Magpie

Saturday, July 12, 2003

No gun yet, but the scent of smoke is getting stronger.

Okay, we're still with Dubya's claim in the State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. It turns out this wasn't the first time the Prez wanted to say that. According to the Washington Post, CIA Directory George Tenet intervened last October to keep a similar reference out of another Dubya speech.

Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.

The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.

It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the president's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech. That failure may underlie his action Friday in taking responsibility for not stepping in again to question the reference. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said in Friday's statement.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:43 PM | Get permalink

Blob no more.

Remember that weird thing found on a beach in Chile the other week? It's a sperm whale, say the experts.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:29 PM | Get permalink

'It's beginning to sound a little like Watergate.'

Since Magpie has a delicate constitution, she doesn't watch CNN very often. But Lilith at A Rational Animal is made of sterner stuff, and she caught this interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean by CNN's congressional reporter, Jonathan Karl.

[Note: The interview took place before CIA Director George Tenet took the rap for Dubya's misstatements about Iraq's WMDs.]

KARL: The president and his national security adviser are saying that the CIA, and George Tenet specifically, cleared this speech and signed off on it. Does that get the president off the hook?

DEAN: We don't know that. The fact is that [former U.S.] Ambassador [to Niger Joseph] Wilson, in a public statement in The New York Times, has indicated that his report showing that there was no involvement between Niger and Iraq in terms of the uranium deal went to the office of the vice president, the secretary of state and the CIA. So I don't know what the president knew and when the president knew it, but I know that this intelligence-handling is a disaster for the administration at best, and either no one got to the secretary of defense or the president, or his own senior advisors withheld information.

So this is a serious credibility problem, and it's a lot deeper than just the Iraq-Niger deal, it has to do with assertions by the secretary of defense that he knew where weapons were that turned out not to be there, it has to do with assertions by the vice president there was a nuclear program that turned out not to exist, and assertions made by the president himself, not just about the acquisition of uranium, but also about the ability of [deposed Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] to use chemical weapons on the United States. We need a full-blown public investigation not held in Congress but by an outside bipartisan commission.

KARL: Condoleezza Rice specifically mentioned George Tenet, and now the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is specifically saying that George Tenet had a responsibility to tell the president about this but didn't.

DEAN: It's beginning to sound a little like Watergate. They start throwing people over the side. The deeper you go, the more interesting it will be. It's very clear that it may be George Tenet's responsibility, but that information also existed in the State Department and it also existed in the vice president's office, so they will not get away with simply throwing George Tenet over the side.

KARL: How big a deal is this?

DEAN: The big deal is not so much that we went to war over a deal between Iraq and Niger which didn't exist and that the administration knew ahead of time it didn't exist. The big deal is the credibility of the United States of America and the credibility of the president in telling the American people the truth and the rest of the world the truth. That's a very big deal.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:17 PM | Get permalink

Driving blind in Iraq.

A story running in the Knight-Ridder newspapers shows that Washington's lack of planning for post-war Iraq was pervasive, deliberate, and ideologically driven. What planning existed was done by a small group of 'senior civilians' in the Defense Department who believed that Iranians would welcome US 'liberators' and then allow the installation of Ahmad Chalabi as the new Iraqi leader. Anyone who disagreed with this plan — such as officials in the CIA and State Department — was just left out of the picture. When almost nothing after Iraq's 'liberation' went as planned, this group in the Defense Department had no 'Plan B.'

One 'former senior US official' told Knight-Ridder: 'There was no real planning for postwar Iraq.'

The story of the flawed postwar planning process was gathered in interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior government officials.

One senior defense official told Knight Ridder that the failure of Pentagon civilians to set specific objectives - short-, medium- and long-term - for Iraq's stabilization and reconstruction after Saddam Hussein's regime fell even left U.S. military commanders uncertain about how many and what kinds of troops would be needed after the war. [...]

Ultimately, however, the responsibility for ensuring that post-Saddam planning anticipated all possible complications lay with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, current and former officials said.

The Pentagon planning group, directed by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official, included hard-line conservatives who had long advocated using the American military to overthrow Saddam. Its day-to-day boss was William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney before joining the Pentagon.

The Pentagon group insisted on doing it its way because it had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with U.S. friends and allies. The problem was that officials at the State Department and CIA thought the vision was badly flawed and impractical, so the Pentagon planners simply excluded their rivals from involvement.

Feith, Luti and their advisers wanted to put Ahmad Chalabi - the controversial Iraqi exile leader of a coalition of opposition groups - in power in Baghdad. The Pentagon planners were convinced that Iraqis would warmly welcome the American-led coalition and that Chalabi, who boasted of having a secret network inside and outside the regime, and his supporters would replace Saddam and impose order. [...]

A senior administration official, who requested anonymity, said the Pentagon officials were enamored of Chalabi because he advocated normal diplomatic relations with Israel. They believed that would have "taken off the board" one of the only remaining major Arab threats to Israeli security.

Moreover, Chalabi was key to containing the influence of Iran's radical Islamic leaders in the region, because he would have provided bases in Iraq for U.S. troops. That would complete Iran's encirclement by American military forces around the Persian Gulf and U.S. friends in Russia and Central Asia, he said.

But the failure to consult more widely on what to do if the Chalabi scenario failed denied American planners the benefits of a vast reservoir of expertise gained from peacekeeping and reconstruction in shattered nations from Bosnia to East Timor.

As one example, the Pentagon planners ignored an eight-month-long effort led by the State Department to prepare for the day when Saddam's dictatorship was gone. The "Future of Iraq" project, which involved dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals and 17 U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon, prepared strategies for everything from drawing up a new Iraqi judicial code to restoring the unique ecosystem of Iraq's southern marshes, which Saddam's regime had drained.

Virtually none of the "Future of Iraq" project's work was used once Saddam fell.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:04 PM | Get permalink

Our main weapon is fear.

The UK Guardian has an interesting piece on how fear is being used as a marketing and propaganda tool in the US. While Magpie thinks the premise of the article is sound, she's not sure that the article itself rises beyond being a bunch of anecdotal evidence. But some of that evidence is compelling.

Politicians and terrorists are not the only propagandists who use fear to drive human behaviour in irrational directions. A striking recent use of fear psychology in marketing occurred following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. During the war, television coverage of armoured Humvees sweeping across the desert helped to launch the Hummer, a consumer version of a vehicle originally designed exclusively for military use. The initial idea to make a consumer version came from the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted a tough-looking, road-warrior vehicle for himself. At his prodding, AM General (what was left of the old American Motors) began making civilian Hummers in 1992, with the first vehicle off the assembly line going to Schwarzenegger himself.

In addition to the Hummer, the war helped to launch a broader sports utility vehicle (SUV) craze. Psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille, a consultant to the automobile industry, conducted studies of postwar consumer psyches for Chrysler and reported that Americans wanted "aggressive" cars. In interviews with Keith Bradsher, the former Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, Rapaille discussed the results of his research. SUVs, he said, were "weapons" - "armoured cars for the battlefield" - that appealed to Americans' deepest fears of violence and crime.

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

The never-ending story.

When we last looked in on Dubya, he and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice had denied that Washington knew that there was no solid evidence for an attempted purchase by Iraq of uranium from Niger.

In the 24 hours since then, a lot has happened.

—  CIA Directory George Tenet accepted the blame for the fact that the Iraq-Niger claim made it into Dubya's State of the Union message this past January.

As preparations for the war against Iraq gathered momentum, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Mr Tenet said those 16 words did not meet the level of certainty required for Presidential speeches and that it had been a mistake to allow them to be included in the address to the American people. [...]

In his statement Mr Tenet said the president's words were factually correct, in the sense that they attributed the claim about Iraqi nuclear ambitions to the British government.

But he went on to say that was not good enough given the long-held doubts about the accuracy of the UK's information.

—  Dubya tried to sweep the whole issue back under the rug, now that the CIA has taken the fall.

"I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I...look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror," Bush said in Abuja on the last leg of a five-day five-nation African tour.

Asked if he considered the controversy that dogged his African tour over, he said: "I do."

—  The UK government stuck to its guns on the accuracy of its report of the Iraq-Niger connection.

In a letter to a senior MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UK had additional information to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, but this intelligence had not been passed on to the US administration.

In Washington, the CIA has accepted the blame for allowing the claim to be included in a speech by President George W Bush, even though the agency had long had doubts about its credibility.

The uranium claim was used by both governments to build a case for going to war over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

No weapons of mass destruction have so far been found.

—  A new poll showed Dubya's approval ratings taking a hit over his handling of Iraq.

In early April, 74 per cent of people approved of the President's role in Iraq but in a poll taken by Newsweek during the past two days, Mr Bush has lost 20 points, with only 53 per cent of people happy with how he is handling the post-conflict situation.

His overall approval rating is down to 55 per cent from 61 per cent in May.

Just over half the people surveyed believed the Bush administration had not misled them about the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

But a third felt they had been misled and the remainder were not sure.

Magpie thinks that the most cogent summary of the current state of affairs may come from a lead sentence in the Cuban newspaper, Granma.

The CIA and the U.S. and British governments are embroiled in contradictions over lies concerning the aggression against Iraq and are now publicly disputing the issue.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:45 PM | Get permalink

Friday, July 11, 2003

Just under the wire.

Even though Magpie's been busy playing Irish music with friends all evening, we can't finish a Friday without heading over to Wampum and seeing where in 1991 the time machine takes us this week.

FOR DEMOCRATS, A SLIM REED ON WHICH TO LEAN
David Nyhan, Boston Globe
July 11, 1991

There is something out there for the Democrats as they cast about for a presidential campaign.

It doesn't look like much at the moment. But it's something to build on. Despite President Bush's popularity, and 75 percent approval rating, a lot of things are going wrong.

The recession is cutting. Too many millions of Americans are hurting for the Republicans to enjoy a walkover next year.

The Bush White House hasn't a clue about matters domestic. State governments and...

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

Forget the dog. The CIA did it.

The effort to place blame for Dubya's false claim that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from Niger is getting more intense. Following yesterday's report by CBS News and others that the sentence making that claim went into the State of the Union address over CIA objections, the White House is firing back, claiming that the CIA did not object to the sentence at the time.

Both Dubya himself and national security advisor Condoleeza Rice pointed fingers at the CIA in separate remarks just before and during the Prez's visti to Uganda.

Bush made his charge at Uganda's Entebbe airport, while sidestepping a question as to who put the sentence into the speech:

"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush said in Uganda, where he was meeting President Yoweri Museveni as part of a five-nation African tour.

"It speaks in detail to the American people of the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. My government took the appropriate response to those dangers," he told reporters.

Speaking to reporters on a plane enroute to Uganda, Rice went into more detail:

"The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety... If the CIA Director of Central Intelligence had said, 'take this out of the speech', then it would have been done," Rice told reporters flying to Uganda from South Africa on Air Force One with Bush. [...]

"There was even some discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought and the speech was cleared," Rice said.

"Some specifics about amount and place were taken out...with the change in that sentence, the speech was cleared."

The strong White House denials come against a background of mounting criticism of the administration's handling of Iraq, both before and after the invasion. Polls show Dubya's approval ratings are dropping, along with public confidence that things in Iraq are going well. Iraq has also moved to the forefront of the presidential election campaign, with Gov. Howard Dean calling for the resignations of those responsible for the false statements, and Sen. John Kerry accusing Dubya of lying about the situation in Iraq, comparing his statement to false statements made by the government during the Vietnam War.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:22 PM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

X-ray flashlight!

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink

US paranoia doesn't stop at the border.

Over at the new megablog, Crooked Timber, Maria Farrell looks at how the US obsession with security and the 'war on terror' is spilling over into Europe.

[F]ew people Stateside have really grasped the deep and permanent damage the war on terror is doing to European human rights and civil liberties. This isn’t simply a case of the US pushing unpalatable policies on its hapless allies (though there’s plenty of that going about), but is a more complicated situation in which the law enforcement / Justice and home affairs crowd have used the US war on terror to ram through retrograde measures that no civilised democracy should tolerate.

The war on terror is being used as a means to unpick, thread by thread, the European privacy protection regime. In two key issues in the last 18 months - communications data and airline passenger data - the Bush Administration has pushed the EU either to gut its privacy protections or simply to flout them. And Justice / Interior ministries throughout the EU member states have been beside themselves with happiness at the prospect of hoovering up terabytes of information about European citizens on the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Go read it all.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink

What time is it, kids?

Time for Vacation Bible Camp!

Do I send food with my child?

Please do not send food to camp with your child. Each child will be given a satchel of dried locusts to serve as a Bible trail mix. Other than that, understand that your child is attending Bible camp to learn post-apocalyptic techniques on how to hunt, stalk, and kill his own food or starve to death. No meals are served in the first two weeks. You child will also learn to barter and share the love of Jesus at gunpoint should they be left behind as part of the unsaved remnant after the Great Tribulation.

Via wood s lot.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink

'Voting should not be an act of blind faith. It should be an act of record.'

Nervousness about 'black box voting' has made it up to Capitol Hill. On Thursday, US Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 into the House of Representatives. If passed into law, the Act would require all voting machines to produce a paper record or votes cast so that voters can see that their choices were accurately recordied, and that election officials can use to verify votes in the case of 'computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity.'

Key provisions of The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 include:

1) Requires all voting systems to produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits and recounts. For those using the increasingly popular ATM-like “DRE”(Direct Recording Electronic) machines, this requirement means the DRE would print a receipt that each voter would verify as accurate and deposit into a lockbox for later use in a recount. States would have until November 2003 to request additional funds to meet this requirement.

2) Bans the use of undisclosed software and wireless communications devices in voting systems.

3) Requires all voting systems to meet these requirements in time for the general election in November 2004. Jurisdictions that feel their new computer systems may not be able to meet this deadline may use an existing paper system as an interim measure (at federal expense) in the November 2004 election.

4) Requires that electronic voting system be provided for persons with disabilities by January 1, 2006 -- one year earlier than currently required by HAVA. Like the voting machines for non-disabled voters, those used by disabled voters must also provide a mechanism for voter-verification, though not necessarily a paper trail. Jurisdictions unable to meet this requirement by the deadline must give disabled voters the option to use the interim paper system with the assistance of an aide of their choosing.

5) Requires mandatory surprise recounts in 0.5% of domestic jurisdictions and 0.5% of overseas jurisdictions.

If you're in the US, write your member of the House and ask them to support this one. If you don't know who your representative is, go here.

For more on paperless ballot systems and election fraud, see this Magpie post.

Thanks to South Knox Bubba for spotting this one

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

After the Lawrence decision.

What are lesbians doing to celebrate?

Alison Bechtel's Dykes to Watch Out For have the answer.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Which is worse?

Some interesting thoughts on Iraq's WMDs from Take on the News. It's a short post, so here's the whole thing:

So, the BBC is the first international media outlet to declare that WMD will not be found. It makes us wonder which scenario is worse: that Hussein didn’t have significant WMD capacity and that America went to war under a false pretense or 2) that he did but effectively dismantled them and moved them to other countries just before the war began. Well, what most Americans hope for is security. So no matter how you slice or spin it, if either scenario is true, we’re less safe. If he never had significant WMD capacity then we should have stuck with a policy of containment -- because now that we’ve invaded an Arab stronghold we truly are the world’s supreme terrorist target. And if he had some weapons and they’ve been sent elsewhere, then we’ve lost the one advantage we once had -- knowing where things were. It’s kind of like termites -- you’d rather have them captured in a glass jar on the kitchen counter (prewar containment) than scrambling around in the floor boards (now).

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Woody Guthrie.

The Nation is really on a roll. First was Victor Navasky's piece on I.F. Stone that we linked to yesterday. Now it's a truly wonderful short piece on singer/songwriter/activist Woody Guthrie by Steve Earle, who is no slouch musically or as a songwriter himself.

Does all this mean that the world would be a different place if Woody had dodged the genetic bullet and lived? You bet your progressive ass! Just imagine what we missed! Woody publishing his second and third books! Woody on the picket lines with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers singin' "Deportee"! I could go on forever. I have imagined hundreds of similar scenarios, but then at some point it always dawns on me how selfish I am.

Let him go. He did his bit. Besides, as much as we need him right now, I wouldn't wish this post-9/11 world on Woody. He hated Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" more than any other song in the world. He believed that it was jingoistic and exclusive, so he wrote a song of his own. It goes:

This land is your land
This land is my land
From California
To the New York island
From the redwood forest
To the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
Everything you could ever want to know about Woody Guthrie, his music, and his times is here, at the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives.

Steve Earle's 'official unofficial' website is here.

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

'Bush knew Iraq info was false.'

You can't get much clearer than that headline currently on the front of the CBS website. The US network reports that 'senior administration officials' are saying that Dubya's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger went into his State of the Union address over the objections of the CIA.

Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

CIA officials warned members of the President's National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.

The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that's how it was delivered.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Mr. Bush said.

The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Mortgaging Iraq's future.

The LA Times reports that Washington is considering a plan to borrow money against Iraq's future oil and gas revenue in order to pay for the country's reconstruction. And to make the decision without waiting for the formation of an Iraqi government. By in effect putting Iraq into hock, the US would avoid having to pay reconstruction costs out of its own pocket.

The plan is being floated by the Export-Import Bank of the United States and a group of large companies with major contracts in Iraq, including Halliburton and Bechtel. They say that if the 'oil mortgage' plan isn't adopted, reconstruction funds will dry up.

The plan isn't being greeted with open arms in all quarters.

"Unless a reconstituted Iraqi government or the U.N. Security Council authorizes the plan, it appears to violate international law," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. "We do not have the right, without additional authority, to impose financial obligations on the future government of Iraq."

Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, has asked the Export-Import Bank, the Pentagon and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to disclose more information about the proposal and the role played by Halliburton and other companies in crafting it.

Opponents of the plan warn that if a future Iraqi government chose to stop making payments on the obligations, U.S. taxpayers could wind up holding the bag.

"We're going to be on the hook, just like U.S. banks were on the hook to Mexico in the early 1980s and U.S. lenders were on the hook to South America in 1990," said independent energy economist Philip K. Verleger Jr.

Although the proposal is under consideration in Washington and Baghdad, the State Department has expressed concern about the pre-emption of Iraqi decision-making authority and the possibility that a future government might choose to default on the debt.

The Treasury Department has voiced similar reservations, warning that the creation of a new class of debt could complicate U.S. efforts to persuade other countries to write off or restructure Iraq's massive prewar debt burden.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Another smart move in Washington: Cut AIDS research.

Dubya's administration is funding research on a new anthrax vaccine by diverting the money from research on AIDS and other diseases, reports the BBC. Dubya had asked Congress to provide money to buy and test a new anthrax vaccine in his 2003 budget, but Congress didn't appropriate any funds. To make up for this, the White House has ordered raids on the budgets for other disease research projects, including some that deal with HIV.

According to the BBC, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is siphoning off US $145 million this year to buy and test the anthrax vaccine. Fifty percent of that money comes from NIAID's bio-defense budget, another 25 percent from the institute's HIV projects, and the last 25 percent comes from research on other diseases.

Some AIDS researchers say their work is already being affected by the budget 're-organizing.'

Dr Luis Montaner from the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia has just started an HIV research project which has had its funding cut.

"This basically means for our own research that we have to scale back, to re-address our aims and perhaps accomplish less than what we would have hoped we could accomplish," he told the BBC. [...]

Dr Montaner's team is evaluating a potentially cheaper way of using anti-retroviral drugs in southern Africa, one of the regions Mr Bush has been visiting on his current African trip.

"This is happening at a time when the administration and Congress are putting a special emphasis on Aids," observed Robert Guidos, director of policy and government relations at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the professional organisation for researchers and doctors in the field.

"The Bush administration and the department of state have said that Aids is a national security issue; that we definitely want to do more in Africa", he said. "Here we have an opportunity to do more, and yet we're taking away the research dollars."

A number of scientists, campaigners and members of Congress - including Senators Arlen Specter and Tom Harkin - have written letters of protest to the White House, some calling the move a "misuse" of research funds.

If the money needs to be found, they say, it should come from the Homeland Security budget.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:03 PM | Get permalink

Howdy.

A big ol' Magpie how-do-you-do to Sisyphus Shrugged, who we thank for pointing us to this extremely apt headline.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:39 PM | Get permalink

Bad Magpie!

One of our astute antipodean readers pointed out a really bad statistical comparison that Magpie made at the end of this post. In comparing the number of deaths in the US each year among law enforcement officers with the deaths of women at the hands of an intimate partner, we completely forgot that the size of the two groups are drastically different. And while we thought about burying a correction in the comments so that no one noticed our mistake (just like the NY Times shoves their corrections onto a page that nobody reads), we decided that we had to be a brave corvid and face the music.

So what we said in our earlier post was this:

The last year for which we could find figures for both deaths of law enforcement officers in the line of duty and women killed by intimate partners was 2000. According to statistics kept by the FBI, 51 law enforcment officers were killed on duty during 2000, while 1247 women died at the hands of intimate partners.

Here's the problem with Magpie's math. While the raw numbers indeed show that about 25 women are killed in relationships for each law enforcement officer who is killed on duty, the number of women in intimate relationships is at least 150 times the number of cops in the US. For the death rates to be identical, over 7600 women would have to be killed in a year — that's six times the current figure. For the record, there are currently 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the US, and about 144 million women (including girls).

So while Magpie said in her earlier post that she had done her homework, that homework should have included brushing up on her statistics and logical fallacies. We apologize for being so sloppy.

On the other hand, there's still a case to be made the number of deaths among women in intimate relationships being terrifying and disgraceful. Even though law enforcement officers are killed at a rate six times higher, they work in a profession that's universally understood to be one of the most dangerous ones around. A relationship is not only not supposed to be dangerous — to most people, Magpie would bet that a relationship is supposed to be safe. Given the history of denial around the entire issue of partner battering and violence against women, it's not surprising that an argument like the one made by reporter Elizabeth LeReverend (and added to by Magpie) could be so powerful, even while so wrong statistically.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:02 PM | Get permalink

US unemployment highest since the Reagan recession.

According to the Labor Department, 3.82 million US workers are collecting unemployment. The last time the number was so high was in 1983. The number of unemployed workers jumped by 87,000 since last week's report, and there were about 5,000 more first-time unemployment claims filed than in the previous week. Since analysts expected claims to drop, however, that last figure isn't good news.

The new figures follow last week's announcement that the current unemployment rate is at a 9-year high. (If you're keeping track, the rate is 6.4 percent.)

[Magpie reminds everyone that these 'official' numbers from the Labor Department should be taken with a grain of salt. First of all, the initial numbers tend to get revised upward within a couple of weeks, when no one is looking. (Wampum is always on top of these changes.) Second, the figures omit workers who have dropped out of the job market because they are discouraged. And last, the figures don't measure underemployment — that is, people who are working part time because no full time work is available. If all of these additional workers were included, the 'real' level of unemployment in the US would turn out to be significantly higher than the 'official' one.]

The Labor Department is spinning today's numbers by suggesting that the increase was caused by the July 4th holiday and by the annual shutdown for re-tooling in the auto industry. Since the Labor Department's seasonal adjustments compensates for the plant shutdowns, that spin is extremely unlikely to bear any relationship to economic realities.

Will the economy pick up? That depends on how you look at it. The economists that Reuters talked to expect the economy to pick up between now and the end of the year, but they also say that this recovery is unlikely to produce jobs in any significant number.

This crowgirl wonders how long those same economists have been predicting an upturn, and whether any of them predicted the current recession before it happened.

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

You mean they have news over there?

The lack of interest in international news on the part of US media is well-known. Especially in broadcast media, editors seem to think that no one in the country is at all interested in anything happening abroad, and they fill their news holes accordingly. This attitude has a huge effect on what foreign coverage does show up.

Because media aren't interested in foreign news, they don't have bureaus or reporters in places where news happens. So when stories demand coverage, a media outlet either has to 'parachute' in a reporter who has no background in the country, or they have to scramble to buy coverage, either from foreign media or from freelancers. What gets lost from US newspapers and news programs is any sense of continuity, and any sense that something other than crises happen in other countries. The smaller, day-to-day stories generally don't see the light of day in the US.

One of the organizations for US freelancers is AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio. Each month, AIR has an online chat for members, giving them the opportunity to hear from and talk to an interesting journalist or producer. This month, the chat was with Nancy Greenlease, who recently returned from a couple of years as a freelance reporter in Italy. The chat is worth reading in its entirety, just to get a sense of what it's like to be a freelance reporter — making sure you own three minidisc recorders, in case one breaks, for example.

But what Magpie found most interesting was what Greenlease had to say about where international news fits into the US news ecosystem:

Sean Tubbs: Do you think the current "rift" in US-European relations can be explained by different reporting styles?

Nancy Greenleese: I think the "rift" is a disconnect. I heard all about anti-Americanism in Europe while I was living in Italy, but I saw absolutely none...

Many news networks and newspapers have pulled international bureaus. They don't have anyone on the ground in places like Rome. For instance, the Washington Post is close to closing its bureau.. No major networks, other than CNN, have a presence. I think editors aren't getting the goods on what is REALLY going on in these foreign outposts from balanced reporters.

For instance, I covered one of the peace rallies in Rome. A huge event. There was absolutely no anti-Americanism. No Bush effigies, no stamping on American flags. Families, old ladies, priests and nuns all marched the streets calling for peace. NPR aired some of my spots but many news outlets didn't cover this march. I think there were 3 million people!

We aren't getting this news about anti-war, not anti-America, in the U.S. press because there are few reporters in the area passing on the news. International news just isn't a priority, which makes freelancing abroad difficult at times.

Ashley Gross: So even if they can get stories on the cheap from freelancers, editors still aren't interested?

Nancy Greenleese: Correct, Ashley.

A bio of Nancy Greenlease is here.

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

Oooooooh, shiny!

An oldie, but a goodie.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 AM | Get permalink

More looting in Iraq.

Vandalism, too. But, according to Time, it was done mainly by US troops. As a result, the former Saddam International Airport in Baghdad has to be rebuilt.

U.S. estimates of the cost of the damage and theft begin at a few million dollars and go as high as $100 million. Airport workers say even now air conditioners and other equipment are regularly stolen. "Soldiers do this stuff all the time, everywhere. It's warfare," says a U.S. military official. "But the conflict was over when this was done. These are just bored soldiers." Says Welsh: "If we're here to rebuild the country, then anything we break we have to fix. We need to train these guys to go from shoot-it-up to securing infrastructure. Otherwise we're just making more work for ourselves. And we have to pay for it."

Via wood s lot.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink

Pop quiz!

What company had a profit of US $4.1 billion last year, and is nonetheless trying to wring concessions out of the union that represents its workers? Can you say 'Verizon'?

Defining "reality" has become a crucial imperative for Verizon—the largest of the nation's telecommunications giants and the second most profitable—as it rolls toward an angry midsummer collision with the Communications Workers of America. Contracts covering 75,000 workers expire August 2, and based on its posture at the bargaining table so far, the company appears bent on wresting away prized benefits.

Verizon is demanding that employees pick up a much greater share of their health benefits and retirement plans, according to union officials. It has also hammered at the issue of absenteeism and, in conjunction with that, is seeking rights to subcontract work as needed and to lay off any worker hired within the past eight years, while transferring others out of the Northeast as necessary.

Those concessions are needed, company officials insist, for the firm to remain competitive in the precarious telecom world. That the changes entail a dramatic rollback for a major segment of the country's unionized private-sector workforce, the company holds, is just unfortunate collateral economic damage.

CWA officials insist that the concessions themselves are the company's main goal.

"They are taking advantage of turmoil in the industry, an anti-union climate, and a national health care crisis to drive down our members' standard of living," said Bob Master, Northeast legislative director for the CWA. "They don't need this to be competitive; they see an opportunity and they're taking it."

Via The Mad Prophet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink

New Mikhaela cartoon.

Over here!

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

I.F. Stone.

If that name doesn't mean anything to you, you really should read Victor Navasky's appreciation of the legendary investigative journalist in The Nation. And if you do know Stone and his work, you'll pick up some stories about him that you haven't heard.

To me, I.F. Stone, né Isadore Feinstein, known to his friends as Izzy, was an event-making man. He was event-making not because Izzy and his little newsletter, I.F. Stone's Weekly (later biweekly), were right about McCarthyism, right about the war in Vietnam (he was one of the first to raise questions about the authenticity of the Gulf of Tonkin incident), right about the Democrats' repeated failure to live up to their own principles, right about what he called, long before the US invasion of Iraq, the "Pax Americana." Writing in The Nation (which he served as Washington editor in the 1940s), he was prophetic about the Holocaust, which in 1942 he called "a murder of a people" "so appalling...that men would shudder at its horrors for centuries to come." He was even, by the way, prescient about the meltdown of the Soviet Union. In 1984, seven years before it happened, he told Andrew Patner, the young Chicago journalist who had the wit to debrief Izzy on tape, that "all these dictatorships look so goddamned powerful. [But I think] one day they [will] just collapse. They're rigid, and rigid structures crack."

It's the way he was right, the way he lived his life, the way he did his journalism that magnified his influence, made him something of a role model for the most idealistic of the next generation. This college dropout who couldn't see without his Coke-bottle glasses, and who couldn't hear without his hearing aid (which he turned on and off strategically), was something of a pariah among his peers in 1953, the nadir of McCarthyism, when he founded I.F. Stone's Weekly. His name was on a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee list of the eighty-two "most active and typical sponsors of Communist-front organizations" (which in Izzy's case meant mainly popular front, antifascist organizations or civil liberties groups upholding the Bill of Rights against those who would undermine it in the name of combating a phantom domestic Red Menace).

When Izzy founded the weekly, with the help of a $3,000 loan from a friend and a 5,300-name subscription list inherited from the defunct PM and its successor progressive papers, also defunct, he was unemployed and some thought unemployable, including by The Nation. (Freda Kirchwey, The Nation's editor, who had fired him as Washington editor when he didn't notify her that he had signed on with PM to become the first journalist to travel with the Jewish underground to the Holy Land, was reluctant to re-employ him.)

But in short order, although he never attended presidential press conferences, cultivated no highly placed inside sources and declined to attend off-the-record briefings, time and again he scooped the most powerful press corps in the world.

Magpie had the good fortune to interview I.F. Stone in the early 1980s, a few years before his death. What we most remember about Stone is a mind that was so quick to make connections between things that we had to work hard to follow. And we remember a journalist who could talk about Thucydides' comments on the war between Athens and Sparta as easily as he could discuss Ronald Reagan's latest economic policy blunders. In his article, Navasky lists some of the journalists who I.F. Stone inspired to take up the pen. Magpie is one of them.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

The dog really did eat it.

Honest.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

Can Dubya get re-elected?

Probably not, says Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe.

Here's why the economy is likely to rain on George Bush's 2004 election parade: For starters, the unemployment numbers are truly awful. Since Bush took office the economy has shed almost 2.5 million jobs, the worst performance since the administration of Herbert Hoover. A weak job market also means flat or declining wages and benefits for those employed.

Most people are not moved by statistics. They pay attention to their own economic condition. The same problem afflicted Bush I. The economic numbers really weren't all that bad - the official recession was fairly shallow - but people felt terrible.

This time people are not likely to feel great in the fall of 2004. Few economists expect a dramatic turnaround either in the stock market or in the unemployment numbers. Stocks have rebounded slightly, but corporate profits have not gained enough ground to justify the kind of stock market growth that people took for granted in the booming 1990s. And businesses are trying to rebuild profits by shedding labor - which means less new job creation and flat wages.

Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. Their website is really worth checking out regularly. So is their blog.

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

The most dangerous job in Canada. (And in the US, too.)

And no, says police-beat reporter Elizabeth LeReverend, it's not being a cop.

The myth that policing is the most dangerous occupation is a pervasive one. We hear often how the men and women of law enforcement put themselves in mortal danger every time they put on a uniform. Certainly, police put themselves in harm's way, and it is undeniable that they are injured and killed on the job far too often. When an officer is murdered on the job, public outrage is justified. But the often-repeated claim that policing is the most dangerous job just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Far more women are killed by an intimate partner in a single year in this country than are officers killed in the line of duty. It has always been so. [...]

In contrast to merely being a woman who is, or has been, in an intimate relationship, policing is much safer. It is no more dangerous than any other job in which workers must deal with the public. It's no riskier than being a retail worker. Police officers are injured no more often than motel clerks or service station attendants. Occupational Health and Safety statistics, based on claims for workers' compensation, show that farmers, miners, loggers, nurses, taxi drivers, commercial fishers and construction workers are injured and killed much more often than police.

And yet, when a worker in another occupation dies on the job, there seldom follows the media attention, or the public outcry, that is so justified when a police officer dies on duty. Across Canada, memorials have been built to honour those who died on the job in such fields as mining, sailing, firefighting and other hazardous jobs. But a memorial to women killed by an intimate partner? Not yet.

By the way, Magpie did her homework on this one.

The last year for which we could find figures for both deaths of law enforcement officers in the line of duty and women killed by intimate partners was 2000. According to statistics kept by the FBI, 51 law enforcment officers were killed on duty during 2000, while 1247 women died at the hands of intimate partners. [Warning: Those links open PDF files.] Women murdered by their partners made up 33.5 percent of the total number of women murdered in that year. For comparison, only 3.7 percent of the men murdered in 2000 were killed by an intimate partner.

Via Rabble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, July 9, 2003

UK government doubts any WMDs will be found in Iraq.

'Very senior sources' in the UK government have 'virtually ruled out the possibility of finding weapons,' reports the BBC. Those sources say that they believe the Saddam Hussein government had WMDs at one point, but that the weapons were hidden or destroyed before the war. Since the UK government rested its argument for going to war on the threat posed by Iraqi WMDs, admitting that those weapons don't exist could have serious political consequence for Tony Blair's government.

[BBC political editor] Andrew Marr said: "Right at the top of Whitehall, they no longer believe that weapons of mass destruction are likely to turn up in Iraq.

"They do think there were weapons programmes there, they believe that other stuff - interviews with Iraqi scientists, paperwork, dossiers - that will turn up.

"But the actual weapons, the tubs of the evil stuff, the rusting missiles, no, belief that that will actually be available, can be shown to cameras, that is trickling away very fast at the top of government."

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

And before we forget.

Happy first birthday to skippy!

We love his comments about his first post:

what sweet, sweet naivete! for one thing, notice skippy was blogging by himself, and used first person singular. luckily, soon he hired his first intern, then his editorial staff, fact checkers, sales people, head line writers, janitorial service, parking attendants, and moved into skippy international headquarters here in beautiful southern california! and soon he was using the editorial "we" (or is that the royal "we"? we are not sure).

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

Just like everybody else.

Magpie is linking to Crooked Timber today. Pretty good stuff for a blog that's only heading into its third day online.

After reading this post, Magpie is trying to figure out which universe she's living in.

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

More demonstrations in Tehran.

The BBC is reporting that 'disturbances' have taken place in the center of the Iranian capital.

Thousands of motorists, many with their families, converged on the city centre near Tehran University after nightfall, sounding their horns and forming huge traffic jams.

The whole area was swamped by security forces, including riot police, regular police, plainclothes men and hundreds of hardline vigilantes on motorbikes, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Tehran.

Today's 'disturbances' took place despite the attempts of authorities to prevent any demonstrations to mark the anniversary of a 1999 raid on a student dormitory. Dozens of people were injured and several were killed in that raid, and several days of violent rioting followed on the streets of Tehran.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:32 PM | Get permalink

Iraq's WMDs? They never really mattered.

That's basically what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today. According to Rumsfeld, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were what made Washington change its view as to whether Iraq was a threat.

''The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder,'' Rumsfeld said while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ''We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11.''

Rumsfeld also defended Dubya's administration against the charges — now admitted to be true — that the fraudulent documents 'proving' Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger undermine Washington's rationale for the war.

''I think the intelligence has been quite good, and I don't think the fact that there's an instance where something was inaccurate ought to in any way paint a broad brush on the intelligence that we get and suggest that that's a pattern or something. It's not,'' Rumsfeld said.

Meanwhile Dubya continued insisting that WMDs will indeed be found in Iraq.

''There's no doubt in my mind that when it's all said and done the facts will show the world the truth,'' Bush said at a news conference in Pretoria during his five-nation African tour. ''There's going to be, you know, a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I'm absolutely confident in the decision I made.''

Magpie thought the whole notion that 9/11 is what brought Iraq into the crosshairs of the US sounded familiar, so she did a bit of checking. A 30-second Google search turned up this excerpt from a NY Times story that ran in September 2001:

Some senior administration officials, led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, are pressing for the earliest and broadest military campaign against not only the Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan, but also against other suspected terrorist bases in Iraq and in Lebanon's Bekaa region. These officials are seeking to include Iraq on the target list with the aim of toppling President Saddam Hussein, a step long advocated by conservatives who support Mr. Bush.

A number of conservatives circulated a new letter today calling on the president to "make a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power" even if he cannot be linked to the terrorists who struck New York and Washington last week. ["Bush Advisers Split on Scope of Retaliation," Patrick E. Tyler and Elaine Sciolino. New York Times, 20 September 2001]

Given how easy it was to find that quote, Magpie is sure that there's a huge paper trail supporting the case that the war on Iraq was being planned well before fall of last year, when the war drums began beating in earnest. It makes us wonder how important the WMD issue ever was, other than as a convenient way to get the US public to accept a pre-emptive war on Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:14 PM | Get permalink

Uh-oh.

The US Supreme Court's decision on the Texas sodomy law might be letting the country in for more than anyone bargained for. As Bert Archer points out in Eye Weekly, Canada legalized that sort of sex decades ago, and they know where we're heading.

The first thing you should expect is almost immediate bilingualism (look for it sometime towards the middle of April, 2004). It had been coming for a long time here, much like it has down where you are, but still, it came as a bit of a shock at first. The first thing you're going to notice is the cereal boxes: way less white space. You'll have to get used to flipping the box over as often as not when you pick it up off the grocery store shelf to find out whether sugar's the first or second ingredient. At first. But soon, you'll learn that azúcar means sugar and you'll find yourself flipping less often. Of course, the whole government voicemail thing is going to be a huge pain, but give it a few years and your kids will thank you when they can go to Miami for spring break and understand the things the locals are saying about them.

Thanks Deanne!

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

Lunasa, Green Linnet declare a truce.

Irish traditional group Lunasa won't need to sue Green Linnet Records, it appears. The group had theatened their label with court action in a dispute over the master recording used for their most recent CD, Redwood. Lunasa claimed that Green Linnet used an 'inferior' mix and had demanded, without success, that Green Linnet re-press the CD using the proper master. According to Lunasa's management, Green Linnet has now agreed to do so.

The two sides are now in negotiations on the exact settlement. A statement from Lunasa's management is here.

For more on the dispute, see this earlier Magpie post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:49 PM | Get permalink

Want to steal an election?

It's no problem if the election runs on the right kind of electronic voting equipment.

Scoop explains how and why someone might want to tamper with a US election, and then shows exactly how to tamper with touchscreen voting equipment of the type used in many parts of the US.

Well one way to run such a corrupt electoral system might look like this.

- Each voting precinct (or booth) could be fitted with electronic voting systems, optical scanning systems, punch card voting systems or the more modern touchscreen electronic voting machines;

- At the close of play each day the booth/precinct supervisor could be under instructions to compile an electronic record of the votes cast in their booth;

- They might print out a report that contains only the details of the total votes count for that precinct/booth, and then file via modem the full electronic record of votes through to the County supervisor;

- The County Supervisor could be equipped with a special piece of software and a bank of modems that enables all these results to be received and tabulated in the internals of the computer;

- The County Supervisors themselves could be assured that their system was bullet proof, certified and contained tamper-protection mechanisms par excellence;

- The Country Supervisor could be given a range of tools for looking at the data within this software, but nothing to enable them to directly manipulate the results;

- But unbeknownst to the County Supervisor the software could actually create three separate records of the voting data;

- Meanwhile - also unbeknownst to the County Supervisor - these three tables of voting data could be in fact completely insecure and accessible simply through a common database programme, say Microsoft Access;

- Having the three tables would enable you to keep the real data in place – so the system could pass spot tests on individual precincts and booth results (should a precinct supervisor be particularly astute) -while simultaneously enabling you to manipulate the bottom line result;

- Finally you might also enhance the election hacker's powers by including within the software a utility to enable them to cover their tracks by changing the date and time stamps on files and remove evidence of your tampering.

Black Box Voting does an excellent job of keeping track of issues around ballot-tampering and election security.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink

Ayene.

It means 'mirror' in Farsi. And it's also the name of a very beautifully done Iranian website. Make sure to watch 'One Song,' which is available in English as well as Farsi.

Via LadySun.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink

Making the victim.

If you live in the US and you're Arab, south Asian, or Muslim, you don't need Magpie to tell you about how discrimination and prejudice against people like you have increased since 9/11. According to an article in the Village Voice, however, social scientists say that government actions since 9/11 are increasing these biases. Preliminary findings show that actions such as the mass arrests of Muslims and Arabs by the INS are sending 'social signals' to people whose anti-Arab and anti-Muslim biases have already been heightened by the 9/11 terrorism.

"We're trying to figure out who we should be nervous about. We're looking for social cues to tell us," said David R. Harris, a racial demographer at the University of Michigan. "If the federal government has rules that tell us, or certain people get pulled off planes, that's telling us pretty blatantly that this is the group to worry about."

By requiring male immigrants from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and other Muslim countries to register with authorities, the government is signaling that all males from those countries are dangerous, Harris and others agree. A similar message was sent in the months after 9-11, when the Justice Department detained 750 immigrants, mostly South Asian and Middle Eastern, on minor immigration violations to look for terrorist ties. A recent Department of Justice internal report tells how the government held many people without any proof of terrorist links, often for long periods of time, effectively stigmatizing entire groups.

In turn, Linda Skitka's study found that the more people reported feeling angry and threatened, the more willing they were to restrict civil liberties. The researchers did discover, however, that people who engaged in what the study termed "value affirmation," including donating blood and even flying an American flag, in general became more politically tolerant after the attack.

Via veiled4allah.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

US soldiers' morale at 'rock bottom.'

Harsh conditions, shifting timetables for troop rotation, and attacks that have killed almost 30 soldiers since May 1 have dropped the morale of US troops in Iraq through the floor, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated. "Most soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home," said one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity.

In some units, there has been an increase in letters from the Red Cross stating soldiers are needed at home, as well as daily instances of female troops being sent home due to pregnancy. [...]

Security threats, heat, harsh living conditions, and, for some soldiers, waiting and boredom have gradually eroded spirits. An estimated 9,000 troops from the 3rd Infantry Division - most deployed for at least six months and some for more than a year - have been waiting for several weeks, without a mission, to return to the United States, officers say.

In one Army unit, an officer described the mentality of troops. "They vent to anyone who will listen. They write letters, they cry, they yell. Many of them walk around looking visibly tired and depressed.... We feel like pawns in a game that we have no voice [in]."

If she's quiet, this crowgirl can hear the voices of US soldiers in Vietnam saying many of the same things as current soldiers told the Monitor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

War on Criticism escalating.

That bastion of accurate and unbiased journalism, The Onion, reports that Dubya is asking Congress for US $30 billion to continue the War on Criticism.

Sadly, the threat of criticism is still with us," Bush told members of Congress during a 2 p.m. televised address. "We thought we had defeated criticism with our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We thought we had struck at its very heart with the broad discretionary powers of the USA Patriot Act. And we thought that the ratings victory of Fox News, America's News Channel, might signal the beginning of a lasting peace with the media. Yet, despite all this, criticism abounds."

Critical activities, Bush noted, have not returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels, when well-organized, coordinated attacks on his administration were carried out on a near-daily basis. But in spite of the National Criticism Alert Level holding steady at yellow (elevated), administration officials warn of severe impending attacks.

This crowgirl has to admit that it's pretty hard to tell satire from reality in the US these days.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

'Bring 'em on!'

Editorial cartoonist Tony Auth's response.

Via Mikhaela.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:35 PM | Get permalink

Remember: The Iraq war ended over two months ago.

At least that's what Dubya told the US and the world from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Kittyhawk on May Day.

Numbers tell a different story, however, as the number of US troops dead in action in Iraq approaches the level of the first Gulf War. The total for the 1991 war was 147. As of Wednesday, the current death toll in Iraq is 143. For reference, that number stood at 114 when Dubya made his May 1 speech.

US military authorities also acknowledge 68 deaths in non-hostile circumstances.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:29 PM | Get permalink

Same-sex marriages legal in another Canadian province.

British Columbia has become the second Canadian province to allow same-sex marriages after the provincial Court of Appeal lifted a temporary ban it issued last year. At least five same-sex couples obtained marriage licenses in the province on Tuesday, after the court's action.

The Appeal Court had earlier ruled in favour of same-sex marriages but imposed a ban until next July to permit the federal government to draft a new law redefining marriage.

But gay groups asked the court to revisit its moratorium after an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling opened the door to same-sex marriages in that province and Ottawa began drafting a new marriage law.

The three-member Appeal Court panel noted neither the B.C. nor federal attorneys general opposed lifting the ban.

"It is also apparent that any further delay in implementing the remedies will result in an unequal application of the law between Ontario and British Columbia," the decision said.

The federal government in Ottawa has indicated that it will enact legislation to legalize same-sex marriages nationwide by sometime later this year.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:19 PM | Get permalink

When did Dubya know he was lying about Iraq's nuclear program?

Well before the White House has been letting on, it appears. The BBC reports that the CIA warned other US government departments — including the White House — that claims about Iraq's attempt to buy uranium from Niger were false almost a year before Dubya used them to beat the drums for war against Iraq.

Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, the CIA has told the BBC.

On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January.

But the CIA has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:11 PM | Get permalink

Mmmmmmm.

That Teresa Nielsen Hayden sure knows how to mix drinks. Magpie thinks a Liberal Forage (or two) may be just the thing for the next hot July day in Portland

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

When the Indians won.

Via Wampum, this link to a story about the North Carolina Indians who kicked the Ku Klux Klan's butt.

On the evening of Jan. 18, 1958, several hundred Lumbees gathered around a pasture near Hayes Pond to end the Ku Klux Klan's invasion of the Indian community.

News had spread that the Klan was coming to put a stop to race mixing in Robeson County. Klansmen had burned crosses in Lumberton and St. Pauls several days before. The Klan distributed fliers advertising the demonstration at Hayes Pond, now Mill Pond, near Maxton.

Several Indian leaders decided that they would not allow the Klan into the community. They organized a defense, and people followed carrying shotguns and rifles. More than a thousand Indians showed up for the rally, compared with about 25 Klansmen.

When the leader of the rally, James "Catfish" Cole, stood to speak, the Indians moved in from several directions. The Indians fired their weapons into the air, driving the Klansmen out of the field.

No one was seriously injured.

Although not well known to non-Indians, especially those living outside North Carolina, the Lumbeesare the ninth largest Indian tribe in the U.S., and by far the largest tribe east of the Mississippi, counting 40,000 members. Like many other tribes, the existence of the Lumbees is not formally recognized by the federal government. (A fact for which former US Sen. Jesse Helms is in part responsible.) However, this may be about to change.

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

The Guardian is coming.

The UK Guardian is planning a US edition. The US Guardian will be a weekly news magazine, and will start publishing in time to cover the 2004 presidential campaign.

Regular Magpie readers have undoubtedly noticed how often we cite Guardian articles. The thought of their wonderfully left-leaning reporting being available on US newsstands just makes us grin.

Via Daily Kos.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Monday, July 7, 2003

Making lemonade in Argentina.

The collapse of the Argentine economy in late 2001/early 2002 led to massive unemployment, political unrest, and economic upheavals. During that period, many factories were abandoned by their owners, and thousands of workers were owed huge amounts of back pay. Instead of taking the situation lying down, many Argentine workers joined with neighborhood associations to convince bankruptcy courts to give the abandoned companies to the workers. As the NY Times reports, at least 10,000 workers make their livings as part of 160 cooperative factories.

With 172 workers making aluminum cans, foil and wrappers, IMPA — the Spanish acronym for Metallurgical and Plastic Industries of Argentina — is the largest of the so-called retrieved factories here [in Buenos Aires]. Production is still far from the peaks of the 1990's, but since workers took over with an initial 50 employees under contract, production has tripled, to 50 tons a month.

"We could easily be turning out 90 tons a month, because we've got the orders but not the working capital," said Guillermo Robledo, chosen by the workers to be the plant manager. Instead, he added, "we're in the ironic position of having to extend 60-day credit lines to our customers, some of whom are large multinationals" with much easier access to capital than a workers' cooperative.

Like most of the cooperatives, this factory is run by an administrative council, whose members are elected by the workers. Monthly assemblies are held to discuss issues like salaries — which have nearly doubled since the low point as the economy collapsed — how many new workers to hire and who they should be.

The IMPA workers have even voted to turn space that was not being used into a neighborhood cultural and arts center. Dance, drama and music classes and performances now take place regularly there, movies are shown in a small theater on an upper floor and artists have been allowed to set up studios where they paint, draw and sculpture.

"Being a factory and a cultural center simultaneously is something unique," said Eduardo Murúa, a leader of the cooperative. The positive response to the cultural activities, he said, provides "an umbrella that prevents the banks from acting against us" and has gained the factory favorable publicity and financial support from city government.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

White House admits it was wrong on Iraq-Niger uranium purchase. Probably. We think.

Here's the meat of the NY Times story saying that the White House has changed its position on the uranium claim. See what you think.

Tonight, after Air Force One had departed, White House officials issued a statement in Mr. Fleischer's name that made clear that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement.

"There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa," the statement said. "However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made."

In other words, said one senior official, "we couldn't prove it, and it might in fact be wrong."

How Mr. Bush's statement made it into last January's State of the Union address is still unclear. No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate. That document contained a footnote — in a separate section of the report, on another subject — noting that State Department experts were doubtful of the claims that Mr. Hussein had sought uranium.

Update: White House press flack Ari Fleischer tried to clear this matter up earlier in the day. Talking Points Memo has posted part of the transcript. Magpie is not sure Fleischer was speaking English.

[Free reg. req'd. for NY Times]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:36 PM | Get permalink

'Something of a political revolution' in Hong Kong.

In Asia Times, A Lin Neumann analyzes the effects of last week's massive demonstrations against a proposed new national security law for Hong Kong. Known as section 23, that law would muzzle the press, make illegal many forms of political protest, and curtail civil liberties. Half a million people went to the streets in protest, and the Hong Kong government had no choice but to back down on passing the law. In this case, the people won — which is no small thing in a country like China, which is not known for its tolerance of dissent. Neumann believes that 'No matter how Beijing fixes the game, democracy just won't go away in Hong Kong.'

Given that Hong Kong does not have a democratic government, fear of coming repression seems reasonable. The legislature is dominated by pro-Beijing "functional" representatives elected by special interests whose voting power was engineered by China to outstrip the minority of directly elected lawmakers. [Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's] "re-election" last year to another five-year term was a bad joke. An 800-member Beijing-appointed electoral council made him the only nominee and then promptly voted him in with the kind of landslide that that only occurs in totalitarian countries.

Once he was re-upped for another term, practically his first act was to create a new layer of government ministers accountable only to him and, by extension, to the mainland.

Add to this dysfunctional and unrepresentative government, a slumping economy and the poorly managed SARS crisis, and you have a classic climate for a referendum on the government. Article 23 was the fuse and July 1 the perfect symbolic date.

In effect, Hong Kong has now voted with its feet, and Tung must face the consequences. When Liberal Party chairman James Tien, a Tung insider, resigned from the Executive Council over the weekend as a result of the flap over Article 23, the beleaguered chief executive seemed to have lost not just the Article 23 battle but his ability to rule.

This is a real pickle for Beijing. If China forces the legislation now, it stands a substantial chance of being defeated without the Liberal Party's votes. If the legislation is materially altered, opened to real public debate and delayed as critics want, it will be a triumph for the democracy of the streets. All this in China. Imagine that.

Update: For another view of the same events, check out this article by Japanese journalist Yoichi Shimatsu at Pacific News Service. Rather than being about civil liberties, Shimatsu thinks that darker impulses may have been lurking below the protests.

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

Very light blogging today.

Magpie is having a very busy Monday. But later, we promise.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:27 PM | Get permalink

Sunday, July 6, 2003

Confess or die.

That's the choice being given to two UK citizens being held on suspicion of terrorism at the US Guantanamo base in Cuba. According to the UK Observer, US military authorities have told Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abassi that they can either confess and receive a 20-year sentence in prison, or go in front of a military tribunal and be sentenced to death. The newspaper quotes sources 'close to the process' as saying that the dilemma in meant to encourage the prisoners to cooperate with their captors.

Gareth Peirce, who acts for Moazzam Begg, said: 'Anything that any human being says or admits under threat of brutality is regarded internationally and nationally as worthless. It makes the process an abuse. Moazzam Begg had a year in Bagram airbase and then six months in Guantanamo Bay. If this treatment happened for an hour in a British police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible,' she said.

Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, which is leading the campaign for the two men, said: 'Our concern is that there will be no meaningful way of testing the evidence against these people. The US Defence Department has set itself up as prosecution, judge and defence counsel and has created the rules of trial. This is patently a kangaroo court.'

The Observer reports that UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will ask US Secretary of State Colin Powell to give Begg and Abassi into British custody so that that can stand trial in the UK under English law. The UK government is particularly disturbed by the possibility that the two men could face the death penalty, which is not used a a punishment in the UK.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:06 PM | Get permalink

Dazed and confused.

Dubya's beligerent rhetoric on the Fourth of July doesn't fit the realities of the US, a few months down the road from the Iraq invasion. Instead of exuding confidence, says an article by Tim Harper in the Toronto Star, people in the US are confused and troubled. US troops in Iraq are targets of deadly attacks; Iraq's WMDs continue to be will-of-the wisps; the Taliban is on the comeback trail in Afghanistan; and the economy continues to slide.

"The realization has finally taken root in this country that Iraq is a problem, that it will end up with a fair number of U.S. casualties and there is no exit strategy," says Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute research foundation.

"The sense of triumph, the exultation, the sense that we were doing something good in fighting terrorism and getting rid of Saddam will become a passing notion."

As Iraq slides out of its control, the Bush administration is paying the price for pursuing unilateralism — now going cap in hand to other countries, pleading for international help for its dispirited and beleaguered troops in the country.

"Begging Poland and Ukraine and Nicaragua and Honduras to help us is rather humiliating and degrading when we are supposed to be the great power," says Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategic Institute and author of American Unilateralism And The Failure Of Good Intentions.

Speaking from Europe, Prestowitz saystraditional allies, whom Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls the "new Europe," want no part of the chaos in Iraq and don't want to fight under American command.

"We are now paying the price of our own cynicism and the perception in Europe of an America betraying its own ideals. It may be a silent price at home, but I hear it everywhere (in Europe.)"

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:59 PM | Get permalink

Salsa Celtica.

Every once in awhile, Magpie gets knocked totally for a loop by some new music. Salsa Celtica is definitely one of those times. Imagine a salsa band with bagpipes. Or a Scottish folk band with a Latin horn section. Get the picture? The only close musical comparison we can think of is Canada's La Bottine Souriante, who have mixed traditional Quebecois music with horns and Latin rhythms.

It's always dangerous when musicians decide to mix two genres. Without a firm grounding in both musical styles, they risk becoming a novelty act or — even worse — making music that is just plain bad. Salsa Celtica know what they're doing, and their integration of Latin and Scottish musical elements is seamless. Plus they rock!

Their current album, La Agua de Vida, is the group's third outing, and is one of the best CDs Magpie has heard recently. You can hear MP3 snippets of the tracks from this CD (and from Salsa Celtica's second album, too) if you go here. Mapgie recommends listening to 'Cumbia de Celtica' and 'Auld Lang Syne.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:04 AM | Get permalink

Tehran underground.

The art in the Metro is just beautiful.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink