Magpie

Saturday, May 3, 2003

Fascism coming to the US?

The term fascism gets thrown around a lot on the US left, particularly when discussing the current administration in Washington. Often, it's clear that the person using the term has little (if any) understanding of the ideological underpinnings of fascism or of what a fascist system looks like in practice.

Political theorist Sheldon Wolin doesn't have either of these problems. While he thinks that the US is indeed moving towards something like fascism, the new arrangement will be something Wolin calls 'inverted totalitarianism.'

While the Nazi totalitarianism strove to give the masses a sense of collective power and strength, Kraft durch Freude ("Strength through joy"), inverted totalitarianism promotes a sense of weakness, of collective futility. While the Nazis wanted a continuously mobilized society that would not only support the regime without complaint and enthusiastically vote "yes" at the periodic plebiscites, inverted totalitarianism wants a politically demobilized society that hardly votes at all. Recall the President's words immediately after the horrendous events of September 11: "Unite, consume and fly," he told the anxious citizenry. Having assimilated terrorism to a "war," he avoided doing what democratic leaders customarily do during wartime: mobilize the citizenry, warn it of impending sacrifices and exhort all citizens to join the "war effort." Instead, inverted totalitarianism has its own means of promoting generalized fear; not only by sudden "alerts" and periodic announcements about recently discovered terrorist cells or the arrest of shadowy figures or the publicized heavy-handed treatment of aliens and the Devil's Island that is Guantánamo Bay or the sudden fascination with interrogation methods that employ or border on torture, but by a pervasive atmosphere of fear abetted by a corporate economy of ruthless downsizing, withdrawal or reduction of pension and health benefits; a corporate political system that relentlessly threatens to privatize Social Security and the modest health benefits available, especially to the poor. With such instrumentalities for promoting uncertainty and dependence, it is almost overkill for inverted totalitarianism to employ a system of criminal justice that is punitive in the extreme, relishes the death penalty and is consistently biased against the powerless.

Via The Nation.

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

Happy Birthday.

Folksinger Pete Seeger is 84 today. Woods Lot has a big mess of Seeger links today in celebration.

This crowgirl recalls the uproar in the late 1960s when the CBS TV network barred Seeger from singing the anti-Vietnam war song 'Waist Deep in the Big Muddy' on the old Smothers Brothers program.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:24 PM | Get permalink

Isn't capitalism wonderful?

An ad software outfit called Unicast has come up with an incredibly intrusive web ad format.

The New York-based company described the new unit as a "full-screen, 15-second, 300k online ad." Unicast promotional materials suggest the new format will enable advertisers to reach their audiences "with the same impact" as TV.

The ultra-intrusive new format opens when a user is on one page of a Web site and clicks a link to go to another page on the same site. Instead of seeing that new page, the user sees an ad that fills the entire screen.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 PM | Get permalink

Very false economy in Ontario.

An investigation by the Globe & Mail reveals that cuts in Ontario's public health budget weakened the province's system for handling epidemic diseases, making it much easier for SARS to spread in Toronto.

"It's been very clear to us that we were going to pay for the public-health dismantling that has happened under the provincial and municipal governments," said Allison McGeer, head of infection control at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and one of the key members of the SARS containment team.

Ontario's understaffed lab, which sits in Toronto's west end on the ironically named Resources Road, is just one example of the inadequacies.

It was once considered a world-class reference laboratory, with dozens of top-notch scientists who watched for coming infections and anticipated new disease threats by designing diagnostic tests to detect them.

But by 2003, according to one of those laid off, "there was no one left watching any more."

Among those let go in 2001 was microbiologist Ching Lo, who was designing a test for the West Nile and Norwalk viruses, and Martin Preston, who was developing a rapid-detection method for the E-coli bacteria responsible for the Walkerton outbreak.

"We're living in the richest province in Canada and we couldn't afford to have a top-notch public-health lab system to support outbreaks," Dr. Preston said.

Even before the layoffs, a steady stream of scientists had left the lab, frustrated by cost cuts. None was replaced. Today two microbiologists remain.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:43 AM | Get permalink

'Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads.'

The LA Times reports that Baghdad's book market has re-opened. The market is still a shadow of its pre-Saddam heydey, but booksellers are looking forward to filling Iraqis' voracious appetite for books.

"For 40 days, I have been waiting," declared bookseller Abdul Salah, a grizzled 65-year-old who wore a long robe and sandals and presided proudly over the offerings arrayed on a piece of ragged cardboard on the pavement — a scant dozen well-thumbed paperbacks, including English editions of Virgil's "Aeneid" and T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral."

"I don't have much to sell today, but at least I am back," Salah said. "We are back."

For the first time in decades, the booksellers can sell whatever they please — free of Saddam Hussein's security apparatus, which kept a close watch on the book stalls of Mutanabi Street and terrorized those who dared to sell anything deemed subversive.

"Before, so many books were forbidden — anything that didn't agree with the regime," said Imad Saad, a teacher who has run a stall in the market for seven years. "Which means practically everything that was ever printed!"

Some vendors brought a few dangerous volumes out of hiding Friday and put them up for sale — Shiite religious texts, historical and political works — but most said their offerings were not yet all that different from what they had sold before.

"It will take time," Saad said as he rearranged a low wooden table that held his books. Some of them were little more than flimsy, faded pamphlets, which he weighted down with jagged chunks of rock.

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

Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

Molly Ivins looks at the spin that Washington is using to explain the lack of WMDs in Iraq.

The United States, which insisted it could not give U.N. weapons inspectors so much as 10 days more to search, so dangerous were these WMDs, now says it needs months to find them.

In the meantime, we are clearly being set up to put the whole issue of WMDs down the memory hole. Here are the lines of argument advanced by the administration so far:

– Saddam did have WMDs, but in a wily plot, he poured them down a drain right before we invaded, just so he could embarrass George W. Bush.

– The WMDs are still there, but in some remote desert hiding place that we may never be able to find. "Just because we haven't found anything doesn't mean it wasn't there," one Pentagon source told the Los Angeles Times. Right.

– Saddam had WMDs, but he handed them off to the Syrians just before we came in. Or maybe it was to the Iranians.

– Well, maybe Saddam didn't have huge stores of WMDs, but he had critical blueprints, weapons parts and, most ominously, "precursor chemicals," so he could have manufactured WMDs.

– Well, maybe he didn't have WMDs ready to deliver. The Pentagon has already backtracked on the Scud missile claim.

Meanwhile, Dubya is still sure that those WMDs will turn up.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:01 AM | Get permalink

Sad news.

New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain has fallen.

[Free registration required for Union Leader website.]

Update: There's a photo of the new appearance in this story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:42 AM | Get permalink

Friday, May 2, 2003

Another story from 'liberated' Iraq.

From Fallujah, no less — the town where US troops opened fire on Iraqi demonstrators earlier this week. Some of the soldiers apparently left calling cards at the school where the shooting took place.

The headmaster, Mohammed Ahmed, said that before they left, U.S. soldiers had damaged furniture and classroom supplies and left offensive graffiti on the walls.

In one classroom, "I [love] pork," with the word love represented by a heart, was written on the blackboard, along with a drawing of a camel and the words: "Iraqi Cab Company." In another room, "Eat [expletive] Iraq" was scrawled on a wall. And in Ahmed's office, sexual organs were drawn with white chalk on the back of the door.

"They came to liberate us?" Ahmed asked, pointing out the graffiti to a reporter. "What is the point of doing this?"

Via Skippy.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:21 PM | Get permalink

Love that Senator Santorum.

Continuing on with the roster of things Magpie should have noticed, but didn't, Eschaton caught this NY Times story about Rick Santorum's meeting with a group of constituents who are parents of lesbian/gay children. Santorum, you'll recall, has been under fire for allegedly making homophobic remarks in an interview with the AP.

The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said.

"What we tried to do in this meeting was reach him on a human level, and we found no humanity there," said Melina Waldo, a former constituent of Mr. Santorum who lives in Haddonfield, N.J. She said he was "condescending, belligerent, argumentative and arrogant." [...]

The meeting, with a heated exchange, ran 30 minutes, the parents said. The parents, Mrs. [Fran] Kirschner said, insisted that the comments were hurtful to their children. Mr. Santorum, they said, wanted to talk about legal terms, insisting that he was just arguing against a right to privacy and that his remarks had been taken out of context.

Finally, an aide interrupted the session and told Mr. Santorum that he would have to leave.

"He couldn't get out of there fast enough," Mr. Kirschner said.

A Santorum spokesperson, meanwhile, called the meeting "a very professional and polite exchange."

[Free registration required for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:03 PM | Get permalink

Oh, however did we forget this?

Magpie is having memory problems this week. First we forget Mother Jones' birthday. Now we totally overlook the fact that May is National Masturbation Month.

Luckily Bitter Shack is a bit more, um, in touch than we are. She reminds us all to support the Masturbate-A-Thon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:49 PM | Get permalink

Who's Dubya afraid of?

Cursor sends us to this story about Dubya's speech the other day on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Writer Bill Vann notices something curious about this speech and others that the president has made recently.

Critics among the Democrats complained that Bush’s choice of a carrier flight deck to make his speech on Iraq was a transparent political stunt aimed at creating patriotic imagery that will be flogged for all its worth in the 2004 presidential election campaign.

The fact is, however, that the venue was nothing new. For months, the US president’s speeches have been delivered almost exclusively to military personnel and employees of major military arms contractors. His flight to the Abraham Lincoln was to be followed Friday with an appearance at United Defense Industry, the California manufacturer of the Bradley fighting vehicle.

Bush has exploited these captive audiences to promote a domestic political agenda consisting of tax cuts for the rich to be paid for through the gutting of social programs—including veterans’ benefits—while portraying this Robin-Hood-in-reverse agenda as an act of patriotism.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:25 PM | Get permalink

US leans on Canada. Again.

The US is making it clear that Canada should expect consequences if it decriminalizes marijuana use, as is expected. David Murray of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says that while the US respects Canadian sovereignty, it would be "forced to respond" to any decsion to decriminalize the evil weed.

Murray didn't spell out what the American response would be, but he invoked images of tie-ups at border crossings and intense bureaucracy.

He said if marijuana becomes more widely used in Canada, it could penetrate more widely into the U.S.

Murray tried to express the feeling in the U.S. that looser drug laws go hand-in-hand with increase in crime and drug addiction among youth, and used some apocalyptic language to do it.

"You can't wall this off saying, 'We're only talking about a little cannabis.' Our experience is they come together like the Four Horsemen," he said.

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

Those anti-sodomy laws.

They're the salvation of the country.

[Ad view or subcription required.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:21 PM | Get permalink

China groans under another epidemic.

Scary.

Addressing a gathering of journalists in Beijing on Friday, Wu Yi, deputy prime minister and new health minister, demanded that the United States be more proactive in dealing with the all-American "squirrel pelt" hairdo, also known as the "mullet". The growing popularity of the mullet, which is characterized by short hair on the top and sides of the head and a long drape of hair at the back, poses a grave threat to China's sovereignty, said Wu. Despite recent offers from President Bush for US assistance in dealing with its domestic SARS epidemic, Wu blasted US leaders and the foreign press for applying a double standard in dealing with international health issues. [...]

Known in China as the ayishushu or "uncle auntie" haircut, the mullet is raging unabated throughout the country, whose beauty parlors and barber shops are often ill-equipped to cope with the abomination. Wu said 578 mullet cases had been diagnosed in Beijing alone, with cases increasing 36 percent from March to April. It is feared that rural areas in the world's most populous country could be severely affected by the spread of the mullet, but no statistics have been provided by the Health Ministry. The ministry has been forced to implement extreme measures to contain the hairdo, placing victims under quarantine, subjecting them to summary shaves and forcing them to compose letters of self-criticism. Wu flatly denied claims made in a May 23 Washington Post story that the ministry had been secretly selling the harvested mullets to buyers in an unspecified US state. "That's absolutely absurd," said the livid Wu, "I don't even know where Indiana is."

This crowgirl wonders what else those kids at Asia Times are doing with all that time they must have on their hands.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:00 PM | Get permalink

More SARS fallout in China.

The Washington Post reports that the mishandling of the SARS epidemic has spurred a power struggle among current and former members of the Chinese government.

The most significant call for change so far came on Wednesday in the Southern Metropolitan Daily, the most popular newspaper in Guangdong. In an opinion piece, an unnamed writer called for a "breakthrough" in the way the government deals with crises, information and its relations with its people.

"This crisis illustrates the need for timely and clear reporting of the truth to the people," the article said, "and the clear communication of what the government is doing to deal with the crisis and the problems it might face."

The SARS crisis has presented the government with an opportunity to win public trust and support, the article said. "SARS, from its beginning through its evolution, acutely shows the need for the improvement of traditional methods of administration."

Southern Metropolitan Daily has played a crucial role in the SARS story. Government censors warned the newspaper three times in February and March that its articles had violated censorship rules. At the time, the government was enforcing periodic bans on SARS-related stories.

The newspaper defied the ban in February and published an article that raised doubts about the source of SARS. State-run media were under orders to report that the source of the disease had been identified as the bacteria chlamydia, part of a campaign to claim that the disease did not originate in China. During the National People's Congress in Beijing in early March, the newspaper quoted a senior respiratory specialist as saying that SARS was not under control, directly contradicting government propaganda at the time that the disease had been contained.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:07 PM | Get permalink

US citizens have too many rights.

That's certainly what Dubya's administration must believe, given its most recent assault on the privacy and civil liberties of US citizens. This time, the idea is that the CIA and military need the power to pry into personal and financial records under the authority of "national security letters." These would be issued by the CIA or military on their own authority, without any court oversight. According to the New York Times, national security letters would force "Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs."

Why does the administration think the CIA and military need this sweeping new power? To fight the war against terrorism, of course.

The administration's proposal turned up in the depths of the general intelligence authorization bill currently in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Democrats on the committee have managed to stall the administration proposal for the time being, but — given Dubya's record of being persistent with similar proposals — you can bet this isn't the last we'll hear of this one.

Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.

But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.

They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.

Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."

Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."

A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."

[Free registration required for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:55 AM | Get permalink

Jobs.

The US lost 48,000 of them last month, bringing unemployment up to 6%. But, as Wampum explains, these official numbers don't tell the whole story.

[Free registration required for NY Times website.]

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

Thursday, May 1, 2003

Painting the the town (and country) red.

The Iraq Communist Party has had a rough 69 years. Its founder was hung by the government in 1949. It was battered by struggles with nationalist parties and the Baathists in the 1950s and 1960s. And its membership had to flee or go deep underground after Saddam Hussein banned the party in 1979. With the overthrow of the Saddam government, reports Asia Times, Iraq's communists are back, and full of optimism for the future.

"We already have headquarters set up in all the major cities," Malik says. "And we are ready to move." He sees his job over the next months and years as trying to persuade the people of Iraq that it is possible to forge a middle path between kick-the-poor capitalism American-style and kill-the-poor statism Saddam-style.

What he represents isn't really communism any more, but more a soft, leftward-leaning blend of principles deriving from a concern for society's weakest and specifics deriving from various West European socialist experiments-in-progress. The most important planks in his current platform, he says, would include an open, democratic process; a federal union; separation of church and state; and - most importantly, in his view - a ban on foreign financial support for Iraqi political parties. In fact, to enforce this ban, "there should be government funding for all parties and candidates in Iraq", he says.

Asked to point to a specific existing model that he would use as a guide for building a government, he mentions Sweden.

At the moment, it's a little difficult to look around this still-burning war-torn city of tanks and Kalashnikovs and imagine it ever turning into some kind of new Stockholm. But then, it's also a little difficult to look around and imagine it turning into a new Kansas City or a new Des Moines. If Jay Garner can dream big, so can Malik.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:38 PM | Get permalink

'Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.'

Magpie is embarrassed to admit forgetting that today is the birthday of Mother Jones, who is maybe the most famous organizer and hell-raiser that the US labor movement ever produced. (Luckily Woods Lot didn't forget.)

This short chapter from Mother Jone's Autobiography gives a good idea of how she got her reputation as such a tenacious organizer:

The miners in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, went on strike for more wages. Their pay was pitifully low. In answer to the cry for bread, the Irish -- that is the Pennsylvania -- constabulary were sent into the district.

One day a group of angry women were standing in front of the mine, hooting at the scabs that were taking the bread from their children's mouths. The sheriff came and arrested all the women "for disturbing the peace." Of course, he should have arrested the scabs, for they were the ones who really disturbed it.

I told them to take their babies and tiny children along with them when their case came up in court. They did this and while the judge was sentencing them to pay thirty dollars or serve thirty days in jail, the babies set up a terrible wail so that you could hardly hear the old judge. He scowled and asked the women if they had some one to leave the children with.

I whispered to the women to tell the judge that miners' wives didn't keep nurse girls; that God gave the children to their mothers and He held them responsible for their care.

Two mounted police were called to take the women to the jail, some ten miles away. They were put on an interurban car with two police men to keep them from running away. The car stopped and took on some scabs. As soon the car started the women began cleaning up the scabs. The two policemen were too nervous to do anything. The scabs, who were pretty much scratched up, begged the motorman stop and let them off but the motorman said it was against the law to stop except at the station. That gave the women a little more time to trim the fellows. When they got to the station, those scabs looked as if they had been sleeping in the tiger cat's cage at the zoo.

When they got to Greensburg, the women sang as the car went through the town. A great crowd followed the car, singing with them. As the women, carrying their babies, got off the car before the jail the crowd cheered and cheered them. The police officers handed the prisoners over to the sheriff and both of them looked relieved.

The sheriff said to me, "Mother, I wou1d rather you brought me a hundred men than those women. Women are fierce!"

"I didn't bring them to you, sheriff," said I, " 'twas the mining company's judge sent them to you for a present."

The sheriff took them upstairs, put them all in a room and let me stay with them for a long while. I told the women:

"You sing the whole night long. You can spell one another if you get tired and hoarse. Sleep all day and sing all night and don't stop for anyone. Say you're singing to the babies. I will bring the little ones milk and fruit. Just you all sing and sing."

The sheriff's wife was an irritable little cat She used to go up and try to stop them because she couldn't sleep. Then the sheriff sent for me and asked me to stop them.

"I can't stop them," said I. "They are singing to their little ones. You telephone to the judge to order them loose."

Complaints came in by the dozens: from hotels and lodging houses and private homes.

"Those women howl like cats," said a hotel keeper to me.

"That's no way to speak of women who are singing patriotic songs and lullabies to their little ones," said I.

Finally after five days in which everyone in town had been kept awake, the judge ordered their release. He was a narrow-minded, irritable, savage-looking old animal and hated to do it but no one could muzzle those women!

There are links to lots more about Mother Jones here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:01 PM | Get permalink

Over in Kingsley, Hampshire.

It's not only May Day, but they're voting for District Council, too. The King's Blog offers some advice to voters.

Starting with Pelham, he's old school with a keen eye for modern presentational touches. virgin.net is designed to appeal to the younger voter, virgin suggesting youth and .net clearly shouting "I'm a switched on trendy individual with a firm grip on technology".

Warwick has gone for a more efficient style making use of the familiar .com suffix allied with the newer trend towards making the term "all one word" a word in its own right. Also in his favour is that his address is only 22 characters as opposed to 30 for Pelham's.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:38 PM | Get permalink

Strangers.

After 9/11, many Saudi students had to abandon their education at US universities and return home. Arab News talked with some of them about what it's like to live at home again.

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

Photoshop.

Somebody's been having a bit of fun with it.

(The real question of the day is nowhere near as interesting.)

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:13 PM | Get permalink

Too much freedom in Canada.

The US State Department's report on global terrorism during 2002 suggests that the government of Canada puts too much importance on civil liberties.

It [the report] says "some U.S. law enforcement officers have expressed concern" about Canadian privacy laws.

The U.S. officers feel those laws, as well as funding levels for law enforcement, "inhibit a fuller and more timely exchange of information and response to requests for assistance," the report says.

"Also, Canadian laws and regulations intended to protect Canadian citizens and landed immigrants from government intrusion sometimes limit the depth of investigations."

You can read all of what the terrorism report says about Canada here (scroll down to 'Canada').

Via This Modern World.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:52 PM | Get permalink

A wonderful day in the neighborhood.

Especially if you live out in the asteroid belt.

The International Astronomical Union has honored the late Fred Rogers by giving Asteroid #26858 the new designation Misterrogers. Fred Rogers was the much-loved (and much made fun of) creator and long-time host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on US public television.

Via Current.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:23 PM | Get permalink

SARS resources.

SARS Watch Org has put up a new page of online SARS resources.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:26 PM | Get permalink

Okay. We admit it.

It does rain a lot in Oregon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:00 PM | Get permalink

May Day.

The 'communist holiday' started in the US, you know? Or maybe you don't. Perhaps you should head over to rabble, where Corvin Russell shares some thoughts about May Day and the struggles of working people.

The day is May Day — 1886. It is Chicago. All attempts at legislating a limited workweek in the U.S. have failed; workers are still forced to work up to sixteen hours a day.

Across North America, a general strike has been called for May 1 to fight for the right to an eight-hour workday. The workers of Chicago are among the most militant in the country: the Commerce Club has bought the Illinois National Guard a machine gun to help them control the strikers. May Day itself passes without violence, but on May 3, police fire on workers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four and wounding many.

The next day, anarchists organize a mass protest in Haymarket Square. As it is winding up, 180 police order the dwindling crowds to disperse. A bomb is thrown at police. It kills one police officer and injures seventy. Police fire on the crowd, killing one worker and injuring others. The bomber is never identified, but eight anarchists are arrested and found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the bombing. Four are executed, and one commits suicide in jail; three are later pardoned.

Since then, May Day has been a day for workers around the world to commemorate the bloody fight for workers’ rights.

For more on the events at Haymarket Square in 1886, see this extensive website, which is loaded with period illustrations.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 PM | Get permalink

Afghanistan war is over. Sort of. Perhaps.

At any rate, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it's over.

``We're at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities,'' Rumsfeld said at a joint news conference with [Afghanistan president Hamid] Karzai.

The Rumsfeld announcement was not a surprise. There has been little combat in Afghanistan for months, but the administration is trying to bring some public closure to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as Bush begins his re-election campaign.

Now does anyone else notice the contradiction between that and the following?

There are about 9,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, led by the 82nd Airborne Division. They still launch occasional armed search missions when they acquire new intelligence on hostile forces, mostly in the southern and southeastern part of the country. The most recent was March 20 and involved about 1,000 U.S. troops joined by Afghan troops and backed by attack helicopters. [...]

And to this additional statement from Rumsfeld?

Rumsfeld said the U.S. military will still be involved in trying to stabilize the security situation in Afghanistan, which he said has ``porous borders.''

``People can in fact return and do things that are unhelpful to the success of this government,'' he said.

[Free registration required for NY Times website.]

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

US Government 1228, Constitution 0.

The US government obtained 1228 secret warrants to investigate 'suspected terrorists and spies' during 2002, according to this AP report. What's really noticeable about this story is the totally uncritical attitude it takes — not even mentioning that anyone disputes the constitutionality of these warrants or of the activities that the government carries out under their authority.

Operating with permission from a secretive federal court that meets regularly at Justice Department headquarters, the FBI has broken into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles, installed hidden cameras, rummaged through luggage and eavesdropped on telephone conversations.

Besides break-ins, agents also have pried into safe deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and intercepted e-mails. They have planted microphones, computer bugs and other high-tech tracking devices.

Details about some FBI techniques emerge from court records spread across dozens of cases. But only a fraction of these surveillances each year result in any kind of public disclosure, so little is known outside classified circles about how they work.

[Free registration required for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:06 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Passive verbs kill more Iraqis.

Over at This Modern World, Bob Harris explains how the verb that a news outlet uses in a headline can drastically change the spin of a story.

The CBC is also now carrying this, recording a second such incident:

U.S. Troops Fire Again On Iraqi Protesters

While the LA Times front page currently says (at 5:04 pm pdt 4/30/03)

2 Iraqis Killed In New Shooting

and CNN's front page says

Second day of deadly clashes in Iraqi town

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:02 PM | Get permalink

Same old party.

The Peking Duck is in Guilin, in south China. He has a few words about Chinese censorship.

Last night I saw yet another dimension to the evils of China's censorship machine. I was watching CNN in my hotel when a guest was introduced to dicusss how China's lies about SARS in Beijing were damaging the nation's political system. This sounded interesting and I sat up to listen. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the screen went black. It stayed black for about ten minutes with no sound. Then, just as suddenly, the picture and sound came back, just in time for me to hear the announcer thanking the speaker for his time. China is still obsessed with censoring the news and will go to any lengths to keep people in the dark about its crimes, whether we're talking about Tiananmen Square or SARS.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:27 PM | Get permalink

Your (US) tax dollars at work.

Over at AlterNet, Jason Halperin tells a tale of homeland security terror.

"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.

"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation." [...]

When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month."

We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead."

Via This Modern World.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:49 PM | Get permalink

Lots of things to read in the Asia Times.

Try this one about how Afghanistan may once again be the breeding ground for Islamic militant groups, this one about how Iran is trying to counter the encirclement strategy of the US by improving its relations with its neighbors to the north and east, or this one about the environmental cost of the invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps most interesting, though, is this one, which shows a huge disconnect between how the neo-cons see the US role in the world and the way that the general US public sees it.

Even more unexpected was the response to the question of whether the Bush administration should have tried to get Security Council authorization for taking military action against Iraq, a notion with which administration hawks strongly disagreed. Eighty-eight percent of respondents chose the UN route.

"You talk to people in Washington and you wouldn't expect this at all," noted I M Destler, a foreign-policy specialist at the University of Maryland. "It's such a high percentage, especially when you consider how the UN process has been exposed to so many attacks by the administration and in the media," he told reporters.

Similarly, while 35 percent of respondents said Washington should feel more free to use force without UN authorization in the future, almost two-thirds said the United States should not take away that lesson.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:58 PM | Get permalink

Comrade of Steel.

What if the infant from Krypton had landed in Stalin's USSR?

Via Rebecca's Pocket.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:24 PM | Get permalink

Just wonderful.

US troops fire on Iraqi demonstrators in Fallujah, who were protesting the earlier shootings and deaths in that town. The US Central Command in Qatar has issued the usual statement that the Iraqis fired first.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:53 PM | Get permalink

Not dead yet.

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at the sliding fortunes of Firebaugh, an agricultural town in California's Central Valley.

"Here's a prime example," said Pete Cardella, a man who has farmed in the Firebaugh area for his entire life.

"When my dad was growing cotton in World War II, he got 50 cents a pound," said Cardella. "Today, we're still getting 50 cents a pound. Meanwhile, the price of diesel (used by tractors and other farm equipment) has gone from 3 cents a gallon to 80 cents a gallon."

Similar problems face garlic, said Cardella.

"China can sell it in this country for 90 cents a pound, but growers here have to sell it for $2 a pound minimum to come close to breaking even," he said.

And yet, by the standards of most of the people in Firebaugh, the farmers have it pretty good. After all, they generally have equity: hundreds or thousands of acres of cropland.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:02 PM | Get permalink

Just what we need right now: less drug research.

Reuters reports that drug giant Pfizer is closing three research facilities in the US, putting up to 2000 research workers out of work. Why the closures? To help offset US $60 billions that Pfizer paid to acquire one of its competitors — Pharmacia Inc.

The cuts are essential if Pfizer is to keep its financial goals on track and boost its earnings as a result of the merger. The company is targeting $2.5 billion in merger-related cost savings this year alone, with more expected in future years.

This crowgirl wonders how laying off all those researchers fits in with the drug companies' claims that they need high drug prices in order to pay for all that research they do.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:28 PM | Get permalink

Laurie Garrett on SARS.

Laurie Garrett is about the best journalist working in the field of reporting on epidemic diseases and, as SARS Watch points out, she is doing some great reporting from Beijing for Newsday. SARS Watch points to two stories: this one from yesterday about the lack of Chinese data on SARS, and this one from the day before about mystery of SARS transmission.

"Beijing has the largest outbreak in the world so far, the most dramatic increase. And we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of SARS cases reported in the last week," WHO's Beijing representative Dr. Henk Bekedam said in a news conference here yesterday. "There is a lot of frustration for the public at this point in Beijing ... We do believe it is high time for this information to be available.

"We do believe China is sitting on a wealth of data," he said.

There are indications that China's leadership believes that Beijing's epidemic is on a sharp upswing. On Saturday, Beijing municipal authorities announced that all SARS patients would be moved into three designated hospitals, but by Sunday the government expanded the list to 17. By Sunday night there was word the government was building a hospital to house 1,000 SARS cases. Six state-run companies executed the project in the far northern outskirts of Beijing, scheduled for occupancy by this evening.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:45 AM | Get permalink

Where's Saddam?

If this letter is authentic, he's alive and urging Iraqis to rebellion.

The coalition victory had only been possible because of "treachery", the letter says.

It says the countries around Iraq opposed resistance to the US-led invasion, but warns "those who have stood against Iraq and plotted against it will not enjoy peace at the hands of the United States".

"The day of liberation and victory will come", the letter continues, and "right will triumph this time, like it does every time, and the coming days are going to be more beautiful".

There's a bit more information in this Guardian story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:34 AM | Get permalink

Pop quiz!

How many things can you find wrong with this statement?

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday the nation is better protected from terrorism since creation of the Department of Homeland Security, but conceded that coordination among federal agencies ``is not perfect.''

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

Putting the brakes on the propaganda machine.

FAIR is reporting a major lapse by ABC News. On April 26 and 27, the network's nightly newscast prominently featured a report on the 'mobile laboratories' that were likely used to produce chemical agents. As it turned out, this wasn't the case. ABC has yet to broadcast a retraction.

The April 26 report began: "The U.S. military has found a weapons site 130 miles northwest of Baghdad that has initially tested positive for chemical agents. Among the materials there, 14 55-gallon drums, at least a dozen missiles and 150 gas masks." Correspondent David Wright explained, "Preliminary tests showed it to be a mixture of three chemicals, including a nerve agent and a blistering agent." Wright added that an Army lieutenant "says the tests have an accuracy of 98 percent."

While expressing some reservations, Wright called it "by far the most promising find in the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," especially since it included what his military source told him "looks like a mobile laboratory."

Perhaps somewhat self-consciously, ABC followed Wright's report with a short segment about weapons claims that have turned out to be false alarms. But ABC continued to pump the story the next day, with Wright appearing on This Week to explain that "what may turn out to be a very significant find are these mobile laboratories, which appear to have a pumping apparatus as well as machinery to mix chemicals."

The story led World News Tonight again on Sunday, as anchor Carole Simpson explained that "for the second day in a row, some of the preliminary tests have come back positive for chemical agents."

FAIR is asking people to contact ABC News and request that the network retract the 'mobile lab' stories, as good journalistic practice dictates. The FAIR alert is here.

The contact info for World News Tonight is:

ABC's World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
PeterJennings@abcnews.com

An email form for World News Tonight is here.

FAIR reminds us that criticism is taken more seriously if we keep our tone polite.

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

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

A bad day in 'liberated' Iraq.

Was it self-defense, as US soldiers say, or murder, as the residents of the Iraqi town of Falluja say? The UK Guardian's Jonathan Steele fills in the picture.

The shooting late on Monday night was the bloodiest incident since the fall of Saddam Hussein. It occurred 40 miles west of Baghdad in an overwhelmingly Sunni town which had been quiet for two weeks until the Americans arrived. [...]

In the town hall police inspector Omar Minar Esawi said there was no reason for US troops to be in Falluja.

They were not needed as liberators because the Iraqi army fled the day Baghdad fell. They were not needed as a security force because people had chosen a new mayor and the imams in the mosque had managed to stop the looting and get some of the stolen goods returned. Most of the police force was back in action.

"We controlled the town. When the troops came eight days ago they said they would stay for two or three days, but they're still here and the numbers have been increasing," he said. Like many Iraqis, Inspector Esawi is part of the "thank-you-and-goodbye" school of thought. With Saddam gone, the US ought to leave, he believes. "We need freedom and democracy. Now we're afraid because the US army creates these problems," he said.

Asked whether it might have been better to place his forces on the edge of town, Lt Col Nantz said: "No, I never considered that. You need to be engaged. You can't do that if you're sitting outside. We want to help them build themselves up and build a police force.

"It was obvious that some people did not appreciate us. But I still don't believe the majority was anti-coalition," he said.

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

He can't get no respect.

The tale of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the former Iraqi information minister, continues. It seems he can't get himself taken into custody.

But Al-Sharq al-Awsat says the Americans have refused to arrest Mr Sahhaf - who became a familiar face during the war with his upbeat assessments of Iraqi military "successes" - because he does not appear on their "most wanted" list of 55 former regime officials.

Update: Arab News reports that the Al-Arabiya satellite channel has offered Al-Sahaf a job, possibly as a political analyst.

In explaining the offer, the director said that Al-Sahaf had been part of the former Iraqi government and that because of that, he knew many things of interest to viewers. He also has wide knowledge and experience that could help in explaining Iraq’s history and discussing the country’s future.

Al-Hudaithi denied that the channel was looking for publicity. “The channel chose him because he has things to say about Iraq and he is one of the few Iraqi officials not wanted by the Americans; he is not on the list of 55 wanted Iraqis.”

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:38 PM | Get permalink

Hubris and empire.

At Asia Times, Ahmad Faruqui delivers a wide-ranging article on the costs of empire and the 'battle for the soul of the American republic.'

A fundamental change has occurred in the tactics of implementing regime change. What was formerly accomplished through covert "black" operations is now being accomplished through overt military operations. In the near future, regime change may be expanded to include not just those unelected despots with access to weapons of mass destruction, but any rulers who stand in the way of the neoconservative agenda of global domination. [...]

George Magnus, chief economist at UBS Warburg, estimates that the continuation of the ongoing war could see defense spending rise from 4 percent of GDP to as much as 9 percent in the coming years. This development will not impress the financial markets, since it comes on the heels of the largest budget and trade deficits in US history and continuing high rates of unemployment. David Hale of Hale Advisors, an economics consultancy, commented, "It is unclear if America is truly prepared to accept an imperial role on a sustained basis." Despite the September 11 attacks, the sustained threat to the US from terrorism is less obvious than the threat from the USSR. David Landes, a Harvard economic historian, found that even in Great Britain - where attachment to empire ran deep - economic necessity meant that the rapid liquidation of imperial liabilities in India and the Middle East after World War II met with little opposition. "Once the potential cost becomes apparent, the willingness of the American public to pay for their country's new security strategy will be tested to the limit."

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:51 PM | Get permalink

Oooooh, shiny!

The big blue marble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:37 PM | Get permalink

Deja vu all over again.

Wampum points out that not only are Dubya's poll numbers much like those garnered by Bush the First back in 1991, but polling organizations have noticed this similarity as well.

I've been asserting for months that if Progressives, heck, any Bush critics, would continue to hammer the similarities between Bush I and II, despite Rove&Co. objections, it would begin to stick. This is not a Teflon presidency. Get out your glue sticks.

Go take a look at the figures. They speak loudly.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:51 PM | Get permalink

WHO lifting Toronto travel advisory.

It ends tomorrow, reports the CBC.

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

'You sort of want to pull out 1984.'

An excellent article by Jennifer Block in the current issue of Conscience (the journal of Catholics for a Free Choice) looks at how Dubya's administration is making public health and medical research subservient to right-wing political and ideological goals.

The most blatant attack was the severe gutting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fact sheet on condoms, which had been disappeared from the website in July 2001 and replaced, with significant battle scars, in December 2002. Pre-Bush, the fact sheet had encouraged consistent condom use, advice supported by vast bodies of scientific research that show condoms to be 98-100% effective in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. "The primary reason that condoms sometimes fail," read the original fact sheet, "is incorrect or inconsistent use, not failure of the condoms itself." Following that statement was user-friendly guidance on proper use. Now, according to the once nonpartisan CDC, abstinence is the "surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases." Along with the condom "how to," the CDC removed the "Programs that Work" section, which summarized several large studies of teenagers that found no increase or hastening of sexual activity among those who were taught about condoms.

Revising the CDC website is just one of the many ways the Bush administration has sought to distort and suppress scientific inquiry, not to mention sound public health policy, that contradicts its so-called family values. "We've been monitoring a deeply unsettling trend where public health science is being supplanted by politics and ideology," says James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a proponent of comprehensive sexuality education. The Bush administration has stacked scientific advisory panels with ideologues who have scant credentials and conflicts of interest; flooded schools with medically inaccurate "abstinence-only" programs; punished HIV/AIDS prevention groups with audits; and gagged overseas healthcare workers who receive US funds, repeatedly exemplifying its willingness to let ideology trump the very pillars of democracy it claims to be defending.

Via AlterNet.

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

That Tom Ridge sure gets around.

Law.com reports that Dubya has made him a major player in deciding which international mergers are approved by the US government.

In a little-noticed move, Bush has installed the secretary of homeland security as a member of the obscure regulatory body that weighs the national security risks posed by major foreign investments in U.S. companies.

Now some experts, including former senior government officials who served on the panel, suggest the president's maneuver could dilute the influence of those who champion cross-border investment. The result could be a more difficult environment for non-U.S. companies that come before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, looking to execute mergers and acquisitions in this country.

"This is part of the broadening of what constitutes a national security concern, and it also reflects a broadening of the industries seen as subject to CFIUS review," says Ronald Lee, a Washington, D.C., partner at Arnold & Porter who handled CFIUS matters as head of the Executive Office of National Security at the Department of Justice.

If any reader can tell Magpie more about the CFIUS, please make a comment.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:17 AM | Get permalink

Supremes 5, Immigrants 0.

The US Supreme Court has handed the government another tool to use against due process for immigrants. On a 5-4 vote, the justices held that any immigrant who has committed certain crimes can be held indefinitely while the government seeks their expulsion from the US.

"We hold that Congress, justifiably concerned that deportable criminal aliens who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for their removal hearings in large numbers, may require that (such) persons ... be detained," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority in the 20-page opinion.

The ruling was a setback for civil liberties groups, which argued the law gives the government unprecedented detention powers. They said the case could have implications for the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

The Justice Department said more than 75,000 criminal aliens had been detained under the law. It applied to thousands of criminal immigrants in custody and to hundreds of others for whom deportation proceedings begin each week. [...]

The court's most liberal members, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, dissented.

Souter said the court allows the government to detain aliens where there's no reason for it and no way to challenge it.

"The court's holding that the due process clause allows this under a blanket rule is devoid of even ostensible justification in fact and at odds with the settled standard of liberty," he said.

This crowgirl thinks that the 5-4 decisions that are so common in civil liberties decisions from the Supreme Court is another good reason that it matters which party wins the White House next year.

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

SARS now a political football in Canada.

China isn't the only place where government handling of SARS is affecting the nation's politics, as well as its health. The fact that neither Prime Minister Jean Chretien nor his health minister Anne McLellan were in Toronto during the height of the SARS outbreak has spurred criticism from both inside and outside Chretien's Liberal Party.

According to this story in the Globe & Mail, Heritage Minister Sheila Copps has blasted the health minister for staying in her parliamentary district in Alberta when in-person leadership in Toronto was needed. (Copps is campaigining to succeed Chretien as leader of the Liberal Party.)

"I think certainly the Minister of Health has some answering to do for the way that she has been absent from the [SARS] file, and that's a legitimate complaint," Ms. Copps charged in an interview yesterday on CBC Newsworld. [...] "In the time period where people were expecting to hear the strong voice of government of Canada through the Health Minister, she was absent."

Ms. Copps sounded more like an opposition politician than a member of the government as she joined in criticizing Ms. McLellan's handling of the outbreak.

McLellan is countering the criticism by accusing Copps of playing politics with the SARS issue.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Chretien has just returned from a 10-day vacation in the Caribbean. As this CTV story shows, he's also taking his share of heat from critics.

Harvey Skinner, the chair of public health sciences at the University of Toronto medical faculty, said Chretien got off to a good, properly low-key start on the SARS issue by visiting a Toronto restaurant two weeks ago but has "let it slip off the radar screen.''

Skinner would have preferred he'd stayed in the public eye so that people could "sense that the prime minister — because he's the biggest figurehead — at least had his hand on the pulse and was watching. He was, initially, and now there's been a gap.''

Political opponents pulled no punches.

"The PM should be aggressively involved,'' NDP Leader Jack Layton said Thursday. "I don't care if he's on a golf course. His cellphone can be connected to the meetings if need be.''<

Tory Leader Joe Clark called Ottawa's leadership "absolutely awful.''

"The first minister we heard from was Sheila Copps, and she's now retracted her statements,'' he said.

Copps called the SARS outbreak an "epidemic'' and a "national emergency'' this week and was almost immediately contradicted by Health Minister Anne McLellan, who openly accused the Liberal leadership hopeful of playing politics.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:42 AM | Get permalink

Nuclear war keeps getting less unthinkable.

The UK Independent reports on a conference on nuclear non-proliferation that has just begun in Geneva. The meeting is overshadowed by increasing likelihood that some country, somewhere, is going to use nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. Many analysts see the current attitude in Washington as one of the factors that's making nuclear warfare more likely.

At least as damaging as North Korea's departure [from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT] have been successive moves by Washington to distance itself from nuclear disarmament.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, the US President, George Bush, signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, which said: "The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force – including potentially nuclear weapons – to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States ..."

This assertion, analysts say, undermined an important prop of the NPT process: the so-called "negative security assurances", initially made in 1978 and strengthened by the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 984 in 1995, not to use nuclear weapons against the non-nuclear weapon states.

The assurances were considered vital in discouraging states from developing their own nuclear weapons. Now people wonder if they are worth the paper it they are written on.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink

Monday, April 28, 2003

Israel-Syria talks soon?

Haaretz is reporting that Syrian president Bashar Assad has sent a note to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon saying that Syria wants to settle its differences with Israel. A member of the US House of Representatives, Tom Lantos, carried the message from Assad to Sharon.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:58 PM | Get permalink

All those lies.

And the questions that need to be asked because of them. Paul Krugman deals with both in his latest column in the NY Times.

Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions — not just about Iraq, but about ourselves.

First, why is our compassion so selective? In 2001 the World Health Organization — the same organization we now count on to protect us from SARS — called for a program to fight infectious diseases in poor countries, arguing that it would save the lives of millions of people every year. The U.S. share of the expenses would have been about $10 billion per year — a small fraction of what we will spend on war and occupation. Yet the Bush administration contemptuously dismissed the proposal.

Or consider one of America's first major postwar acts of diplomacy: blocking a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Ivory Coast (a former French colony) to enforce a truce in a vicious civil war. The U.S. complains that it will cost too much. And that must be true — we wouldn't let innocent people die just to spite the French, would we?

So it seems that our deep concern for the Iraqi people doesn't extend to suffering people elsewhere. I guess it's just a matter of emphasis. A cynic might point out, however, that saving lives peacefully doesn't offer any occasion to stage a victory parade.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:48 PM | Get permalink

US troops may have fired into another crowd in Iraq.

This Reuters story cites an Al-Jazeera report that US troops have fired on a crowd in the town of Falluja, killing 10 people and injuring 70. Given that there is no independent confirmation as yet, take the story with a grain or two of salt.

U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it had no information and U.S. Army commanders in Baghdad were unavailable to comment.

Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, speaking on air by telephone, said U.S. forces opened fire around midnight (4 p.m. EDT Monday) after someone in the crowd threw a stone at them.

He said a group, numbering up to 200, had finished Muslim evening prayers at a mosque and answered a call by preachers to protest against the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

He said he did not have an exact number for the injured who were being treated at five different hospitals in Falluja.

Update: The Al Jazeera report was accurate. The Sydney Morning Herald reports 13 dead and 75 injured. The US Central Command in Qatar has issued one of its usual statements saying that people in the crowd fired first.

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

'Bring out your dead!'

How does the way television covers the SARS epidemic influence the degree to which people are afraid of the disease? Sars Watch Org points to this column by John Doyle of the Globe & Mail in which he examines what television has done with the story of SARS in Toronto. He finds the coverage by US television to be particularly awful.

The same day on CNN, an agitated Daryn Kagan, sitting somewhere in the United States, was anxious to emphasize the horrors of Toronto and, with this in mind, interviewed CBC reporter Melissa Fung. First, Kagan let Fung explain that officials here are dealing with the situation. "Let's get past all of the officials," Kagan snapped. "What about just average Canadians on the street? Are people pulling their kids out of school? Are they staying home, or are they going about their daily business?"

Fung replied: "They're going about their daily business here. The impression that Toronto is a dangerous city to visit is a bit of an overreaction. People here are walking down the street. People aren't wearing masks, but there has been a drop in business, in general. People are not visiting, cancelling trips to Toronto that they had planned."

This was what Kagan wanted to hear -- fear. She proceeded to question the quality of Canadian science: "And, meanwhile, I understand Canadian scientists are fighting this and trying to find [out] as much as they can. But even the science that they are doing at the main virus laboratory there -- I think it's in Toronto, I know it's in Canada -- is getting some conflicting results, like people who should be testing positive are testing negative for the virus and vice versa."

Fung tried to explain the science issue but got nowhere, as Kagan ended the chat: "A lot of questions and, as you were just pointing out, a lot of fear out there too. Melissa Fung from CBC, thanks for joining us from Toronto. Stay safe, stay well!"

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:57 PM | Get permalink

Turning rebellion into money.

Writing in ColorLines, Anmol Chaddha looks at how capitalism co-opts dissent and uses the images of rebellion to sell products and lifestyles.
.
There's no question that dissent has become cool, and nothing sells quite like "nonconformity." Billboards across the country encourage us to "think different" in a campaign that features none other than Mahatma Gandhi himself stitching his own clothes (khadi) in an explicitly anti-colonial, anti-capitalist gesture. Other icons selected for these Apple ads include Cesar Chavez, the farmworker organizer who led the struggle against capitalist forces in California's Central Valley, and civil rights heroine, Rosa Parks. Curiously, Jesse Jackson publicly complained that Parks is too 'sacred' to be included in fictional jabs in the film Barbershop, but apparently finds nothing sacrilegious about her image being used to sell neon-colored computers.

This past year, television viewers in California have been subjected to ads from the power company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) that cleverly reinterpret the 1960s radical folk song, "Power to the People, Right On!" The astonishing contradiction lies in the fact that PG&E was a significant player in and beneficiary of the 2001 electricity crisis whose burden was borne most heavily by California's working class. And, in November 2002, PG&E successfully campaigned against a San Francisco initiative that would have created a public power infrastructure as a local solution to the nightmare created by the privatization and deregulation of the electricity market. Sure, power to the people, right on!

In all cases, when icons of resistance are commodified, they become depoliticized. In essence, dissent is cool as long as it is fashionable, predictable, and contained by consumerism. At the same time, actual political and ideological dissent is not really cool at all, especially in the post-9/11 Ashcroftian era.

So, it can be said that any item that is bought and sold, or simply used in advertising campaigns, is inherently detached from the cultures, ideologies, and movements that produced it. As with any product, the market creates a separation between the consumers and producers of those goods. In that sense, Ford drivers never interact with the Detroit auto workers who assemble their cars, and kids with Ché T-shirts need not read up on his political ideology.

Via AlterNet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:26 PM | Get permalink

Those documents that keep turning up in Iraq.

You know, the ones that say a member of the UK parliament was on Saddam Hussein's payroll, or the ones that link the overthrown Iraqi government with Al Queda. Should we believe what they say? Or, as this article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests, should we be very cautious when evaluating 'found' documents and their contents? The London Times reports that UK intelligence agencies are doing just that with the Iraq-AlQueda documents.

Via Cursor.

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

The real dope.

A farming couple on BC's Vancouver Island are growing Canada's only organic medical marijuana.

Nash and Little are the first federally licensed medical marijuana growers in Canada to have their crop officially certified 100-per-cent organic. [...]

The Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia, an organization likely more accustomed to monitoring the production of carrots or spinach, granted Nash and Little certified organic status this month.

In B.C., where the RCMP says black market marijuana worth billions is the province's largest cash crop, Nash displays his organic certification like a badge of honour.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:14 PM | Get permalink

Return of the native.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the effort to bring back the Olympia mussel to California's San Francisco and Tomales bays.

Early pioneers described the flavor of the tiny mollusks, which are about the size of a 50-cent piece, as "coppery." They were, in fact, a delicacy in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. The "Hangtown Fry" was created, according to one legend, by a condemned man who ordered the two most expensive items he knew of at the time -- oysters and eggs -- for his last meal.

Because they were so small, it took between 1,600 and 2,000 shucked Olympias to make a gallon. So it didn't take long for the oyster beds in San Francisco Bay to be depleted. [...]

"We think bringing back Olympia oysters to their historic population levels will have an impact on the water quality because each one filters up to 30 liters of water a day," said Michael McGowan, a research scientist and adjunct professor of biology at San Francisco State, who is studying how the reefs might affect other aquatic life in San Francisco Bay.

"What you might see is more plentiful fish, more birds and a general improvement in the health of the bay," he said. "Oysters are an important building block in the system. They not only live in the habitat. They provide habitat."

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

'The security forces are getting playful.'

At Eurasianet, cartoonist Ted Rall takes a look at press freedom in central Asia.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:20 AM | Get permalink

Another fine mess.

Asia Times has a good overview of the ethnic politics of northern Iraq.

The emergence of ethnic and territorial disputes has created a suitable ground for instability in the northern part of Iraq. In particular, fighting between armed Kurdish and Turkmens groups with the aim of defending their rights, settling scores or seeking strategic objectives will likely push the oil-rich region into bloody conflict, if the current trend continues.

Should the Iraqi Kurds incorporate Kirkuk and/or Mosul into their self-ruled region, fear of the feasibility of creating an independent Iraqi Kurdish state will likely push Iran and Turkey into the conflict. Concern about the impact of such scenario on their Kurdish minorities could push Ankara and Tehran to follow the lead of Washington in preemption, with a much stronger case to justify their action.

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

Mostly good SARS news.

The WHO says that the SARS epidemic has peaked in most of the countries that have been the worst affected by the virus, including Canada. Vietnam is the first country that the WHO believes has contained the disease. On the other hand, the number of new cases in China continues to grow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:45 AM | Get permalink

Rumsfeld slams war critics.

The US Defense Secretary is currently touring the Persian Gulf region, meeting with military commanders and the leaders of Gulf states. The South African Independent reports that he's also taking pot-shots at those who opposed the invasion of Iraq.

"There were a lot of hand-wringers around, weren't there?" he said with a grin to cheers from military troops. [...]

Noting Churchill's remark about the Battle of Britain against Nazi Germany that "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", Rumsfeld said of critics of the war: "Never have so many been so wrong about so much."

This crowgirl wonders who, in the long run, will turn out to be 'so wrong' about Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:25 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, April 27, 2003

Bechtel and Iraq.

Tom Tomorrow is right on the money.

(Subscription or ad view req'd)

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:14 PM | Get permalink

Happy Birthday.

To Mark Woods at Woods Lot. Magpie lifts a Tim Horton's coffee cup (half-full of Jameson's) in a birthday toast.

This crowgirl has never met the man — in fact, she didn't even know his first name until she saw it on another blog today. But she's been reading Woods Lot for years, and that blog is one of the main reasons Magpie exists.

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

I don't know how I missed this one.

Wednesday's San Jose Mercury News reported that the US is not only planning to do research on using hydrogen bombs as bunker-busting weapons, but it plans to build them, too.

The weapon -- known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator -- would be a full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in an urban area. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the conventional ``bunker busters'' dropped on Baghdad in an attempt to kill former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

And guess who's behind the drive for this weapon?

According to a variety of participants, impetus for a renewed interest in battlefield nuclear weapons comes primarily from civilian Pentagon officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his second-in-command, Paul Wolfowitz, rather than uniformed generals and admirals.

``I've talked to the military extensively, and I don't know anybody in the military who thinks they need a nuclear weapon to accomplish this,'' said U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a Walnut Creek Democrat whose district includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

``If you can find somebody in a uniform in the Defense Department who can talk about a new need'' for nuclear bunker busters ``without laughing, I'll buy him a cup of coffee,'' said Robert Peurifoy, a retired vice president of Sandia National Laboratory. The New Mexico lab fashions the outer casings and other non-nuclear aspects of nuclear weapons and will play a role in the project.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:31 PM | Get permalink

Department of False Economy.

The UK Observer reports that the Pentagon is closing the Peacekeeping Institute at the US Army War College.

The Peacekeeping Institute was created in July 1993 to guide the Army's strategic thinking on how to conduct peacekeeping and to document lessons-learned. It has operated with a staff of ten and a yearly budget of about $200,000 (out of an $81 billion annual Army budget). [...]

The looting and lawlessness in Iraq's major cities suggests that the US military is ill-prepared to perform as peacekeepers. So, at a time when US soldiers are doing civilian reconstruction in Afghanistan and are the stewards of post-conflict Iraq, how could it happen that the Peacekeeping Institute will shut its doors?

Via Pedantry.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:19 PM | Get permalink

A pre-emptive strike.

Over at ReachM High, Cowboy Kahlil is threatening to sing a frightening version of an old Hank Willams song to anyone who fails to add a link to ReachM High. While this crowgirl doesn't scare easily, she's pretty certain that the cowboy lives in the same town she does. And given that she's not that hard to find, this crowgirl is also pretty certain that Cowboy Kahlil could indeed arrive on her doorstep with guitar in hand. So to avert catastrophe, she's adding the link.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:51 PM | Get permalink

Yet another justification for the war collapses.

In Feburary, US Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to convince the UN Security Council to support military action against Iraq. One of the dangers he cited then was Al Ansar, a militant Islamic group that operated in northern Iraq. According to Powell, this group was connected to Al Queda and bent on becoming a world-wide terrorist force.

While there is no doubt that Al-Ansar was busy battling the Kurds, a report in the LA Times casts serious doubts on the US claim that Al Ansar was an international threat.

Documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, along with interviews with U.S. and Kurdish intelligence operatives, indicate the group was partly funded and armed from abroad; was experimenting with chemicals, including toxic agents and a cyanide-based body lotion; and had international aspirations.

But the documents, statements by imprisoned Ansar guerrillas and visits to the group's strongholds before and after the war produced no strong evidence of connections to Baghdad and indicated that Ansar was not a sophisticated terrorist organization. The group was a dedicated, but fledgling, Al Qaeda surrogate lacking the capability to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:07 PM | Get permalink

Iraqi information minister may give himself up.

Jordanian news service Al Bawaba reports that the former Iraqi information minister, Mohammad Said al-Sahaf, is negotiating terms for his surrender with an Iraqi opposition group.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:44 PM | Get permalink

SARS and Mongolia.

Mongolia has obviously taken a lesson from the way SARS has been handled by its neighbor to the south, China. While no cases of SARS have been confirmed in Mongolia yet — although there are six people with suspicious illnesses — this Eurasianet story shows how the Mongolian government has taken quick measures to contain any spread of SARS.

In addition to canceling public events such as concerts and other performances, the decree also requires special inspection teams to monitor the implementation of the governmental and city measures.

Special teams of Mongolian doctors--clad in protective clothing donated by the World Health Organization--met every train and plane that arrived from Beijing, interviewed passengers for signs of symptoms, and took suspicious cases to hospitals for a medical checkup.

"I’m surprised--people are much more committed than I expected," WHO medical officer Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn told TOL. "Every train has a doctor from the railways hospital checking the passengers for fever and respiratory problems."

Preventive measures included public announcements on major broadcast news media on the dangers and prevention of the SARS infection. Three hotlines were introduced, giving advice and providing emergency help to the population, and special medical receiving rooms were opened in 26 state and district hospitals for "suspicious" patients."

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:31 PM | Get permalink

Giving up on work.

The NT Times has a fairly good article on long-term unemployment, which centers on the personal experiences of several people who have been unemployed for anywhere from eight months to two years. If you only read the first few paragraphs of the article, however, you could easily come away with the impression the reason why people drop out of the job market is personal — they just get discouraged. It's not until the eighth paragraph that the article gets around to explaining just how badly the US economy is actually doing.

Over the last two years, the portion of Americans in the labor force — those who are either working or actively looking for work — has fallen 0.9 percentage points to 66.2 percent, the largest drop in almost 40 years.

More than 74.5 million adults were considered outside of the labor force last month, up more than 4 million since March 2001, the Department of Labor says. They are people who fall outside the government's definitions of either employed or unemployed: they do not hold jobs, but they also have not gone out seeking work within the past month.

This group includes retirees and parents who have been home taking care of their children for years, but the surge of dropouts suggests that the jobless rate — which was 5.8 percent last month, roughly where it has been for the past year — offers an artificially sanguine picture of the labor market, many economists say.

"People use the unemployment rate as some kind of gauge of the health of the economy," said Robert H. Topel, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. But because of the number of people now outside of the labor force, he said, "the unemployment rate does not give you the same kind of information it did in the 1970's or 1960's."

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:02 AM | Get permalink

Latest SARS victim: state secrecy.

Pacific News Service suggests that the quick spread of SARS — only months from its first appearance to being a global epidemic — shows that secrecy measures introduced to protect national security hamper efforts to control infectious diseases.

The new reality that governments seem to have a hard time grasping is that a new disease is, from the very moment it appears, a global concern. It may well be a certain country's major problem -- as SARS is now China's -- but knowledge of it is not that country's property. It is, in a sense, the world's property. Disease creates a new kind of community -- what some political analysts now call a "community of risk" -- within which cooperation and sharing of information become life and death necessities. National governments may try to prevent a disease from establishing a foothold within their boundaries, but even while they play the old games of national security by trying to slow the progress of the disease, they must participate in international activities aimed at speeding the movement of information.

As a recent report from the California think tank RAND puts it: "State-centric models of security are ineffective at coping with issues, such as the spread of diseases that originate within sovereign borders, but have effects that are felt regionally and globally."

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:43 AM | Get permalink

SARS 'can still be contained.'

WHO director general Gro Harlem Brundtland told the BBC that the strong control measures being put into effect in Asia are 'prudent and necessary'.

Asked on the BBC's Breakfast With Frost programme whether Sars was the "first global epidemic of the 21st Century", the WHO director-general replied: "Yes, this is correct. It will historically be seen that way."

She said the world still had a "window of opportunity to avoid the virus becoming endemic, such as flu and HIV... to contain it - lessen it where it is, and stop it spreading".

Meanwhile, New Zealand's National Business Review has a summary of the latest SARS developments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:24 AM | Get permalink