Magpie

Saturday, August 30, 2003

New to the blogroll.

Magpie strongly recommends NathanNewman.org. His current series of posts on the US minimum wage is especially worth your attention.

If nothing else, look at the graph here. In one look, it tells you why the current US $5.15/hr minimum wage is a joke, and why the attempts to move that wage up to the US $8.00 to $8.50 range make a lot of sense.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:46 PM | Get permalink

Another questionable decision in Iraq.

Magpie guesses there's a certain consistency to some recent actions by the US-run occupation government in Iraq, but it's not the kind of consistency that we appreciate. A couple of weeks ago we found out that the US occupation government was rewarding some of the Iraqis guiltiest of human rights abuses by recruting former members of Saddam Hussein's secret police into its domestic intelligence network. Now the UK Guardian reports that the occupation regime's 'de-Ba'athification' decree appears to be taking jobs away from people who had little or nothing to do with the former security apparatus.

According to the decree, anyone who held one of the top four ranks in the Ba'ath party is being removed from their job unless a specific exception is made. The assumption is that people in these ranks were hardcore regime supporters who were involved in domestic survelliance and other human rights abuses. The problem with this mechanistic approach to removing Ba'ath influence from Iraqi society, say critics, is that holding one of these positions wasn't necessarily an indication that a person spied on others. For example, at least some of those affected by the decree joined the Ba'ath party before Saddam Hussein took control of it, and were unable to leave.

Some Iraqi institutions are being hit hard by the decree. The Guardian reports that as many as 2000 Baghdad university employees have been told not to report to work for the autumn term, and many hospitals and government ministries are losing significant parts of their top staff.

"The problem is they didn't look at who were really leaders. They made the issue of rank too important and went down too low," said Husam al-Rawi, a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a professor in Baghdad University's architecture department. "Instead of targeting a thousand or a few hundred people, they targeted 80,000."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:16 PM | Get permalink

The permanent election.

What does the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton, the 2000 Florida presidential election results, and the California recall have in common? According to Robert Reich, they're all part of a disturbing trend in US politics to no longer view the results of elections as final.

One of the things that distinguishes advanced democracies from banana republics is that winners and losers accept the results of elections. Losing candidates and parties don't initiate coups. Winners don't kill off the losers and their supporters. The winning party has an opportunity to govern. Both sides go back to their respective corners -- winners take office, losers take other jobs -- and wait until the next election to do battle again.

In recent years, however, U.S. politics has shifted somewhat away from this model toward more or less continuous battles. The first stage, which began several decades ago, was the "permanent campaign." Here, newly elected officials would almost immediately begin rounds of fund raising and media strategies designed to discourage potential rivals from entering the fray years hence. Potential rivals, for their parts, would begin almost at once to raise money and organize for the next election.

We are now, it seems, witnessing the next stage in our shift toward a banana republic form of government. Permanent campaigns are morphing into permanent elections. In the permanent election, rivals seek to reverse the decision of the majority of voters and unseat the victor as soon as they can. Unlike the permanent campaign, in which incumbents and rivals only act as if the next election were imminent, in the permanent election, the next election is in fact always imminent -- or at least an imminent possibility.

Via The American Prospect.

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

Need something done? Don't ask the Republicans.

Since the 1970s, one of the main issues that Republicans have used in successful campaigns against Democratic opponents is that of competence. Democrats, claim the Republicans, just can't get anything done. If you trust them with foreign policy, you get Iranians taking US hostages, or communists trying to take over Central America. If you trust Democrats with domestic policy, you get increasing crime and failing schools. If you trust them with the economy — well, the Republicans are more careful with claims about the economy since most recessions occur during their watch. Of course, the Republicans generally don't show any more competence when dealing with these problems than they attribute to their opponents, but that fact is conveniently forgotten come time to run an election campaign.

In the 2004 national campaign, however, Michael Tomasky of The American Prospect believes that .
the Republicans won't be able to use compency as an issue.

No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence. They don't know how to manage an economy. They sure don't know how to balance a budget. They have no idea how to create jobs (though they do have a pretty strong sense of how to make them disappear). Their domestic-security measures have consisted of the usual emphasis on show over substance, first stealing a Democratic idea (the Department of Homeland Security) and then underfunding the result in some crucial respects -- a mistake for which I pray we never pay a price.

They don't understand the Bill of Rights, and their shills in the media obviously don't understand the relationship between the First Amendment and trademark law, as Blah-Blah O'Reilly's laughable lawsuit against the great Al Franken shows. They've done nothing to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, and have, if anything, done damage to those resources. They've done nothing for the minorities Mr. Compassionate Conservative was supposedly courting in 2000, his speeches to the NAACP and the like transcribed by a tremulous media.

And now, it turns out, they don't know how to do the one thing they've spent 50 years convincing Americans that they and only they know how to do: fight a war. The war in Afghanistan is hardly won (did you notice the firefight the other day that left 14 dead?). And the war in Iraq is a fiasco that is fast becoming a huge political problem, worrying middle-of-the-road voters (who have figured out now that maybe alienating the rest of the world wasn't such a great idea after all) and exposing ideological fissures on the right (go read William Kristol and Robert Kagan's editorial in the current Weekly Standard, where they call for more troop strength and take several amusing implicit swipes as Donald Rumsfeld).

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

Washington expands 'abortion gag rule.'

One of the things you can depend on in Washington politics is that unpopular or controversial decisions will be announced sometime after friday afternoon, so that the news hits the media over the weekend, when most people in the US aren't watching or reading.

So it's no surprise that Dubya's administration picked Friday to announce that the US will start withholding family planning funds from oveseas groups that perform or promote abortions with their own money. Up until now, the 'abortion gag rule' had applied only to groups that used US funding for these purposes.

Said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: "The world's poorest women and their children again are bearing the brunt of Bush's obsession with appeasing his domestic political base. This is the real face of Bush's compassionate conservatism."

Via AP.

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

Friday, August 29, 2003

Rebuilding Iraq.

What's it going to take? Occupation honcho Paul Bremer says it will take years and US $90 billion to do the job. Over at Baghdad Burning, Riverbend thinks otherwise.

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

If you're not already reading Baghdad Burning, take awhile to poke through Riverbend's other posts while you're there. She's doing some of the best writing from Iraq that you'll see on the web

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

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Who's the underdog in the 2004 US presidential election?

It's Dubya, according to a fundraising email sent out by his re-election campaign:

"Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him," campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote in the fund-raising e-mail sent Wednesday night. "If you need more convincing the president needs your help, consider what the Democrats are saying. The race is just starting, but their rhetoric is already red-hot."

Jeez, Magpie couldn't have made this one up if we'd tried.

Let's look at some numbers: Dubya is expected to raise US $200 million for his re-election campaign, or well over a dollar for every person of voting age in the country. Between the day in mid-May when the Prez started raising money and the end of June, he took in US $35 million — around US $750,000 per day. As the AP points out, Dubya 'has set several fund-raising records, including the most collected for a presidential primary campaign, and the most raised at a single event.'

These figures are supposed to paint the picture of an underdog campaign about to be snowed under by the Democratic money machine? Give us a f'n break!

Magpie would also point out that Dubya is unopposed for the Republican nomination, which renders any fundraising comparison withthe extremely competitive Democratic race irrelevant. Even without a need to outspend a Republican primary challenger, however, we're willing to bet that the next quarter's fundraising reports show Dubya is well ahead of his closest Democratic challenger (most likely to be Gov. Howard Dean).

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:44 PM | Get permalink

The truth comes out.

The US didn't invade Iraq because Dubya's administration twisted around intelligence reports to 'prove' that Saddam Hussein was a danger to world peace, it went in because of all that bad information supplied by the fake defectors that Saddam sent to confuse those innocents in Washington.

Magpie doesn't know whether to laugh or throw up.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:21 PM | Get permalink

Oooooooh, shiny!

Via New Scientist, a brand new picture of Mars from the Hubble space telescope.

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

A Canadian phrasebook.

From Geist, a set of entries from the magazine's ongoing compilation of Canadian regional expressions.

Toronto: Upper Canada (i.e. Ontario)

Vancouver: out East, or (if speaker has family in Ontario): back East

Cape Breton: the mainland

Dundurn, SK: those Eastern bastards

And this letter about the phrasebook:

I'm from BC and spent five years in Ontario, and stumbled across quite a few subtle linguistic differences. The "thongs" vs. "flip-flops" thing was highly problematic. Here's another one: In B.C. we say: I was ID'ed at the bar. In Ontario it was: I was carded at the bar. I don't know what they say in Saskatchewan or Cape Breton. Maybe just: I was at the bar. — David Coppard

There's a whole lot more here.

[Note for US readers: SK is Saskatchewan, one of those big rectangular provinces on the Canadian prairies.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:54 PM | Get permalink

What's it like living next door to an empire?

Dangerous, says Canadian writer Stephen Henighan.

I am writing this in Guatemala, where newspapers now punningly refer to the United States (Estados Unidos, in Spanish) as "Estamos Hundidos," a double-edged phrase that means both "We're bogged down" and "We've collapsed." Here, surrounded by eighteen centuries of visible history, including the ruins of both the greatest civilization of pre-Columbian America, that of the Classic Maya, and the greatest empire of early Renaissance Europe, that of Spain, it is impossible not to ponder imperial decay. As a Canadian, one has to think about how we plan to survive next to a belligerent empire whose decadence has reached the stage of "totalitarian democracy."

Our prognosis is not good. Few small countries bordering empires have outlasted those empires' death throes. Prime Minister Chrétien's policy of not sending the Canadian Armed Forces to Iraq was initially popular, but as CNN intensified its propaganda assault, many Canadians changed their minds. Did we lose our nerve, lose touch with our history of participation in multilateral institutions, lose our grip on global public opinion, or lose our ability to think? We need to think with minds attuned to a wider range of experience than watching CNN. We will not survive alongside a totalitarian democracy by shackling our brains to the sinking galleon. Our reliance on the U.S. for 86 percent of our export markets replicates the single- crop penury of many Third World countries; it encourages a mental dependence that robs us not only of our particular Canadian history but of access to any historical perspective on the present.

We must diversify or die.

Via rabble.

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

Gas prices are now an issue in the California recall campaign.

Lt. Gov Cruz Bustamante is proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would regulate oil companies as public utilities. Reminding voters that Californians will be paying the highest gas prices in the country over the Labor Day weekend, Bustamante accused Big Oil of ripping off consumers.

"Californians are being gouged, and under current law we [state officials] are powerless to do anything about it," he said [...]

"The oil companies explain their behavior the same way Enron did," Bustamante said. "They say it was someone else's fault. ... But what they never say is that their profit margin in California is the highest in the nation."

It's going to be in interesting to see what effect this has on the race to succeed current Gov. Gray Davis. Bustamante's proposed constitutional amendment could just be grandstanding — it's nowhere near clear that the amendment would have enough support among state legislators to become law. Whatever his motivations, however, Bustamante is obviously hoping that his proposal will translate into votes. And Magpie will bet that he's also trying to put Ahhnold in the awkward position of having to come out against putting a lid on gas prices.

The strategy is not without risk, however. The oil industry is never amused by the talk of regulation, and the main result of Bustamante's proposal could be to send piles of money into the campaign coffers of his Republican opponents.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:34 PM | Get permalink

Not much to celebrate this coming Labor Day.

US workers have one of their few legal holidays coming up this Monday. But before we celebrate, economist Mark Weisbrot wants us to remember that the only thing notable about this Labor Day is that it caps 30 years of declining wages and purchasing power for most people who collect a paycheck.

While workers' productivity went up 66 percent between 1973 and 2003, our wages went up by only 6 percent. By comparison, Weisbrot points out, wages went up about 80 percent during a similar period from 1946 to 1973, about the rate at which productivity increased.

(Strangely enough, those years also spanned the period when organized labor in the US was at its 20th century peak. Magpie is sure this is coincidence.)

As is usually the case, the economic effects of the wage erosion of the last 30 years are being felt most at the lowest-paid levels of the workforce. Weisbrot notes that, despite several increases in the minimum wage, the purchasing power of that wage has dropped 23 percent from 1973. About 20 million US workers notice this change when they try to make a living on their minimum wage paychecks.

None of this change is accidental, says Weisbrot. It's largely a result of conscious decisions taken by various administrations in Washington since the early 1970s.

One such change has occurred at the Federal Reserve, which in normal times is able to determine the national unemployment rate through its control over interest rates. When unemployment gets "too low," the Fed raises interest rates in order to slow the economy and wage growth by throwing people out of work. For most of the last quarter century, unemployment of less than 6 percent (and sometimes even more) was considered "too low."

The Fed temporarily eased up on this policy in the second half of the 1990s, and unemployment dropped drastically to 4 percent by 2000, without any upsurge in the much-feared inflation rate. America's workers saw their best wage gains – about 2 percent annually for four years – in decades. The gains reached down, in a break from recent decades, to lower and middle-income workers; and unemployment among African American teenagers dropped from 36 to 24 percent.

But what the Fed giveth, the Fed taketh away. The financial markets are already anticipating that the Fed will raise interest rates early next year, even though unemployment is projected to be at 6.2 percent. In other words, when the economy recovers, the Fed has no intention of allowing a repeat of that brief spate of near- full employment.

Magpie got curious about how the decrease in worker's real wages work out in our own life, so we went to the inflation calculator at the Columbia Journalism Review to run some figures. The result was even worse than we'd expected. Given that we have spent most of our working life in unionized jobs or in the high-tech field, both of which are places that have higher than average wages, this is not good news.

For example, our hourly wage as a unionized directory assistance operator for Ma Bell in 1973 was US $6.50 an hour. In 1996, we were contracting as a technical writer at 3M in Minnesota, and making US $19 an hour. If you adjust that 1973 wage for inflation, it comes to US $22.97 an hour. So even a move to a higher paid field still netted us a pay loss of almost three bucks an hour.

Our current wage as a contract writer is $31 an hour, which is pretty good considering how many tech writers in Oregon aren't working at all. If you take our 1973 wage and bring it up to the present, it's US $26.42. So while we're finally earning more than our 1973 wage, it's not by much.

And if Magpie remembers right, the top of the scale for directory assistance operators in 1973 was about US $9/hr, which works out to $36.59 in current dollars. Our supposedly high-paid tech industry job pays us less than we could have made as a phone operator in the 1970s after five years on the job. This is a good testament to the contract that the Communications Workers of America negotiated for operators back then, but a miserable commentary on high-tech wages and, even more so, on the failure of corporate America to share the fruits of the last 30 years with the people who actually do the work.

Happy Labor Day, America.

Via AlterNet.

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

Sorry for missing yesterday.

Too many tunes to learn to play. Too little time.

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Dean breaks a million.

Gov. Howard Dean's campaign has been trying to raise US $1 million during the candidate's ten-day 'Sleepless Summer' tour. (The name is a snipe at all the rest that Dubya should be getting during his month-long vacation.) Dean made the goal tonight.

This puts Dean well on his way to a bigger goal:

Dean expects to raise $10.3 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30, said campaign manager Joe Trippi. That is the amount former President Clinton raised in the same period in 1995, the best performance by any Democratic presidential candidate in a single quarter the year before an election.

Privately, Dean's advisers said the $10.3 goal is a conservative estimate.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:43 PM | Get permalink

Another day at the National Archives.

Law professor Sarah Whalen needed some documents about Saudi Arabia for her research. Given that nothing in the US National Archives is classified, seeing them should have been a piece of cake, right?

Not any more. Since the Patriot Act was passed, the US government is screening unclassified documents and re-classifying more than just a few of them. All to protect us from those terrorists, of couse.

"The U.S. State Department records you requested are indeed declassified and theoretically available. But they also may contain information that terrorists can use, like names and addresses and information of U.S. citizens." I gave a blank look. "So?" The clerk's brow furrowed with concern. "A terrorist could come into the National Archives and try to steal their identities or target them for assassination."

I protested: "The documents I seek are over thirty years old and even older." Now the clerk's smile became nothing but teeth, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

I persisted: "Any person the record concerns will be either quite elderly or already dead."

The clerk's brittle smile remained fixed. "I'm sorry, you can't look at the Saudi records even if they are a hundred years old."

I tried again. "Come on. Who's identity would a terrorist be able to steal from these records? Dwight Eisenhower's? Nixon's or Kissinger's? King Faisel's? They're not easy identities to steal."

Getting no response, I tried again. "Who'd want to be Kissinger, anyway? I guess you could get a good table at Lutece."

I smiled at my own joke, but the clerk's smile disappeared. "Ask again," he hissed, "and I will call security to remove you from the building and have you barred as a security risk."

I was stunned by the clerk's absolute refusal, and stung by his implication that I, a wife, mother, and published researcher and writer, was some kind of horrid criminal. But this is only a taste of the Patriot Act's damage to the American mind. If the mere desire to research Saudi history is met with stern threats of arrest or detention, imagine what it is like to be a Saudi in America today. Or a Muslim. Or someone from the Middle East.

Via Occasional Subversion.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:27 PM | Get permalink

One of Ashcroft's 'persons of interest' has had enough.

A biowarfare expert whose name has been mentioned offically in connection with the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US is suing the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft for violating his constitutional rights. Five people died from those attacks.

In his filing in federal court, Steven Hatfill alleges that Ashcroft and other defendants labeled him a 'person of interest' of interest in the attacks for their own political gain. He claims that his name was leaked against Justice Department policy, and that his life has been ruined as a result.

"Mr. Ashcroft publicly identified Dr. Hatfill for a specific purpose -- to suggest to the American public...that the DOJ and the FBI could be trusted, and that investigators were properly conducting the Amerithrax (anthrax) investigation, and that they were making substantial progress," the complaint said.

"Mr. Ashcroft acted to protect both his department's and his own political future and public image, at the expense of Dr. Hatfill's constitutional rights," it said.

Since being labeled a 'person of interest,' Hatfill has had to deal with intrusive government surveillance (sometimes for 24 hours a day) for months at a time. He has also lost two jobs — firings that took place at the government's behest, Hatfill alleges. All of this has taken place despite Hatfill's consistent denial of any connection with the attacks, and in the absence of any formal charges against him.

Hatfill is asking the federal court to formally declare that Ashcroft and the Justice Department were wrong to identify him as a 'person of interest,' and to issue an injunction barring any further violations of his constitutional rights. He's also asking for unspecified monentary damages.

The Justice Deparment hasn't commented on the lawsuit, except to produce a January memo from the department's Office of Professional Responsibility that says Ashcroft had not committed misconduct in the Hatfill matter.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:21 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's spending puts the US deeper in the red.

The US deficit will swell to US $401 billion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is significantly higher than the US $246 billion that the CBO predicted in its last budget outlook in March. The main cause of the increase is — you guessed it — the war in Iraq.

The long term figures are even worse. The CBO expects a US $480 billion shortfall next year, and a US 1.4 trillion deficit between now and 2013. Previously, the prediction had been for a surplus of US $891 billion.

But wait — that's not all. The CBO's long-term figures depend on Dubya's tax cuts staying temporary, as passed by the Congress. If these cuts are made permanent, as many Republicans are advocating, the CBO says the deficit over the next ten years could double, to almost US $3 trillion.

Given that the US commitment of troops and money to Iraq could be both longer and more expensive than anticipated while the CBO was compiling its figures, Magpie suggests that we can expect to see larger deficits when the next CBO budget outlook comes out in March 2004.

Via BBC.

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

No offense to Jimi Hendrix.

Magpie has no argument with Rolling Stone magazine naming Hendrix the greatest rock guitarist of all time. We've worn out more Hendrix LPs and CDs than we like to think about. And the way rock guitarists play now would be markedly different if Hendrix hadn't existed. But Magpie finds Rolling Stone's continual assumption that playing electric guitar is a 'guy thing' to be tedious in the extreme.

Out of the 100 guitarists in the magazine's list of the best-ever players, all but two are men. And of the two women who did make the list — Joan Jett (#87) and Joni Mitchell (#72) — only one is really a rock guitarist. Magpie suggests that Rolling Stone editors threw these women in only to deflect charges of sexism. (No offense to Mitchell or Jett, either. Magpie loves them.) Hell, we'll even suggest that Rolling Stone was looking more at the size of guitarists' ... um ... axes than at their musical abilities.

Just off the top of our head, Magpie suggests that Ellen McIlwaine and Bonnie Raitt should have been on the list — and not near the bottom. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney come to mind, too.

You can probably think of other women who should be on the list, too. Magpie would love to hear your suggestions.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 PM | Get permalink

Flash! Black birds wreak havoc on Japan!

Japanese crows have been getting into big trouble, according to two reports from Mainichi Daily News.

In the first report, a single crow brought two commuter rail lines in Tokyo to a standstill. Rail line officials say that the crow landed in a power station and short-circuited several wires.

Thousands were affected by the power stoppage, which only stopped trains for six minutes, but threw the entire timetable into disarray.

"We've had one case like this before," a Tokyu spokesman said. "It's still rare, though."

The crow, sad to say, did not survive to enjoy the disruption it created.

In the second story, crows have been fingered as the 'arsonists' behind a decade-long series of mysterious fires at Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. The crows were apparently attracted by candles, thinking that they were a particlarly delectable oily food.

While police searched vainly for the arsonist conducting a fiery campaign against the shrine, [Ornithologist Hiroyoshi] Higuchi focused his sights on the crows. He set up security cameras around the shrine and waited. He got results that were worth crowing about - crows were seen flying off with lit candles they had stolen from lanterns set up around the shrine but which priests had previously believed had been too heavy for them.

Though the footage was enough to "convict" the crows, Higuchi confirmed their role by checking through piles of leaves stored at various points throughout the shrine grounds. Crows typically hide food away in piles of leaves for when times get tougher when it comes to searching for food. Higuchi's suspicions were confirmed when he discovered a number of the candles hidden at the bottom of leaf piles.

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

Learning to drive.

With Suzanne Vega, no less. A gem from the local pages of the NY Times.

I recently moved back to my old neighborhood, near 102nd Street and Broadway, where I lived from 1967 to 1979, and I decided I would learn to drive there. It was strange, rolling down the very roads where I had taken my first small steps away from home. We moved to 102nd Street when I was 7, and I remember crossing Broadway for the first time. It was as big as an ocean. I remember learning to navigate the neighborhood in concentric circles - you can go around the corner to the grocery store to get Daddy's cigarettes, but you can't go across any streets. O.K., you can cross four streets to get to your friend's house, but you can't go down to 96th Street. Eventually, I could walk to school on 97th Street, several blocks from my house.

How weird it was to drive streets I knew so well. What a different perspective. I could rumble down streets I would have been too afraid to walk on, especially as a kid. Now I zipped past everyone, and everyone was a pedestrian. There were lots of them. Big ones, too. I didn't hit any, even the slow ones who took their time strolling though the intersection when I had to turn right.

And Magpie thought we were a late starter, not getting our driver's license until after we turned 21. Vega took her driving test at age 43.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Monday, August 25, 2003

Another brilliant move from Washington.

The US is trying to block a UN resolution that would increase the protection of aid workers in conflict zones, reports the BBC. The sticking point is the part of the resolution that makes attacks on aid workers a war crime prosecutable by the International Criminal Court. Since the US doesn't recognize the court's jurisdiction, Washington is insisting that the reference to the ICC be dropped from the resolution, or that the UN write in language that would give immunity to countries that haven't signed on to the Rome Statute that established the court.

In other words, the US isn't willing to be bound by the laws of a court that it can't control.

Human rights groups are furious over the US position, especially given that it comes so close after the attack on the UN headquarter in Iraq.

Human Rights Watch has accused the US of waging an ill-conceived and ideologically-driven crusade against the court and in the process, compromising efforts to protect aid workers.

"After the tragic killing of aid workers in Baghdad, the US opposition to the proposed resolution is disgraceful," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's international justice programme.

Other human rights groups argue that the court should be supported as it acts as a deterrent to those who might consider attacks on humanitarian workers.

The Human Rights Watch press release on the UN resolution is here.

Update: The resolution was approved by the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote after language referring to the International Criminal Court was removed.

The nations agreed on language emphasizing "that there are existing prohibitions under international law" against deliberate attacks against humanitarian or peacekeeping personnel "which in situations of armed conflicts constitute war crimes."

Mexico and the other co-sponsors of the resolution - France, Russia, Germany, Bulgaria and Syria - insisted that the resolution must have no ambiguity that attacks on humanitarian personnel constitute a war crime.

"It is very important to have a resolution with unanimous support that says what must be said - and what must be said is that this is a war crime," said Mexico's U.N. Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:24 PM | Get permalink

'The most American thing you can do is to dissent.'

Folksinger, activist, wobbly, storyteller. Utah Phillips wears all of those hats, and a bunch more, probably. He's funny. He's unswervingly political. He's one of the best performers Magpie has ever seen.

If you don't know his music, go over his here and find out about it. And go over here to read the rest of the interview that he recently gave to The Progressive. Here's a taste of it:

Q: What do you think about the way labor history is taught in schools today?

Phillips: It is a shame and a crime that a young person can graduate from high school not knowing what a scab is, not knowing workers have the absolute right to collective bargaining, to form a union, to join a union. Why? Because the boss doesn't want them to know this. Who is on the school board? Who is in charge of the curricular process? Who owns the textbook company? The boss does. The boss wants young people to come trained with the answers but not asking questions. Every good educator knows that true teaching is to teach kids how to ask the right questions.

These kids are coming in untrained in fair labor practices. For the most part, most of them are not going to own the tools they work with, they are not going to own the workplace, they will simply be selling their own labor energy and trying to get a decent deal for it so they can get by. Some of them are going to go to college, going to go to community college, they are going to apprenticeship trade school to enhance their labor energy so they can make a better deal, and live better. It is still the same; you are a wage worker. How do you control the condition of your labor? How do you make a deal on a job that isn't going to kill you? Where you are adequately compensated? How are you going to make sure that when you get sick that you are just not out on the street? Or if someone in your family gets sick that you are not out on the street? What do you do about health insurance? What do you do when you are too old to do the work? None of that is taught in school. The district labor councils absolutely have to get to work teaching this in the public schools to make sure that our true history is taught to our kids.

These kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that.

It's a heroic, passionate, beautiful, richer, and more useful history than any history they are getting from the history books right now. The gift from my elders. I never got that history before I talked to people who lived it. That is one of the missions of my life: to make sure kids know these things, and respect the dignity of other people's labor. If you talk to people working on the job, and you ask them what is the most important issue, as a wage worker, you know what comes out first? Respect. We need to respect the wage workers. They contribute more to my quality of life than I do to theirs. I have to respect and honor that. I want to make sure that those tasks that enhance the quality of my life are done well. That the people doing that work are happy. They shouldn't have to worry about a sick child or an elder getting properly cared for, or job security, or proper retirement benefits. There is nothing unreasonable about that. I want people to go out and ask their garbage person for an autograph.

Magpie remembers a story Utah Phillips told the last time we saw him. He used to do a lot of gardening, and every year he and his wife would dig up the back yard and put in a huge garden. One year, Utah's touring schedule was really heavy, and there was no way he could be home to help with the digging. He felt really bad about this until he had an idea.

Because of his politics, Utah often had the eyes of the authorities on him, and he was almost certain that his phone was tapped. So he calls up his wife one night after a show and asked her if she got all the guns and explosives buried safely in the backyard. She tells him that they're buried so deep the cops and feds will never find them.

So naturally the police and FBI show up almost immediately and dig up the entire back yard, looking for the weapons. And, like Dubya and the Iraqi WMDs, they come up empty-handed.

But in the meantime, all the hard work of preparing the garden for planting has been taken care of. Utah said they had a real good crop that year.

Via wood s lot.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:08 PM | Get permalink

Fox drops lawsuit against Franken.

After basically being laughed out of court last week, Fox has dropped its trademark infringement lawsuit against satirist Al Franken and Penguin Books. The right-wing network dropped the suit with its usual grace:

When asked to comment on its decision to drop the case, a Fox spokeswoman said, "It's time to return Al Franken back to the normal obscurity he's accustomed to."

Meanwhile, Franken's 'obscure' book is at the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list.

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

The 10 commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court.

Writing in the UK Guardian, Gary Younge uses the uproar among fundamentalists over their court-ordered removal to talk about how the role of religion in the US differs from that in most industrialized countries.

At this point America's internal contradictions become an issue on the world stage: the nation that poses as the guardian of global secularity is itself dominated by strong fundamentalist instincts. There are two problems with this. The first is that, as became clear in Montgomery last week, there is no arguing with faith. Fundamentalists deal with absolutes. Their eternal certainties make them formidable campaigners and awful negotiators - it is difficult to cut a bargain with divine truth.

The second is that America's religiosity is not something it shares with even its few western allies, let alone the many countries that oppose its current path. Yet another poll shows that among countries where people believe religion to be very important, America's views are closer to Pakistan's and Nigeria's than to France's or Germany's.

Via little red cookbook.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:59 PM | Get permalink

A woman's life in 'liberated' Iraq.

Over at Baghdad Burning, Riverbend tells us how she lost her job. It's a depressing story and, as she points out, one that's all too commonly told by women in Iraq these days.

I'm a computer science graduate. Before the war, I was working in an Iraqi database/software company located in Baghdad as a programmer/network administrator (yes, yes... a geek). Every day, I would climb three flights of stairs, enter the little office I shared with one female colleague and two males, start up my PC and spend hours staring at little numbers and letters rolling across the screen. It was tedious, it was back-breaking, it was geeky and it was... wonderful.

When I needed a break, I'd go visit my favorite sites on the internet, bother my colleagues or rant about 'impossible bosses' and 'improbable deadlines'.

I loved my job- I was *good* at my job. I came and went to work on my own. At 8 am I?d walk in lugging a backpack filled with enough CDs, floppies, notebooks, chewed-on pens, paperclips and screwdrivers to make Bill Gates proud. I made as much money as my two male colleagues and got an equal amount of respect from the manager (that was because he was clueless when it came to any type of programming and anyone who could do it was worthy of respect... a girl, no less- you get the picture).

What I?m trying to say is that no matter *what* anyone heard, females in Iraq were a lot better off than females in other parts of the Arab world (and some parts of the Western world- we had equal salaries!). We made up over 50% of the working force. We were doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, professors, deans, architects, programmers, and more. We came and went as we pleased. We wore what we wanted (within the boundaries of the social restrictions of a conservative society).

During the first week of June, I heard my company was back in business. It took several hours, seemingly thousands of family meetings, but I finally convinced everyone that it was necessary for my sanity to go back to work. They agreed that I would visit the company (with my two male bodyguards) and ask them if they had any work I could possibly take home and submit later on, or through the internet.

One fine day in mid-June, I packed my big bag of geeky wonders, put on my long skirt and shirt, tied back my hair and left the house with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension.

We had to park the car about 100 meters away from the door of the company because the major road in front of it was cracked and broken with the weight of the American tanks as they entered Baghdad. I half-ran, half-plodded up to the door of the company, my heart throbbing in anticipation of seeing friends, colleagues, secretaries... just generally something familiar again in the strange new nightmare we were living.

The moment I walked through the door, I noticed it. Everything looked shabbier somehow- sadder. The maroon carpet lining the hallways was dingy, scuffed and spoke of the burden of a thousand rushing feet. The windows we had so diligently taped prior to the war were cracked in some places and broken in others... dirty all over. The lights were shattered, desks overturned, doors kicked in, and clocks torn from the walls.

I stood a moment, hesitantly, in the door. There were strange new faces- fewer of the old ones. Everyone was standing around, looking at everyone else. The faces were sad and lethargic and exhausted. And I was one of the only females. I weaved through the strange mess and made my way upstairs, pausing for a moment on the second floor where management was located, to listen to the rising male voices. The director had died of a stroke during the second week of the war and suddenly, we had our own little 'power vacuum'. At least 20 different men thought they were qualified to be boss. Some thought they qualified because of experience, some because of rank and some because they were being backed by differing political parties (SCIRI, Al-Daawa, INC).

I continued upstairs, chilled to the bone, in spite of the muggy heat of the building which hadn't seen electricity for at least 2 months. My little room wasn't much better off than the rest of the building. The desks were gone, papers all over the place... but A. was there! I couldn't believe it- a familiar, welcoming face. He looked at me for a moment, without really seeing me, then his eyes opened wide and disbelief took over the initial vague expression. He congratulated me on being alive, asked about my family and told me that he wasn't coming back after today. Things had changed. I should go home and stay safe. He was quitting- going to find work abroad. Nothing to do here anymore. I told him about my plan to work at home and submit projects... he shook his head sadly.

I stood staring at the mess for a few moments longer, trying to sort out the mess in my head, my heart being torn to pieces. My cousin and E. were downstairs waiting for me- there was nothing more to do, except ask how I could maybe help... A. and I left the room and started making our way downstairs. We paused on the second floor and stopped to talk to one of the former department directors. I asked him when they thought things would be functioning, he wouldn't look at me. His eyes stayed glued to A.'s face as he told him that females weren't welcome right now- especially females who 'couldn't be protected'. He finally turned to me and told me, in so many words, to go home because 'they' refused to be responsible for what might happen to me.

Ok. Fine. Your loss. I turned my back, walked down the stairs and went to find E. and my cousin. Suddenly, the faces didn't look strange- they were the same faces of before, mostly, but there was a hostility I couldn't believe. What was I doing here' E. and the cousin were looking grim, I must have been looking broken, because they rushed me out of the first place I had ever worked and to the car. I cried bitterly all the way home- cried for my job, cried for my future and cried for the torn streets, damaged buildings and crumbling people.

I?m one of the lucky ones... I'm not important. I'm not vital. Over a month ago, a prominent electrical engineer (one of the smartest females in the country) named Henna Aziz was assassinated in front of her family- two daughters and her husband. She was threatened by some fundamentalists from Badir's Army and told to stay at home because she was a woman, she shouldn't be in charge. She refused- the country needed her expertise to get things functioning- she was brilliant. She would not and could not stay at home. They came to her house one evening: men with machine-guns, broke in and opened fire. She lost her life- she wasn't the first, she won't be the last.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:39 PM | Get permalink

If the Vice President doesn't have anything to hide ...

Then how come US VP Dick Cheney stiffed the investigation into the Energy task force he headed in 2001? That task force, you might remember, was criticized at the time for ignoring any input except that from energy companies such as Enron, and for putting out a report that read more like an oil company annual report than a government document. After an investigation that met with almost total noncooperation from Cheney's office, the General Accounting Office (the investigate arm of the US Congress) has finally put out its report on the task force's activities.

What did the GAO find? Nothing. But only because Cheney's stonewalling made it impossible to tell how much influence the energy industry had on the task force and its recommendations.

"The extent to which submissions from any of these stakeholders were solicited, influenced policy deliberations or were incorporated into the final report is not something that we can determine based on the limited information at our disposal," the GAO said.

Administration officials did not account for much of the money spent on the task force and could not remember whether anyone took official notes during the 10 Cabinet-level meetings the group held in 2001, the investigators said. [...]

The task force issued a report to President Bush in May, 2001. The administration announced an energy policy shortly afterward, calling for more oil and gas drilling and a revival of nuclear power. The policy bogged down in Congress.

Critics of the administration, including environmentalists and some Democrats in Congress, said they suspected the energy industry had undue influence on the task force.

White House officials argued that the GAO had overstepped its bounds and forcing them to turn over the records would hamper their ability to get "unvarnished" expert advice. [...]

Cheney's office turned over 77 pages of documents relating to money spent on the task force, but all were either irrelevant or useless, the GAO said.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:58 PM | Get permalink

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Sending Dubya back to Crawford, Texas.

That's one of the promises Gov. Howard Dean is making in his stump speech as he pursues the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. Magpie went down to hear Dean at his Portland (the one in Oregon) stop earlier today, and we're starting to think that the former Vermont governor may be just the man to do the job.

About 5000 Oregonians filled the Urban Studies plaza at Portland State University mid-day today, and waited fairly patiently for Dean to appear, which he did about one hour after the time that many people had been given. But once there, Dean jumped right into a series of attacks on Dubya's record on the economy, the environment, jobs, and foreign policy. (Yes, pretty much everything the Prez has done since he's been in office.)

Magpie should have taken notes or made a recording of the speech so we could be more specific about what Dean said, but we didn't. So what we will do instead is mention a few things that impressed us the most.

— Dean said that he wasn't the kind of candidate who looks at polls before he takes a position on something. He said that if asked a question on an issue, he'd answer, and that his answers can be found on his website. He expected that people would disagree with him on some issues, but he promised to be honest.

— He risked pissing off some of the audience by saying that he supported both the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan. (The former because it was in response to the invasion of an ally, and the last because it was an attempt to bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice.) Further, he said that as commander-in-chief, he would send US troops to overseas if the security of the US required it. But he also said that he would never send troops abroad without telling the American people the truth about what he was doing. Magpie disagrees with him on almost all of this, but we appreciated the honesty.

— Dean said that he was trying to give three to four million people who don't show up at the polls a reason to vote. One of Magpie's major criticisms of the Democratic party is that, for the last 15 or 20 years, its focused on the same part of the electorate as the Republicans, and hasn't seemed to care that the number of people who vote is shrinking. Dean obviously realizes that the success of his campaign for the nomination, and that of the Democratic campaign against Dubya, depends on mobilizing people who generally don't believe it matters who gets into office.

— Dean said that no one was going to beat Dubya by being a 'Republican lite.' Instead, Dubya has to be confronted on his record and made to justify his poor handling of the country since it fell into his stewardship. Dean promised not to let Dubya off the hook. Magpie liked this a lot

Magpie isn't sure that she's throwing her support behind Gov. Dean (even though we have given to the campaign in the past), but we are beginning to believe that Dean can go the distance. And that maybe another four years of Dubya, his cronies, and the lootocracy isn't inevitable.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:50 PM | Get permalink

We're sure this isn't important.

From a BBC report:

The International Committee of the Red Cross is cutting back its operations in Iraq after warnings that it could be targeted for attack.

The number of foreign staff in Baghdad is being reduced to about 50 as the level of violence throughout the country has failed to abate and the organisation fears that US-led forces cannot ensure security.

If it was, Washington would be upset, right? And it would do things differently in Iraq, yes?

By the way, one of the things the Red Cross won't be doing anymore is monitoring the conditions of people detained by the US and UK forces.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:29 PM | Get permalink