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WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

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Saturday, May 7, 2005

Dubya's economic report card.

The Center for American Progress has issued a report card for Dubya's handling of the economy in his first term. Hale Stewart at BOPnews has added a few more items.

So here's how Dubya's administration did between 2000 and 2004:

S&P 500:   –15%
NASDAQ:   –36%
Dow Jones:   –5.3%
Price of a Gallon of Gas:   +46%
Real Value of the Minimum Wage:   –7%
Poverty Rate:   +11%
Americans without Health Insurance:   +18%
Federal Debt:   +39%
Dollar vs. Euro:   –30%
Dollar vs. Yen:   –11%
Median Household Income:   -4%
Average Cost of 4-year Public College:   +24%
Monthly Trade Deficit:   +75%
Annual Trade Deficit:   +53%
Americans Filing for Bankruptcy:   +33%
Annual Increase in Prescription Drug Prices (from 4.1% to 6.8%):   +68%
Home Mortgage Borrowing:   +100%
Total Outstanding Consumer Debt:   +28%
Household Debt as a Percentage of Assets:   20%
Household Debt as a Percentage of GDP:   +21%

The next time someone defends Dubya's economic record, throw those figures at them. And spread them around.

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



Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss.

Since the selection of Benedict XVI as the new pope, one of the big questions in the media has been what Benedict's reign will be like, with a common spin being that somehow being pope would make the former Cardinal Ratzinger less reactionary and heavy-handed. Guess again.

According to the independent National Catholic Reporter, pressure from the Vatican has forced the liberal editor of a US Catholic magazine to resign. Father Thomas Reese's resignation came at the request of the Jesuit order, after years of pressure from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And if you guessed that the new pope was the cardinal in charge of that congregation, give yourself a gold star.

Ousted editor

Father Thomas Reese SJ,
the ousted editor of
America

The resignation caps five years of tensions and exchanges among the congregation, which was headed at the time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, the Jesuits and Reese, according to sources close to the magazine who asked not to be identified.

A release from the magazine May 6, which did not mention the forced ouster, announced that the new editor is Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen, who has served as associate editor. [America's announcement of Reese's resignation is
here.]

Ironically, Reese received the news that the Jesuits found the debate "unwinnable," according to one source, when he returned to the magazine's New York headquarters from Rome, where he had covered the conclave that elected Ratzinger as pope.

Contacted on background, a Vatican official said he could not discuss the case.

Over the course of a five-year exchange between the doctrinal congregation and the Jesuits, the Vatican congregation had raised objections to various editorial choices at America under Reese's leadership, including:

  • An essay exploring moral arguments for the approval of condoms in the context of HIV/AIDS;
  • Several critical analyses of the doctrinal congregation's September 2000 document Dominus Iesus, on religious pluralism;
  • An editorial criticizing what America called a lack of due process in the congregation's procedures for the investigation of theologians;
  • An essay about homosexual priests;
  • A guest essay from U.S. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, challenging suggestions that the church should refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who do not vote as a number of bishops believe they should vote.

In every instance, however, the pieces represented just a portion of coverage of the subject in America, which always published opposing points of view.

The article goes on to give details about how Reese's ouster was engineered by Catholic conservatives. We strongly suggest reading it all, since we're sure this story will be repeated as Pope Benedict's papacy continues.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:33 AM | Get permalink



And while we're on the subject of religion ...

Well, popular religion anyway ... we want to pass on word of a brilliant series of posts at Slacktivist that we've just been made aware of.

If you're in the US, it's hard not to be aware of the 'Left Behind' books. This series of apocalyptic novels by fundamentalists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins take place in a world in the last days before the second coming of Christ, complete with the Antichrist, believers getting raptured, and biblical prophesies being fulfilled all over the place. And much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

We should also mention that they are not particularly well-written and that, given the current social and political climate in the US, you'd be right in guessing that they are best-sellers.

'Left Behind' promo

Promo graphic for 'Left Behind' book [detail]

Fred Clark at Slacktivist is a biblical scholar and has very little tolerance for either the bad writing or the sloppy theology of the 'Left Behind' books. Here's a sample from his most recent post on the subject. [Don't worry — there's no need to know anything about the book's plot to understand the comments.]:

So here's what we know about Mr. and Mrs. Williams:

  1. Sharon was a born-again, evangelical Christian.

  2. Jeff was not.

  3. Jeff did something awful, something which even he considers unforgivable.

  4. Sharon, the model of the good, godly wife, forgave Jeff and welcomed him back.

We aren't told the specifics of the awful thing or things that Jeff did. He may have cheated. Or drank. Or maybe he hit her. Perhaps all three. For LaHaye and Jenkins, it really doesn't matter what he did, all that matters is Sharon's duty as a good, godly wife to forgive him and preserve their marriage no matter what.

That's the point of this little vignette and it's hardly unique to L&J. This message -- the Gospel According to Tammy Wynette -- is taught in evangelical congregations across the country. It's a pernicious, dangerous and potentially even deadly little lesson about wifely duty.

As I write this, some poor Christian woman is talking to her pastor or her priest. When she walked into his office she was scared -- it's been getting worse and she feels she and her children are in real danger.

"Be like Sharon," the reverend man of the cloth is telling her. "God hates divorce." He will tell her that her desire to leave her abusive husband is an affront to "the sanctity of marriage." He will not tell her, because it will not occur to him, that her husband's violence constitutes a far greater violation of that sacred union.

She will leave the office still afraid, but her fear will be mixed with guilt and shame.

L&J didn't invent this -- it's just a part of the culture of their target audience, such a large part that I'm certain I'm not just reading too much into this little tangent about Jeff and Sharon. That evangelical subculture, like any culture, has positive traits as well as negative ones. Here -- as ever throughout the World's Worst Books -- L&J reinforce the bad while ignoring the good.

Have I mentioned that I think these books are evil?

You can read all of the 'Left Behind' posts here.

Thanks to Sisyphus Shrugged for the tip.

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



Update on that really unfortunate logo.

We see this morning that the Instituto de Estudos Orientais in Brazil has obviously noticed the huge increase in traffic to their site from people coming to look at the, um, interesting logo on their gateway page. Instead of the logo, visitors now see an 'under construction' page.

Luckily, we figured the original page would disappear quickly, so we stashed a copy of it here. Have fun.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:13 AM | Get permalink



Who pays and who doesn't.

When the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison is concerned, it's the lower ranks who are being punished and the brass who are getting the slaps on their wrists.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the various investigations have resulted in six military prosecutions — all of whom are enlisted men or women. These investigations have led only to reprimands for the two senior officers with direct responsibility for the prison. And Dubya just demoted the one-star general who commanded Abu Ghraib.

Abu Ghraib

If any lesson can be drawn from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse legal fallout so far, it may be this: The lowest-level soldier has the highest level of responsibility. The rank and file must clearly know right from wrong - both in terms of their own actions and orders from superiors.

"What the average soldier is going to take away from Abu Ghraib is a reinforcement of what he learned at boot camp - that he's responsible for his actions," says Mary Hall, a former military judge now in private practice. "These Abu Ghraib courts-martial are a blunt reminder to even the newest private that they have a duty to just say 'no.'"

Reading this article reminded us of a conversation we had about a week after the first pictures from Abu Ghraib hit the US press. We were talking to a woman who was at the end of her own service in the army. She came from a military family: If we remember right, both her father and grandfather had been in the service, and her brother and one sister were currently in the army (one serving in Iraq).

Not surprisingly, she said that Abu Ghraib was a huge topic in her family and among her friends who were either currently or formerly in the military. Everyone she'd talked to was angry and ashamed of what had happened. All of them thought that the actions of the Abu Ghraib jailers were reprehensible, she said, ant that the soldiers who carried out the abuse and torture needed to be punished. But even more guilty, she said, were the superior officers who ordered the criminal activities, condoned them, or willfully ignored the fact that they were occurring. As best we can remember her words, she said that there would not have been a work culture among the Abu Ghraib jailers that allowed for abuse and torture unless a) a superior officer had ordered these activities or b) a superior officer had made it abundantly clear — without issuing a formal order — what kind of treatment the prisoners were to receive.

She told this magpie that a lot of people in the military would be watching with trepidation to see what happened as a result of the Abu Ghraib inquiries. What she and other were afraid of was that the enlisted soldiers who were directly responsible for the torture and abuse would be made examples, to show the world that the US government wasn't looking the other way. And that their superiors would get off largely scot-free.

We guess we know now whether those fears were founded.

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



'Smile, shoot first, ask questions later.'

That's the philosophy that Wired co-founder and photographer followed when he was taking photographs as he ambled around in Asia during the 1970s and 1980s. The results of all that effort became the book Asia Grace in 2002.

A website full of images from the book has been kicking around in our bookmarks since then, and we figured it was about time to share it.

Vanished city of Pagan

Pagan, Burma

This valley created by the Irrawaddy River was once a vast metropolis. Pagan was a center of civilization about a thousand years ago. Now the city has dissappeared leaving only hundreds of temples standing among fields tended by poor farmers. Earthquakes have shaken down many of the spires, but inside are still many treasures.

If you really like Kelly's photos and want to buy the book, there's a great deal on it here at Powell's.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:30 AM | Get permalink



Friday, May 6, 2005

We suddenly feel ill.

Here's the beginning of a Washington Post story:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) delivered an emotional homily yesterday on the need for greater humility in public servants, declaring himself a sinner before a largely Christian audience and warning that pride has brought down leaders throughout history.

"Just think of what we could accomplish if we checked our pride at the door, if collectively we all spent less time taking credit and more time deserving it," DeLay told the 54th annual National Day of Prayer gathering on Capitol Hill. "If we spent less time ducking responsibility and more time welcoming it. If we spent less time on our soapboxes and more time on our knees."

DeLay drew appreciative smiles when he added, "For in God, all things are possible, ladies and gentlemen. And even greatness from lowly sinners like you and me -- especially me."

Appearing before TV cameras and 300 people in the ornate Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building, DeLay said: "No matter what your faith, no matter what your political persuasion, your prayers for our increased humility, for our ever-humbler service to God and neighbor are needed and wanted."

The man's cynicism and hypocrisy knows no bounds.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:11 PM | Get permalink



National ID card, here we come!

CNET has an excellent summary of the effects of passing the RealID Act. This noxious piece of legislation turns state-issued driver's licenses into de facto national ID cards — cards that everyone living (or working) in the US will need after 2008 to buy a plane ticket, open a bank account, collect government benefits, or use a wide range of government services.

Can we see your ID?

The Act was grafted onto the current military approprations bill, which has already been passed by the House. Senate passage could come as soon as next week.

What's going to be stored on this ID card?

At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The card must also sport "physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes."

Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those. We won't know for a while what these additional requirements will be.

Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military spending bill?

Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.

The House already approved a standalone version of the Real ID Act in February, but by a relatively close margin of 261-161. It was expected to run into some trouble in the Senate. Now that it's part of an Iraq spending bill, senators won't want to vote against it.

What's the justification for this legislation anyway?

Its supporters say that the Real ID Act is necessary to hinder terrorists, and to follow the ID card recommendations that the 9/11 Commission made last year.

It will "hamper the ability of terrorist and criminal aliens to move freely throughout our society by requiring that all states require proof of lawful presence in the U.S. for their drivers' licenses to be accepted as identification for federal purposes such as boarding a commercial airplane, entering a federal building, or a nuclear power plant," Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, said during the debate Thursday.

You said the ID card will be electronically readable. What does that mean?

The Real ID Act says federally accepted ID cards must be "machine readable," and lets Homeland Security determine the details. That could end up being a magnetic strip, enhanced bar code, or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

In the past, Homeland Security has indicated it likes the concept of RFID chips. The State Department is already going to be embedding RFID devices in passports, and Homeland Security wants to issue RFID-outfitted IDs to foreign visitors who enter the country at the Mexican and Canadian borders. The agency plans to start a yearlong test of the technology in July at checkpoints in Arizona, New York and Washington state.

Will state DMVs share this information?

Yes. In exchange for federal cash, states must agree to link up their databases. Specifically, the Real ID Act says it hopes to "provide electronic access by a state to information contained in the motor vehicle databases of all other states."

While the hour is very late, it's still possible to block final passage of this bill. If members of the US Senate hear from enough of their constituents, some votes might change.

If you live in the US and need to find out who your senator is, go here. At this point, phone calls will probably have the most impact, but emails and faxes are better than nothing.

More: Human Rights First has an excellent discussion of how passage of the Real ID Act will hurt people who come to the US to escape persecution in their own country. Read their analysis here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:33 PM | Get permalink



Microsoft does another turnaround on lesbian/gay rights.

In a reversal of a reversal, Microsfot says that it will support lesbian/gay rights legislation. The announcement came today in an email to employees sent by CEO Steve Ballmer.

Ballmer's statement came after a Seattle newspaper revealed that pressure from Christian fundamentalists had caused Microsoft backed off from supporting an anti-discrimination bill in the Washington legislature. That bill failed by one vote late last month.

"After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Ballmer wrote.

We're happy that Microsoft has re-affirmed its past support for lesbian and gay rights, but we have to wonder whether that position will change again the next time the company comes under right-wing pressure.

For the earlier story, see this Magpie post.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:32 PM | Get permalink



Louie, Louie comes home.

Yesterday, we posted about the school superintendent in Benton Harbor who had barred a middle school band from playing the garage-band chestnut 'Louie Louie' in a local parade. The reason? The song's allegedly obscene lyrics.

It looks like all the publicity about the decision was enough to turn the tide. Today, the Detroit Free Press reports that the decision has been reversed, and the band will be able to play 'Louie Louie' as previously arranged. Sometimes the forces of stupidity lose one.

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



Federal judges string anti-piracy rules up on the yardarm.

A US appeals court has struck down the FCC's anti-piracy rules, which were scheduled to go into effect this coming July. Under those rules, 'broadcast flag' technology would have been required for digital televisions, VCRs, and similar TV recording devices, and some PCs sold in the US. Entertainment companies would be able to 'flag' programs to keep views from copying them.

Entertainment companies maintained that the rules were needed to keep people from making digital copies of movies and TV programs and then distributing them over the internet. The rules were opposed by librarians [PDF file] and consumer groups, who pointed out that they would prevent people from recording programs in ways that are legal under US copyright laws.

Today, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC disappointed the entertainment industry by ruling [PDF file] that the FCC had overstepped its authority when it issued the anti-piracy rules.

The FCC acknowledged the agency never had exercised the authority to impose regulations affecting television broadcasts after such programs are beamed into households, but it maintained that was permitted by Congress since lawmakers didn't explicitly outlaw it.

"We categorically reject that suggestion," the appeals panel said.

The appeals decision will launch an aggressive lobbying effort by entertainment companies in Washington to persuade lawmakers to require new technology to enforce copyright protections.

Friday's ruling was no real surprise. During courtroom arguments, U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards told the FCC it had "crossed the line" by requiring the new anti-piracy technology for next-generation television devices and rhetorically asked the FCC whether it also intended to regulate household appliances.

"You've gone too far," Edwards told the FCC's lawyer. "Are washing machines next?"

In other words, the entertainment industry is going to keep tossing money around until it gets Congress to give them the rules they want, now that the courts say the current ones are illegal. It's so wonderful to live in the US of A.

Via AP. Thanks to Paper Chase for some of the links.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:35 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

The six patron saints of graphic design!

St. Pixela

St. Pixela, Patron of Retouching & Comfy Chairs
[Image: ©  W. Lynn Garrett]

If you want to go straight to the page for St. Pixela, go here.

To see all of the saints in their glory, start here.

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



Moving day.

Nope, not us. Unfortunately.

But Susie over at Suburban Guerrilla has finally had enough of Blogger's vagaries, and has moved her blog onto a lovely new spot at TypePad.

The new url is http://susiemadrak.com/. Adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly.

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



Thursday, May 5, 2005

A very unfortunate logo.

In fact, it's an unbelievably unfortunate logo. If we were running that institute, we'd be asking the designer for our money back.

Via Boing Boing.

More: As of Saturday, 7 May, the page with the logo has been taken down. Luckily, we figured it would disappear quickly, so we stashed a copy of the page here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:08 PM | Get permalink



Labour apparently wins the UK election.

Based on exit polls, the BBC is predicting that Tony Blair will remain PM, but with a reduced Labour majority in Parliament.

If you're in the US, you can watch the BBC reports on the election on cable/satellite on C-SPAN. (If you're in the UK, we're sure you know where to find Auntie.)

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



Meanwhile, back at the pandemic.

Okay, we don't actually have a flu pandemic yet, but a couple of stories we've read today are indicators that the clock is ticking.

First, a prominent US epidemiologist warns that the world's governments need to speed up the approval of new flu vaccines and the resources to inject them. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Michael Osterholm warns that hundreds of millions of people will die in the next flu pandemic if prompt action isn't taken. [Osterholm is director for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.]

The 'Spanish flu' pandemic of 1918 killed 100 million people worldwide. When you adjust that figure to accommodate the tripling of the global population in the last century, a similar pandemic would claim 1.7 million victims in the US and between 180 million and 360 million globally.

Governments need national and international co-ordination to prepare vaccines and the means to administer them, he [Osterholm] writes.

Vaccine research on all contagions remains basic at best, Osterholm writes. Government investment must increase, especially to develop a new process to test vaccines without using chicken eggs. That technique takes at least six months.

"We need a detailed operational blueprint of the best way to get through 12 to 24 months of a pandemic," writes Osterholm.

If a pandemic started, would world health authorities be able to stop it before it spread? If the cause is the H5N1 ('bird flu') virus, the answer is 'probably not,' given that the likely starting point for such a pandemic is Vietnam.

According to a report in Nature, bureaucratic delays will probably make it impossible to stop a pandemic in its early stages.

Klaus Stöhr, who coordinates the influenza programme of the World Health Organization (WHO), says there is only one option for extinguishing an emerging human pandemic: rapid identification of cases, and treatment of patients and all their contacts with the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate). Modelling studies suggest this should work if action is taken quickly enough1.

The models predict that there will be only a short window of opportunity in which to act: up to 30 days after a new case is detected. But the Vietnamese health ministry often takes two to four weeks to declare cases, according to the WHO.

"This leaves just a few days to intervene, making it very unlikely that we could stop a virus," says Stöhr. "Without fast reporting and detection of cases, the world is gambling away the small (and unproven) chance we have of stopping an emerging pandemic in its tracks."

Via CBC News and Nature.

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



Remembering the Shoah.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Or, in Hebrew, Yom HaShoah.

Today is set aside to remember the Shoah (Catastrophe) that was inflicted on Jews during the the Second World War. At least six million people died.

Deportees

Dutch Jews are marched to the Amersfoot internment camp
under heavy guard, 1942
[Photo: Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie]

In 1941, in the summer, all of a sudden we heard bombs and the airplanes flying overhead, and after a few days the Germans marched in very much like the Russians did a few years ago, and again, I mean there was no bloodshed as far as I can recall. They came in with tanks. They came in--the soldiers looked much, they were much, uh, better dressed--and they came in and people again greeted them with flowers, and they were very welcome in our town. A lot of people were very happy that the Germans came in, and that the Russians were leaving. If there were fights, they were outside of the town so really, there was very little fighting in Horochow. But 1941, early summer, was when the world became completely topsy-turvy for the Jews. When the Germans came in, from the very beginning, they concentrated and they let it be known that the Jews are the ones that they are going to try to murder, all of us. What they did, I don't recall if it was the first or second day after they come into, came into Horochow, they went around with a list and they looked for people by name. These were people who were leaders, the Jewish leaders, and my beloved father was among them. They came into the house, they burst in, and they asked for him, and my father saw them, he tried to get out the back way. They caught him, and they led him away. He never even said goodbye. I'll never forget that look in his eyes. [Charlene Schiff, Horochow, Poland]

Last days

Young mother and her two children sit among Jews from Lubny who have been assembled for mass execution on October 16, 1941
[Photo: Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv]

Extensive information on the Holocaust is available at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. More information can be found at Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

Although it's designed for educators, the massive resources (including articles, bibliographies, photos, and more) available at the Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust are of interest to anyone.

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



Happy birthday!

Political philosopher, revolutionary, and socialist Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany on this day in 1818.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx, 1818-1883

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. [Theses on Feuerbach, 1845]

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. [Communist Manifesto, 1848]

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. [The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852]

In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water.... They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off. [Address of the General Council of the International Working Men?s Association on 'The Civil War in France,' 1871]

Funny how that last quote sounds like it could have been written far more recently than 1871, isn't it? Not like we're thinking about any people in particular. Certainly not people in the US.

There's a good short bio of Marx here.

You'll find a longer biographical sketch (including a bibliography) is here at Wikipedia.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:41 AM | Get permalink



Louie, Louie go home.

It's amazing the longevity that some urban legends have. One of these is the allegedly obscene lyrics of the 60's garage band standard, 'Louie Louie.' Originally written by Richard Berry (no releation to Chuck) in the 1950s, the song was made infamous by totally unintelligible version that was a massive hit for the US band The Kingsmen about 10 year later. [You can hear an MP3 clip of the Kingsmen's 'Louie Louie' here.]

Louie, Louie 45

The evil record in the flesh

It's been four decades since the original brouhaha over 'Louie Louie', but the song continues to raise the hackles of moral crusaders, as a report today from the AP shows. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, school superintendent Paula Dawning barred the the McCord Middle School band from performing 'Louie, Louie' in a local parade, citing the allegedly obscene lyrics as the reason.

In a letter sent home with McCord students, Dawning said "Louie Louie" was not appropriate for Benton Harbor students to play while representing the district ? even though the marching band wasn't going to sing it.

Band members and parents complained to the Board of Education at its Tuesday meeting that it was too late to learn another song, The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph reported.

"It's very stressful for us to try to come up with new songs for the band," eighth-grader Laurice Martin told the board. "We're trying to learn the songs from last year, but some of us weren't in the band last year."

Dawning said that if a majority of parents supports their children playing the song, she will reconsider her decision.

"It was not that I knew at the beginning and said nothing," Dawning said. "I normally count on the staff to make reliable decisions. I found out because a parent called, concerned about the song being played."

It's worth noting that a typical aspect of 'Louie Louie' bannings persists in the current case: The school superintendent didn't ban the song because she thought the lyrics were obscene or indecent; she did it because someone else thought there was a problem.

As we mentioned, the controversy in Michigan is not the first time that 'Louie Louie' has raised the ire of would-be censors and moral guardians. In the 1960s, stories that the song's lyrics were so widespread that the FBI spent two years investigating the words:

Under the auspices of "ITOM," a federal law prohibiting Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material, "Louie Louie" was investigated by the F.B.I. to determine whether the song was actually obscene. Spurred on by naughty notes from teenagers that claimed to know the "actual lyrics," concerned parents contacted government authorities to see what could be done to restrict distribution of this controversial rock song....

The F.B.I. investigation of the song, which took over two years, uncovered very little relevant information. Despite a lengthy investigative process that included repeating listenings of the song at different speeds, and interviews with author Richard Berry, and members of Kingsmen, the study could find no evidence of obscenity. In fact, the bureau came up with the conclusion that the song was "unintelligible at any speed."

You can view the first page of the FBI report here at Smoking Gun.

And if you're still hungry for more info on 'Louie Louie,' the urban legend experts at Snopes.com have more on the lyric 'controversy' over here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:31 AM | Get permalink



Forget about fighting for the living.

We had heard that restructuring and layoffs were imminent in the AFL-CIO (the largest labor federation in the US). Like everyone else, though, we didn't know where the axe would fall. Wednesday, 167 AFL-CIO employees were laid off, including half of the four-person Health and Safety Department's staff.

Jordan at Confined Space explains why this particular cutback is such bad news for working people in the US:

Workers in this country are faced with going to work every day knowing that the government agency mandated to watch over their lives in the workplace is becoming increasingly irrelevant, the tort system (the ability of people to sue corporations that harm them) is under fierce attack, the advocates of reducing compensation for injured workers are winning in state after state, chemicals continue to pour into the workplaces that destroy workers' health with no government agency able to do anything about it, an asbestos compensation bill that promises to ensure that thousands of workers with asbestos disease don't get compensated is moving through the Senate, "new" issues like ergonomics, longer working hours, speed-ups, stress, work organization changes are being ignored -- and the only voice standing up to this mess -- or even recognizing that all is not well for the health and safety of American workers -- is being dismantled by its own family.

[How] can working people and individual unions working alone be any match for the well funded combined power of the Chamber of Commerce, NAM, NFIB and individual industry associations who have the ability to hire high-priced attorneys, scientists ? and legislators? Indeed, champagne corks must be popping in corporate suites all across America. The AFL-CIO's Health and Safety Department has been one of the only forces standing between workers' ability to come home safely at the end of ever day and complete corporate domination of workers' lives and health. And now it's gone.

What's especially sad about the cuts is that they were part of a reorganization done largely for political reasons. Working Life has more details about the restructuring here.

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



Ooooooh, shiny!

Rather, make that 'Ooooooh, sleepy!'

Check out this wonderful gallery of photos of sleeping people. They seem to be mostly from the 1930s and 1940s, but some are much older or more recent.

Sleeping woman

[Photographer unknown]

The full-size image of the photo above is here.

Via Life in the Present.

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



Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Bring me the head of Osama bin Laden!!

Literally.

When CIA officer Gary Schroen led a team into Afghanistan just days after the 9/11 attacks, he got a very unusual order from his boss:

[In] the days that followed the worst terror attack on U.S. soil, Schroen said his boss at the CIA also told him and his deputy in no uncertain terms to kill the al Qaeda leadership.

"What he said (was), 'I would like to see the head of bin Laden delivered back to me in a heavy cardboard box filled with dry ice, and I will take that down and show the president. And the rest of the lieutenants, you can put their heads on pikes'," Schroen told Reuters in an interview.

He was quoting Cofer Black, a prominent U.S. intelligence figure who was then the director of the CIA's counterterrorist center.

"I don't think he meant that in detail ... I think he meant to impress upon me and my deputy that this was very serious business and he wanted to get our adrenaline charged," Schroen added.

Black was not immediately available for comment.

And this magpie has no comment, either.

Via Reuters.

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



What's the best way to deal with whistleblowers?

If you're the US National Security Agency, you get rid of them.

On April 28th, intelligence analyst Russ Tice appeared at a press conference for the National Security Whistleblowers, where he told about how the NSA had harrassed him. On May 16, the NSA gave Tice his walking papers and lifted his security clearance.

[Tice's] problems started when he asked the agency to look into the activities of an employee he thought might be engaged in espionage. Instead, the NSA called him in for an emergency psychological evaluation, one of the usual procedures in blackballing an employee. He was duly determined to be crazy and put on administrative leave. Tice was later assigned to unload furniture from trucks at a warehouse, where he hurt his back. He also served an eight-month tour of duty in the NSA motor pool, where the analyst worked at maintaining the agency?s fleet of vehicles, gassing them up, cleaning them and checking the fluids, and driving NSA big shots around town.

Tice had done intelligence work for nearly 20 years with the Air Force, with Navy intelligence, and with the Defense Intelligence Agency, before landing at the NSA. He has conducted intelligence missions related to Kosovo, Afghanistan, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and the Iraq war. Most recently he was nominated for an award for outstanding service because of his work on Iraq. It has since been withdrawn, along with the security clearance.

There's more to the story, and James Ridgeway has it in this Village Voice article.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:47 PM | Get permalink



Four dead in Ohio.

On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops shot and killed four students at Kent State University in the US state of Ohio. The shootings came after several days rising tensions between students protesting the US invasion of Cambodia and Guardsmen deployed to control those protests.

Four dead in Ohio

Here's how Wikipedia describes the day's events:
On Monday, May 4th, a protest was scheduled to be held at noon, as had been planned three days earlier. University officials attempted to ban the gathering, handing out 12,000 leaflets stating that the event was cancelled. Despite this, an estimated three thousand people gathered on the university commons. The rally was, initially at least, peaceful. The campus's iron victory bell was rung to signal the beginning of the rally. The rally may have in fact been legal, since a state of emergency had not been declared, but there was a widespread belief among both the students and the guardsmen that the rally was illegal.

Just before noon the Guard ordered the crowd to disperse and fired tear gas. Because of wind, the tear gas had little effect on dispersing the crowd, some of whom were now responding to the tear gas with rock-throwing and chants of "Pigs off campus!" Some students began to pick up the tear gas cannisters and throw them at the National Guardsmen.

A group of seventy National Guard troops advanced on the hundreds of protesters with fixed bayonets and with their weapons locked and loaded, in an attempt to disperse the crowd. The National Guardsmen were wearing gas masks and had little training in riot control. They soon found themselves trapped on an athletic practice field which was fenced on three sides, where they remained for ten minutes. The Guardsmen then began to withdraw back in the direction from which they had come, followed by some of the protesters.

When they reached the top of a hill, 28 of the seventy guardsmen fired a fusillade of between 61 and 67 shots at the unarmed students. Although the firing was later determined to have lasted only 13 seconds, a New York Times reporter stated that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer." The question of why the shots were fired has been widely debated. The Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard told reporters that a sniper had fired on the guards, but this was later shown to be false. Many guardsmen later testified that they were in fear for their lives, although the distance of the students at that point makes the claim seem unlikely.

They shoot students, don't they?

Mary Vecchio kneels over Jeffrey Miller's body
[Photo: John Filo]

The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Only one of the four students killed was participating in the protest, and one of the students killed, William Schroeder (who was observing but not participating in the demonstration) was a member of the campus ROTC chapter. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) from the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest was 265 feet (81 m) from the guardsmen.

Killed:

* Allison Krause
* Jeffrey Glen Miller
* Sandra Lee Scheuer
* William Knox Schroeder

Wounded:

* Alan Canfora
* John Cleary
* Thomas Mark Grace
* Dean Kahler
* Joseph Lewis
* Donald MacKenzie
* James Dennis Russell
* Robert Stamps
* Douglas Wrentmore

Immediately after the shootings, many angry students were ready to launch an all-out attack on the National Guard. Many faculty members, led by Glenn Frank, pleaded with the students to leave the Commons and to not give into violent escalation. After 20 minutes of difficult speaking, the students left the Commons. Ambulances came and tended to the wounded, and the Guard left the area.

You can listen to an eyewitness account of the shootings here. [RealPlayer req'd.]

wood s lot has an excellent set of links about Kent State in today's post [scroll down a bit].

More: There is a huge collection of material about the shootings at Kent State here.

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



Sign for the times (2).

We liked that anti-Tom DeLay billboard we posted about yesterday so much that we couldn't resist another photo. This one gives a better idea of the billboard's surroundings in downtown Houston, Texas.

Sticking it to DeLay

Via TalkLeft.

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



Destroying the species to 'save' it.

With all the complaining that corporations, landowners, and the US right wing do about the Endangered Species Act, you'd think that the act was placing onerous burdens on them that make it impossible to do business or develop land. Not so, according to a series of investigative stories currently running in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

According to the P-I, hundreds of exemptions the the Endangered Species Act have been issue in the past decade. These 'habitat conservation plans' allow developers, loggers and others to harm or kill a certain number of protected creatures in return for doing something to help their survival. For example, a developer may get the right to build houses on 2000 acres of land inhabited by an endangered animal in return for buying and protecting an equal amount of land as habitat for the species.

Waste dump on protected land

Dump site on conservation land near San Diego
[Photo: Gilbert W. Aria/P-I]

These habitat conservation plans were originated under the Clinton administration, and have become a huge part of the conservation landscape under Dubya. While they are touted as being the solution for the problem of balancing the needs of people and endangered creatures, they have one big problem: They usually don't work.

Many of the nation's habitat plans have serious shortcomings that tip the scales in favor of development over endangered species, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation has found.

Although the conservation strategy was conceived by a developer's lawyer and launched to help the private sector, state, county and city governments are increasingly signing on -- primarily to shield major public-works projects from costly lawsuits. Coming up are plans covering state-owned Puget Sound waterfront and the King County sewage-treatment system.

It's a delicate balancing act: protecting endangered species, often by setting up preserves, while allowing private landowners to make a living.

The strategy is sweeping the country, embraced by prominent Democrats and Republicans, big-scale developers and leading conservation groups. All say the program keeps the economy running smoothly while preventing further declines in the populations of some of the planet's rarest creatures....

There is no evidence of any species going extinct under the program, but there are signs that some are in decline. The P-I's nine-month examination of major habitat plans nationwide revealed systemic breakdowns that undermine the national strategy:
  • The agency charged with protecting most threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, doesn't know whether these plans are shielding creatures from further decline or speeding them toward extinction.

  • Many plans open the door to permanent damage of wild places before scientists know how to best protect vulnerable animals. Most fail to predict how many creatures will be killed or harmed. Few spell out an exit strategy if things go wrong.

  • Local governments eager to help developers are cutting them deals -- allowing existing parkland to count as "preserves" or defraying their costs by securing millions from federal coffers.

  • The public, including independent scientists, often has little voice in the plans -- even some covering vast acreages -- until they are virtually a done deal.

  • While habitat conservation plans focus on setting aside land to spare it from the bulldozer or chain saw, money is sometimes lacking to maintain the preserves.

The P-I investigation reviewed 98 habitat conservation plans of 100 acres or more, including all of those approved from 1999 to 2004. Of those, half failed to say how the development, timber cutting or other activity would affect the overall health of a species.

Each plan came with a promise to help the animal in question, but only 27 percent in the P-I study included benchmarks to ensure that, in fact, the "mitigation" would help the threatened animals.

This is an excellent series that shows what a newspaper can do when it really tries. You can read all the stories and sidebars for the first two parts here. If you live in the Seattle area and have already seen the story in the print paper, make sure to check out the web version. Much of the material is only available on the P-I's website.

The series continues for at least one more day (Thursday).

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:00 AM | Get permalink



Tuesday, May 3, 2005

The rings. Where are the rings?

They're that blue line across the middle of the striking image of Saturn below. Compiled from a number of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft, it shows what the ringed planet's most notable feature looks like when Cassini crosses the plane of the rings.

Passing through the plane

[Image: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA]

Just how thin are those rings? While they are 168,000 miles (250,000 km) in diameter, they're only about 5 miles (8 km) thick. If Saturn were a ball one meter (just over a yard) across, the rings would only be 1/10,000 the thickness of a razor blade.

You can read more information about Saturn and about how the image above was made if you go here. A much bigger version of the image is here.

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

More: In more Saturn news, astronomers have found 12 new mooons, bringing Saturn's total to 46.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:15 PM | Get permalink



Are you a Republican?

The US kind, that is. Not the Aussie (or other) kind. Just answer these questions and you'll know for sure.

This magpie, by the way, is minus-9 percent Republican. In other words, a damn commie. Woohoooo!

Via skippy.

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



What leaves far fewer children behind than Dubya's education 'reforms'?

Social Security.

The lefty Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looked at a range of federal programs to see which one lifted more US children above the poverty line. Social Security was second only to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Leaving fewer children behind

[In the graph, 'disposable income' is a person's income after taxes, including any government income assistance, food stamps, school lunch, housing benefits, or energy assistance.]

This magpie would have guessed that welfare (TANF) would have come in near the top. As the CBPP figures show, welfare brought fewer than half the number of children out of poverty that Social Security did.

Here are some more of the CBPP's findings:
  • Nationwide, Social Security benefits lifted one million children under 18 above the poverty line in 2002.

  • Social Security reduced the number of children whose families had disposable incomes below the poverty line in 2002 from 10.3 million (when Social Security is not counted) to 9.3 million (when Social Security is counted), a reduction of one-tenth.

  • In half of the states, Social Security lifts more than 10,000 children our of poverty. These state data cover the period 2000-2002.

Moreover, when both the breadth and severity of children?s poverty are considered, Social Security does more to reduce child poverty than any other program, including the earned income tax credit. One combined measure of the breadth and severity of children?s poverty is the aggregate child poverty gap: the cumulative dollar amount by which the incomes of all poor families with children fall short of the poverty line. Social Security reduced the child poverty gap by 21 percent in 2002 ? slightly more than the reduction achieved by the EITC (20 percent) or food stamps (15 percent).

It's interesting that we haven't heard much mention of how Social Security payments benefit children in the ongoing discussion of 'saving' the program. Democrats? Are you paying attention?

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



Sign for the times.

Democracy for America has this up in House majority leader Tom DeLay's home district in Texas.

Anti-Delay billboard

Nice one, DFA!

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:35 PM | Get permalink






Monday, May 2, 2005

Attention time travelers!

The first Time Traveler Convention is coming up this Saturday (North America time) at MIT.

Attention Time Travelers!

Mr Peabody, his boy Sherman, and the Wayback Machine

Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

Can't the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and travel back in time to attend?

Yes, they can! In fact, we think this will happen, and the small number of adventurous time travelers who do attend will go back to their "home times" and tell all their friends to come, causing the convention to become a Woodstock-like event that defines humanity forever.

Unfortunately, we of the present (2005) don't have time travel, and so we only have one chance at observing the convention. If the time travelers don't leave us their secrets, we won't be able to go back in time and see our convention in all its glory unless it is publicized in advance....

I'm from the future, and I'd like to attend!

We're not sure how you're emailing us from the future, but we'd love to have you! Come as you are! No dress code whatsoever. We do request that you bring some sort of proof that you do indeed come from the future, and haven't just dressed like you do. We welcome any sort of proof, but things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty, or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated.

So now you know the explanation for those cryptic notes you've been finding in library books for years.

Via LISNews.

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



More on moving US public broadcasting to the right.

Earlier today, we had took note of a NY Times article on the efforts by the new right-wing leadership of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to 'correct' the 'liberal bias' of public TV and radio in the US. While we had some comments on the article's shortcomings, the folks at Media Matters did us one better and figured out what information the Times left out of the article:

In a May 2 article on efforts by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), "to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias" at CPB, New York Times reporters Stephen Labaton, Lorne Manley, and Elizabeth Jensen noted that CPB recently appointed two ombudsmen "to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts." But the article failed to note that one of the ombudsmen, William Schulz, is an avowed conservative with close ties to Tomlinson, while the other, Ken Bode, is a former journalist and a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who last year endorsed Indiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels. In addition, the Times story made no mention that CPB's new chief operating officer and acting president is a former Bush administration official.

And that's not all of it, either. Check out the whole article here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:56 PM | Get permalink



Consistency? We don't need no stinkin' consistency.

US television network ABC has accepted an ad from the right-wing Christian group Focus on the Family. The ad will tout the group's faith-based family counseling website.

In case you'd forgotten, ABC was one of the US networks that rejected an ad by the United Church of Christ because the ad 'espoused a particular religious doctrine.' In the UCC ad, club-style bouncers outside a church were shown turning away people of color and an apparently gay male couple.

ABC is fair and balanced indeed.

Via AmericaBlog.

More: Media Matters for America has more details, plus some background on Focus on the Family.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:29 PM | Get permalink



Things Republicans believe.

There's another list of them in 'This Modern World':

No Plan B for you, lady!

[Cartoon: Tom Tomorrow]

Via Salon.

[Paid sub. or ad view req'd.]

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



Get ready for the Propaganda Broadcast Service.

A few days ago, we called your attention to a CJR Daily post about how Dubya's administration is trying to remold public TV and radio its own right-wing image. The CJR writer complained about how this important story was being overlooked by much of the press.

That complaint is slightly less accurate today, as the NY Times is running a story on the new right-wing chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has already started to force the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to 'correct' its supposed 'liberal bias.'

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

And that's not all. Read the whole story.

While the Times story is definitely a step forward in how 'mainstream' US media are covering the changes at the CPB, the story is nowhere near as good as it could (or should) have been. Too often, the piece breaks down into 'he said-she said' presentation of opposing quotes in place of analysis. And, despite the damning evidence that CPB chair Tomlinson's own activities provide for the thesis that Dubya's administration is trying to turn public broadcasting into a propaganda arm for the government, the story wriggles and squirms in order to keep from taking a position on whether the facts show that this is indeed the case.

And we would have felt a whole lot better about the story had the Times put it on page 1 (or at least in the main news section) rather than burying it in the Arts section.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:04 AM | Get permalink



Oops, we did it again.

Yesterday, we forgot to mention that May is National Masturbation Month!

National Masturbation Month

Good Vibrations began celebrating National Masturbation Month in 1995. Earlier that year, then-Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders was fired for saying that masturbation should be discussed as part of young peoples' sex education. We were astounded. It was one of the most sensible things we'd ever heard a government official say -- and it cost Elders her job! We started National Masturbation Month to raise awareness, and because we wanted to highlight the importance of masturbation for nearly everyone: it's safe, it's healthy, it's free, it's pleasurable and it helps people get to know their bodies and their sexual responses. Of all the kinds of sex people can have, masturbation is the most universal and important, yet few people talk about it freely -- worse, many people still feel it is "second best" or problematic in some way. National Masturbation Month lets us emphasize how great it is: it's natural, common and fun!

You know what you need to do. We leave it totally in your hands.

But before you leave, make sure to check out the Masturbation Hall of Fame.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:03 AM | Get permalink



The goal remains the same.

Dubya's new plan for Social Security is just like the old one. The only difference is that, instead of gutting the program via private accounts, the prez now wants to do it via indexing benefits. And, just like in the old plan, the middle class will get the biggest shaft.

In one of Paul Krugman's best columns in a long time, the economist points out how Dubya's indexing plan has an interesting twist. While Social Security benefits for the middle class will be gutted, those for the people at the bottom of the income scale won't be affected.

That's good, right? Uh, no ...

[Only] the poor would receive Social Security checks - and regardless of what today's politicians say, future politicians would be tempted to reduce the size of those checks.

The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn't driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax cuts.

No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs.

Get the picture now?

Via NY Times.

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



Did the US offer to release Saddam Hussein?

A news report saying that US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered freedom to Saddam is circulating in the Israeli, Indian, and Turkish press. (Possibly in other places, too. Those are just the ones we've seen.) It appears to have originated with Ynetnews in Israel. Here's the important part of the Ynetnews report:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld paid former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a surprise visit during his trip to Iraq two weeks ago, an Arab newspaper reported on Thursday.

Only a few Iraqi officials in Jordan knew about this meeting, the London based Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily newspaper reported. It said Rumsfeld offered Saddam freedom and a possible return to public life in return for a televised request to armed Iraqi terrorists for a cease-fire with foreign liberating forces.

However, according to sources, Saddam rejected the offer.

The fact that this story hasn't been picked up by the major wire services makes us wonder how credible it is. On the other hand, far stranger things have turned out to be true.

And the cynicism of offering to release the man who was so dangerous that the US had to invade his country certainly fits in with the administration's past record.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:53 AM | Get permalink



This sure makes us feel a whole lot safer.

In what would be a reversal of a decade-old policy, the US military is thinking about letting regional military commanders request approval for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against possible WMD attacks against the US or its allies.

The March 15 paper, drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," providing "guidelines for the joint employment of forces in nuclear operations . . . for the employment of U.S. nuclear forces, command and control relationships, and weapons effect considerations."

"There are numerous nonstate organizations (terrorist, criminal) and about 30 nations with WMD programs, including many regional states," the paper says in recommending that commanders in the Pacific and other theaters be given an option of pre-emptive strikes against "rogue" states and terrorists and "request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons" under set conditions.

The paper identifies nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as requiring pre-emptive strikes to prevent their use.

During the 1990s, the US removed its ground-based nukes from Asia and Europe, and from warships and nuclear submarines. If this new doctrine is adopted, it seems to us that at least some nuclear weapons will have to be put back into place. We can't see any condition under which this would be good news.

Via Japan Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:37 AM | Get permalink



'A more effective human pathogen'?

Some epidemiologists think that avian flu may be evolving into virus that's better at infecting people. The H5N1 strain of the avian flu has been infecting people in China and southeast Asia for several years, resulting in a number of deaths and the slaughter of millions of chickens (one of the main carriers of the virus. So far, the virus has not been easily transmissible directly from one person to another, which had somewhat eased fears of it causing a flu pandemic.

In Vietnam, however, an increasing number of small clusters of cases has scientists worried that person-to-person transmission of the H5N1 flu may be happening more often. In addition, the virus appears to be killing fewer of the people it infects — a change that makes it more likely that a person with the flu will live long enough to give the virus to other people.

While the level of unease is mounting, flu watchers know they understand so little about how pandemic strains evolve that they are incapable of judging whether these changes indicate H5N1 is making the final push toward pandemic strain status, or is setting off down a viral detour.

"That's the problem. You can sort of see it happening, but our predictive power is so crappy that even when you see it happening you don't know what the next step is, unfortunately," says Dr. Earl Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa who specializes in influenza evolution.

"They're real changes of biology but it's the relevance that I can't really give you any inkling of, really. Other than generalities: Keep this virus out of people."

Dr. Brown admits his interest was piqued when he heard reports that the fatality rate in Vietnam was dropping.

That type of the observation may only mean that Vietnam has gotten better at finding less severe H5N1 cases that previously flew under the radar. Or it could signify that the avian virus has undergone a real change that has put it on a path to becoming a human one.

"If the mortality is going down, that's a change. And if there's more ... contacts getting infected, that's a change," Dr. Brown says.

"Is it the beginning of a trend? That's a question without an answer. Is it good? Well, it's not good per se, but it's not bad per se. You don't know where it's going to go."

Via Globe & Mail.

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



Sunday, May 1, 2005

Not like we didn't already suspect this.

But Dubya's administration was already bent on invading Iraq in July, 2002. A previously secret UK government memorandum summarizing a meeting involving Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002 also shows that Blair privately committed the UK to supporting an invasion of Iraq, and that his government set out to lure the Saddam Hussein regime into providing the excuse for military action.

Here's part of the memo:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action....

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force....

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

The complete text of the memo is here. It makes very interesting reading.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:21 PM | Get permalink



'I'm no lady. I'm a hell-raiser.'

Today is the birthday of Mary Harris Jones, better known around the world as 'Mother Jones.' In her long life (she lived to be 100), Mother Jones was a tireless agitator, labor organizer, and advocate for the poor and dispossessed. She was especially known for her work on behalf of the nation's coal miners.

Mother Jones

Mother Jones [1830-1930]

Writing in 1907, labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs wrote a tribute to Mother Jones for the Appeal to Reason, in which he could not say enough about Mother Jones' contributions to the US labor movement:

From the time of the Pullman strike in 1894, when she first came into prominence, she has been steadily in the public eye. With no desire to wear "distinction's worthless badge," utterly forgetful of self and scorning all selfish ambitions, this brave woman has fought the battles of the oppressed with a heroism more exalted than ever sustained a soldier upon the field of carnage....

For many weary months at a time she has lived amid the most desolate regions of West Virginia, organizing the half-starved miners, making her home in their wretched cabins, sharing her meagre substance with their families, nursing the sick and cheering the disconsolate - a true minister of mercy.

During the great strike in the anthracite coal district she marched at the head of the miners; was first to meet the sheriff and the soldiers, and last to leave the field of battle.

Again and again has this dauntless soul been driven out of some community by corporation hirelings, enjoined by courts, locked up in jail, prodded by the bayonets of soldiers, and threatened with assassination. But never once in all her self-surrendering life has she shown the white feather; never once given a single sign of weakness or discouragement. In the Colorado strikes Mother Jones was feared, as was no other, by the criminal corporations; feared by them as she was loved by the sturdy miners she led again and again in the face of overwhelming odds until, like Henry of Navarre, where her snow-white crown was seen, the despairing slaves took fresh courage and fought again with all their waning strength against the embattled foe.

Deported at the point of bayonets, she bore herself so true a warrior that she won even the admiration of the soldiers, whose order it was to escort her to the boundary lines and guard against her return.

Mother Jones 1903?

Leading a protest march in Trinidad, CO [c. 1903]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are links to lots more about Mother Jones here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:36 PM | Get permalink




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