Magpie

Saturday, August 2, 2003

US to Niger: Shut up.

The UK Telegraph reports that the US has told Niger's president to stop talking about Iraq's alleged purchases of his country's uranium. According to the paper, former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Herman Cohen dropped in on President Mamadou Tandja to let him know about Washington's displeasure with Niger's recent statements on the uranium. The country's foreign minister recently told the Telegraph that Niger had never sold uranium to Iraq, and challenged the US and UK governments to prove their allegations about such sales.

One [senior Niger official] said: "Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up." [...]

American officials denied that there had been any attempt to "gag" the Niger government. The Niamey official, however, said that there was "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger".

He said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. "Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive."

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

Guess who helped ensure Argentina's economic collapse?

During the 1990s, Argentina was the poster child for free-market economics. The government sold off publicly-owned companies, deregulated the economy, and pegged its currency to the dollar. In the short run, everything was rosy. But by early 2002, Argentina was defaulting on its debts and a deep recession idled millions of workers and dropped a huge proportion of the population into poverty.

A major report in Sunday's Washington Post identifies the culprits responsible for Argentina's current woes. Hint: It's the same group who helped Enron and all those dot-com companies commit financial fraud.

Big securities firms reaped nearly $1 billion in fees from underwriting Argentine government bonds during the decade 1991-2001, and those firms' analysts were generally the ones producing the most bullish and influential reports on the country. Similar conflicts of interest involving analysts' research have come to light in other flameouts of the "bubble" era, such as Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. In Argentina's case, though, the injured party was not a group of stockholders or 401(k) owners, it was South America's second-largest country.

Other factors besides optimistic analyses impelled foreigners to pour funds into Argentina with such reckless abandon as to make the eventual crash more likely and more devastating. One was Wall Street's system for rating the performance of mutual fund and pension fund managers, who were major buyers of Argentine bonds. Bizarrely, the system rewarded investing in emerging markets with the biggest debts -- and Argentina was often No. 1 on that list during the 1990s.

Within the financial fraternity, some acknowledge that this behavior was a major contributor to the downfall of a country that prided itself on following free-market tenets. That is because the optimism emanating from Wall Street, combined with the heavy inflow of money, made the Argentine government comfortable issuing more and more bonds, driving its debt to levels that would ultimately prove ruinous.

Magpie was poking around the web for some history on the 'Argentine miracle,' and found this rather optimistic 1998 evaluation of Argentina by a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter economist. There won't be any prognostication points awarded to Carlos Janada, we fear.

Update: The Mad Prophet points to this excellent article about the workers' co-op movement that has sprung up in response to Argentina's economic collapse.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:30 PM | Get permalink

This sure makes us feel safer.

A 17-year-old Massachusetts teenager travelling with his family was arrested and arraigned in district court on charges of making a bombing/hijacking threat because of a note in his luggage. The Boston Globe reports that the following note was found in David Socha's bag during a random search:

According to the police report, the note, which was placed on top of clothes in a black gym bag read: ''[Expletive] you. Stay the [expletive] out of my bag you [expletive] sucker. Have you found a [expletive] bomb yet? No, just clothes. Am I right? Yea, so [expletive] you.''

There was no bomb in the bag, and the Globe reports that there was no disturbance as a result of Socha's note.

According to the police report, when he was confronted by State Police, Socha told his parents, ''I can explain this. I wrote a note in my bag asking if there was a bomb in it and telling them to stay out.'' There were no other delays at the airport due to the alleged threat, said [Transportation Security Administration spokesperson Ann] Davis, and the United flight departed from Logan on schedule.

''There was no commotion whatsoever,'' Davis said. ''But when [we] see the word `bomb,' we take it very seriously. In today's security environment, there's no room for that sort of joking.''

Is this what it's come to as a result of post 9/11 paranoia? Some kid's bad joke becomes criminal activity to be dealt with by the legal system? This crowgirl is sure that would-be terrorists all over the world are considering other careers now that US authorities have demonstrated how tough they are.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:59 PM | Get permalink

Howdy.

A big ol' Magpie hello and hearty handshake to blogorrrhoea, which has a name that's very hard for us to type.

Nonetheless, blogorrrhoea is one of those blogs that we're embarassed that we don't read more often, because there's always something worth our time. This visit, it's a post on the Australian intervention in the Solomon Islands — yet another military adventure hiding under the cloak of anti-terrorism.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:33 PM | Get permalink

Dean is going after Dubya on his home turf.

A press release for a story in next week's issue of US News & World Report gives details of a new ad that for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean that starts running on Monday.

In the ad, which Dean taped last Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he wears a blue, open-necked work shirt, faces the camera, and says, "I want to change George Bush's reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable healthcare, and create new jobs... Has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?"

The media buy cost between $100,000 and $200,000, U.S. News has learned. It will run in Austin, 87 miles away from where Bush is vacationing in Crawford.

According to US News, the ad is slated to run only in Texas.

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

Howdy.

A big ol' Magpie howareya to paulthom.org.

Although we have to admit that when we went over to take a look-see at the blog with a new link to Magpie, we weren't expecting any sort of Spanish Inquisition.

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

Update on the Green Linnet lawsuit.

Magpie has noticed that a number of recent visitors have been searching for information on the lawsuit that Green Linnet Records is facing because of its alleged non-payment of royalities to some of its artists. Green Linnet is one of the oldest and largest labels dealing in Irish traditional music.

We did some prowling around the web, and here's the best information we've found.

The Irish Echo has a long story about the lawsuit in its July 16–22 issue, describing which artists are involved and what the financial issues are. Both sides were talked to.

Speaking from Graffington, England, where Cherish the Ladies was on tour, Joanie Madden said: "We have not received a dime since 'Threads of Time,' the first Cherish the Ladies album for RCA in 1998." After fulfilling their three-album deal between 1992 and 1997 for Green Linnet, the group signed with RCA Victor. "We never got another royalty statement from Green Linnet until Bob Donnelly demanded it, which was maybe six months or so ago."

Madden also pointed out that "Green Linnet has my own compositions on a bunch of compilation records. They had no right to place any of my own tracks on any compilation without my prior written consent and they have never paid a dime in royalties for those."

The Irish website Live Ireland has a long report/commentary on the lawsuit here. It's largely based on a press release from the lawyer representing the artists who are suing Green Linnet, but it has a good discussion of the changing relationship between artists and labels as recording and disc-pressing technology gets cheaper and more widely available.

There is another huge and under-reported factor in regard to the surging number of "independents" in the traditional field. It is no longer necessary to have a full, billion track studio with all the bells and whistles to capture a great sound. The big studios may be necessary in the classical field, or for recordings featuring large ensembles. But, most traditional music recordings involve a relatively few musicians, and the advances in electronic recording capabilities have ensured that major artists like Sean Tyrrell can record in their own homes and have a perfectly engineered product to take to market. Real engineering skill is still vital, but the equipment can be rented--or in some cases borrowed--for comparatively little money. And, it is easily transportable, as everything in the electronics field continues to get smaller and smaller.

Best of all from the artists' points of view is what a musician said years ago. " When I sell a number of albums to a shop, I know exactly what my profit is. And, I know it immediately." Long gone are the days when a musician or singer had to be affiliated with a major company like Green Linnet or Shanachie in order to be recognized. It is still advantageous in terms of ease and scope. But, it is not necessary. Add to all of this the growing number of " comers " in the field like the aforementioned Compass, Narada, Greentrax or a host of others, and the financial, prestige, production and distribution stranglehold companies like Linnet and Shanachie used to enjoy in the traditional field don't seem so vast, after all.

This case will, of course, have enormous ripple effects throughout the traditional field. If a settlement or judgment force Green Linnet under, some of its competitors might see opportunity. In that eventuality, ( by no means a certainty ) those competitors should also see a warning. Relationships with artists are more important than ever. The artists can, and will, succeed on their own. Under all this lies an unprecedented, subtle sea change in the artist-recording company marriage.It may be necessary in the multi-million selling rock or pop album market to have a Sony or some other giant behind an act. But, the traditional Irish field is finite. Large and growing. But finite. It can be reached, still, by individuals and groups with talent, belief and vision. That is part of its great appeal. Several of the companies in the traditional field get it. For the others, it no longer will do to look at the artists as captive employees. They are now partners.

In addition, Magpie posted on the difficulties that Irish traditional group Lunasa were having with Green Linnet here and here. Both posts have additional links.

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

Uh-oh.

A new executive order from Dubya has amended the Patriot Act in a truly dangerous way.

The amendment grants librarians increased latitude for surveillance, pursuit, and even punishment of those who do not use the [library] system appropriately. For example, librarians will now have the power to exact fines of up to $1.00 per day, up from the current average of ten cents. They will also have the power to flog, keelhaul, and detain indefinitely those who abuse library privileges, as well as wear firearms, although silencers will be required for these.

Magpie suggests getting those library books back on time.

Via LISNews.com.

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

Who turned off the permafrost?

One of the arguments made by oil companies who want to open up Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling is that exploration activities will only happen during the winter. During those months, the ground is frozen and covered with snow, making it possible to operate heavy equipment without tearing up the tundra. In fact, state rules require at least six inches of snow cover.

Guess what? The number of days cold enough to allow heavy equipment use have dropped drasically over the last three decades, from over 200 in 1930 to 103 in 2002. Almost all climatologists attribute the change to global warming.

One would think that the oil companies would just have to get used to a shorter exploration season, but the US Energy Department has other plans. The department has given $270,000 to study how equipment can be used even when there's no snow cover.

But wait — it gets even better:

In a June 3 news release, the Energy Department did not refer to global warming. Instead, it quoted Mike Smith, the assistant energy secretary for fossil energy, as saying the grant will be combined with $70,000 put up by oil companies to "refine our understanding of the tundra's resistance to disturbances."

But according to the [state of Alaska's] description of the research, the shorter period for frozen tundra "appears consistent with findings of general warming in the Alaska Arctic associated with global climate change." [...]

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a vocal opponent of development in the refuge, said that "for years, proponents of drilling in the Arctic refuge have unpersuasively argued that by doing all their development during the winter season on ice roads, the impact on the tundra would be negligible.

"Now they admit that they can't afford to drill unless they are allowed to trample the tundra in the nonwinter season," he said. "The supreme irony is that the winter season is getting shorter because of a pronounced warming of the climate brought on, in part, by the burning of oil."

Via gordon.coale.

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

Friday, August 1, 2003

The real US unemployment rate.

There was a lot of good stuff at Wampum today. This time, we want to call your attention to the results of MB's latest dive into the numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. She's used them to update her May estimate on the actual unemployment rate in the US, and she's come up with a somewhat different figure than the one that the feds issued earlier today.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:33 PM | Get permalink

What day is it?

It's Flashback Friday! MB has another interesting trove this week, but this article here was the one that caught Magpie's interest.

U.S. OFFICIALS DEFEND PANAMA'S DEMOCRACY AS 'ON TRACK' Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post July 31, 1991

The Bush administration yesterday defended the much-criticized record of the post-Noriega government in Panama, declaring that while the country's problems are imposing, "democratization" is on track.

Senior State and Defense department officials, appearing at a congressional hearing, said most of Panama's current woes are the legacy of its ousted strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and claimed that the basic situation has greatly improved since the U.S. invasion that...

So now that you appetite is whetted, get yourself over to Wampum and see what else MB has brought back from 1991.

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

How to rebuild Iraq faster.

Put the Iraqis in charge.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:40 PM | Get permalink

A lovely day in the neighborhood.

Some fool broke into Magpie's car and stole the stereo. With the disc for the most recent Liz Carroll CD still in it. Grrrrr.

On the positive side, it means Magpie isn't at her job today.

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

Spinning the US unemployment news.

The US unemployment rate dropped to 6.2 percent in July. It had been 6.4 percent in June. Good news, right? Well, let's take a look.

Here are the first half-dozen stories listed in Google News. (Given that a lot of people only read headlines or the first couple of sentences of the story, the frame in which the media put a story is important.)

US Notes Decline as US Unemployment Rate Drops in July
Bloomberg - 2 hours ago
1 (Bloomberg) -- US Treasuries dropped in New York trading after a government report
today showed the unemployment rate fell in July, a sign the economy may be ...

US unemployment rate down, businesses cut payrolls again
CBC News, Canada - 3 hours ago
WASHINGTON - The unemployment picture south of the border remained gloomy last month
as businesses ... The US jobless rate came in at 6.2 per cent, down 0.2 of a ...

US unemployment falls to 6.2pc
Business World, Ireland - 3 hours ago
The unemployment rate fell to 6.2pc from 6.4pc in June, the Labour Department
said. Economists, on average, expected the rate to fall to 6.3pc. ...

US unemployment seen edging lower in July
Forbes - Jul 30, 2003
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US unemployment rate is expected to edge lower in July
after hitting a nine-year high 6.4 percent last month, but analysts believe ...

US unemployment seen edging lower in July
Reuters, UK - Jul 30, 2003
WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - The US unemployment rate is expected to edge lower
in July after hitting a nine-year high 6.4 percent last month, but analysts ...

US Unemployment Rate Drops
Voice of America - Jul 24, 2003
... Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute says the unemployment
numbers offer hope that the US economic recovery is strengthening. ...

But there's something missing from almost all of those examples. Here's part of the Reuters story

The jobless rate slid to 6.2 percent last month from 6.4 percent, the Labor Department said. However, that decline was caused by an exodus of job-hunters from the labor force, not by any surge in hiring.

The number of workers on U.S. payrolls dropped 44,000 -- in contrast to expectations for a rise of 18,000.

So the real picture shows an unemployment rate dropping because job hunters have gotten discouraged and stopped looking for work, or who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and dropped out of the official numbers. Plus the extended drop in the number of people working in the US continued. Not real good news after all, is it? And of the half-dozen news stories above, only one from outside the US (the CBC) gave any indication of the dark cloud inside the silver lining reported by the others.

This is admittedly an unscientific survey of media coverage of this issue, but Magpie suggests that the half dozen stories above are pretty typical of how the positive spin that Washington puts onto even the most ambiguous economic news is picked up by the press. The result is the appearance of positive economic news where a small amount of digging shows that the picture is nowhere near as rosy as the headlines make it seem.

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

How's your geography?

A really fun quiz on the Arab world and Middle East.

(Magpie got them all right.)

Via randomWalks.

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

European and Arab mobile providers getting wrong number in Iraq.

The US occupation government in Iraq has issued the ground rules for companies wanting to bid on three regional mobile phone licenses in Iraq, and guess what? The rules give the advantage to US mobile providers.

According to the BBC, the rules bar any company with more than 5% direct or indirects government ownership from bidding, thus ruling out T-Mobile and Orange. And companies have to have five current licenses or contracts, which rules out companies from countries that hand out a single nationwide license, which rules out providers like Bahrain's Batelco. (Until a few days ago, Batelco was providing mobile service in Baghdad on an ad-hoc basis.) Since the US gives licenses regionally, a US provider could have a slew of licenses for providing service to fewer customers than do many foreign competitors with only a single license.

Some of the firms with significant state ownership which could be barred under bidding rules:
— Orange (France)
— T-Mobile (Germany)
— Telefonica Moviles (Spain)
— KPN (Netherlands)
— NTT DoCoMo (Japan)
— Batelco (Bahrain)
— MTC-Vodafone (Kuwait)
— Etisalat (UAE)

Via also not found in nature.

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

'Good evening. My name is Jim. And I am an economist.'

Even though he suffers from a dread affliction, Canadian Auto Workers economist (not chief economist, mind you) Jim Stanford is getting better. And he has a 12-step program to help other economists shake their demons as well.

Step 9: Learn from those who went before you. Mainstream economics is arrogantly ahistorical. In most cases, capitalism is presented as a natural, eternal state of human affairs. Even the term 'capitalism' is rarely used: naming the system, after all, might imply that there are others. The preferred euphemism is 'market economy,' which implies that the economy is like some big flea market where anybody can set up a card table on Saturday mornings and sell their wares. It's just coincidence that General Electric has $575 billion (U.S.) worth of capital assets sitting on its card table, while you and I have only our brains and our brawn to offer.

Via rabble.

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

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Taking on the phony in the flyboy suit.

At Salon, Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon have some tactical advice for the Democrats. If they want to win in 2004, they shouldn't waste time calling Dubya incompetent (although he is) or showing how bad his record on the issues is (although it is truly terrible). What the Democrats need to do is to undermine Dubya's credibility by showing he's a phony.

Bush's image as a regular guy has helped to obscure the fact that he is an insider with close connections to big business and a natural interest in protecting them. To turn this around, Democrats can use the "phony" message as a nexus to explain the contradiction. How can the everyman who stumbles on his words and has a traveling pillow be the same fellow whose tax cuts leave nothing to poor families with kids? How can a champion of personal responsibility and born-again asceticism engineer such unsustainable budget deficits? How can a leader who claims to be the first White House CEO engage in the kind of shoddy handouts to corporate backers in Iraq that shareholders would never tolerate in a business leader? How can a president so determined to wage the war on terrorism be the same president who starves state and local authorities of critical funds for homeland security? How can the commander in chief so concerned about terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapons be the same leader who leaves Iraqi nuclear sites unattended for weeks? [...]

The message that Bush is a phony needs to be hammered issue after issue, month after month. We'll know this is working when people start using the term in the checkout queues, the gas pumps, the classrooms, the malls, the churches and living rooms across America. The message has to be so simple that Bush's own appearances and announcements, instead of countering the Democrats' attacks, actually underscore them. It has to pick up on areas where voters are already uneasy, like Bush's handling of the corporate fraud scandals and his environmental record.

This crowgirl just loves the illustration Salon used with this story: a picture of Dubya in his flight suit next to a couple of cheesy Elvis impersonators.

[Paid sub or ad view req'd.]

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

Israel's parliament passes controversial marriage bill.

The UK Independent reports that a bill that would disallow Israeli citizenship or residency status to Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens has been approved by the Knesset. While Palestinian and human rights groups blasted the bill as racist and discriminatory, the Sharon government called the legislation a necessary anti-terrorism measure. (Sound familiar?)

Some Israelis believe they are sitting on a demographic time bomb, with an Israeli Arab community, already 20 per cent of the population, growing faster than the Jewish population.

The discrimination is not only against Palestinians, according to human rights groups, but against Israel's own 1.2 million citizens of Palestinian origin as well. The overwhelming majority of Israelis who marry Palestinians are the so-called Israeli Arabs - Palestinians who live in Israel and have Israeli citizenship.

"This bill blatantly discriminates against Israelis of Palestinian origin and their Palestinian spouses," said Hanny Megally of Human Rights Watch. "It's scandalous that the Government has presented this bill, and it's shocking that the Knesset is rushing it through."

The government pushed the vote through at speed, even agreeing to consider it a vote of confidence to get it through. It was passed by 53 votes to 25, with one abstention.

For more information on the marriage bill, see this earlier Magpie post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:35 PM | Get permalink

Bye-bye, Poindexter.

The architect of the discredited online terrorism trading market and the creepy Total Information Awareness program is resigning. One of those anonymous Washington 'officials' tells the BBC that retired Admiral John Poindexter will be gone within a few weeks, largely because of the unfavorable publicity around the terror market. This isn't the first time that Poindexter has had problems in Washington — he was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and destruction of evidence for his activities during the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal (although his convictions were later reversed).

"Everybody certainly recognises Admiral Poindexter's background. And in the context of that background, it became in some ways very difficult for him to receive an objective reading of work that he was doing on behalf of finding terrorists," the official said.

Well, duh.

The only thing that this crowgirl finds worrisome about Pointdexter's resignation is Dubya's remarkable ability to replace one bad functionary with another one who's even worse.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:31 PM | Get permalink

New to the blogroll.

General Glut's Globblog is becoming (along with Wampum), one of Magpie's favorite sources for economic news and analysis, particularly regarding the US.

Today, the General has some words about those supposedly glowing US economic numbers released today. Check the post out, and put the General on your regular rounds of the blogosphere.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:57 PM | Get permalink

Mapping the income universe.

Over at Alternet, Stan Cox has a really interesting idea for understanding how incomes are distributed in the US. Taking large-scale models of the solar system as his guide (a good example is this 40-mile model in Maine), Cox place the median US income in his home town of Salina, Kansas.

Suppose the IRS were to locate the median-income plaque at one of Salina's exits on Interstate 70 and then place plaques symbolizing other incomes along I-70 to the east and west, using a scale of, say, $1,000 of income per mile of road.

The plaque showing the federal poverty level for a family of four in 2002 – about $18,000 – would be located about 25 miles west of Salina, at the exit for Ellsworth, Kansas. Eighteen miles beyond, in the town of Wilson, would be the spot for the "zero income" plaque (assuming the good people of Wilson would accept that dubious distinction).

That's it for the incomes of half of all U.S. households. They would fit within a 43-mile stretch, across only two Kansas counties. [...]

But let's come back down to earth. Ninety-five percent of U.S. households have incomes between zero and $150,000. There, between Wilson and Topeka, Kansas on our income map, can be found almost the entire range of knowledge, skills and political positions that our country has to offer. Yet the top 1% – that million or so families stretching out over the horizon from Missouri to the moon – make a disproportionate share of the economic and political decisions in America.

The distribution of wealth is even more wildly skewed than that of income; the 5% of households with the greatest net worth own almost 60% of the country's wealth. The primary function of excess income is to generate additional wealth, and wealth confers power. The "one person, one vote" principle applies only in the poll booth. Everywhere else, it's that same old skewed distribution.

Don't just read this excerpt, though, because Magpie deliberately didn't include the locations of the average major-corporation CE0 income, or those of the top 400 incomes in the US. You'll be (unpleasantly) surprised when you find out where on the map they're found.

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

Pointing out the obvious.

That's Molly Ivins' summary of the recently released US congressional report on 9/11. It was full of things like how the FBI's antiquated computers kept agents from exchanging important information quickly, or how the rivalry between the CIA and military intelligence kept the CIA from obtaining satellite intelligence about al-Qaeda activities in Afghanistan.

But, as Ivins points out, the report failed to show any link between preventing terrorism and the domestic anti-terror measures that the administration has put in place since 9/11.

But the most striking thing about this report is that none of its conclusions and none of its recommendations have anything to do with the contents of the PATRIOT Act, which was supposedly our government's response to 9-11. All the could-haves, would-haves and should-haves in the report are so far afield from the PATRIOT Act it might as well be on another subject entirely.

Once again, as has often happened in our history, under the pressure of threat and fear, we have harmed our own liberties without any benefit for our safety. Insufficient powers of law enforcement or surveillance are nowhere mentioned in the joint inquiry report as a problem before 9-11. Yet Attorney General John Ashcroft now proposes to expand surveillance powers even further with the PATRIOT II Act. All over the country, local governments have passed resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act and three states have done so, including the very Republican Alaska.

Via Working for Change.

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

Hard luck story.

Washington just can't win, it seems.

First, they tell everyone that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous guy who has WMDs all over Iraq, just waiting to be used against the US and anyone else who pisses him off. So the US invades Iraq and what happens? No WMDs.

So pretty soon the official line changes to 'Well, Saddam may not have had any WMDs built, but he had WMD programs,' programs which were, of course, imminent threats to world peace. The US is sure it's hit the jackpot by taking into custody a number of Iraqi scientists who would surely spill the beans on Saddam's plans.

Unfortunately, reports the Washington Post, all of the Iraqi scientists say that Iraq was not developing nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.

No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Hussein was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:03 AM | Get permalink

Getting some helpful hints from those who know.

That's what a US military delegation was doing in Israel last week.

The current delegation includes relatively high ranking officers from the ground forces and Marines. Among the issues they want to examine are handling guerrillas in a civilian environment, defending forces from attacks, such as patrols in jeeps - the Americans tend to use open Humvees, IDF troops armored jeeps - the use of checkpoints, searches in houses and cars and dealing with suicide attackers.

The Muslim Wake Up! Blog puts this new cooperation between the US and Israeli armies into perspective:

[Will] the US begin using standard Israeli practices like the targeting of civilians, home demolitions, and the use of children as "human shields" (or what the Israelis prefer to call the "neighbor procedure") to protect occupation troops?

But instead of wasting the time and money on these trips to Israel, the Pentagon should just distribute copies of the latest Human Rights Watch report on Israeli occupation tactics--it's chock-full of good ideas.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:47 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Sam Phillips, 1923–2003.

We record anything--anywhere--anytime.
— Sun Records motto

Legendary record producer Sam Phillips has died. Phillips was the founder of Sun Records in Memphis, and was the first to record a very young Elvis Presley. Phillips also put out the early recordings of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Charlie Rich and Roy Orbison. Many will argue that all of these artists did some of their best for Phillips and Sun.

Phillips' success with Elvis on the Sun label was bittersweet. Because of the economics of the record business, Phillips couldn't afford to have such big star on his roster, and he sold Elvis' contract to RCA for $35,000 in 1956.

Phillips died in a Memphis hospital at the age of 80. The cause of death has not been released.

The Country Music Hall of Fame has a short bio of Phillips here.

NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Phillips in 2001. That interview, as well as background information on Sun Records, is here.

A good illustrated history of Sun Records is here.

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

Knowing and not-knowing.

In Haaretz, Amira Hass confronts a belief that is very near and dear to both journalists and political activists — that if people saw for themselves what is happening in Israel (or Iraq, or in Washington) they would view those events differently and, perhaps, act differently as a result of that knowledge.

As an example of activism based on this belief, Hass uses the work of the Israeli women's group Machsom Watch, which monitors the activities of the Israel Defense Force at roadblocks. The Machsom Watch women, of course, don't need to learn much about what Palestinians have to go through at roadblock, but the group makes a point of bringing Israeli women who are less critical of the occupation to the roadblacks so that they can see how the conqueror-and-vanquished relationship between Israel and Palestine plays out in the lives of real people.

There is a very humanistic assumption at work here. It says that because people are rational, the more information they are exposed to, the more independent an opinion they will form, that is free from the all-knowing political propaganda of official spokespeople. This school of thought says that one's ethnic-national identity does not have to lead one to automatically justify the policies of the government that represents that particular identity.

Because this is a humanistic statement, it is difficult to counter and remember that in fact many Israelis are exposed to the reality of the territories on a daily basis - settlers and soldiers. The first group are concerned for their personal safety, their welfare, and the possessions they have amassed in the occupied territory. The second group is concerned for their lives, after they have been sent to defend the first group.

The immediate personal interest and privilege of both groups, as Israelis, prevents them from interpreting what their eyes see from a non-security perspective. If they did, they would see that two contradictory foundations are being laid - the continually-being-developed, for Jews only, and the withheld, the choked-off, and the delimited, for the Palestinians. The settlers and the soldiers radiate onto a large group of Israelis. Neither group finds this system, the seeds of which were planted with the conquest of 1967 and which came to maturity during the Oslo period (when Jewish infrastructure in the territories merely expanded) objectionable. The security rationale becomes the defensive shield for a system that is obviously immoral.

There is no conspiracy that prevents Israelis from knowing more. Perhaps it is preferable not to know more, because knowledge will confront them with the demand to give up the supernumerary rights involved in conquest. This is difficult to admit, especially for journalists, because the abundance of information supplied by the Israeli press has not percolated into the consciousness of those who do not wish it to.

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

Shifting targets.

Trouble in Iraq? Is Iran too big to take on? Then maybe it's time to crank up the rhetoric against Syria again.

Writing in Asia Times, Hooman Peimani looks at how Syria appears to be rising to the top of the US hit-list again. A part of the article that Magpie found particularly interesting is Peimani's report of the Syrian suggestion that the US had good reasons to kill the Hussein brothers, rather than take them alive.

In her interview with a Lebanese television program, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Buthaina Shaaban suggested that the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein might have been planned for a certain reason. She made the suggestion while speculating about the possibility of having the brothers apprehended. Thus, "the United States could have captured Saddam Hussein's sons alive". Based on that assumption, she added, "killing the pair in a US military raid in Iraq may have aimed at covering up Washington's past political dealings with the defunct regime".

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:06 AM | Get permalink

Rude awakening.

Magpie woke up this morning to hear Dubya giving his first press conference in since March. We have to admit that we turned it off after listening to him avoid answering questions about whether Condoleezza Rice should be held responsible for those 16 words about uranium in the State of the Union speech, and whether the US $170 millon that he's raising for his re-election bid shows that he only listens to people who pay $2000 to see him. We're sorry, but we can only handle so much unpleasantness when we're not quite awake.

You can be sure that Magpie will have more to say about the press conference later when the transcript is available.

Much later: On second thought, reading through the transcript once was bad enough, without having to go through a second or third time to mark comments. Magpie's toughness has its limits.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:22 AM | Get permalink

With only the shirts on their backs.

The Houston Chronicle has details about how those Democratic senators from Texas organized their escape to New Mexico to prevent passage of a redistricting bill that heavily favors Republicans.

Since their arrival, the senators have been protected by about a half dozen New Mexico state troopers, all but one in plainclothes.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the state, his administration and a majority of the state Legislature stood behind the Texas senators and their mission.

"My message to Texas state senators is that they are most welcome in New Mexico," Richardson said. "These men and women are courageous. They're strong. They acted on principle and they are here protecting their constituents, protecting those that potentially could be disenfranchised."

He said the few officers assigned to the security detail are serving regular shifts without overtime and at no extra cost to the state.

For more info on how the Republicans are trying to use redistricting in Texas and elsewhere to increase and maintain their control of the House of Representatives, see this earlier Magpie post.

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

The pursuit of uranium.

What's true, what's spin, and what's false? The ever-vigilant Spinsanity sorts out the various claims connected to the story about Iraq's alleged attempts to buy African uranium. And, as usual, almost nobody gets away unscathed.

No excerpts. Go read the whole thing.

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

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

The F word goes to court.

The Smoking Gun has given out its 2003 Legal Document of the Year award five months early because this one is so amazing. The excerpt doesn't come close to exhausting the good parts.

22. The state has the power to protect its citizenry from actual harm, and thus has the power to outlaw one yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. See, Schenk v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). However, yelling "F—k!" in a crowded theatre does not create a clear and present danger to anyone and thus cannot be outlawed. Although they are both four lettre words that start with F, the distinction is constitutionally significant.

[Sorry for the dash, which is not in the original, but Magpie doesn't want to run afoul of any 'net filters.]

Via A Rational Animal.

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

Where they stand.

The AFL-CIO gave all of the probable 2004 presidential candidates a list of questions, and it has posted the answers on its website.

Of ten candidates, only three haven't submitted answers so far. One of them is the Republican occupant of the White House, who Magpie shall leave unnamed so as to not embarrass him.

[For those outside the US, the AFL-CIO is the country's largest labor federation.]

Via The Mad Prophet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:03 PM | Get permalink

Ignoring the endless nightmare.

The UK Independent has an excerpt from the next book by US writer Walter Mosley (probably best known for his 'Easy Rawlins' mysteries). In the excerpt, Mosley likens the rage against the US among people in many parts of the world to that rage against white America that he heard his father express during the Watts Riot of 1965.

So why did he want to go out with his gun and a Molotov cocktail during the summer of '65? Why did his heart race with a dark pride when he saw his fellow black Americans wreaking havoc? Of course, I've already answered this question. The hatred lived inside my father; it lives in the hearts of so marry black people in the United States today. It is part of the legacy of slavery, racism and Jim Crow. It is something that my father and most black Americans have learned to live with. He never fired his gun or burned a building. He never allowed himself to commit the crimes that were committed against him. Most of us haven't. We understand that the choice is between building and tearing down.

There is a long discussion issuing from that painful realization, but that is not my topic. The only purpose that my father's muted rage has here is to help us try and understand the rage that men and women around the world feel towards America today, especially the Muslim population of the Middle East. The similarities are undeniable: a group of people who feel intense political and economic pressures from an external culture; people who are pushed to adhere to standards that make them outcasts in their own culture, their own skins. We see them on CNN or on the cover of our magazines and newspapers: enraged dark-skinned people burning effigies and flags, marching and loudly denouncing the capitalist imperialists - us. From Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, they rage. For decades, they say, America has interfered with their religion, their money and their rulers. Sometimes we run away. Often, we get involved with covert military actions. But lately, we've been preparing for all-out war.

This sort of international politics presents a deep quandary for black Americans. I realized that when I saw Colin Powell being burned in effigy on the streets of Pakistan. They didn't think of him as a black man.

They certainly didn't see him as a son of Africa. He was an American pressing American policies on a people who are sick of our policies and our representatives. They don't identify with him, but I see some of my father in their rage. I imagine 10,000 Pakistanis for every one that stands in protest. I imagine these men and women sitting in their houses feeling impotent and seeing America as their enemy. I see them wanting a world that is forever denied them. They are living in poverty in a nation surrounded by enemies. They are a people who want to realize their dreams in a world that vies to control their every thought.

The excerpt is from Mosley's book What's Next: A Memoir Towards World Peace, published in the US by Black Classic Press and in the UK by Serpent's Tail.

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

Sorry. Wrong nationality.

Haaretz reports that the Israeli government is trying to ram through the Knesset a bill that will prevent Palestinians who marry Israelis from becoming citizens or legal residents.

The government has argued that the bill is a necessary anti-terror measure, because Palestinians who received Israeli citizenship or residency within the framework of family unification, have been involved in terror attacks.

Both local and international human rights groups have decried the bill as racist, saying it creates an impossible situation in which couples will either have to separate or move abroad. Most of the cases involve Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza. If the law passes, they will not be able to live together in Israel.

Human Rights Watch is one of the groups that opposes the bill.

The proposed “Nationality and Entry into Israel (temporary order)” law prohibits Palestinians from residing with their Israeli spouses in Israel. The law will prevent all newly-married couples from being able to live together where they choose. It will also affect couples who have been married for years, and whose requests for residence permits are still pending.

"This bill blatantly discriminates against Israelis of Palestinian origin and their Palestinian spouses," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. "It’s scandalous that the Government has presented this bill – and it’s shocking that the Knesset is rushing it through."

Human Rights Watch has more information on the bill here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:21 PM | Get permalink

Disconnected in Iraq.

Those journalists and business people in Iraq are going to have to break out the satellite phones again, since those cell phones that sprung to life earlier this week are going dead again. As the UK Independent tells us, the US occupation government has made a Bahraini company take down its mobile network in Baghdad. The Batelco network had been accessible to anyone who had a GSM phone. (GSM is the cell phone standard used outside the US.)

Batelco had started placing more than $5m (£3m) of aerials and other equipment for GSM mobiles across Baghdad.... But mindful of its desire to set up a tender for the country's mobile network, the US authorities apparently started to put pressure on Batelco, threatening to confiscate its equipment.

"They applied enough pressure for us to push the button," said Rashid al-Snan, the company's regional operations manager. "I feel really sorry - sorry for the Iraqis and sorry for the foreigners who were using the network. It's a pity we had to stop. We really put in an effort and felt a cheer coming towards us from all over the world."

The occupation government is planning to ask for bids for three regional cell phone licenses in the near future. At this point, however, no decision has been made as to whether that system will use GSM or the US-only system, CDMA.

So far, occupation authorities have not commented on Batelco's allegations that it was threatened.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:01 PM | Get permalink

'Study Cantonese Gain Weight.'

Another Magpie admission: we web-surf during the time when our employer pays us to write bad computer manuals. Some days, when we are especially bored by our work, our surfing takes on an edge of desperation. Today has been one of those days, so we've been poking into places that we usually could care less about.

Like the Dining section of the NY Times, for example.

On that section's front page today is a piece by Daisann McLane that Magpie would have missed on a less desperate day. Ostensibly an article about eating Chinese food in NYC, it's really a tale of the difficulties and unexpected joys of learning one of the world's most difficult languages — Cantonese.

Anyway, as I was weaving down Canal Street, my eyes peeled for Chinese characters, I stopped short. There, hanging from a peg in front of the Wong Fa gift shop, were a dozen silk shoulder bags, each covered in Chinese writing. Chinese characters are decorative as well as readable, but until that moment it had never occurred to me that they could be both at once, and I suddenly needed more than anything else to know if I could read what was on the pocketbook. Squinting, I could make out several characters - moon, bright, in front - but nothing more.

"Ten dollars" said the vendor, in English.

I plunged into Cantonese and asked him if the letters on the bag had meaning. He looked at me blankly, and I realized that the man was a Mandarin speaker, and so couldn't understand me. I repeated myself, speaking slowly, pointing to the characters on the bag. He got it. Nodding excitedly, he called for his partner, who came bustling out of the shop and into the street. The partner, who I guessed was around Mr. Wen's age, took the bag down from the peg and held it out like a flag. He said something in Mandarin - I caught the word tang. And then, slowly, sonorously and beautifully, he began to recite the characters on the bag, from memory.

And so, in the middle of a strip of tacky souvenir shops on Canal Street, I was introduced to a beautiful and famous Chinese poem about loneliness and longing for homeland by Li Bai, the Tang Dynasty's most famous poet.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:41 PM | Get permalink

Shutting the door on the world.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article today on how restrictive visa-screening rules have caused a dramatic drop-off in the number of foreign visitors to the US. These rules were put into effect as a result of 9/11, and they're about to get even stricter. Starting on August 1, most visa applicants will have to apply in person at the US embassy, even if that involves a trip of hundreds of miles to do so.

According to the Monitor, the rules already in effect (with an assist from the current unpopularity of the US in many quarters) have caused vias applications to drop from 10.4 million in 2001 to 8.3 million last year. Approvals dropped similarly, from 7.5 million to 5.7 million.

That trend could accelerate with start of the in-person interview and other new requirements. "If foreign governments imposed something similar on Americans, we wouldn't like it very much at all," says Michael McCarry, head of the Alliance for International Education and Cultural Exchange, a lobbying group in Washington.

Indeed, the new approach is the equivalent of a US citizen - who wanted to visit, say South Africa - having to call the South African Embassy on a 1-900 number to schedule an interview several weeks in advance, travel to Washington, D.C., for the interview, stay overnight in a hotel, fly back home to await the visa's arrival by mail, and only then be allowed to leave on the trip. [...]

A recent report by the General Accounting Office noted that only 843 consular officers preside over the 8 million incoming applications. In fact, lines at embassies are often so long that consular staffers only have a couple of minutes to conduct each interview. The State Department has added 39 consular officers this year and will add 40 next year.

For graduate student Jasmin Shakeri, the process didn't work. And now the tri-lingual Iranian native - who's also a part-time soul singer - has given up on coming to America.

Last fall she had secured a spot in a master's program at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., rented an apartment, and even earned a $25,000 scholarship. She had been to the US eight times before. But this time, she was denied a visa.

"I was really upset," she says. "I've known and traveled this country, and now they don't want me." She's finishing her studies in Germany and plans to go to Egypt for vacation this year where, she says, "They want me."

Later: On the subject of visa problems, Magpie also wants to point to a June article in the NY Observer about the demise of Boston's Gaelic Roots festival, which was probably the premiere festival in the US for learning and hearing Irish traditional music. Unlike most US festivals and workshops where Irish music is taught, about 80 percent of Gaelic Roots' instructors were from Ireland. The difficulties of getting visas for this many people only ten months ahead of time was too much work for the organizers and too hard on the nerves of many of the instructors. As someone who plays Irish music, Magpie is very aware of the difference it can make when one learns from a person who grew up with the music in Ireland. Now, with rare exceptions, that experience is only going to be available to those in the US who can't afford a ticket to Ireland.

So add that to the list of things we've lost because of the paranoia whipped up by Washington.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:37 PM | Get permalink

Counting crows. Two or three times apiece.

ChannelNewsAsia reports a crow-culling scandal in Singapore. Like Tokyo, Singapore has a crow problem, with an estimated 98,000 crows calling the city home. But unlike Tokyo, Singapore deals with the problem by paying people to go out and shoot crows. Each dead crow turned in by a shooter is worth Singapore $5.

The problem is that three shooters have been turning in a suspiciously high number of dead crows.

Sources said that after the dead crows are presented and counted, they are dumped and later disposed of. The suspicion is that after the tallying, the three shooters would return and pick up the birds before they were disposed of, and present them again the following day.

Suspicions apparently arose because the three seemed to be bringing in many more birds than their counterparts did. This trend continued over several months.

The three have now been suspended from culling duties, sources said.

For background on Singapore's war on crows, see this 2001 report from the Aussie ABC.

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

Monday, July 28, 2003

'I want to move to mars. people are nicer there.'

The Boston Globe has an article today about Crystal Evans, a typical 22-year old woman with a blog. Who's also homeless.

Evans strives to capture the struggles of people in her world -- the discomfort of sleeping in used shelter beds, the fear of being robbed or attacked on the street, and the constant anxiety of not knowing where the next meal will come from.

She is determined to debunk stereotypes.

''Anyone can be homeless,'' Evans says on a recent weekday afternoon, sitting on a bench outside Boston Medical Center, where several homeless people stroll by and ask her for change. ''All homeless people don't smell or sleep on park benches. We aren't all drug addicts or alcoholics. We aren't all mentally ill. We aren't all lazy. We are each an individual. Each of us has our own journey to go through as we struggle to survive homelessness. I believe the public needs to be more aware of homelessness and hunger. It is closer to home than you may realize.''

Here's a blog entry that Evans made a few days ago.

Um. Yeah. I got to figure out where I'm going when I leave this shelter. I've been here 27 days. My time is almost up. And seeing that I'm disabled they probably won?t let me stay much longer? I met with my advocate today and she said due to my seizures she probably won?t let me stay for more than 2 more weeks?

I don't think I can take much more of this. Sometime I wished I lived in New York or another city where the subway runs all night. I would take train after train and sleep all night. There aren't many good place to sleep besides shelters here. I've slept in a tunnel I know of under a school. I've slept at the airport a few times. (I just make it look like I'm a tourist and get travel info and flight info incase security questions me). I've slept in a hospital? (that?s easy? I've got scrubs from working in a hospital so if I wander into a big hospital wearing scrubs no one questions me if I fall asleep in a chair. I also have a friend who works security at one hospital who has let me sleep in the doctors call rooms)?. Sometimes I just want a cardboard refrigerator box so I can cover it with duct tape and tarps and live in it. That would be so nice to be all alone with no one to bother me and no shelter staff or residents in my face. And I just want to get away from the smell of alcohol. I can't stand it.

Just trying to survive day to day is wearing me out. I am realizing that I can't live like this much longer. I'm getting sick. Even the littlest bit of stress triggers my brain injury symptoms and makes the side effects hit me real hard. It's to the point where lately I can barely walk or think straight. That?s not good? I've been shaking a lot. And I'm really really depressed. I feel like I'm having constant flashbacks of everything. My accident. Rape. Being threatened. Verbal abuse. Emotional abuse. Childhood things. Shelter incidents. Just strange stuff. Nothing makes sense right now. Nothing. Everything is so jumbled together. I feel like a zombie. I don't even know where to begin by dealing with all of this. I think a good place to start is to not go back to the program where the staff have been judgmental. That?s what totally triggered my suicidal feelings. They say I'm blaming them. But I really think that?s what it was? hey. Really. First they constantly accuse me of substance abuse. Then they get in my face about me not working?. Okay me not being able to work is a real sore subject. It?s the reason I'm homeless. If I was working I'd be making at least 4 times what I?m making right now? I hate it when the people that are supposed to be helping actually make matters worse?

I don?t know what to do. Or where to go. All I want is a life like any other typical 22 year old. Not a life where I have to worry about where I?m going to sleep from night to night or where my next meal is coming from or my next bit of income?

How much can one person be expected to take????

Via Occasional Subversion.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:26 PM | Get permalink

When irony fails.

At Asia Times, Gary LaMoshi looks at the recent crushing of a coup attempt in the Philippines and suggests that the coup's end was hardly a victory for democracy. He goes on to wonder whether a lot of other things really match the language that are used to describe them.

It's hard to decide what's more frightening: that political leaders and foreign-affairs and military spokespeople don't see the irony of what they say, or that they see it all and just don't care what they tell us. Does Gloria Arroyo believe she was democratically elected? Does Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad really think he's on the side of justice when he advocates freedom for a political prisoner that threatens a nearby regime's grip on power and captivity for one who may threaten his own? Do George W Bush and Tony Blair think they told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the Iraqi threat? Are they fooling themselves, too, or just us?

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:47 PM | Get permalink

Yippeeee!

Magpie has arrived! A right-wing blogger has included us in the 'moronic left.'

Well, this 'clueless' crowgirl still says that DeLay's so-called 'declaration of war' is hatemongering of the basest sort.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:25 PM | Get permalink

Isn't capitalism wonderful?

Let's suppose you were a large high-tech company, and that your profits for last quarter were down by 80 percent. You'd wantto do something about that, yes? But what?

Well, if you were Sun Microsystems, your answer would be to hand out a bunch of stock options to top management.

Sun granted [Chairman and Chief Executive Scott McNealy] McNealy options for 1.5 million shares [...] Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Stephen McGowan options to acquire 500,000 shares [...]

Other executive vice presidents granted options for 500,000 shares were Jonathan Schwartz, who runs Sun's software group, Mark Tolliver, head of marketing and strategy, and Patricia Sueltz, head of Sun's computer services unit.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:17 PM | Get permalink

The 'Killer Ds' strike again!

The AP reports that 12 Democratic members of the Texas Senate have fled the state to scuttle Republican redistricting plans. In a move similar to that of House Democrats in May, the legislators boarded a bus for Albuquerque, New Mexico as Texas' Republican governor called a second special legislative session to deal with the redistricting plans. The absence of the 12 Democrats is sufficient to keep the Senate from being able to conduct business during that session.

Republicans are pressing for more seats in the state's 32-member delegation in the U.S. House; the Democrats currently hold a 17-15 advantage. Republicans say that ratio does not reflect the state's increasingly Republican voting patterns.

Most Democrats want to keep the existing congressional map drawn by a three-judge federal panel in 2001, calling redistricting a power grab pushed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Republican.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:35 PM | Get permalink

Turn your back on the news for a day ...

... and look what happens: Washington is trying to defend its handling of Iraq by tying it to 9/11 and the war on terrorism.

While doing the Sunday news interview circuit, Assistant US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attempted to counter charges that the administration lied about the 'Iraq threat' by asserting that the US had to act on 'murky' intelligence or risk terrible consequences. Extending that claim, Wolfowitz called the current fighting in Iraq 'the central battle of the war on terrorism.'

"Stop and think, if in 2001, or in 2000, or in 1999, we had gone to war in Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin Laden, and we had tried to say it's because he's planning to kill 3,000 people in New York, people would have said, you don't have any proof of that," he said.

"I think the lesson of Sept. 11 is that you can't wait until proof after the fact.

"It surprises me sometimes that people have forgotten so soon what Sept. 11, I think, should have taught us about terrorism," he added.

"And that's what this is all about," he said.

For any validity, of course, this argument rests on the assumptions that 1) the Saddam Hussein government was actively promoting terrorism against the US and 2) that the Saddam Hussein government had the capability of striking against the US. The fact there's no proof for either of these assumptions obviously doesn't bother Wolfowitz one bit.

His remarks remind Magpie of that old saw about Usenet arguments, which goes something like 'The more heated a discussion becomes, the more likely that one party in the argument will accuse the other of being a Nazi.' The rule used by the current administration in Washington seems to be that the more intense the opposition to its policies gets, the more reason there is for Dubya or his minions to throw out the charge that their opponents are 'soft on terrorism.'

Via the Toronto Star.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:33 PM | Get permalink

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Talk about 'out of control' rhetoric.

Magpie followed the lead of MB at Wampum and moseyed over to the website of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. We've never thought much of the man, but the extent of his hate-mongering in a speech he delivered on Friday to the College Republicans still surprised us.

Here's an excerpt:

So unserious are the Democrats that they are now embarrassing themselves and their party over a single, irrelevant sentence in a 10-year old case for war that could run a hundred thousand pages long.

Howard Dean says the president intentionally misled the American people.

John Kerry hinted Operation Iraqi Freedom was about oil.

Dick Gephardt the other day said we were less safe and less secure than we were four years ago… when Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein ran free.

Blame-America-first liberals all over the country are repeating this nonsense.

But make no mistake: this isn't just campaign rhetoric we're talking about.

Let's be real clear:

If you take their [the Democrats'] comments to their logical conclusion, they're essentially calling our Commander in Chief, Benedict Arnold.

Ridiculous as it sounds, the logical extension of the Democrat leadership's assertion is that President Bush is an international war criminal.

If we are to take this nonsense seriously, THAT is how out of control the Democrats' rhetoric has become.

This is the mainstream of the Republican Party, folks, not some crazy man hollering from somewhere out in the wilderness. Magpie does not even want to think about how little restraint there will be on DeLay and his ilk if Dubya wins the election next year.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:20 AM | Get permalink

The White House is hiding the costs of the Iraq occupation.

The chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee says that the White House won't talk about the long-term costs for its Iraq operations. Talking to National Public Radio, Sen. Richard Lugar said that the administation does 'not wish to discuss that [the Iraq price tag].'

Asked by NPR whether rebuilding Iraq will cost tens of billions of dollars, Lugar responded, "Yes. We are talking about that. And that's what needs to be talked about now as opposed to one surprise after another" in funding requests to Congress.

Magpie should point out that Sen. Lugar is not a Democrat.

Via Reuters.

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