Magpie

Saturday, October 4, 2003

Leaving no stone unturned.

Brian Flemming has put his crack team of researchers to work to create an excruciatingly detailed account of Dubya's efforts to determine who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA connection to Robert Novak. Flemming kindly posted the results for the rest of us to share right over here.

Via Atrios.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:44 PM | Get permalink

Republicans short-change US troops. Again.

Army Times reports that Republicans in the US Senate have blocked an amendment that would have provided more money for the Army to buy personal combat gear for troops in Iraq. By a 49-37 vote, the Republican majority in the Senate tabled an amendment by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd that would have pulled money from Dubya's funding request for reconstructing Iraq and added that money to the Army's supply budget. According to Dodd, Dubya's request as-is only covers three months of combat supplies.

Many soldiers, especially mobilized National Guard members, have been buying their own equipment, especially things like water-pack systems, Dodd said.

“The Army could not afford to equip all soldiers with this equipment, so many soldiers are using bulky canteens that quickly heat up in the desert sun,” Dodd said. And, the canteens don’t have the same capacity as the so-called camelbaks.

“In other cases, the soldiers are paying hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to buy equipment themselves, everything ranging from the camelbacks to gun scopes,” he said. “In spite of the Army’s stated priorities, the administration did not procure enough personal equipment for these men and women.”

He estimated deploying soldiers are spending an average of $300 each on personal gear. “I think we can do better than that,” he said.

Via Pacific Views.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:10 PM | Get permalink

The Chinese immigration to California.

The US Library of Congress has a fascinating site on the Chinese immigration to California between 1850 and 1925. There are links to around 8,000 photos, texts, and other source material, compiled from major archives in California. Obviously, Magpie didn't crawl through the whole site, but we saw enough to know that we're going back to look more.

These documents describe the experiences of Chinese immigrants in California, including the nature of inter-ethnic tensions. They also document the specific contributions of Chinese immigrants to commerce and business, architecture and art, agriculture and other industries, and cultural and social life in California. Chinatown in San Francisco receives special treatment as the oldest and largest community of Chinese in the United States. Also included is documentation of smaller Chinese communities throughout California, as well as material reflecting on the experiences of individuals. Although necessarily selective, such a large body of materials presents a full spectrum of representation and opinion.

Our favorite photograph so far is this one of a musician taken in 1889.

Via gordon.coale.

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

A really cheap shot against Schwarzenegger.

But y'all know that Magpie loves a good cheap shot.

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:36 PM | Get permalink

California right wing is picking their next target.

The prospect of Governor Terminator isn't the only bad news hanging over the heads of Californians. The state's lesbian and gay citizens are being targeted (yet again) by the right, as two Republican state legislators have launched a drive to repeal California's domestic partners law.

Backed by the religious right, State Senator Peter Knight and Assemblymember Ray Haynes gotten the green light to start collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would toss out the domestic partners law. To qualify for the March 2004 ballot, repeal backers must collect 373,816 valid signatures on referendum petitions. Because the number of signatures required is relatively small, and California has so many people, observers expect that the measure will easily make the ballot.

"This attack on families and children by Republican legislators is truly offensive," said Geoffrey Kors, Equality California Executive Director, noting that not one Republican member of the legislator voted in favor of the domestic partner bill. "To say that they support family values while they are aggressively working to take rights away from California families is incredibly hypocritical."

Sen. Knight was behind the successful drive for Proposition 22 defining marriage as a union between a man and as woman. Voters endorsed the proposition in 2000, and Knight says the Domestic Partners Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Gray Davis last month is in direct conflict with the law.

Via 365Gay.com.

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

Lesbians and gay men outside California better look out, too.

Magpie has been over visting our right-wing friends at Crosswalk again, and we noted that the Christian right is mobilizing the troops to 'defend traditional marriage from the assault of homosexuals.' The Agape Press wire service report is notable both for the language in which the journalists describe the right-wing move to get a constitutional amendment against lesbian and gay marriages, but also for the rhetorical overkill that some of the fundamentalist leaders use when describing their opponents.

We recommend reading the whole article, but here are some excerpts in case you don't:

Pro-family leaders have wrapped up a meeting in Washington, DC, with a firm commitment to defend traditional marriage from the assaults of homosexuals, their supporters, and the courts. The coalition of pro-family groups says it is ready to fight like never before to defend the biblical concept of marriage: the union of one man and one woman.

More than two dozen pro-family organizations -- including the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and the Christian Coalition of America -- say they want to make homosexual "marriage" the number-one social issue in next year's election. The coalition has announced a voter registration drive and endorsed the language of a Constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the traditional way.

At a press conference on Thursday, the leaders of many of the pro-family groups composing the coalition said they are ready to do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to preserve the traditional view of marriage, which they call the foundation of American society. They announced that October 12-18 will be "Marriage Protection Week" in the U.S. Elements of the observance will include church bulletin inserts in more than 70,000 churches, and Christian radio programming on the issue throughout the week. [...]

Tony Perkins, who just recently became president of the Washington, DC-based Family Research Council, said the formation of the coalition was mandated by the out-of-control actions of one group which is trying to legalize same-sex unions. He claims the push for homosexual marriage is not coming from the American people or from their elected representatives -- but from what he calls "the Black Plague."

"From the Pledge of Allegiance to the Ten Commandments to the Do-Not-Call campaign -- and now to the very institution of marriage -- un-elected judges in black robes are not only ruling against the wishes of the American people, they are overturning laws passed by the elected representatives of those people," Perkins said.

The FRC leader said "this is the issue of our time." He stated emphatically that his organization will use every resource at its disposal to ensure that when pro-family voters enter the voting booth in 2004, they will know which candidates are "friends of the families."

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

This sounds vaguely familiar

Back at Wampum, MB has dredged up more news stories from 1991. Magpie had to double-check the date on this one to make sure it didn't come from a current issue of the Post.

JOBLESSNESS DROPS TO 6.7% IN SEPTEMBER NUMBERS CALLED SIGN OF WEAK RECOVERY
Anne Swardson, Washington Post
October 5, 1991
The nation's unemployment rate dropped a bit in September and a relatively small number of jobs were added to the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday. Although both developments were positive signs, neither was strong enough to change the opinion of many experts that the recovery from recession is weak and spotty.

President Bush, commenting on the figures at a news conference yesterday, said "the economy is moving in the right direction. The drop in...

The rest of Flashback Friday is here. (And we hope MB is feeling better.)

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

Hello, operator? Get me rewrite!

At Ruminate This, Lisa English audtions for an editing job at the NY Times.

Magpie would be more than willing to write her a glowing reference.

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

Valerie Plame.

Was she 'an analyst, not a spy,' as columnist Robert Novak maintains? Or was she an undercover agent who ran intelligence operations?

Calpundit has run down all the descriptions of Plame's role at the CIA that have hit the press since Novak's original column on July 14. Take a look and figure out for yourself what you think the truth is.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:15 AM | Get permalink

Friday, October 3, 2003

We rarely do graphics here.

But this one from the Knight-Ridder News Service is so eloquent in showing how bad a job the US media has done reporting the Iraq war and the 'war on terrorism.'

Fox News rots brains

The full story is here.

Via San Jose Mercury News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:17 PM | Get permalink

Déjà vu all over again.

In watching the story of the Plame affair unfold, Magpie has been keenly aware that the country has seen something like this before. In the 1970s, the Nixon White House set out on a similar path of leaking dirt on its enemies and using other dirty tricks in an attempt to hide the lies it told while prosecuting an increasingly unpopular war. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the NY TimesUS press. The 7,000 pages of this internal Defense Department document told the real story of the war in Vietnam, including the raft of lies used by several administrations to convince the public to support US involvement in Vietnam's civil war. Publication of the papers in the Times and other newspapers was a critical event in forcing the US to pull out of Vietnam.

The Nixon tapes reveal how angry the release of the Pentagon Papers made Tricky Dick, and one of the results of that anger was the creation of Nixon's 'plumbers.' The plumbers started off by breaking into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and leaking information that the White House hoped would discredit him. Later on, the plumbers broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel, an act which led to the scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency.

In a compelling interview with Salon's Michelle Goldberg, Ellsberg looks at the similarities between his experiences after leaking the Pentagon Papers, and those of Joseph Wilson after his leak about Iraq's supposed uranium purchases from Niger.

[Salon:] If the leaker really was someone high up in the administration, what do you think is going on in the White House now? Is the dynamic of a scandal like this something they can control?

[Ellsberg:] I think we can predict from past experience what's going on in the White House. First, there's the realization that they have one of these daily or weekly crises. There may be a growing sense - but here I may be a little ahead of them - that this one has real possibilities for bringing them down. Part of that is because the administration has said that the President knows of no one in the White House being involved. That is almost surely a lie, and it's a lie that is now entangled in a legal process. The FBI is going to be asking who knew what when. [White House spokesman Scott] McClellan says the president knows that Rove has no involvement. That statement is going to be declared inoperative. At the very least, Rove was clearly involved in calling people up and saying Valerie Plame is fair game.

They have already made statements they are going to have to reverse. It is not going to end up that there was no White House involvement. One leak, even of an undercover agent, is not going to look like an impeachable offense, but the lies and obstruction of justice going on now, that stuff is going to come out, and that stuff is going to look impeachable. I can see just how this is going to go down now that there's a legal process as there was in Watergate.

Of course, we wouldn't want to impeach Bush. Cheney is Bush's impeachment insurance, just as Spiro Agnew was Nixon's impeachment insurance. We need to get them all out of there. [...]

[Salon:] Like you, Wilson has a formidable political machine lined up against him. Do you have any advice for him?

[Ellsberg:] Everything I've seen him do so far has been admirable and exemplary. He certainly has a picture now about what they're prepared to do against him - he doesn't need to have me warn him.

My advice is not to Wilson but to other people. The purpose of going after Wilson, as in going after me, was to intimidate him and to intimidate other people. I'm totally confident now that he can't be intimidated. He isn't intimidated any more, if I may say, than I was.

What I would really urge is for other people to thwart the White House's hope that they would be intimidated. I want to encourage people to tell the truth, but not by misleading them that it's without risk. My advice to these other people is to consider telling important truths about government lies that are dangerous to this country, consider telling those truths even though you know that they'll go after you personally and professionally. They'll try to destroy your career. They might even try to put you in jail.

CIA analysts said they were appalled that the president used such bogus information [to justify the Iraq war]. My advice to them then and now is that, when they're appalled by misinformation by the president, they should consider risking their careers, risking even going to prison, to correct such bogus information by telling Congress, putting it in the press with documents, and/or coming out publicly.

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

The Plame leak.

Corrente has a comprehensive update on the last day's developments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:06 AM | Get permalink

Gun homicide rate in Canada drops to lowest ever.

Magpie was going to blog about this, but xymphora's got it covered:

In 2002, Canada had 149 homicides committed by gun (the firearm homicide rate has been falling for the last thirty years). The United States, with approximately ten times the population of Canada, has over 10,000 homicides committed by gun each year (despite the fact that gun deaths and gun homicides have been dropping significantly in the United States over the last ten years). Canada exists in exactly the same atmosphere of violent American popular culture as Americans do, and is statistically similar to the United States in most measures of health. It appears that the massive discrepancy exists because of the amount of gun ownership, and in particular the much greater number of handguns in the United States. I know there has been a tremendous effort in the United States, funded by gun companies and their lobbyists, to attempt to prove that gun ownership somehow makes people safer, but the huge difference between the Canadian and American experience is impossible to surmount with tricks with statistics (it gets even worse if you think about suicide and accidental deaths). This isn't necessarily an argument for legal restrictions on gun ownership, but it is clear that the price for unrestricted gun ownership will be a significant number of human lives.

The new Canadian figures made Magpie remember a 1980s study of violent crimes in Seattle and Vancouver. The two cities were (and are) about the same size, located about 120 miles apart on opposite sides of the Canada-US border. Basically, the two cities are about as similar as any pair you could find in either country. Rather than try to remember the findings ourselves, we went and found an abstract for the journal article reporting the study's results.

Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities, John Henry Sloan, MD, MPH; Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; et al, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 319, No. 19, November 10, 1988, pp. 1256-1262.

Key Statistics: Although similar to Seattle, Washington in many ways, Vancouver, British Columbia has adopted a more restrictive approach to the regulation of handguns. In this study, the annual rate of assault was only modestly higher in Seattle than Vancouver, but the rate of assault involving firearms was seven times higher in Seattle. The risk of death from homicide was found to be significantly higher in Seattle than in Vancouver. Virtually all of this excess risk was explained by a nearly five-fold higher risk of being murdered with a handgun in Seattle as compared with Vancouver. Rates of homicide involving means other than guns were not found to be substantially different in the two cities.

This study examined robberies, burglaries, assaults, and homicides in Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1980 through 1986 to determine the associations between handgun regulations, assault and other crimes, and homicide. This study found that restrictions on handgun access may reduce the rate of homicide in a community.

Basically, the study said that if guns are more easily available, the homicide rate will be higher. The city that had the higher handgun ownership rate and the less restrictive gun laws—Seattle—had more assaults involving guns and more gun-related homicides than Vancouver—the city with restrictive gun laws and fewer handguns in the possession of its residents.

Of course, the gun lobby has been attacking the conclusions and methodology of this study for years, trying to prove that it didn't prove any link between gun, gun laws, and homicides. They're undoubtedly getting ready to 'prove' that the continuing decrease in gun-related homicides in Canada has nothing to do with its gun laws, either.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:34 AM | Get permalink

Is Schwarzenegger trying to ride fear to victory?

In recent weeks, Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign to unseat California governor Gray Davis has spent a lot of time pointing at the problems supposedly caused by Indian casinos, and bemoaning Davis' appproval of a new law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses. According Pacific News Service's Donal Brown, this is just the latest example of how racial fears often drives California elections, especially when times are hard.

As an example, Brown points to the 1982 governor's race between Republican George Deukmejian and LA mayor Tom Bradley, a black Democrat. Despite a 5 percent lead on te polls going into the election, Bradley still lost. It was widely believed at the time that some people were lying to pollsters, not willing to admit that they wouldn't vote for Bradley because he was black.

Brown thinks something similar is going on in the current recall campaign.

Certainly the Democrats have provided Schwarzenegger with openings on the fear issues. In an attempt to mend fences with California's growing ethnic populations, Gov. Gray Davis approved a measure allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, a controversial issue. And Bustamante accepted sizable campaign donations from the Indian gaming industry.

Even so, I can't figure out why Indian gaming is suddenly such a threat. Contrary to the allegations in the Schwarzenegger ads, the industry contributes millions to the state coffers. And only three years ago, California voters themselves approved Indian gaming by a 2-1 margin. But Schwarzenegger has been aggressively exploiting the Indian money openings in his ads and statements, as if their money were dirtier than the money in his campaign.

[University of Maryland political scientist Karen] Kaufmann points to Schwarzenegger's criticism of his leading Republican challenger, conservative State Sen. Tom McClintock, for accepting Indian money. Schwarzenegger supporters have called the money to McClintock an Indian plot to weaken his campaign. No matter that McClintock has long supported the Indian right to gaming.

"In my opinion," says Kaufmann, "the constant references to illegal immigrants and Indians are a not-so-subtle suggestion on the part of the Schwarzenegger camp that Davis and Bustamante will give preference to people of color over Anglo Californians."

While ethnic minorities now comprise a majority of Californians, the electorate is still overwhelmingly white. Latinos represent only 15 percent of registered voters, and are unlikely to provide a counter-surge that might determine the recall outcome.

California Republicans paid a big political price for their Prop. 187 adventure, losing Latino voters. The recall election shows that once again, they are willing to risk alienating Latino voters. How long will they be able to get away with it?

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

Thursday, October 2, 2003

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

It's been over two months since Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his column—months during which Dubya knew that somone in the White House had broken the law by leaking this information, but did nothing to identify the perpetrator and bring them to justice. Now that the leak has become a major political problem for the administration, Paul Krugman says that the main response of the White House has been 'slime and defend.'

The right-wing media slime machine, which tries to assassinate the character of anyone who opposes the right's goals — hey, I know all about it — has already swung into action. For example, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page calls Mr. Wilson an "open opponent of the U.S. war on terror." We've grown accustomed to this sort of slur — and they accuse liberals of lacking civility? — but let's take a minute to walk through it.

Mr. Wilson never opposed the "war on terror" — he opposed the war in Iraq precisely because it had no obvious relevance to the campaign against terror. He feared that invading a country with no role in 9/11, and no meaningful Al Qaeda links, would divert resources from the pursuit of those who actually attacked America. Many patriots in the military and the intelligence community agreed with him then; even more agree now.

Unlike the self-described patriots now running America, Mr. Wilson has taken personal risks for the sake of his country. In the months before the first gulf war, he stayed on in Baghdad, helping to rescue hundreds of Americans who might otherwise have been held as hostages. The first President Bush lauded him as a "truly inspiring diplomat" who exhibited "courageous leadership."

In any case, Mr. Wilson's views and character are irrelevant. Someone high in the administration committed a felony and, in the view of the elder Mr. Bush, treason. End of story.

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| | Posted by Magpie at 11:17 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's bad poll numbers just keep on coming.

This time, it's a NY Times/CBS News poll.

President George W. Bush's approval ratings are now back to where they were before their post-9/11 meteoric increases. His overall approval rating and his rating on handling the economy are near the lowest marks of his presidency, and his rating on handling foreign policy is lower than ever before.

In addition to the declining overall job approval rating, confidence in the President's ability to handle the two major issues dominating his presidency -- the economy and international crises - has fallen, and is now more negative than positive.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:52 PM | Get permalink

Uncommon Thought is back.

Magpie got a note from Rowan at Uncommon Thought, letting us know that her blog is back up after several weeks of technical problems and host-switching. It's good to have her back.

If you head over that way, check out the post on how the media is switching its attention from the White House's leaking to the credibility of Joseph Wilson.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:45 PM | Get permalink

That lot in the White House are getting mighty nervous.

And there's no telling what they might do if they fell like they've been cornered.

That's the premise Jeremy Puma is working from in an article about how Dubya's administration might respond to its continuing slide in popularity and credibility. Like Puma says, put on your tin-foil hat.

2. Another war -- Okay, my spidey-sense gets all tingly over this possibility. They know that another terrorist attack on American soil (to be addressed in #3) could very well serve only to show their utter ineptitude. Something in a foreign nation, however, would be a different story. A well-planned attack against an American establishment in a foreign nation would no doubt have Rumsfeld and Bush dry-washing their hands with glee.

Doesn't even have to be in a new country. Suppose "[insert radical Islamic group here] terrorists" in Iraq blow up one of our headquarters, killing lots and lots of American non-combatants. Suppose the Taliban get their acts together and launch a major offensive into Kabul. Neither of these scenarios is outlandish -- it's definitely a possibility. Public opinion is most certainly leaning away from Iraq right now, but in the face of another large-scale attack on Americans, you'd be able to watch the needle of popular opinion rise right out of the red.

Obviously, Iran, Syria and North Korea are on the list. Iran's nuclear designs are freaking us out right now, and wouldn't it be convenient if some of their nuclear technology ended up in Iraq in the hands of Shi'ite fundamentalists?

Again, it could happen, and since foreign wars are "clean" wars (not usually many American civilian casualties), it's far more difficult for the administration to be held accountable. Not saying that the Bushies would purposely plan and cause a new war, but it wouldn't be out of the question to find them looking the other way, and exploiting any such war for political gain.

Via Open Source Politics.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:52 PM | Get permalink

'Evil reptilian kitten-eater' wins Ontario election.

After a campaign that featured some the weirdest election rhetoric that Magpie has heard in a long time, Ontario voters have swept the Liberal Party into office. Preliminary returns show the Liberals taking 70 of the 103 seats in the province's Legislative Assembly, enabling them to form a majority government for the first time in 65 years. Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty—the man called an 'evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet' in a Tory press release— will be Ontario's new premier.

The election results are a major change in the fortunes of the Progressive Conservative Party and current Premier Ernie Eves. Last spring, the party was favored to win an election if it were called, and just a month ago polls showed the Tories and Liberals running neck-and-neck. But the 'kitten-eater' remark seems to have opened up a vein of dissatisfaction with Eves' government, based largely on scandals involving members of the provincial cabinet and problems around the privatization of Ontario Hydro, the provincially owned electric utility.

The election may also be a setback for the New Democrats. Earlier this week, NDP leader Howard Hampton had been predicting that is party would outpoll the Conservatives to become the official opposition in the Legislative Assembly. Current returns show the NDP winning only eight seats, down one from their number in the last assembly.

For more on the 'kitten eater' press release, see this earlier post.

Update: The Globe & Mail reports the final results as:

Liberals 72 seats (+36)
Progressive Conservatives 24 seats (-32)
New Democrats 7 seats (-2)

As a result of the election, the NDP has lost 'official party' status in the province, despite its share of the vote going up 2.6 percent.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:34 PM | Get permalink

Smelling blood in Washington.

At AsiaTimes, Jim Lobe describes how badly things have fallen apart for Dubya's administration in the last few weeks. If you only read the first two paragraphs, you'll have a crystal-clear picture of how everything Dubya and his cronies touch seems to be turning into shit. But Lobe goes on to lay out, by chapter and verse, the administration's deceit, venality, corruption, and incompetence. Not to mention its leak of Valerie Plame's CIA connection. Magpie always finds Lobe worth reading, but this article is particularly well-done.

The administration of US President George W Bush - including virtually all of its top officials, from Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - is on the defensive. Not only have the president's approval ratings plunged to the lowest level in his term, but his administration has opened a potentially lethal credibility gap on so many different fronts that reporters hardly know which to write about.

The Justice Department's announcement on Tuesday that it has launched a formal investigation at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency of the identification by as-yet-unidentified "senior White House officials" of a covert CIA agent is just the latest of a series of brewing scandals that are likely to dominate the media agenda in the coming weeks and months.

With the exception of practicing extramarital sex in the Oval Office, Bush and his Iraq policy are now being charged with violating just about every imaginable tenet - from deceit and corruption, to incompetence and betrayal - of what has come to be called "good governance".

That many of these charges have moved in just the past few weeks from the alternative to the mainstream media and from grassroots activist groups to Capitol Hill indicates the seriousness of the situation faced by Bush.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:16 AM | Get permalink

Bridges into Iran.

At the Iranian, Hossein Derakhshan talks about his experiences as an Iranian expat blogger, about the explosion of weblogs in Iran, and about how the increasing number of English-language blogs written by Iranians has the potential to change the way the world sees Iran.

Weblogs are powerful bridges in a widely divided society. Bridges between immigrants and homeland inhabitants, girls and boys, parents and children, and especially between journalists and writers who were not able to publish their works freely in the politically closed atmosphere in Iran and their thirsty readers.

Tens of thousands of Persian weblogs now attract millions of readers everyday, but the language barrier has prevented the world from seeing the real Iran and its people through them. A quick study of the contents of these weblogs displays a whole new set of attitudes and values among Iranian young people, absolutely different with what mainstream North American media tries to sketch.

New generation of young Iranians are more tolerant, self-expressive, independent, and individualistic than ever. In an increasingly anti-American -- and to some extent anti-Western -- region of the Middle East, where fanatic Islam has the most fans among the middle-class population, Iranians embrace extremely different values than their neighbouring countries, and surprisingly, different than their fanatic leaders.

Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger who was the only genuine and direct voice from inside Iraq during the foggy days of war, could change many people's mind about the life in Baghdad. Now while the Iranian fundamentalist regime is under serious pressure by the world community for its nuclear program, human rights issues and support for terrorism, Iranians who write their weblogs in English provide the best tools for the world to separate the fanatic government from an exceptionally educated and rational society in the Middle East.

Hossein has created a website that links to English language weblogs by Iranians living inside and outside their homeland. You can find it here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:34 AM | Get permalink

Nothing's happening. Keep moving.

Magpie was wondering how the far right is spinning the growing White House leak scandal, so we wandered over to our favorite religious-right news site at Crosswalk to see what's up. According to commentator Gary Bauer, nothing's up—it's all just campaign posturing for 2004.

By now you have probably heard about the first alleged Bush scandal. The administration has been charged with leaking the name of a CIA "operative" to the media, a woman who happens to be married to an Administration critic, Joseph Wilson. It is against the law to disclose the names of CIA operatives.

Factually, this is much ado about nothing. The CIA employee was not "covert" and her identity was widely known in Washington, D.C.

Joseph Wilson is hardly an unbiased player. He is a Clinton appointee who has financially supported a number of the current crop of Democrat presidential contenders. He has been affiliated with far left-wing groups that not only opposed the liberation of Iraq, but which also wanted to end the sanctions on Iraq during the Hussein regime.

But the "scandal" is important in this sense - it is a signal that the 2004 campaign will be one of the most bitterly fought in our history. The President's enemies hope to prove Karl Rove is responsible for the leak in order to cripple a key player just as the battle for a second term begins in earnest.

In short, take what your hear on the evening news with a "side order" of great skepticism. The "long knives" are out!

Just to add some perspective on Bauer, he's the former president of the Family Research Council and was Ronald Reagan's chief domestic policy advisor during his second term. Currently, he heads a new right-wing outfit called American Values.

Magpie is sure that Bauer and his ilk will be cranking up their attempts at character assassination against Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame as the investigation of the leak gets closer to the top of Dubya's administration.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:17 AM | Get permalink

We wish we'd written that headline.

On a story about Dubya's advisor Karl Rove in the UK Guardian:

Boy Genius or Turd Blossom?

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

US public thinks the White House leaks are serious business.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll is bad news for anyone in Dubya's administration who thought that the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent was a story that would blow over fast.

According to the poll, 81 percent of those responding thought that the leak was a serious or very serious matter, and 72 percent thought it was very likely or somewhat likely that someone in the White House did the leaking. Poll respondents were underwhelmed with Dubya's current plan to have John Ashcroft's Justice Department investigate the leak. Over two-thirds of those responding—69 percent—said the investigation should be handled by a special counsel; only 29 percent thought the investigation should be handled by Justice.

To add to Dubya's woes, his approval rating continues to slide. Of those responding to the poll, only 54 percent approved of his job performance, while 44 percent disapproved. His approval rating was 77 percent as recently as early April.

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

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Yet more money for Iraq.

From the NY Times:

The Bush administration is seeking more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday.

The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.

Magpie guesses that it must be more expensive than Dubya thought to construct and hide all those 'Iraqi WMDs.'

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:18 PM | Get permalink

The latest on the Green Linnet controversy.

There's an ongoing dispute between Green Linnet (probably the largest outlet for recorded Irish traditional music) and some of its artists, with the artists charging that the label isn't paying them royalties that they deserve, and the label denying that any difficulties exist. (We posted earlier on the dispute here and here.)

The latest move in the ongoing fight is a protest concert that the 'Green Linnet 5' will be bringing to the label's doorstep later this month. Magpie was forwarded this message from Joanie Madden of Cherish the Ladies:

I'm sorry I have to bother you by sending out a bulk email to all of you soliciting your help in getting the word out regarding the Green Linnet 5 (Cherish the Ladies, Altan, Eileen Ivers, myself and Mick Moloney) and our planned protest / mini-concert for Monday, Columbus day, October 13th at Green Linnet records in Bethel, CT (by Danbury) at 4:30. We're hoping for a great turnout and I'd love all fans of traditional Irish music to come out and show their support for our cause.

As many of you are aware, Green Linnet has neglected to report all sales since 1999 to any of the GL 5. Collectively, our lawyer Bob Donnelly, estimates that approximately $450,000 is owed to us. Green Linnet has refused to pay us what they owe up to 1999 and have refused to account to us for what they owe us for the past four years. In addition there are hundreds of tracks on compilation albums that have never been accounted for either.

Their delays and actions have already cost us many thousands of dollars so far in trying to get what is owed to us, now we have been pushed to run a full fledge audit - an extremely expensive venture. At the present time, Green Linnet has refused our legal team any access to the books - another stall tactic.

For years, folk artists have been taken advantage of by unsavory accounting standards - we have finally said enough is enough and taken a stand. By banding together, we are charging ahead in an unprecedented attack of running a full audit - hopefully this endeavor will defer any other recording companies from doing this to another folk musician and they might think twice before they take advantage of travelling musicians or do it again.

This is serious money to a bunch of people who tour and make music for the sheer joy and love of it and for what it brings to the fans of our music. We work very hard and travel far and wide taking Irish music to the masses - with no 401K's or pension plans. Royalties are our pension! At a time of the biggest Celtic music explosion in history, one of the top Celtic labels has decided that their artists don't deserve what's due to them. Please help us in letting them know that you won't stand for it either.

Many of you have email lists or access to them - please help us in our cause in getting the word out! We need your help!

Thanks so much!!!!!

Directions to the protest...
From New York
Take I-684 North towards Brewster. Merge onto I-84 East - exit 9E towards Danbury. Take Exit 8 US-6 E / Newtown Road Exit. Turn Right onto Newtown Road go down 3/4's of a mile (you'll pass Holiday Inn, Taco Bell and McDonalds). Make a right at light onto Old Newtown Road. Go 3/10ths of a mile and the road comes to a Y. Bear Right before the stop sign onto Beaver Brook Road. After 2/10th's of a mile you'll see West End Power Equipment on your left. Go slow and turn left into next driveway. You'll see a big red Brick Building with Pilgrim Electronics written on the side - address is 60 Beaver Brook Road. Park in rear of the building.

Joanie Madden

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:17 PM | Get permalink

Washington Post reporter takes an axe to Dean's stump speech.

Having heard Democrtic presidential candidate Howard Dean speak, Magpie noticed that he kept hitting certain phrases and ideas over and over in order to move his audience to action against the current administraton. But unlike reporter Laura Blumenfeld, we didn't get the sense that Dean was practicing 'political group therapy.' To be fair, she didn't pull this notion out of thin air — her story on how Dean appeals to people who feel disenfranchised contains a quote from the candidate himself that lends credence to Blumenfeld's 'therapy' frame for understanding the success of the Dean campaign:

"People feel horribly disempowered by George Bush," he [Dean] said. "I'm about trying to give them control back. This is not just a 'campaign,' it's a movement to empower ordinary people...."

But overall, Magpie finds it really difficult to read Blemenfeld's article as anything other than a reporter's look down her nose at how a candidate manipulates people who are nowhere near as smart, sophisticated, and politically savvy as she is.

Here are some representative samples:

While the other candidates focus on their humble roots or heroic feats, Dean inverts the telescope: He talks about the voters. He tells them they're okay. Instead of trying to get them to love him, he tells them to love themselves. A doctor by training, he injects psychology into politics. [...]

Don't get mad, he urges, get even. It has been a recurrent theme in insurgent campaigns, but Dean's has capitalized on the Internet, where those who feel alienated can instantly connect: "The power is in your hands -- contribute!" [...]

If the emotional leitmotif of Bill Clinton's campaigns was empathy -- "I feel your pain" -- Dean's is empowerment -- "We'll fix your pain."

"The power to take this country back is in your hands," Dean said to the crowd. "Not mine."

Andrew watched him and smiled, rubbing his knuckles.

"You have the power," said Dean.

Andrew hugged his wife: "I love listening to him." [...]

"I don't even know his background, but I get sincerity from him," said Rusty Goodwin, 68.

Doris Bauters, 69, said, "Dean's a regular working guy, just like us."

In fact, Dean comes from an old-line family of bankers.

There's more, but you get the idea.

On the one hand, Magpie thinks that Dean's speeches and the workings of his campaign are proper grist for the journalistic and analytical mills, and that Dean should get as tough a going-over by reporters as any other candidate. But we've also noticed how Dubya's presidential campaign has not been subjected to a similar depth of analysis. Magpie would feel far better about the Post's publishing of Blumnefeld's story if the paper was also printing stories in which reporters took a similar look down their noses at Dubya and his supporters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:16 AM | Get permalink

Covering Dubya's butt.

The lead sentence of a Washington Post story:

With no chemical or biological weapons yet found in Iraq, the U.S. official in charge of the search for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction is pursuing the possibility that the Iraqi leader was bluffing, pretending he had distributed them to his most loyal commanders to deter the United States from invading.

That Saddam. He was such a master of deception that he would have fooled anybody into thinking that Iraq was armed to the teeth with WMDs.

Yeah, right.

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

Mindless secrecy.

Don't believe for a moment that the US has cornered the market. Just take a look over the border.

Via waterloo wide web.

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

Jobs coming and going in US economy.

The first of a new series of economic reports from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a 'tremendous churn' of jobs in the economy. According to the BLS, the fourth quarter of 2002 (the most recent quarter available) saw a gain of 7.746 million jobs. At the same time, however, 7.816 million jobs disappeared. If you do the math, there were 70,000 fewer jobs in the US this past New Year's Day than there were three months earlier, at the beginning of October.

In other words, 7.2 percent of all jobs in December 2002 did not exist three months earlier, while 7.3 percent of jobs in September 2002 had disappeared by the end of the year — a significant churn that cannot be seen by looking at the Labor Department's monthly payrolls report.

"These gross job gains and job losses statistics demonstrated that a sizable number of jobs appear and disappear in the relatively short time frame of one quarter," the BLS said in the report.

Nathan Newman pointed Magpie to an interesting AP story about what all this churning means.

[M]any analysts believe major changes in the nation's work force may be involved...

Some suggest that companies, facing tough competition from overseas and unable to raise prices of their products, are trying to hold down costs by turning more and more to contract employees. These employees would not show up on the business payroll survey but would be picked up by the survey of households, which would list them as self-employed.

Analysts said there were several reasons for this trend, including a reluctance of companies to hire fulltime workers until they have more assurances that the recovery is sustainable. Also, companies often save money by not offering benefits, such as health insurance, to contract employees.

Being a contract worker ourself, very little of this is news to Magpie. But rather than comment further, we'll let Nathan Newman have the floor:

What is remarkable is the instability so many people are living with. Add the real unemployment rate (including discouraged workers) to this rate of "churn jobs" and you have 15–20% of the population without a job or unsure if they'll have one tomorrow.

That's a scary number.

A summary of the BLS report is here. (The summary has links to the full data.)

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

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Maybe it wasn't Karl Rove. Or maybe it was.

At Open Source Politics, Mark Kleiman has an excellent update on the White House leak, including the latest speculation as to whodunit.

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

Reptilian kitten-eaters, polls, and the Ontario election.

Magpie has been paying close attention to the upcoming Ontario election since the Conservative Party sent out a press on Sept. 12 that called Liberal Party leader Dalton McGuinty an 'evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.' (See this earlier post.) Before that press release went out, the ruling Conservatives were in a dead heat with the Liberals for the upcoming provincial election. Now that the election is just two days away, five polls have predicted that the Liberals will win an outright majority in the provincial legislature. Most observers give the 'kitten eater' press release a significant role in changing the Tories' fortunes.

But now there's even more to the story. When the press release originally surfaced, Premier Ernie Eves discounted its importance, attributing it to someone in his campaign office who'd drank too much coffee or had too much time their hands. According to the Toronto Star, however, the author was Peter Varley, a key advisor to former Conservative Premier Mike Harris.

Sources say Varley, who did not return calls seeking comment yesterday, wrote the line at the end of a news release entitled "Dear Mr. McGuinty" as a way of boosting morale inside Tory campaign headquarters.

"He wrote it as a joke to share around the office, because everyone was so bummed out about that stuff you guys (the Star) had on tainted meat," said a party insider.

Another source said senior campaign officials pounced on Varley's intra-office quip and decided to send it out to reporters "to change the channel" on the tainted-meat story.

As another indicator of how far the Tories' may fall in Thursday's election, the leader of the leftist New Democrats — Ontario's usual number-three party — predicts that the NDP will come in ahead of the Tories. The NDP has been concentrating its energy on 30 key ridings where it has a good chance of winning the seat.

[NDP leader Howard Hampton] zeroed in on polls released over the weekend showing the Liberals clearly in the lead. An EKOS poll conducted for the Star shows the Liberals with nearly 48 per cent support, the Tories with 31 per cent and the NDP with 17 per cent.

The strong Liberal showing means it's safe for voters who want to throw out the Tories to support the NDP without fear of fragmenting the anti-Tory vote, he said. Hampton has battled the spectre of such strategic voting from the opening days of the campaign.

"We don't have to vote out of fear any more — fear the Conservatives might get elected," Hampton said. "Fear is something we can put behind us ... People can vote for what they believe in now."

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:37 PM | Get permalink

Right at the bottom of the story...

... about the alleged White House leak to the press of Valerie Plame's CIA connection, the Globe & Mail makes an interesting comparison:

The Wilson case has eerie parallels to one in Britain. Aides to Prime Minister Tony Blair leaked the name of a government scientist, David Kelly, to the media.

Mr. Kelly had questioned Mr. Blair's evidence on Iraqi weapons. He committed suicide after his name was made public.

Magpie wonders if the fallout from the White House leak is going have as catastrophic an effect on Dubya's fortunes as the Kelly leak appears to be having on those of Tony Blair.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:03 PM | Get permalink

'The 52 most dangerous American dignataries.'

The other day, Magpie linked to a CNN article about a new deck of cards out in France, featuring a rogues' gallery of the Dubya regime. Sadly, the article only showed the card for Dubya.

Now, Corrente has pointed us to this web page, where you can see all 52 cards. And even buy them or download them as a PDF file.

Cool!

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

FBI trying to get its mitts on journalists' records.

In an end-run around the First Amendment, the FBI is demanding that reporters who've written about a hacking case give up their records and identify their sources. The case the FBI is investigating is that of Adrian Lamo, who hacked into the internal database of the NY Times. According to The Register's Mark Rasch, the feds have sent letters to reporters who've written about Lamo, warning them that all of their documents related to Lamo are going to be subpoenaed.

According to Rasch, the subpoenas will cover 'their own notes, e-mails, impressions, interviews with third parties, independent investigations, privileged conversations and communications, off the record statements, and expense and travel reports related to stories about Lamo.'

The notices make no mention of the protections of the First Amendment, Department of Justice regulations that restrict the authority to subpoena information from journalists, or the New York law that creates a "newsman's shield" against disclosure of certain confidential information by reporters.

Instead, the FBI has threatened to put these reporters in jail unless they agree to preserve all of these records while they obtain a subpoena for them under provisions amended by the USA-PATRIOT Act.

The government also officiously informed the reporters that this is an "official criminal investigation" and asks that they not disclose the request to preserve documents, or the contents of the letter, to anyone -- presumably including their editors, directors, or lawyers -- under the implied threat of prosecution for obstruction of justice.

As Rasch points out, the provision of the Patriot Act that the FBI is using was not intended to apply to journalists. Instead, the provision requires ISPs to preserve stuff like email messages and audit logs, the idea being to prevent the destruction of electronic evidence while authorities are investigating a crime.

Why then is the FBI trying to use this Patriot provision against reporters? Rasch has three possible answers, none of them pleasant:

The statute is clearly geared at mandating the preservation of ephemeral electronic records by ISP's, but perhaps the Department of Justice is attempting to use the fact that reporters use electronic communications as a jurisdictional hook to order them to preserve their physical notes -- a dramatic, unprecedented and unwarranted expansion of the statute.

More sinister is the possibility that these letters were never intended to go to the reporters at all, but rather were actually intended to go to their ISPs. [...] So the whole thing could be intended as an end-run around for the First Amendment.

Finally, it is possible that the FBI knew that the ISP statute didn't apply to the reporters, but simply wanted to threaten or intimidate them with the possibility of an obstruction of justice prosecution...

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:52 AM | Get permalink

Joseph Wilson talks about the leak that outed his wife's CIA connection.

On Monday, CNN's Paula Zahn interviewed Joseph Wilson, whose wife Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent in a leak that allegedly came from the White House. The part of the transcript that caught Magpie's interest is where Wilson responds to columnist Robert Novak's discounting of the leak's significance and to Novak's current claim that the leak came from the CIA, not the White House. (It was in Novak's column that Plame was identified as an agent.)

ZAHN: And, finally, I wanted to share with you something that Robert Novak had to say a little bit earlier today about this controversy. Let's listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "CROSSFIRE") ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: You want to answer that question? Is this Bush-bashing on your part?

WILSON: Let me make a couple of points about that.

First of all, Novak also said that I was a Clinton appointee. In actual fact, my first political appointee was as ambassador. And I was appointed by George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush. So I really am apolitical in all of this.

Secondly, somebody with Novak's self-described 46 years experience will know the difference between operative and analyst. And his report clearly says -- his article says operative.

ZAHN: So what does that mean?

WILSON: That means that I think that he knew and he was told that she was a CIA operative, which means that they come under the branch of the CIA that deals with clandestine operations.

ZAHN: So you're basically saying there's no doubt in your mind that this was a leak, when in fact he said, in the course of interviewing a senior White House official, that is what he was told, and your wife's -- not her name at that point, but at least her official capacity was shared with him?

WILSON: Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report. And he said, a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative. He was trying to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm that? I said no.

After the article appeared, I called him and I said: "You told me it was a CIA source. You wrote senior administration officials. What was it, CIA or senior admiration?" He said to me, "I misspoke the first time I spoke to you." That makes it senior administration sources.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:29 AM | Get permalink

Monday, September 29, 2003

White House won't look into leak.

In a totally predicatable development, there'll be no internal investigation of the alleged White House leak of a CIA agent's identity. That leak was an apparent attempt to silence a critic of Dubya's Iraq policies.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, during a lively news briefing, said no internal investigation was planned.

"At this point, I think the Department of Justice would be the appropriate one to look into a matter like this ... There are a lot of career professionals at the Department of Justice that address matters like this."

Magpie suggests that asking John Ashcroft's Justice Department to find the truth of this matter is is considerably less sensible than expecting to find chickens in the henhouse after assigning a platoon of foxes to guard it.

Oh yeah: We almost forgot to mention that the White House denies that anyone there was responsible for the leak.

Via Reuters and AFP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:37 PM | Get permalink

Stealing elections and getting away with it.

BuzzFlash has an excellent interview with Bev Harris of Black Box Voting. Harris talks about the actual and potential problems of electronic voting systems, and about the difficulties her website has had with Diebold (a voting system manufacturer). A must read if you're unfamiliar with either issue.

One thing we've never had until we got electronic vote-counting (which includes touch screens and optical scan machines), is bad software programming. A lever machine can be tampered with, but you don't have any software programming errors with it. Incorrect software programming has now been identified in over 100 elections, often flipping the race to the wrong candidate, even when the election was not close.

No one knows how many elections have actually been misprogrammed, and as we eliminate paper ballots, no one will ever know. We do know that errors as high as 25 percent are not uncommon, and software programming errors have been documented as high as 100 percent, and in one small Iowa county, a single machine miscounted by 3 million votes.

Incorrect software programming can take two possible forms: Accidental or deliberate. Either one takes away our right to have our vote counted as we cast it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:44 PM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

Northern lights!

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

The US government's case for the war in Iraq continues to fall apart.

In the months just bfore the Iraq war, US taxpayers shelled out over US $1 million to pay for an arrangment under which the Iraqi National Congress provided access to defector from Saddam Hussein's regime. According to the NY Times, the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information gained via this arrangement was worthless.

In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said.

The arrangement, paid for with taxpayer funds supplied to the exile group under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, involved extensive debriefing of at least half a dozen defectors by defense intelligence agents in European capitals and at a base in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil in late 2002 and early 2003, the officials said. But a review early this year by the defense agency concluded that no more than one-third of the information was potentially useful, and efforts to explore those leads since have generally failed to pan out, the officials said.

Magpie would remind you that this 'intelligence' was some of what was used by Dubya's administration to build their case for the war. And Ahmad Chalabi is currently the president of the US-appointed Governing Council of Iraq.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:08 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, September 28, 2003

Whisky of Mass Destruction?

This is another one of those stories that Magpie couldn't make up — even after drinking way too many drams.

It seems that the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency monitors the Bruichladdich whisky distillery on the Scottish island of Isla. No, the DTRA isn't a big fan of single malts; they have other reasons for their interest in Bruichladdich.

[Distillery managing director Mark Reynier:] "We install webcams to show the world our whisky is distilled traditionally. The US government apparently lock on to the web images, which they think look dodgy, but we, in Islay, don't know that yet.

"We get an e-mail from 'Ursula' informing us one of our webcams is faulty.

"We reply, thanking her and inquire who she is.

"She admits she's a spy, monitoring sites that potentially produce WMD. What's the expression? Only in America!

"It's hilarious," he admitted. "Mind you, we're a sinister- looking bunch, so I can see how we might be mistaken for al-Qaeda."

The US admitted watching the distilling process because it is similar to the manufacture of chemical weapons.

Mr Reynier said: "The original e-mail didn't say who it was from, but my reply elicited another reply and it had the name of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) on it.

"I thought, 'What the hell?' I wrote back and all was revealed. We were on a 'hot list'." Then with the astonishing innocence of the American, Ursula revealed that she worked for the department dealing with the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Via The Scotsman.

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