraq's culture and carry its treasures out of the country.

Such theories are rampant even among the city's educated elite.

On Wednesday, for instance, the chief doctor at one of Baghdad's larger hospitals spoke about the presumed designs of the Americans on the Iraqi nation.

"Tell me," said the doctor, who asked that he not be identified, "why do the American troops allow the looting? These people are cowards, the looters. All the soldiers have to do is fire one shot, and the looters will go away. They are cowards. And the Americans do not do this. Why?"

Khedairy's neighborhood has not yet been looted, but she thinks the day is near. Since the bombing ended, a group of her neighbors has stood guard over the houses, armed with guns, keeping the thieves away. But the Americans have begun to move closer to the neighborhood, and Khedairy is convinced that the looters will be allowed to roam freely through her home.

"They follow the tanks," Khedairy said. "The Americans come in and they let the looters do as they wish. That is what they did at the museum. That is what they did at my institute. My neighborhood is next."

Not all of Khedairy's anger is directed at foreigners; she has saved a good deal for her fellow Iraqis. As she arrived at the steps of her cultural center, she surprised a half dozen Iraqi men picking over the last of the artifacts and paintings that had not been stolen.

"My God, I'll kill you!" she growled, and the young men scampered out the door. In her anger, Khedairy picked up a piece of broken pottery and hurled it into the back of one of the men.

"How could this nation produce such sons?" she wailed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:46 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, April 17, 2003

The fall of France.

They had it coming.

The looting of the Louvre was regretted, but not stopped. Wild scenes greeted the arrival of the Mona Lisa at the Metropolitan, in New York. A shadow government was soon established in a town called Vichy.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:44 PM | Get permalink

Wal-Mart wins.

A threatened lawsuit by retail giant Wal-Mart has caused the Re-code.com parody website to shut down. That site had suggested that people change the barcodes on goods in order to get a better price. Wal-Mart accused Recode.com of encouraging theft, and threatened legal action unless the site was closed. On the advice of their lawyer, Re-code.com has done just that, but left their side of the story up at the Re-code.com address.

For more details on Re-code.com's shutdown, see this Salon article, and for more info on the original controversy, see this other one.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:21 PM | Get permalink

Your Department of Homeland Security at work.

The travails of an elderly New Brunswick couple who live right next to Canada's border with the US are so amazing that I'm posting the whole article from CanadaEast.

National Revenue Minister Elinor Caplan says U.S. border officials should lay off an elderly New Brunswick couple whose house is on the border and find more useful things to do.

If they don’t, she plans to take their cause to her American counterparts including Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador.

"I am going to be talking to my counterparts because, frankly, I think this is just bureaucratic silliness," she said in an interview yesterday.

"It just seems to me that everyone would have much more important things to do than pick on an elderly couple that have been in the same location for 50 years."

Marion and Nickolaj Pedersen live on a 275-acre potato farm in Four Falls, northeast of Perth-Andover on the N.B.-Maine border. To drive to and from their home, the couple uses a half-mile of U.S. road, known as Brown Road.

"I know that sometimes people get a little carried away and, while I am concerned only from the standpoint that we want to make sure that our border functions safely and efficiently, I don’t think the Pedersens pose any concern to the safety of the border and I am going to relay those comments to the officials that are my counterparts and, if necessary, raise it with the ambassador."

With the heightened security alert in the U.S. as war with Iraq grew closer and finally began, security around the Pedersens intensified.

Last January, Marion Pedersen, 72, was stopped by U.S. authorities and accused of entering the U.S. illegally. She noted that she and her husband had lived on the farm for 53 years so their illegal status had become the status quo.

While U.S. border officials agreed to permit the Pedersens access to their home, most others have been barred, including their children. Now their newspaper is delivered to a neighbour, although Canada Post gets through. And a tenant renting a Perth-Andover property is barred from delivering cheques to the Pedersen farm.

Exasperated, Pedersen complained to Tobique-Mactaquac Liberal MP Andy Savoy who in turn passed along the complaint to Caplan.

"What you really need here is a big healthy dose of common sense," Caplan declared.

Last summer, she visited the site on a tour of unusual border situations. The property next to the Pedersens, she said, is a golf course where the parking lot is in the U.S. and the course in Canada.

And if that's not enough, the Pedersens have lost their Canada Post deliveries, too. (Thanks to Woods Lot for this link.)

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:43 PM | Get permalink

Stunning images of Asia.

A whole bookful of them, photographed by Kevin Kelly.

Via Woods Lot.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:28 PM | Get permalink

Don't ask, don't tell. Still.

From a story in the LA Times:

When he went off to fight in Iraq, the 39-year-old Los Angeles resident did what any airman might do. He took with him a photo of his beloved, a reminder of who waits for him at home.

But the airman is gay. So the photo he carries with him appears to be of his dog. The pet is in the foreground, and the man's partner of five years, a 41-year-old talent agent named Brian, is in the background, as if Brian were a friend who just wandered into the frame. [...]

In recent years, most European countries have begun allowing out-of-the-closet gays to serve in their militaries. In the Middle East, closeted American gays serve alongside openly gay troops from Britain and Australia. [...]

As the troops return from the war, gay and lesbian military members will have to exercise restraint no one expects of the straight soldiers they fought beside.

"The goodbyes are not the hardest part," Brian said. "It's the hellos. The first time you see your partner in five or six months, it's very emotional. And you have to shake hands."

This crowgirl thinks that sucks.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:58 PM | Get permalink

To find the artifacts, you follow the money.

Wampum has many things to say about the looting of artifacts in Iraq. As an archaeologist, she can speak with some authority.

Archaeologists often must try and think like our traditional antagonists, unscrupulous antiquities dealers and art collectors. Thus, if I were such, with the added benefit of backing from my government and its corporate financial supporters, I would not look towards the illegal market. Instead, I would consider loosening the regulations on legally exporting materials excavated after the war. With the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, the number of public projects will be countless, most contracted out to American firms. Many will be revisiting areas previously excavated as sensitive sites, possibly with significant archaeological material in situ (the goal of even rescue archaeology is to leave as much of the site intact for future, less time-critical, study.) Would anyone really notice if, on top of the thousands of new artifacts recovered from any such site, a few hundred others, with documentation only slightly altered for dates, were to end up in on the same cataloging table? Who would know, accept those in possession of the reports harbored in the former Ministries of the Interior and Oil? (Both incidentally protected from pillaging by US forces while the National Museum and Library suffered such a fate.) With Saddam's cultural protections restricting the export Iraqi treasures lifted, antiquities collectors, such as those represented by the ACCP, would argue that they were in fact helping Iraq, as even the most developed country could not be expected to catalog, restore and protect the thousands of priceless pieces swamping the heavily damaged museums during the Reconstruction Period.

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

US bars UK aid flight to northern Iraq.

Save the Children is accusing US forces in Iraq of violating the Geneva Convention after the group was refused permission to land an aid flight in Arbil.

Save the Children said in a statement it had been trying for more than a week to land a plane in Arbil carrying enough medical supplies to treat 40,000 people and emergency feeding kits for malnourished children.

A U.S. official told the charity no aid flights would be allowed until the area was safe but the U.N. has already declared Arbil a "safe and secure" area, the charity said.

"The doctors we are trying to help have been struggling against the odds for weeks to continue saving lives, but now the help we have promised them is being endlessly delayed," Emergency Program Manager Rob MacGillivray said.

"The lack of cooperation from the U.S. military is a breach of the Geneva Conventions and its protocols but more importantly the time now being wasted is costing children their lives."

The full text of the Save the Children press release is here. US authorities have not yet commented on the group's charges.

Via Eschaton.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:46 PM | Get permalink

Things fall apart.

Some of the best best reporting and analysis coming out of Iraq is being done by Robert Fisk of the UK Independent. His dispatch today from Baghdad talks about how things are going wrong in Iraq. Rather than try to it, I'll just present this excerpt and suggest that you go read the whole thing.

Then there's the fires that have consumed every one of the city's ministries – save, of course, for the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Oil – as well as UN offices, embassies and shopping malls. I have counted a total of 35 ministries now gutted by fire and the number goes on rising.

Yesterday I found myself at the Ministry of Oil, assiduously guarded by US troops, some of whom were holding clothes over their mouths because of the clouds of smoke swirling down on them from the neighbouring Ministry of Agricultural Irrigation. Hard to believe, isn't it, that they were unaware that someone was setting fire to the next building?

Then I spotted another fire, three kilometres away. I drove to the scene to find flames curling out of all the windows of the Ministry of Higher Education's Department of Computer Science. And right next to it, perched on a wall, was a US Marine, who said he was guarding a neighbouring hospital and didn't know who had lit the next door fire because "you can't look everywhere at once".

Now I'm sure the marine was not being facetious or dishonest – should the Americans not believe this story, he was Corporal Ted Nyholm of the 3rd Regiment, 4th Marines and, yes, I called his fiancée, Jessica, in the States for him to pass on his love – but something is terribly wrong when US soldiers are ordered simply to watch vast ministries being burnt by mobs and do nothing about it.

Because there is also something dangerous – and deeply disturbing – about the crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives. For they are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses. I followed one after its passengers had set the Ministry of Trade on fire and it sped out of town.

The official US line on all this is that the looting is revenge – an explanation that is growing very thin – and that the fires are started by "remnants of Saddam's regime", the same "criminal elements", no doubt, who feature in the marines' curfew orders. But people in Baghdad don't believe Saddam's former supporters are starting these fires. And neither do I.

The looters make money from their rampages but the arsonists have to be paid. The passengers in those buses are clearly being directed to their targets. If Saddam had pre-paid them, they wouldn't start the fires. The moment he disappeared, they would have pocketed the money and forgotten the whole project.

So who are they, this army of arsonists? I recognised one the other day, a middle-aged, unshaven man in a red T-shirt, and the second time he saw me he pointed a Kalashnikov at me. What was he frightened of? Who was he working for? In whose interest is it to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of the state, with its cultural heritage? Why didn't the Americans stop this?

As I said, something is going terribly wrong in Baghdad and something is going on which demands that serious questions be asked of the United States government. Why, for example, did Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence, claim last week that there was no widespread looting or destruction in Baghdad? His statement was a lie. But why did he make it?

The Americans say they don't have enough troops to control the fires. This is also untrue. If they don't, what are the hundreds of soldiers deployed in the gardens of the old Iran-Iraq war memorial doing all day? Or the hundreds camped in the rose gardens of the President Palace?

So the people of Baghdad are asking who is behind the destruction of their cultural heritage: the looting of the archaeological treasures from the national museum; the burning of the entire Ottoman, Royal and State archives; the Koranic library; and the vast infrastructure of the nation we claim we are going to create for them.

Why, they ask, do they still have no electricity and no water? In whose interest is it for Iraq to be deconstructed, divided, burnt, de-historied, destroyed? Why are they issued with orders for a curfew by their so-called liberators?

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

The US was warned that looting might happen.

Salon's coverage of the museum looting in Iraq today is excellent. Besides the interview with Linda Komaroff that I've already cited, there's this article by Louise Witt laying out the various warnings that were given to the US before the invasion even began.

Some archeological and art experts think that the sack of Baghdad may be a result of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's decision not commit more ground forces. Instead, he opted for a "rolling start" invasion where troops would be deployed to Iraq as needed. Other generals, including Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army's chief of staff, criticized Rumsfeld's decision. One unnamed general even called it a "war on the cheap."

The U.S. and Britain deployed almost 300,000 troops to the Persian Gulf region. In contrast, during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991, allied forces numbered closer to 500,000. "Now, we're seeing the consequences of that decision," says Scott Silliman, who was the senior attorney for the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command during the first Gulf War. Silliman worked with archeologists at that time to make sure the Air Force took precautions not to destroy or harm Iraq's cultural and ancient sites.

Coalition forces are trying to restore civil order in Baghdad, a city of 4.5 million, and the looting has almost ended. However, the pandemonium and destruction that occurred have cost the Bush administration credibility and trust in Iraq and across the Arab world. Silliman, who's now a law professor at Duke University and executive director of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security, says the coalition forces may have violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, which calls for an occupying force to protect cultural property. Even if the coalition forces didn't intentionally breach the Geneva Conventions, he says, "the effect [of the looting] will be more in world opinion, than in legal sanctions."

This crowgirl's heart was broken by the photo of the National Museum's deputy director sitting amongst the destruction.

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

Ooooh, shiny!

This crowgirl's mom always told her that she should never pass up a chance to see a good volcano picture.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:53 AM | Get permalink

US cultural advisors resign over Iraq looting.

This article in the Washington Post reports that two members (including the chair) of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property have resigned to protest the failure of US forces to protect Iraq's cultural heritage.

"While our military forces have displayed extraordinary precision and restraint in deploying arms -- and apparently in securing the Oil Ministry and oil fields -- they have been nothing short of impotent in failing to attend to the protection of [Iraq's] cultural heritage," Martin E. Sullivan wrote in the resignation letter that he sent Monday to the White House.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more details.

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

International art traffickers looted Iraqi museums.

A group of experts on Iraq's archaelogical heritage convened by UNESCO believes that the looting of the most important artifacts was carried out by professionals.

Professor McGuire Gibson from Chicago University told the group that some thieves obviously knew what they were looking for and where to find it.

"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," he said.

"They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes."

Some artefacts from the museum have already turned up in Paris and Iran, he said.

"Probably [it was done] by the same sorts of gangs that have been paying for the destruction of sites in Iraq over the last 12 years and the smuggling out of these objects into the international market," Prof Gibson said.

The BBC also has pictures of the looted museum here.

Why should anyone care about stuff that's gone missing from some dusty museum halfway around the world? Salon put that question (and others) to Linda Komaroff, curator of Islamic art at the LA County Museum of Art:

There are two different ways they might care. I'll do the less important first: The reason excavation in that part of the world became popular was because of archaeologists who wanted to prove the historical validity of the Bible. Now, someone in Peoria is going to have heard of Ur, because Abraham came from there. But more of interest to Darwinists and to people not interested in proving the validity of the Bible is that we share a common civilization, and that's where it began. A cuneiform tablet touched by someone 4,000 years ago is gone. We are all affected by that. It diminishes all of us. It's not as though we can say, "I didn't come from there." Civilization traces its roots there.

If we want to make it nationalistic, what if we were to lose all copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and someone stole the Liberty Bell? If they had all been in a single museum and someone had come in and taken them all! The pictures and the numbers don't explain the loss. If we were to lose our history it would be devastating. But this is 30 times more because the civilization is 30 times older.

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

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Yes, it's like that.

One of my favorite books about Irish Music is Last Night's Fun by poet and flute player Ciaran Carson. It is in no small part responsible for me putting aside my fear and starting to learning how to play Irish music, first on concertina, then on the fiddle.

I was poking around the website for Irish Music magazine, looking for something else, and found a review of the paper edition.

The book catalogues the pitfalls, possibilities and probabilities of the search for craic, locations and states of mind induced by the tunes and the social intercourse which is the ceili. Famous and not so famous characters flit in and out of the narrative, Joe Cooley is remembered in the title of the book, the name of a reel and an attitude that allowed him to play until cancer sucked the life out of him.

If you have ever wondered what it is the musicians get out of a session, this book offers a glimmer of an explanation, players will nod their heads and say "yes it's like that", hurlers on the ditch , punters at the bar and intrusive bodhran players and three chord trick guitarists should read well, and if they don't get it, stick to rock and roll.

At the heart of the book is an explanation, convoluted, serpentine, rich and full, of the appeal of traditional music, why generation gaps don't mean much, why the music can withstand fashions,how it copes with style, new instruments and changes from bar to bar. Why it can't be captured in the dot on a page or the dipoles on a tape. Why drink, whether tea or something stronger is an essential social lubricant without which much of the music would not live. Why competitions are necessary and paradoxically meaningless.

But better than a review of the book is a passage from it. I opened my copy at random and my eye found Carson's account of calling person after person, trying to get the phone number of fiddler James Kelly so he can ask him who the "Dowd" of the tune Dowd's No. 9 was:

It turns out Denis is the very man to tell me who Dowd might have been. The tune, he tells me, was recorded in the Forties by the Donegal fiddler Hugh Gillespie, who, Denis thinks, quite possibly got it from Michael Coleman, so that would date it to the Twenties at least. Denis reckons the name is more properly O'Dowd, who was a Sligo fiddler of Coleman's generation. We speculate a little as to what happened to Nos. 1—8 and whether there were more in the series. Whatever the case, whether he lost them one night when on the rake, they are lost to the tradition; maybe they just didn't stick or maybe the title is an elaborate joke. Then there's 'Dowd's Favourite,' which has some modal kinship to 'No. 9' and Denis lilts a bit of it over the phone to me, putting me in mind of 'The Telephone Reel' which Gary Hastings got on the phone from Cathal McConnell, from whose playing and that of Peg McGrath I first heard 'Dowd's No. 9' on a tape that Gary got from Maura McConnell and which Gary loaned me (people had no copying facilities in those days). So I start lilting 'Dowd's No. 9' through the phone to Denis, and Denis says, 'Naw, this is the way she goes,' and lilts me this other reel with a similar but different structure, which is indeed the tune I played with James Kelly, but what I had in my mind tonight was, I think, the one it's paired with on the tape. It's an understandable labyrinth—these lateral slips give one clue as to how tunes acquire their aka's.

If you're intrigued, Powell's has the book.

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

Where the real buzz comes from.

If you mention the playing of Paddy Glackin to an Irish fiddler, she'll probably just go 'Oh yeah' in a respectful voice, while nodding her head. Glackin is one of the best-known Irish fiddlers of the past few decades, even though he rarely records or tours. In the seventies, he was the original fiddler of the the Bothy Band, perhaps the most influential Irish folk group in recent memory. Later in the decade, he recorded the classic Doublin' with uillean piper Paddy Keenan. These days Glackin makes music with singer/guitarist Micheal O Domhnaill (also a former Bothy) when he's not working as a sportcaster for RTE.

Glackin was interviewed by the Scots folk magazine The Living Tradition a couple of issues back. I thought his comments on how Irish music is played these days were interesting:

For Paddy, Irish - and Scottish - music has become too much concerned with ensemble performances of high octane tunes for a music that is essentially, he believes, a soloist's tradition.

"It's even spread into informal situations," he says. "You go to a session these days and it's a case of let's get in and play at two hundred miles an hour. There'll be twenty-five fiddlers and you can't hear yourself, let alone anyone else. It's wonderful that all these people have come into the music, and they genuinely love it, but that sort of thing's not much of an attraction for me.

"I don't have a problem with groups. Technically, the standard of musicianship you hear there is phenomenal, they've broadened the music's appeal and it's great that, these days, there's a lot more musicians able to earn a living playing this music. But I do passionately believe that the music we play in Ireland, and Scotland too, is a solo instrument tradition and, certainly in Ireland, there are just not the same opportunities to perform as a soloist. When I play, I'm not only remembering where the tune came from, I'm very conscious of pipers such as Seamus Ennis and their phrasing, or if it's a song air I'll be thinking about the words, and I don't happen to think that you can convey all that within an ensemble."

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:00 PM | Get permalink

Lending a helping hand to the axis of evil.

A story in Thursday's International Herald Tribune says that the US has "bombed the heck" out of the bases of an armed Iranian opposition group operating out of Iraq

[The group] has maintained several thousand fighters with tanks and artillery along Iraq's border with Iran for more than a decade.

The group, Mujahidin Khalq, has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States since 1997. But the biggest beneficiary of the strikes will be the Iranian government, which has lost scores of soldiers in recent years to cross-border attacks by the guerrillas, who have sought to overthrow Iran's clerical regime. [...]

Defense Department officials who described the air attacks said they have been followed in recent days by efforts on the ground by American forces on the ground to pursue and detain members of the group.

It was unclear whether the attacks, described by Defense Department officials, were intended in part as a gesture by the United States to thank Iran for its noninterference in the war in Iraq.

The United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with Iran, which is listed on the Bush administration's "axis of evil," but American officials are believed to have met secretly with Iranian officials in the months before the war to urge Iran's government to maintain its neutrality.

The article suggests that the US actions against Mujahidin Khalq will anger at least some of the 150 members of the House of Representatives who, earlier this year, signed a letter supporting the group and asking that it be removed from the State Department list of terrorist organizations. This article in the Yellow Times has more background on the letter and on the activities of Mujahidin Khalq. The State Department's profile of the organization is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:51 PM | Get permalink

Bad SARS news.

The virus may be mutating, according to this report in New Scientist.

A cluster of SARS patients in Hong Kong with unusual symptoms has prompted concern that the virus causing the disease is mutating. Doctors fear the changes are making the disease more severe.

Scientists in Hong Kong are now urgently sequencing key genes from recently isolated coronaviruses to reveal any changes. New Scientist has learned that the changes in symptoms mirror those already seen when animal coronaviruses have mutated.

Microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung, at the University of Hong Kong, said on Wednesday that the 300 patients from a SARS hot spot, the Amoy Gardens apartment complex, were more seriously ill than patients who acquired the infection elsewhere.

The Amoy Gardens patients are three times as likely to suffer early diarrhoea, twice as likely to need intensive care and less likely to respond to a cocktail of anti-viral drugs and steroids. Even medical staff who caught the infection from Amoy Gardens patients are more seriously ill, Yuen said.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:24 PM | Get permalink

Patriot Act expansion may be in trouble.

A powerful Republican in the House of Representatives is wavering in his support for Dubya's plan to make the Patriot Act permanent.

James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, complains that the Justice Department isn't sharing enough information for lawmakers to make a judgment on how well or poorly the USA Patriot Act is working.

"I can't answer that because the Justice Department has classified as top-secret most of what it's doing under the Patriot Act," Sensenbrenner said when asked about the future of the anti-terrorism law in a recent interview.

Sensenbrenner maintains that because the department refuses to be forthcoming, it is losing the public relation battle needed to extend the law beyond its October 2005 expiration, much less expand it.

"The burden will be on the Justice Department and whomever is attorney general at that time to convince Congress and the president to extend the Patriot Act or modify it," he said. "But because of the fact that everything has been classified as top-secret, the public debate is centering on (the act's) onerousness."

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:08 PM | Get permalink

"The Constitution applies even in times of dire emergency."

Earlier this week, US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke to the NY City Bar Association about how the Supreme Court should balance security and human rights when it decides the constitutionality of laws and government actions. He had a lot of interesting things to say, including this:

2) The Constitution, emergency or no emergency, typically defines basic liberties in terms of equilibrium. Law itself seeks to reconcile each individual's desire to act without restraint with the community's need to impose restraint in order to achieve common objectives. It is not surprising that Constitutional guarantees often demand a similar balance. They seek an equilibrium permitting the government to respond to threats without abandoning democracy's commitment to individual liberty.

An equilibrium that is right in principle will yield flexibility in practice. The Fourth Amendment uses the word "reasonable," -- a word that permits different results in different circumstances. That Amendment, which ordinarily insists that a magistrate issue a warrant before a search, can relax that prior authorization requirement when a dangerous killer is loose in the neighborhood. In doing so, it does not abandon its commitment to personal privacy; it applies those protections in changed circumstances. The value does not change; the circumstances change, thereby shifting the point at which a proper balance is struck. That is what happens in wartime when more severe restrictions may be required. Justice Goldberg, paraphrasing Justice Jackson, pointed out that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

3) A proper equilibrium requires courts to learn from past mistakes. What mistakes? They include the speech-censoring Alien and Sedition Acts enacted during the Republic's early years. They include President Lincoln's suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. As a result, the Union generals imprisoned between 13,000 and 18,000 people -- all without benefit of judicial process. They include Congress's efforts during World War I to punish efforts to incite disobedience to the Draft and the Executive's efforts to use that law to prosecute political dissidents, for example, the publisher of a political cartoon showing a giant, called "conscription," crushing a worker and a farmer.

They include treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II when, soon after Pearl Harbor, the Government removed 110,000 individuals of Japanese origin, 2/3 of whom were American citizens, from their homes in California, sending them to camps located in Mountain and Mid-Western States. The Government feared sabotage -- though the FBI and J.Edgar Hoover himself then said they had no evidence of any act of sabotage or any sabotage threat. Politicians of the day, including our great civil liberties champion Earl Warren, supported the removal (much to their later regret). And the Supreme Court in Korematsu, a decision we now recognize as shameful, held that the Constitution permitted it.

Via Paper Chase.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:58 PM | Get permalink

Uh-oh. Mergermania hits the coffee biz.

Starbucks, which is already the Wal-Mart of coffee retailing, is swallowing up one of its competitors. By acquiring Seattle Coffee Company, Starbuck's now owns the Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia chains.

This crowgirl lives up in the corner of the US that consumes the most designer coffee, and she manages to consume quite a bit of it herself (especially when blogging). The best thing she's ever been able to say about Starbucks is that it wasn't Seattle's Best Coffee. Oh well.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:40 PM | Get permalink

Living with the US Marines.

Barbara Ferguson was an embedded reporter with the Marines for Arab News, and she's written a piece that Arab-haters would never believe could run in the Arab media. In her account of life on the frontlines Ferguson admits that she came to like the Marines a lot—in fact, she found "many similarities between Marines and Arabs."

In regards to war, I have learned that Marines follow their orders. They are not responsible for war; those decisions are made in Washington. Many in my travels have expressed a genuine distaste for war.

While colonels have told me, behind closed doors, of their concern for the US foreign policy in the Middle East. Other Marines have expressed skepticism for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. This, I am told, are inside opinions that normally would not be heard off the base. Some tell me they hope these men will not be part of the second Bush administration. Almost all, however, trust President Bush. And Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Marines come from well-bred families; others join because they were living off the street. Some join to be educated, others to become part of a family. Some join because they simply “want to be part of the best.”

Many of these young Marines don’t know the difference between an Arab and an Asian. But a Chaplin told me that some of his hardest young Marines’ hearts turned soft “up north” as they witnessed the hard life and poverty Iraqi civilians and military live.

I am greatly concerned that this war has polarized many Arabs and Americans. Knowing these Marines, however, has given me hope for the future of America and its relationship with the Arab world.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:05 PM | Get permalink

Let's celebrate victory in Iraq!

With Mikhaela Reid. She has a new cartoon. Don't miss it!

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:36 PM | Get permalink

The White House answers another question directly.

From yesterday's briefing by Dubya's press secretary, Ari Fleischer. The questioner is (I believe) Helen Thomas of the Hearst Newspapers.

Q Why is the focus on Syria?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the focus is on Syria is because Syria is the nation that's harboring Iraqis.

Q Do you have proof of that?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, certainly, we would not have said it, Secretary Powell would not have said it, the President wouldn't have said it.

Q Why don't you present the proof, then?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, as always, Helen, this is an old argument. We have information that comes into our hands for a variety of means. We prefer to keep getting that information. We feel confident --

Q Don't think it will enhance your credibility if you showed us?

MR. FLEISCHER: I think our credibility is rather strong.

While looking for a bio of Helen Thomas, I found this short, but illuminating interview.

Thanks to Eschaton for pointing to the briefing transcript.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:25 PM | Get permalink

More on the shootings at Mosul.

The webite for Canada's CTV network has an AP report that includes this:

At the U.S. Central Command in Qatar, Brig.-Gen. Vincent Brooks said Tuesday's bloodshed occurred as American special operations soldiers and marines were trying to secure a government building for use as a meeting centre.

He said that when a group of marines arrived at the walled compound people threw rocks, hit them with fists and elbows and spat at them.

He said an Iraqi ambulance with loudspeakers arrived later and began urging on the crowd, which turned over a car and set it on fire.

Brooks said the U.S. troops guarding the wall fired warning shots after seeing some people in the crowd shooting weapons into the air. The Americans then were shot at and began firing at some people in the crowd, including some who tried to climb over the wall, he said.

"It was lethal fire, and some Iraqis were killed as a result of that," Brooks said. "We think the number is somewhere on the order of seven, and there may have been some wounded as well."

If these details are accurate, both the Marines and people in the Iraqi crowd appear to have misunderstood the actions of the other side and panicked as a result. However, another version of the AP story has conflicting details:

Several of those wounded Wednesday accused American troops of firing at them from rooftops, but a Marine sergeant near the scene denied that. He said U.S. troops on top of a building came under fire from gunmen in another building across a park and the Americans shot back.

And so does this CBS News story.

Amal Mahmoud, a 40-year-old taxi driver, said he saw U.S. troops shoot at people.

"There were people inside the central bank, which is next door to the governor's office. They had been looting money for several days. Police were standing outside the bank and fired shots in the air to disperse the looters. The Americans started firing at the people in front of the governor's office," rather than at the looters, he said.

CTV story via Road to Surfdom.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:33 PM | Get permalink

To blog or not to blog.

The Chicago Tribune has an interesting article about how mainstream media look at blogging, especially at the bloggers in their midst. (Warning: Annoying registration procedure required.)

Most mainstream media companies, if they've embraced the genre at all, are careful to edit the content of blog entries before they hit the Internet, and some journalism experts think that's the way it should be.

"Once you're employed by and made public by a news organization, that association will be absolute until the time that you quit," says Keith Woods, a Poynter Institute faculty member who taught ethics for years. "To that extent, the news organization has an interest in what you're doing, whether you're speaking to the local Rotary club about gardening or publishing a blog."

For some bloggers, staying true to the spirit of the format has meant staying independent. Marshall, a freelancer and contributing editor to Washington Monthly, turned down an offer from a media conglomerate when it became clear that the company was nervous about him doing an independent blog on the side.

Christopher Allbritton, a former Associated Press and New York Daily News reporter, may be the most independent journalist in Iraq right now; he asked readers of his site, www.back-to-iraq.com, to fund his reporting trip to the Middle East -- and they did, contributing more than $10,000.

"No one can shut me down," Allbritton said in an e-mail from Kirkuk, Iraq. "The only way anyone can stop [me] is by physical coercion. It's a powerful feeling."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:47 AM | Get permalink

The National Museum looters may have been pros.

This report in Islam Online seems to confirm what many have feared:

Donny George, the director of research and studies at the directorate, charged that the looting of the museum had been carried out by professionals, offering glass cutters as proof.

"Look, these are only used by professionals. It shows that the mob that vandalized the museum was an organized cover-up operation for selective thefts by professionals who were with them," he charged.

"The looters did not even touch two gypsum copies of famous artifacts which are on display in world museums. They only took real artifacts," he said.

Cursor points to this CNN report, which has additional details.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:23 AM | Get permalink

"Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government."

The Washington Post (of all places) has an excellent article on the Iraqis who were excluded from the US-sponsored meeting in Ur to plan a new government for Iraq. Reporter Keith Richburg spent time getting a range of opinion from the "outsiders," rather than talking only to people from the Shiite opposition.

As Iraq begins trying to find its political future, further splits appear to be developing between those who remained inside the country for the past 30 years -- and who say they suffered the most under Hussein's rule -- and the Iraqi exile leaders returning from abroad, many of whom are viewed with suspicion by the internal opposition.

Many of those factions converged outside the entrance to the Tallil air base. Without official invitations, they engaged in an impromptu, disorganized and noisy version of street democracy outside as U.S. Marines and military police kept a close watch.

"I came here at 8 in the morning, and nobody will let me in," said Mohammed Yasser, 49, a member of the outlawed Communist Party for the past 27 years. Criticizing the U.S.-sponsored meeting, he said, "It can't represent the political and social parties and movements inside the country, and I can prove it because nobody from the inside opposition is attending this conference."

"Just imagine that," he said, pointing to the base. "An American flag, and American forces, and they say this is the opposition of Iraq. You can judge the picture yourself. . . . The people in Iraq know very well the Communist Party, which is not like the other parties supported from the outside. Or the new parties that no one knows anything about."

Representing the small Al-Najin tribe at the conference -- but not allowed in -- was Sheik Mehdi Abdulhussein.

"We came here to attend, but they won't allow us to attend," the black-robed tribal leader said. In comments directed at those inside, he said: "All of them are agents of the Americans. All of them are working for the American interest. They have to hear our voice. I refuse such treatment! All the Iraqi people will resist such a government that is formed under the American umbrella!"

Much of the anger was focused on Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group backed by the United States. Chalabi has come to be seen as the Bush administration's favorite political figure because he was ferried here in a U.S. military helicopter. Chalabi did not attend the meeting but sent a lower-level representative. He has been reported to be on the way to Baghdad.

Asked whether Chalabi could be a future leader, Nasri replied, "No -- absolutely not."

One Iraqi man who came to see if he could sit in on the session, Saladdin Mekki, an electrician, said: "I think we need a liberal government that can join all these opposition movements together. We have Sunni, we have Shiite, we have Kurds. We need a liberal government to collect all these parts. And especially the Shiite imams -- we don't want these to be the only ones in government in Iraq, like in Iran."

Via Cursor.

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

Another US export to "liberated" Iraq.

Any day now, viewers in Iraq will be able to turn on their televisions (assuming that their electricity is back on) and see the same news as viewers in the US. The new US government-sponsored television service is called "Iraq and the World," and it will contain stories from CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Fox News, translated into Arabic. CNN declined to participate in the project.

The project is being run by Norm Pattiz, who is the head of the Westwood One radio network. He sees "Iraq and the World" as a direct competitor to Al-Jazeera and other Arabic media.

The introduction of US evening news to Iraqis, who have lived with state-controlled media for decades, could be a revolutionary change for that culture, Pattiz said. But a host of critics suggest that the move may also spark a backlash in a shell-shocked society that is already deeply suspicious of American motives, and in no mood to trust the information or worldview conveyed by US journalists.

“It might be a pretty huge cultural disconnect for Iraqis to turn on a TV and suddenly see Dan Rather,’’ said Mamoun Fandy, professor of politics and media at Georgetown University and a widely syndicated columnist in the Arab world.

Ideally, you should be encouraging Iraqis to produce their own nightly news, and if the U.S. is serious about communicating, they wouldn't rush to put something like this on the air."

Others credit the White House for trying to get an American message across as soon as possible, yet warn that "any media we broadcast which has the backing of our government will be suspect, because you can't export democracy overnight," said Nancy Snow, author of "Propaganda Inc." and a professor at Cal State Fullerton.

The Iraqi people have learned to be deeply distrustful of many institutions, she added, "so why should they suddenly believe what they see on our nightly news?" [...]

As he works to get “Iraq and the World’’ off the ground, Pattiz is also marshaling an effort to create a government-backed news channel for the Middle East, which would compete with Al-Jazeera and other 24-hour satellite broadcasts. Assuming that Congress appropriates the $30 million proposed for the regional television project, Pattiz said it could begin operations before the end of the year.

This crowgirl is having fun imagining how Fox News is going to go over with Iraqi viewers.

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

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

I can't say that I'm surprised.

The San Jose (CA) Mercury News reports that US cell phone companies are in court fighting a new FCC regulation that will let customers keep their existing phone number when they switch wireless providers. The companies told judges of the US Court of Appeals that the new rule would cost customers money and offer them little in return.

``It's very speculative to say this even offers consumer benefits,'' said Andrew McBride, an attorney representing Verizon Wireless and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

McBride asserted the FCC overstepped its authority and made legal errors in its order. Retaining the same phone number is not an essential service like making wireless providers supply enhanced 911 systems to help authorities locate cell phone users during emergencies, he argued. [...]

``Wireless companies will have stronger incentives to provide better service and lower prices if consumers can take their numbers,'' said Chris Murray, an attorney for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He said small businesses and self-employed people are particularly harmed when switching carriers because they lose numbers known by customers. [...]

Many cell phone users outside the United States, in Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and other places, already have the option of keeping their numbers when they switch carriers.

You can find more details on the arguments in court in this NY Times story.

This crowgirl is absolutely certain that the companies' opinion of the regulations has nothing to with the fact that many people frequently stay with a cell phone company only because it's such a pain to change a phone number once you've had it for awhile.

She has a bridge she'd like to sell you, too.

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

Serendipity.

A recent visitor to Magpie came via a Google search on: rumsfeld museum looter

There's something really appropriate about the order of those search terms, isn't there?

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:33 PM | Get permalink

It's still the f'n economy, stupid!

Wampum has cranked up the time machine again. This time she's visiting 1991 so she can decide whether Dubya's big post-war approval ratings will hold until the 2004 elections. Dubya's father, you may recall, had even higher numbers after the first Gulf War than Dubya does now at the end of the second one. And we all know what happened to Bush Sr. when he faced Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.

Among the dusty old newspaper clippings, Wampum found this from the 2/11/91 edition of the NY Times:

Linda Divall, a Republican pollster, said, "The whole question is how sustainable this will be. After the war is over, people will focus on the next problem to be solved . . . and that's the economy."

Alan Secrest, a Democratic pollster, agreed. "You're certainly seeing the revival of American confidence, particularly in respect to foreign intervention. But there are a host of issues waiting in the wings to pour forth as soon as the gulf conflict has been resolved. Those are the issues that were ascendant last fall, primarily jobs, taxes and the economy."

"Obviously it's a good number," Republican pollster Ed Goeas said. "But you have to be cautious, because it's being driven almost entirely by peoples' attitude toward the war."

Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman said, "My guess is this won't last. But the question for Democrats is whether it will change enough to give us a hearing. The good news for Bush is that he's had a great military victory. The bad news is that now he has to deal with the economy and all the other problem areas."

To which Wampum comments:

So here we have it; another article on another favorable poll penned at the end of another war with Iraq under another Bush Administration. However, the list of similarities doesn't stop there. Foremost is that which all the 1991 pollsters, Republican and Democrat, forewarned; Jobs, jobs, jobs. Then, as now, the unemployment situation drove the economy. I don't mean to keep harping on this (okay, yes I do) but almost half a million jobs have been lost in the past two months. That's even with the deployment of 300,000 soldiers to the Gulf, many of whom were reservists holding down day jobs. First time unemployment claims continue to pour in at over 400,000 a week. And business leaders see no indications that they'll start hiring again anytime soon.

I don't think it's hard to see where she's going with this. Go over to Wampum and read the whole post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:01 PM | Get permalink

Welcome Iraqis!

Undernews attributes this to Dr. George Wasson, a Coquille/Coos Indian, but this bulletin board post thinks it was written by Edward Bear.

Dear People of Iraq,

Now that you have been liberated from your oppressors, we at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) look forward to our future relationship with you. As one of the oldest of American governmental agencies, we have a good deal of experience in assimilating people of other cultures to the American way of life. . . Meanwhile, below you will find a list of what to expect from the Office of the BIA, based on our vast experience managing the affairs of American Indians:

1. Henceforth, English will be the spoken language of all government and associated offices. If you do not speak English, a translator fluent in German will be provided.

2. All Iraqi people will apply to be entered on a citizen (tribal) roll. Citizenship will be open to those people who can prove that they are Iraqi back four generations with documents issued by the United States. Christian church records may also be given in support of proof of your origins.

3. All hospitals designated to serve you will be issued a standard "medical kit." The kit will contain gauze, band-aids, burn cream, iodine, tweezers, and duct tape.

4. Your oil is to be held in trust for you. We will appoint an American-approved government lawyer who has a background in the oil industry to represent your interests. Never mind that he may also work for an energy company that he will eventually cut a deal with. However, not to fear - this close relationship will guarantee you more money for your oil.

5. Each Iraqi citizen will be allotted one hundred acres of prime Iraqi desert. You will be issued a plow, a hoe, seed corn and the King James version of the Christian Bible. Following the distribution of land, any land left over will be open to settlement by Israelis.

6. Each citizen is entitled to draw a ration of milk, sugar, flour and lard. If, for health or religious reasons, you feel cannot use the rations, you may file a complaint with your BIA appointed liaison, General Foods Corporation. Those Iraqis showing signs of diabetes, heart disease, or glaucoma will be issued double rations, as, (we are sure you will agree), our own medical system will be too alien for your use.

7. We will manage your trust monies, stipulating that any five year-old American citizen, demonstrating minimal computer skills, may hack into the system that controls your accounts, and set up their own account. Records of your accounts will be kept, but you must receive express written permission from the head of the BIA in order to examine them

8. In keeping with the separation of church and state supported by the US Constitution, Christian missionaries will be sponsored through government funding to provide your local educational and social services. Of course, only Iraqis who convert to Christianity will be allowed to hold jobs within the government.

9. For the purposes of future treaty making, any single Iraqi will be found competent to sign land-session treaties on behalf of all other Iraqis.

10. Welcome to the Free World and have a nice day!

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 PM | Get permalink

Quebec's day after.

After the big Liberal Party win in the provincial election yesterday, Canadian pundits are trying to figure out what the defeat of the Parti Quebecois government means for Quebec and for the country as a whole. Some examples are this in the Toronto Star; this and this in the Globe & Mail; and this in the Montreal Gazette.

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

Shootings in Mosul.

Although the reason for this incident varies according to who you talk to, there's no doubt that US troops fired on a crowd in the Iraqi city of Mosul, killing 10 and wounding dozens.

At US Central Command's war headquarters in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a press briefing he had seen no military reports of the incident and could not confirm it.

But the military spokesman in Mosul later said "there were protesters outside, 100 to 150. There was fire. We returned fire."

He said the fire came from a roof opposite the building, about 75 metres (yards) away.

"We didn't fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building," the spokesman added. "There were at least two gunmen. I don't know if they were killed. The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes.

A man who said he was a witness told a different story.

"We were at the market place near the government building, where Juburi was making a speech," said Marwan Mohammed, 50. "He said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that democracy was the Americans.

"As for the Americans, they were going through the crowd with their flag. They placed themselves between the civilians and the building.

"The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing. Then they prevented the people from recovering the bodies," he told AFP.

At the hospital, where angry relatives of the dead and wounded voiced hatred of Americans and Westerners, a doctor gave a similar account from patients.

"Juburi said the people must cooperate with the United States. The crowd called him a liar, and tempers rose as he continued to talk. They threw objects at him, overturned his car which exploded," said Dr. Said Altah.

"The wounded said Juburi asked the Americans to fire," he said.

And those are only a couple of the accounts. The AFP story cited above has several more versions of what happened.

I get a very bad feeling about this.

Update: ABC (Australia) spins the same facts another way.

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

And this crowgirl thinks she gets cranky.

Scottish SF writer Ken MacLeod has a weblog, Early Days of a Better Nation. I think his weblog is going to be worth watching (especially if he posts more often than he has so far).

MacLeod, for those of you who don't know his writing, is the author of seven of the most thought-provoking and unapologetically political science fiction books of the last decade or so. As an almost-historian (no, you can't ask about the thesis), I appreciate the way that his work looks at how people both make history and are moved by the forces of history. I'd recommend MacLeod's Star Fraction or Cosmonaut Keep as a first venture into his writing. (MacLeod has posted a bibliography here.)

America: a country where ridiculous proportions of the population believe they were created by god, abducted by aliens, and attacked by Iraq. Also where some people believe that someone who burns a paper drawing of a US flag is as good as asking to be crushed under a bulldozer. It's not just the Right. Every political persuasion in the US contains many more stupid people than it or its equivalent does in Europe. On the Left Bank of the Seine you see poststructuralists smoking, flirting, and eating veal. Poststructuralism in America gave us La-La Land liberal toytown totalitarianism. French Maoism gave us Sartre and Althusser. American Maoism gave us Klonsky and Avakian. (I could go on.)

I know, like, and respect lots of Americans. Most of the weblogs I follow are written by Americans. Many of the books I read are written by Americans. But this particular distribution curve has a long tail at the low end. Why? The answer I've come up with, after some agonising over that question, is this:

Not because Americans are more stupid than anyone else, but because there is no American party of the Left. There is no labour (labor) party. There is no liberal party. (On any scale that registers, I mean. There are Liberal and Labor parties here and there.) The Democratic Party isn't a liberal party. It has liberals within it, which is a different thing. Nor is it a labour party, though it gets support from organised labour.

This means that the American Right can indulge in lying and character assassination with almost as much impunity as if it dominated a one-party state. And it means that the American Left either buries itself in the Democratic Party, where it's treated as an embarrassment, or spins its wheels with a complete lack of social traction (in academia or in tiny irrelevant sects) and embarrasses itself.

Via BoingBoing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:40 AM | Get permalink

No war on Syria. Still.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell's remarks today seem to back up yesterday's report in the UK Guardian that Dubya is unwilling to attack Syria.

"We have concerns about Syria. We have let Syria know of our concerns. We also have concerns about some of the policies of Iran. We have made the Iranians fully aware of our concerns," Powell told reporters.

"But there is no list, there is no war plan right now to go attack someone else either for the purpose of overthrowing their leadership or for the purpose of imposing democratic values," Powell said.

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

Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

Locating these weapons (if they exist) is a priority task for the US/UK occupation force in Iraq. Given that the war on Iraq was largely justified on the basis that the Saddam government had WMDs, a failure to find any won't make the US and UK governments look very good..

The BBC has a good summary of where the search stands now, and what's likely to happen in the near future.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:52 AM | Get permalink

No war on Syria. For the moment, anyway.

The UK Guardian reports that Dubya has squelched plans for an attack on Syria:

In the past few weeks, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, his undersecretary for policy, Doug Feith, and William Luti, the head of the Pentagon's office of special plans, were asked to put together a briefing paper on the case for war against Syria, outlining its role in supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, its links with Middle East terrorist groups and its allegedly advanced chemical weapons programme. Mr Feith and Mr Luti were both instrumental in persuading the White House to go to war in Iraq.

Mr Feith and other conservatives now playing important roles in the Bush administration, advised the Israeli government in 1996 that it could "shape its strategic environment... by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria" .

However, President George Bush, who faces re-election next year with two perilous nation-building projects, in Afghanistan and Iraq, on his hands, is said to have cut off discussion among his advisers about the possibility of taking the "war on terror" to Syria.

"The talk about Syria didn't go anywhere. Basically, the White House shut down the discussion," an intelligence source in Washington told the Guardian.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:42 AM | Get permalink