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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.

If you like, you can send Magpie an email!



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Saturday, May 21, 2005

BBC world news headlines.

If you look over to the top of the right-hand column, you'll see that we've added them to Magpie.

What do you think? Are they useful? Is there a different headline service we should be using? Or should we just forget the whole thing?

Let us know.

More: We also found feeds for African and international news from South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper. We'd also like to know what you think about these.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:55 PM | Get permalink



Sanitizing the war in Iraq.

Since the point when US soldiers began getting wounded and dying in Iraq [and Afghanistan, too, for that matter], a big topic for discussion among some media analysts and bloggers has been the 'sanitization' of the war by US authorities and the US press. While some of that discussion has focused on the US military's ban on taking photos of the coffins of dead soldiers — whether in Iraq or upon arrival back in the US — a larger proportion has pointed to how pictures of US war dead aren't showing up on television news or in newspapers. At least in what this magpie has read, the consensus seems to be that US editors are afraid of how readers/viewers will react to pictures of US dead, especially to graphic pictures.

The 'mainstream' US media has, of course, been almost totally silent on the subject. Until today, when the LA Times published an analysis of the Iraq war photos that have appeared in some major US newspapers and newsmagazines. That analysis shows that, when US dead are concerned, the print media have almost totally avoided showing pictures, and been only slightly less avoidant of pictures of the wounded. Photos of grief over US dead have been far more common. Tellingly, the media has had far fewer qualms about showing Iraqi dead.

Stats on war photos

Adapted from LA Times graphic by
Jacquelyn Cenacveira, Lynn Marshall, and Jenny Jarvir

The Times reporter talked to editors about the lack of pictures of US dead and wounded. The most common reason the editors gave was that it's a big war and that press photographers are often nowhere near the locations where combat deaths and injuries occur. [This reason makes us wonder how those editors would explain all the photos of US dead and wounded that came out of the Vietnam War. And, for that matter, out of the Second World War.] The other main reason was worries about how the families of US casualties would feel about seeing a photo of their son or daughter in the news, and how readers/viewers would respond to photos of dead and injured soldiers.

We leave it to you to decide what you think about those reasons.

A strong point of the article is how it lays out the process by which photographers and editors made decisions about which photos would get into the news, and which wouldn't.

Though a few photographers relentlessly blare the 1st Amendment clarion, most said they found themselves on the battlefield balancing a more nuanced set of values and emotions.

Dean Hoffmeyer of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia found out how confounding such calculations could become a few days before Christmas, when a suicide bomber attacked the military mess tent where he was waiting in line with dozens of soldiers.

Blasted to the ground, Hoffmeyer pulled himself up and into the chaos of the deadliest attack of the war on any U.S. base. A young man bleeding to death beside him would be one of 22 to die that day.

Despite a broken lens, aperture wide open, Hoffmeyer fired off several frames of the mortally wounded soldier.

He continued taking pictures of the blast scene ? images that ran prominently in nearly every American paper in the days to come. But he never transmitted the pictures of the dying GI.

Seeing them weeks later, his editor would describe them as "horrible pictures, wonderfully made."

The married, churchgoing Hoffmeyer has struggled with the decision ever since. He has gotten plenty of support from other photographers and taken hits from a few others, who suggested he left his best work in his camera.

Hoffmeyer thought the pictures of the soldier ? his hand pressed over a neck wound streaming with blood ? might be too graphic for publication. If the vivid shots had made the paper, they might have infuriated the Virginia National Guard battalion he had covered, and threatened his plan to catalog the unit's postwar lives. Finally, he thought how terrible it would be if he ever had to see pictures of his own son, age 9, in such a position.

"I don't know if what I did was right," the 41-year-old onetime radio disc jockey said. "But it's what I felt was right."

Another photographer on the front line made the opposite decision, but the result for American newspaper readers was much the same.

Stefan Zaklin of European Pressphoto Agency transmitted the picture of a fallen U.S. Army captain during November's assault on Fallouja. It was apparently the only news picture to be published of one of the dozens of service members who died in the battle.

The photo ran in Thailand's Bangkok Post, in Paris Match and on the front page of Germany's Bild-Zeitung, the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe.

The Village Voice in New York became the first American newspaper to print it this week, along with an essay in which Sydney H. Schanberg argued that the war could not be covered while "omitting anything important out of timidity or squeamishness."

MSNBC.com had briefly posted the shot in November, but took it down after complaints from the officer's family.

"At first we thought it was a really iconic photo of the terrible violence going on in Iraq," said Dean Wright, editor in chief of MSNBC.com. But when it appeared the soldier could be recognized, "we thought it was too horrific, because it was more personalized then."

[Note: The Flash presentation of historic and current photos of war casualties that accompanies the Times article is in some ways better than the article itself. Its impact is certainly more immediate. Don't miss it.]

The excerpt from the Times article above alludes to Sydney Schanberg's piece on the same subject in this week's Village Voice &151; an article which appears to us to be the obvious inspiration for the Times report. However, where the Times article too often degenerates into a kind of he-said, she-said presentation of the views of photographers and editiors, the Schanberg piece has a very definite point of view:

More than 1,600 American soldiers have died in this war that began a little over two years ago. Wounded Americans number about 12,000. No formal count is kept of the Iraqi civilian dead and wounded, but it is far greater than the military toll. But can you recall the last time your hometown newspaper ran a picture spread of these human beings lying crumpled at the scene of the slaughter? And when was the last time you saw a picture of a single fallen American soldier at such a scene?

Yes, some photos of such bloodshed have been published at times over the span of this war. But they have become sparser and sparser, while the casualty rate has stayed the same or, frequently, shot higher. At the moment, five GIs die every two days.

Some readers may object to my use of the word slaughter. I do respect other points of view. But I served in the military, and as a reporter I covered several wars — in India, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I came away persuaded that whether one considers a particular war necessary or misguided, the military goal in armed combat is always to kill and thus render helpless those on the other side. That being the case, what is a government's basis for depriving the public of candid press coverage of what war is all about? How else can voters make informed decisions about a war their government has led them into? The true reason why a government — in this case, the Bush administration — tries to censor and sanitize coverage is to prevent a public outcry against the war, an outcry that might bring down the administration....

I don't hold much esteem for the usual crime-and-catastrophe formula on most late-news shows, but I have even less for contentions that withholding information from the public is good for them. Because we are a country of diverse culture groupings, there will always be differences of view, about war photographs and stories, over matters of taste and "shock" issues. But, while the reporter or photographer must consider these impact and shock issues his primary mission has to be one of getting the story right. And getting it right means not omitting anything important out of timidity or squeamishness. When I would return from a war scene, I always felt I had to write the story first for myself and then for the reader. The goal was to come as close as possible to make the reader smell, feel, see, and touch what I had witnessed that day. "Pay attention," was my mental message to the reader. "People are dying. This is important."

A generation later, the photographer David Leeson [several of whose photos accompany Schanberg's Voice piece], whom I talked with on the phone, has similar passions.

He said: "I understand the criticisms about blood and gore. I don't seek that. When I approach a body on the ground after a battle, I'm determined to give dignity to that person's life and photograph him with respect. But sometimes, as with my pictures of child victims, the greatest dignity and respect you can give them is to show the horror they have suffered, the absolutely gruesome horror." Leeson went on: "War is madness. Often when I was in it, I would think of my work as dedicated to stopping it. But I know that's unrealistic. When I considered the readers who would see my photos, I felt I was saying to them: 'If I hurt inside, I want you to hurt too. If something brings me to tears, I want to bring you to tears too.'"

Amen.

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



Mail call!

And if Dubya's administration has its way, the FBI may already have a list of everyone who's mailed you something.

'Mail covers' — the recording of information on the outside of mail addressed to the subject of an investigation — have been used for year, but the authority to order one lies with postal inspectors. Under a proposal being floated in Congress, the FBI would gain exclusive authority over mail covers if it says 'national security' is involved. The FBI would not be able to open mail, however; that would still take a court warrant.

The rationale for the proposed new FBI power is that (according to the FBI) postal inspectors don't act quickly enough to authorize mail covers. Postal Service officials say that no FBI request for a mail cover has been 'formally rejected' in recent years.

Civil libertians are not happy with the proposal:

"Prison wardens may be able to monitor their prisoners' mail," said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, "but ordinary Americans shouldn't be treated as prisoners in their own country."

Via NY Times.

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



Only a few votes in a few ridings.

And Carole James of the left-leaning New Democrats would have become the new premier of British Columbia this past Tuesday, instead of the BC Liberals' Gordon Campbell.

According to Tom Hawthorn and Tom Barrett, the NDP lost six ridings [electoral districts] by less than 1000 votes, and a shift of only 3371 votes in those ridings would have given the NDP a majority in the provincial legislature. Since the BC Green party picked up almost 10 percent of the vote [which was still not enough to elect a member of the legislature], the temptation is to blame the Greens for the Liberals' election victory. But Hawthorn and Barrett warn that the situation isn't quite so clear:

Did the Greens take more votes from the left than the right? Almost certainly. Can anyone say exactly what effect they had? Not with much precision.

For a start, just as in last year's federal election, a lot of Green voters probably wouldn't have bothered to vote if there hadn't been a Green candidate. How many? Your guess is as good as mine.

Second, when Ipsos-Reid asked Green voters last week which party was their second choice, fewer than half — 45 per cent — named the NDP. Another 20 per cent said the Liberals. And another 26 per cent said they'd vote for some other party.

These numbers are rough. The sampling error for a small sub-sample like Green voters is around 10 percentage points. But the result does suggest that the Greens weren't stealing votes just from the NDP.

By the way, the almost-final results of the election give the Liberals 44 seats in the legislature and the NDP 35 — quite a change from the last legislative session in which the Libs outnumbered the NDP 77–2.

Via The Tyee.

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



Friday, May 20, 2005

No comment.

From an AP story:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program.

Alysha Cosby's decision prompted cheers and applause Tuesday from many of her fellow seniors at St. Jude Educational Institute.

But her mother and aunt were escorted out of the church by police after Cosby headed back to her seat....

Cosby was told in March that she could no longer attend school because of safety concerns, and her name was not listed in the graduation program.

The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.  [emphasis added]

Via Road to Surfdom.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:08 PM | Get permalink



Another one of those amazing 'coincidences.'

Remember British MP George Galloway's blistering testimony before a US Senate committee earlier this week?

We just looked at the website for the Committee on Homeland Security Governmental Affairs and the statement that Galloway submitted to committee members isn't there. The funny thing is that PDF files for all of the other witness statements are right where they should be.

Republicans just love coincidences, don't they?

Via xymphora.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:57 PM | Get permalink



The silence is deafening.

The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting says that stories about the 'Downing Street memo' have been almost entirely absent from US nightly news programs. That previously secret memo, you'll recall, contains new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

While the memo has begun to get wider coverage in print, broadcasters have maintained a near silence on the issue. The story has turned up in a few short CNN segments (Crossfire, 5/13/05; Live Sunday, 5/15/05; Wolf Blitzer Reports, 5/16/05), but the only mention of the memo FAIR found on the major broadcast networks came on ABC's Sunday morning show This Week (5/15/05), in which host George Stephanopoulos questioned Sen. John McCain about its contents. When McCain declared that he didn't "agree with it" and defended the Bush administration's decision to go to war, Stephanopoulos didn't question him further. A look at the nightly news reveals not a single story aired about the memo and its implications.

When finally questioned by CNN (5/16/05), White House press secretary Scott McClellan claimed he hadn't seen the memo, but that "the reports" about it were "flat-out wrong." British government officials, however, did not dispute the contents of the memo?which can be read in full online at http://downingstreetmemo.com/ ?and a former senior American official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" (Knight Ridder, 5/6/05).

FAIR suggests that polite phone calls and emails to network newscast editors could change things. So go to it!

ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
PeterJennings@abcnews.com

CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691
evening@cbsnews.com

NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971
nightly@nbc.com

PBS: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Phone: 703-739-5000
newshour@pbs.org

FAIR's main web page is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:28 PM | Get permalink



The countdown has started.

Republicans in the US Senate began moving toward the 'nuclear option,' as they made a motion to end debate on the nomination of right-wing judge Priscilla Owen to the federal bench.

If Democrats continue to try to block the nomination, the GOP has threatened a vote on eliminating the right to filibuster on appointments to the federal courts and US Supreme Court. It is not clear whether the Republicans have the 51 votes needed to do this.

Via Reuters.

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



Ooooooh, shiny!

Woodblock prints by Ando Hiroshige!

From the article on Hirishige in Wikipedia:

Ando Hiroshige ... is a famous Japanese painter and Ukiyo-e maker. His main works were landscapes, like "100 famous places of Edo" and "53 stages of Tokaido". The last great figure of the Ukiyo-e, or popular, school of printmaking, he transmuted everyday landscapes into intimate, lyrical scenes that made him even more successful than his contemporary, Hokusai....

With Hokusai, Hiroshige dominated the popular art of Japan in the first half of the 19th century. His work was not as bold or innovative as that of the older master, but he captured, in a poetic, gentle way that all could understand, the ordinary person's experience of the Japanese landscape as well as the varied moods of memorable places at different times. His total output was immense, some 5400 prints in all.


From 'Famous Restaurants from the Eastern Capital'/
'Toto Komei Kaiseki Zukushi' [1852-53]

This series was designed by Hiroshige and Kunisada. The prints have a landscape and still-life by Hiroshige above, and below is an actor in a stage role by Kunisada. Further details about this series are available at the Kunisada Project.

Via wood s lot.

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



The beat goes on.

And on.

Sadly.

Via NY Times.

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






Easy come,  easy go .

Paul Krugman's current column deals with the relationship between China's cheap currency and the ability of the US to finance its massive budget deficits. It's not a pretty picture.

Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.

Via NY Times.

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



Hammers are very versatile.

You can use them to build things. Or you can use them to smash things.

Dubya's administration just got a shiny new hammer called the Real ID Act. Guess which way this hammer is being used?

In the first use of the act, the US Justice Department is asking a federal court to deport a Togolese refugee essentially because she missed a filing deadline.

Asylum-seeker Ablavi Malm, 51, was ordered deported to Togo in 1998 because her application for refugee status was denied after she failed to turn up for the hearing, according to court documents. Her subsequent appeal invoking the protection of anti-torture statutes was filed 20 days too late to be considered, according to her lawyer, Morton Sklar of the World Organization for Human Rights USA.

Sklar says Togolese security forces are notorious for their poor human-rights record and that Malm and members of her family there have been tortured.

The REAL ID Act, signed into law last week, mainly deals with the integrity of the nation's drivers' licensing systems -- setting minimum standards and effectively denying licenses to undocumented migrants and other illegal aliens. But it also includes a series of provisions designed to counter what its authors say is abuse of the immigration system, including by terrorists.

The Malm case is likely to become a flashpoint for arguments about the immigration provisions of the new law.

"I'm amazed that the government would use the legislation in this way," Sklar told United Press International. "It is even harsher than Congress intended.

"This 51-year-old rape survivor is about as far from a terrorist threat as it is possible to get."

The only thing that surprises us about this story is the fact that Sklar was amazed at how the feds are using the Real ID Act.

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



About that Chinese military buildup.

It may be greatly overestimated.

According to a report prepared for the US Air Force by the RAND Corporation, the Defense Department may be off by two-thirds. According to RAND, China's military spending in 2003 was somewhere between US $31 billion and $38 billion. The Defense Department, on the other hand, pegs that year's spending by China as high as US $65 billion.

The communist state itself has used a figure of about $25 billion, but U.S. experts say that does not include research and development, pensions and some other costs normally included by western militaries.

RAND's figure could raise questions about some of the arguments used by U.S. decisonmakers to justify continued spending on big-ticket weapons systems....

James Mulvenon, an analyst who contributed to the report before leaving RAND to join another consulting group, said the U.S. government had been using a lot of "wild-assed guesses" about Chinese military spending rather than digging into original source material.

"Basically, we're correcting a lot of U.S. government estimates that weren't based on empirical fact," said Mulvenon, now at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, a Washington-based group that consults for U.S. intelligence agencies.

This story reminds us of how the Reagan administration used the 'Soviet threat' to justify big increases in the military budget. After glasnost and the end of the Soviet Union, we found out that the Soviets had nowhere near the military capability that had been attributed to them during the 1980s. We're not surprised to find that government 'experts' may be overestimating Chinese military spending in order to justify Dubya and Rumsfeld's high-tech military fantasies.

Via Reuters.

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



Siobhan Peoples.

Last summer, we were rummaging through the Irish/Scottish CDs at Dusty Strings in Seattle, looking for a copy of 'Fonnchaoi' by Verena Cummins & Julie Langan, a CD that people kept telling us that we needed to hear. We found that CD [yes, we did really need to hear it] and, not too far away on the shelf, we found one by another fiddle/box duo: Siobhan Peoples' and Murty Ryan's 'Time on Our Hands.' Guess which one lived in our car's CD player for the next week?

If Siobhan Peoples' name seems vaguely familiar to you, it's probably because you're thinking of her father, fiddler Tommy Peoples — known both as a solo player and for his powerful fiddling on the first Bothy Band album in 1975. The younger Peoples is a mighty fiddler in her own right, and you would never guess from hearing her that she's lost the use (for fiddling, at least) of two fingers on her left hand. Siobhan Peoples can often found playing in sessions around Ennis in County Clare, and she's in great demand as a teacher.

'Time on Our Hands' CD

'Time on Our Hands' CD [2002]

In 2004, Peoples was interviewed for Fiddler magazine by writer/musician Brendan Taaffe. The following is an excerpt from that interview:

Taaffe: You've had some trouble with your left hand?

Peoples: I lost the power of two fingers -- just for fiddle playing. They're perfect otherwise. It's just such a controlled space and a very small space, very limited, and the hand just kind of said "No." It was like that for a long time and just progressively got worse. I went to lots of people who could tell me what it wasn't, but there didn't seem to be much of a fix for it. So I just developed my own style of playing after that, which is basically with two fingers. I use these two, my index and middle finger mainly, and I have some little power back in this [ring finger] now, so I could use that for high B's. I'm going between first and second position all the time; it's not as difficult as it sounds. If you saw it, you wouldn't actually notice it. I position between the two, so it's all in the wrist.

Taaffe: And you can still get the rolls and the ornaments?

Peoples: There's lots of things I can't do.

Taaffe: When did you first have that trouble?

Peoples: When I was about sixteen or seventeen, I'd get a cramp, but it would be gone after a couple of minutes. Then a couple of years later it just kind of gave up altogether. I think a lot of it was panic. When I'd take out the fiddle I'd just tense up because I didn't know what was going to happen; you couldn't rely on it to be right.

Irish fiddler Sioban Peoples

[Video still: Joe Edwards]

Taaffe: Was there a period of time where you couldn't play at all?

Peoples: I still can't play, if you know what I mean. I can play, but not play the fiddle the way it should be played. When I went to start to go to see people, they'd check and all this stuff and the first question was should I stop. They all said no, can't see any benefit in you stopping, because it wasn't anything obvious. So it probably did stop me from playing, but I didn't stop, if that's understandable.

Taaffe: How long did it take to develop this two-fingered style?

Peoples: Ah sure, it was like learning all over again. I'd still be improving at it if you know what I mean, but it took a good few years. When you've learned something and then you have to do it differently, you have to forget about how you used to do it in the first place. I wasn't doing that with the two fingers and it sounded horrendous. Once I had kind of forgotten, I suppose, I started to learn. It's basically just having the trust in your judgment. I had everything else, and knew where everything was on the fiddle, but it was just judgment.

Taaffe: How do you think your style has changed because of that process?

Peoples: Well, it obviously differs because of the physical limitations. I can't really do third finger rolls; even with the adapted style, it's a hard stretch. My style now is an awful lot simpler than it used to be, because it's limited, but I think in a way it helped me to listen to rhythm more. I hadn't many options when I couldn't do the stuff I wanted to do, so you have look for something else. Before it would have all been getting out your books and learning the positions. You want to conquer your instrument and that kind of thing. I couldn't do that, so I just got into the whole idea that basically all the tunes are there, but they're just a way of expressing the same couple of rhythms all the time. I've definitely concentrated on my bow hand more -- I'm still in the process of it, if you know what I mean, but I had come through the whole re-learning thing and come to a point where I could sit in any session. It's in the last couple of years that I'd be concentrating more on the power of the bow hand, realizing that it's half the instrument, rather than just something to express what you do with your fingers.

The full interview can be read here.

For more about Siobhan Peoples, we'd suggest viewing this lovely filmclip of her playing a tune with box player Josephine Marsh and talking about how she learned to play Irish music. [The clip comes from a film by musician/filmmaker Mairéid Sullivan, whose website is here.]

We tried to find a site that had samples from 'Time on Our Hands,' but couldn't come up with one. If you're willing to take a chance on the CD just on this magpie's recommendation, we encourage you to order it from Custy's Music or Claddagh Records in Ireland, or from Ossian USA on this side of the water.

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



Thursday, May 19, 2005

Rising prices and stagnant wages.

We just ran into this report on how prices in the US have been rising faster than the wages of many workers. Over the last year, average hourly earnings have risen 2.7 percent, but the cost of consumer goods and services has gone up by 3.7 percent. If you're a minimum wage worker, especially, this is a problem. But anyone who makes less than six figures is probably feeling at least some of the pinch.

But one part of the article really got this magpie's blood boiling:

The uptick in inflation has caught the attention of policy-makers at the Federal Reserve, who have raised interest rates eight times since June to head off price pressures.

But because most of the inflation comes from higher energy prices, which are notoriously volatile, many of the people steering the nation's economic boat are unruffled by the rise.

They look at a narrower inflation measure that excludes food and energy prices. That gauge is up a milder 2.2 percent in the last year. [Emphasis added.]

"I'm optimistic that we're on the right track and that inflation isn't on a rising trend," Fed Governor Donald Kohn said this week.

Translation: Since our main infation measure is giving us 'inconvenient' results, we're going to rely on a different one that gives us numbers that are better politically. Besides, who cares whether wage-earners have problems with food and energy prices, anyway? If those people were important, they wouldn't make such paltry wages.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:03 PM | Get permalink



'What we saw in there was religious extremism, and what we are seeing in Kansas is happening all across this country.'

With everything else that's been going on, we never got around to posting about the recent hearing in Kansas about implementing new science teaching standards for the state's schools. Those standards, as you might have guess, include the teaching of 'intelligent design' — the latest weasel word for 'creationism' — on an equal footing with evolution and natural selection. The religious right has the majority on the state school board, so the hearings were really window dressing to cloak their inevitable adoption of the new guidelines. Those guidelines, by the way, replace a set that mandates only the teaching of evolution — which themselves replaced a set of creation-friendly guidelines put into effect the last time Christian fundamentalists controlled the school board

We've felt very guilty about not covering the hearing, but luckily we can now refer you to an excellent piece on the hearings at AlterNet, written by Kansan Stan Cox (who, incidentally, has a doctorate in plant breeding and cytogenetics). We were especially struck by the following section, which shows how the teaching of 'intelligent design' would likely play out in the classroom:

A biology teacher who discusses with her students the case for intelligent design — as she would be allowed to do under the alternative science standards -- might well be asked by students, "So, tell me, who or what did the designing?" At the hearing, most witnesses wanted to discuss only design, not a designer. That often required some fancy footwork. Here is Irigonegaray's exchange with Russell Carlson, professor of biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Georgia:

Irigonegaray: "The intelligent designer is God?"

Carlson: "Well, yeah, I'd agree with that."

Irigonegaray: "Science should be neutral with respect to religion?"

Carlson: "Yeah."

Irigonegaray: "But intelligent design places faith in ... "

Carlson: "No, the designer is neutral."

Irigonegaray: "You said the designer is God."

Carlson: "We shouldn't discuss the identity [in the classroom]."

Irigonegaray: "We should keep that a secret?"

Carlson: "When children have questions about the materialist explanation, we now send them to their parents or pastors. Instead, design should be offered as an explanation."

Carlson later added that if a child asks about the identity of the designer, that is the point at which he or she should be sent to a parent or pastor.

Following Angus Menuge's testimony, I asked him what should happen when children ask, "Who's the designer?" Menuge said, "You should cut off discussion at that point, and pursue it in a forum other than the classroom."

But it will be teachers and administrators, not university professors, who determine what actually happens in Kansas public schools under the new standards -- and the pro-ID members of the state Board of Education do not appear to be so circumspect when it comes to religion. During an intermission, I asked board member Kathy Martin whether, as Menuge suggested, a teacher should cut off discussion of the designer's identity.

"Oh, no," she said. "If a student wants to have that conversation, there's nothing wrong with the teacher discussing that. It's all about the students' needs, and as you know, they have a lot of needs these days. I was a teacher myself. If, say, a student's puppy has been run over by a car, the student and I might pray about it together, privately. It's not about religion -- it's about helping the student."

Connie Morris, another pro-ID school board member, told me, "No, we can't mandate intelligent design or creationism in the school standards. But as the fellow from Ohio said, we have to let students go where the evidence leads. I'll give you an example. Did you know there is evidence now that prayer is beneficial in treating cancer?" I asked if teachers should be able to teach about that. Morris, her eyes brightening, said, "Absolutely!"

Those school board members gave substance to a scenario foreseen by Harry McDonald, spokesperson for Kansas Citizens for Science: "They don't even have to introduce ID into the standards. All they need is for a child to ask about it, and that will open the classroom door to religion."

Via The Panda's Thumb.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:24 PM | Get permalink



The new pope isn't any laughing matter.

But this bit of photoshop foolishness is still pretty funny:

Benedict's new liturgy

Benedict XVI makes a few liturgical changes

Via The King's Blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:00 PM | Get permalink



How are things going in Iraq?

Not so good, US generals say.

In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years."

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to insurgents and allow American forces to begin stepping back from the fighting. General Abizaid, who speaks with President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld regularly, was in Washington this week for a meeting of regional commanders.

In Baghdad, a senior officer said Wednesday in a background briefing that the 21 car bombings in Baghdad so far this month almost matched the total of 25 in all of last year.

Against this, he said, there has been a lull in insurgents' activity in Baghdad in recent days after months of some of the bloodiest attacks, a trend that suggested that American pressure, including the capture of important bomb makers, had left the insurgents incapable of mounting protracted offensives. But the officer said that despite Americans' recent successes in disrupting insurgent cells, which have resulted in the arrest of 1,100 suspects in Baghdad alone in the past 80 days, the success of American goals in Iraq was not assured.

"I think that this could still fail," the officer said at the briefing, referring to the American enterprise in Iraq. "It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."

Via NY Times.  [Free reg. req'd.]

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



Allstate's 'good hands' drop a bunch of Florida policies.

And the apparent reason is global warming.

While right-wingers try to ignore the recent scientific finding that global warming is increasing the severity of Atlantic hurricanes, Allstate appears to take that finding seriously.

According to an AP report, Allstate will no longer insure businesses in Florida and is dropping 95,000 homeowner policies. The company will also be raising the premiums for its remaining customers. What's the reason?

"The hurricane season of 2004 was an unprecedented event, but it illustrated to us the reality of hurricane risk in the state of Florida," Allstate spokesman Bill Mellander said. "It altered the world of doing business in Florida."

Allstate paid about US $2 billion in hurricane-related claims in Florida last year.

More evidence that Allstate is expecting more severe hurricanes is reported by the Miami Herald, which notes that Allstate has taken out US $1.6 billion in reinsurance for the updcoming hurricane season. Reinsurance is coverage that insurance companies buy in order to coverthemselves against expected losses.

So while the words 'global warming' apparently weren't mentioned in any of Allstate's statements about its Florida pullout, it's fairly clear that climate change is one of the company's major reasons. It's also interesting that none of the stories that we've seen make any connection between Allstate's actions and climate change.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:33 AM | Get permalink



Oh, this sure is a comforting prospect.

Unhappy with those terribly limited powers granted to federal law enforcement by the Patriot Act, Dubya's administration and Senate GOP leaders have come up with a plan to expand the FBI's power to demand business records without having to ask a judge for a court order.

The proposal, which is likely to be considered next week in a closed session of the Senate intelligence committee, would allow federal investigators to subpoena records from businesses and other institutions without a judge's sign-off if they declared that the material was needed as part of a foreign intelligence investigation.

Translation: The feds would be able to ask for whatever records they want, any time they want, without having to give a reason and without having to let a judge — even a judge on the secret intelligence court — approve their actions.

Further translation: Can we say 'another step toward authoritarian rule'?

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

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



What's the biggest domestic terror threat facing the US?

Right-wing paramilitary groups? Nope. Anti-abortion bombers? Bzzzt! Wrong!

According to testimony in front of a US Senate committee today, it's eco-terrorists. FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism John Lewis told senators that 'there is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions.' [We'd think that the Oklahoma City bombing alone would have put right-wingers way out in front, but we're just a magpie.] Interestingly, the list of acts counted by the FBI as eco-terrorism apparently includes harassing phone calls and office take-overs — not exactly high on most people's lists of what counts as terrorism.

We won't go into all of the rationale for this conclusion regarding domestic terror — you can get that from the article. Instead, we want to focus on a really disturbing aspect of the committee hearing:

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the panel's chairman, said he hoped to examine more closely how the groups might be getting assistance in fundraising and communications from tax-exempt organizations [and] "mainstream activists" not directly blamed for the violence.

"Just like al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media," Inhofe said.

Did you get that? What Inhofe is doing here is trying to make a direct connection between 'mainstream' environmental organizations and terrorism. And what Inhofe could be signalling is a direct attack by the Dubya administration on environmental groups under the pretense that they are aiding and abbetting terrorists, not engaging in political speech and activity protected by the US Constitution. And the direct beneficiaries of such an attack would be the oil companies, mining interests, big polluters, and others who've already been reaping benefits from Dubya's control of the wheel of state.

Our guess is that groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense had better start getting ready for IRS investigations and covert surveillance, if not worse.

Via AP.

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



Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Since the GOP took control of Congress in the mid-1990s, one of the things they've done is to flatline the funding for the US Geologcial Survey. Among the tasks of the USGS is to keep track on the nation's volcanoes, such as Washington's Mt. St. Helens and Hawaii's Kilauea and Mauna Loa.

Because of its money shortage, the USGS has hired very few young scientists over the past decade — nowhere near enough to replace the generation of volcanologists that will be retiring in the next few years. The problem was severe enough five years ago that the National Research Council warned that USGS volcano-monitoring programs could collapse as a result of those retirements. Given that US cities such as Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland live in the shadow of active volcanoes, this is not a good thing.

Mt Rainier over Tacoma skyline

Mt. Rainier looms over Tacoma [Photo: Lyn Topinka/USGS]

In the five years since the NRC report, unfortunately, the situation at the USGS has only grown worse.

[Sixty-five] percent of the staff at USGS' Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., [is] eligible for retirement in five years. At the same time, promising students have shunned volcanology for other fields because job prospects have been so poor.

"The mantra has been: In a few years, we'll start hiring," [USGS volcanologist Dan] Dzurisin said. "I've been saying that for a decade now."

Now an authority on the way volcanoes swell and deform before eruptions, Dzurisin honed his craft with the help of more experienced scientists who converged on Mount St. Helens in the early 1980s.

He worries the next generation of volcanologists won't benefit from that type of apprenticeship, so crucial in a field where it can be just as important to know how to trouble-shoot a broken sensor in a snow bank as to interpret the data it yields.

If the USGS doesn't start replenishing its scientific ranks soon, public safety could suffer when volcanoes like Mount Rainier or Mount Baker awaken and the agency lacks the personnel and expertise to evaluate the dangers, said Arizona State University volcanologist Jonathan Fink, who headed the NRC panel.

"We need to be talking about these things before they happen," he said. "Not afterward."

Having lived in Portland when Mt. St. Helens had its major eruption in 1980, this magpie has some idea how much the expertise of USGS volcanologists can matter. We remember being able to get home ahead of a major ashfall only because the USGS was able to give warning that an ash cloud was heading Portland's way.

You can find more information on the USGS Volcano Hazards Program here.

Via Seattle Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:02 PM | Get permalink



Tap-dancing at the White House.

From today's White House press briefing by Scott McClellan:

Q: Scott, you just mentioned that our enemies are looking for any material that they can find to damage us or our reputation. Isn't it the case that the Newsweek article would not have done the damage that it has if our reputation hadn't already been damaged by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you actually bring up a very important point. Abu Ghraib and the individuals that did things that were contrary to our military procedures and contrary to our values did do damage to the image of the United States abroad. And that's why we have worked to make sure that people know that we take such matters very seriously. People are being held to account. They're going to jail for what they did at Abu Ghraib, because it went against everything we stand for, and it was against our laws, as well.

We're also -- we also have taken a number of steps to prevent something like that from ever happening again. When a problem like that arises, the United States deals with it, and deals with it swiftly and takes steps to prevent it from happening again. With the material in the Newsweek report, obviously, as everybody saw, was used to incite violence. It was additional material that people opposed to the United States took and used to incite violence and it had some serious consequences.

I think the American people are outraged about the report, to learn that it turned out to be wrong. And we share in that outrage. And that's why it's important to work to repair the damage that has been done by that report.

Q: Can you assure us that there have been no instances of desecration of the Koran?

MR. McCLELLAN: The Department of Defense actually addressed that yesterday, and I talked about it, as well.

Q: You can assure us of that, there are no cases?

MR. McCLELLAN: You ought to talk to the Department of Defense. They talked about it yesterday. They have found nothing to substantiate any such allegation that was made by the Newsweek report. And Newsweek, itself, retracted the report because they realized it was wrong.

In case you didn't catch what McClellan said, here's a translation:
    Yeah, of course the Koran has been desecrated. Why do you think we came down so hard on Newsweek? If we don't thoroughly intimidate them, someone else will do a story on a desecration incident and provide airtight documentation. Do you have any idea of the problems that would cause this administration?

This magpie especially wants to call your attention the way that McClellan kept giving his answer in terms of the allegation made by Newsweek, totally ignoring the fact that his questioner wanted to know if any allegations of Koran descecration were true. If McClellan weren't such a liar, we'd be impressed by his skill.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:07 PM | Get permalink



'Too widespread and systematic to be dismissed.'

The abuse of prisoners by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to be more widespread than has been believed.

A new set of files obtained from the US Army by the Amercian Civil Liberties Union contains numerous new allegations of abuse, including reports that an Iraqi prisoner who was seriously injured during a beating had to drop his claims of abuse in order to get out of US custody. The documents were released by court order after the government stonewalled a year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace.

According to ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, abuse and torture of people by US troops is 'too widespread and systemic to be dismissed as the rogue actions of a few misguided individuals.'

In one file released today, an Iraqi detainee claimed that Americans in civilian clothing beat him in the head and stomach, dislocated his arms, "stepped on [his] nose until it [broke]," stuck an unloaded pistol in his mouth and fired the trigger, choked him with a rope and beat his leg with a baseball bat. Medical reports corroborated the detainee?s account, stating that the detainee had a broken nose, fractured leg, and scars on his stomach. In addition, soldiers confirmed that Task Force 20 interrogators wearing civilian clothing had interrogated the detainee. However, after initially reporting the abuse, the detainee said that he was forced by an American soldier to sign a statement denouncing the claims or else be kept in detention indefinitely. He agreed.

An investigator who reviewed the signed statement concluded that "[t]his statement, alone, is a prima facie indication of threats." However, despite the medical report and testimony from other soldiers, the criminal file was ultimately closed on the grounds that the investigation had "failed to prove or disprove" the offenses.

Another file released today reports that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posed for photographs of mock executions with hooded and bound detainees, and that some of these photographs were intentionally destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage."

The file concerns an investigation into the discovery of a CD during an office clean-up in Afghanistan in July 2004. The CD contained digital images of what appeared to be abuse and maltreatment of detainees in and around Fire Base Tycze in southern Afghanistan. The pictures showed uniformed soldiers pointing pistols and M-4 rifles at the heads and backs of bound and hooded detainees, and other abuses such as holding a detainee?s head against the wall of a cage. One sergeant stated that he had also seen pictures on Army computers of detainees being kicked, hit or inhumanely treated while in U.S. custody. An Army Specialist and team leader with four soldiers assigned under him admitted that similar photographs had been destroyed after images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison were leaked to the media.


The ACLU has urged Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint a special counsel to investigate the abuse and torture of detainees and, if needed, prosecute civilians for their involvement in the torture of detainees. According to the ACLU's Romero, 'The American public deserves to know which high-level government officials are ultimately responsible for the torture conducted in our name.'

Via ACLU.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:33 AM | Get permalink



Meet Gizoogle.

Gizoogle is another one of Google's unauthorized offspring. This one does ... well, maybe an example would show it best. Let's go look at a Gizoogled version of the most recent White House press gaggle.

Nope, no excerpts for this one either. We want you to be surprised.

Via LISNews.

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



Everybody needs a few ethical guidelines.

How about these?

We'd give you an excerpt, but the list really needs to be seen in its entirety so that its full glory can be appreciated.

Thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerrilla for pointing us to them.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:49 AM | Get permalink



Uh-oh.

It turns out that the Dubya administration's calls for Newsweek to atone for its Koran desecration errors merely scratch the surface of the magazine's transgressions. As Mikhaela points out, Newsweek has a whole lot to answer for.

It's Newsweek's fault!

You can see more of Mikhaela's political cartoons here.

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



Using single, unnamed sources who offer unsubstantiated information.

That's pretty damn irresponsible, isn't it? Well, isnt' it?

Via Think Progress.

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



Villaraigosa doesn't just win the mayor's race in LA.

He wins by a landslide.

The winner!

Via LA Times.

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



Yow!

We finally got a chance to read British MP George Galloway's statement to the US Senate committee investigating corruption in the administration of the 'oil for food' program that operated in Iraq prior to the US invasion.

To put it mildly, Galloway was not your usual witness. Galloway not only denied any oil profiteering, but attacked both the motives of the Republican majority in the Senate for holding the hearings, and the Iraq policies of Dubya's administration:

Galloway at the Senate

Galloway before the senators
[Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
]

Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real oil- for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months, when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and the other American corporations that stole Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal, breaking in the newspapers today. Revealed in the (INAUDIBLE) testimony in this committee, that the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians; the real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government.

There's a lot more where that came from. Go read it. [Scroll down.]

No wonder Minnesota Republican senator Norm Coleman waited until after Galloway had left to attack his testimony.

Via CNN.

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



It's been a year.

And, despite all of the same-sex marriages that have taken place in Massachusetts during the past 12 months, life in the Commonwealth seems to be going on pretty much as it always has.

Just married

Newlyweds Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish, one year ago today
[Photographer unknown]

News media around the country are running stories about the anniversary of the first legal lesbian and gay marriages in the US, with almost all of them bending over backwards to avoid making conclusions about whether same-sex marriage is a good thing or a bad thing. This story is pretty typical. In the midst of all the he-said, she-said, however, the story does contain one really great quote:

[National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Matt] Foreman said Massachusetts might be its own best advertisement for the harmlessness of same-sex marriage. In the past year, he noted, "Nobody in the legislature who supported gay marriage lost their jobs, and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. And the crops came up, and the locusts stayed away."

Via LA Times.

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



Amman taxi.

Ahmed Nassef of Muslim Wake Up! has been in Amman, Jordan for a few days. He's taken a number of cab rides, which often involves an interesting conversation with the cab's driver.

Here's one of them:

Me: "Assalamu alaykum."
Driver: "Wa alaykum assalam. You are Muslim. I am from Hebron."
Me: "Yes, that's great... it is a place of great struggle."
Driver: "But more important than that, we are proud that we have no churches in Hebron, only mosques."
Me: "Oh... is that Four Seasons Hotel over there new? I don;t remember seeing it last time I was here."
Driver: "Yes, it's only a couple of years old. Bin Laden was building it, but then he had to stop and Walid Bin Talal finished the job... God will bless Bin Laden and take him to Paradise."
Me: "Paradise? Did God tell you he's taking Bin Laden to Paradise?"
Driver: "Why not... he is doing many great things."
Me: "Really, if he's going to Paradise, then may be the rest of us are going to hell."
Driver: "By the way, did you hear that Bill Gates has converted to Islam?"
Me: "No that's news to me. Where did you hear that?"
Driver: "From the Imam at the Friday prayer last week in his sermon."
Me: "And you think he's right?"
Driver: "Of course... he is always right and very reponsible. You see, all the imams are being closely watched by the government here, so they have to always be sure that everything they say is compeltely accurate."
Me: "Well in that case, that's good news, may be we'll all get free computers over here."
Driver: "Yes, may be."

Via Muslim Wake Up! Blog.

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



Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Bye-bye Hahn.

Early returns show voters in Los Angeles tossing out incombent mayor James Hahn, and electing Antonio Villaraigosa as the city's first Latino mayor since 1872.

Antonio Villaraigosa

Villaraigosa on the stump
[Photo: Rick Francis/AP]

With 12 percent of the vote in just after 10 pm PDT, Villaraigosa's lead over Hahn had widened to 11 points. If Villaraigosa does indeed win, it will largely be because of an electoral alliance between the city's Latino and African-American communities, which had often been at political odds in the past It will also mark a reversal of the last mayoral election, in which Hahn narrowly beat Villaraigosa.

Via LA Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:38 PM | Get permalink



Liberals returned to office in British Columbia.

But the left-leaning New Democrats chewed into the Liberals' majority in the provincial legislature.

The outgoing legislature had 77 Liberal members and 2 New Democrats. As of late evening, the CBC is predicting that the new legislature will likely have 45 Liberals and 34 New Democrats.

BC Liberals win

[Stats: CBC]

The win for the right-wing Liberals came after a campaign that included US-style attack ads against the NDP, calling the party 'negative, destructive, and pessimistic.' The Liberals much-reduced majority will make the job of governing much more difficult in the second term. It would only take losses in five by-elections to give the NDP control of the legislature. [The NDP won the only by-election during the last legislative term.]

BC voters were also deciding whether the province would start using the single transferrable vote in the next provincial election, scheduled for 2008. As this post is written, the referendum was being approved by a 55-45% margin.

The STV system is a proportional-voting method similar to the instant run-off voting recently adopted by San Francisco. [For more info on the STV system, go here.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:19 PM | Get permalink



Now isn't this just what the world needs.

Dubya's administration is getting ready to start an arms race in space.

Via Reuters.

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



We sure wish we had access to Lexis/Nexis.

'Cause then we could have found the list of citations for Koran descecration in US-run detention camps that Wellstoner posted in the comments over at Atrios.

Here are three we grabbed at random:

Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), January 3, 2005
HEADLINE: Koran prayer torture claim


LONDON -- A British detainee claims he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay for reciting the Koran when talking was banned.

Moazzam Begg told lawyers he was tortured using the strappado, in which a prisoner is suspended from a bar with handcuffs, Britain's Observer newspaper said.

Mr Begg alleged he had been shaven several times against his will and a guard had said on one such occasion: "This is the part that really gets to you Muslims isn't it?""

Financial Times (London, England), Oct 28, 2004
HEADLINE: Four Britons held at Guantanamo sue US government


In August Mr Ahmed, Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal issued a 115-page dossier accusing the US of abuse, including allegations that they were beaten and had their Korans thrown into toilets.

USA TODAY, October 18, 2004
HEADLINE: Spy case was a 'life-altering experience' for airman


Al Halabi says he did not witness any treatment of prisoners that has now been called into question as abusive. But he says he saw things at Guantanamo that disturbed him. He says guards would purposely mishandle the Koran "just to see the detainees' reaction."

So it's not like Newsweek reported anything new. And it looks to this magpie that the reason why Dubya's administration is pushing the magazine so hard on this issue is to discourage any other media outlet from reporting a similar story.

Via Informed Consent.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:54 PM | Get permalink



The Newsweek 'scandal': An Iraqi view

From Baghdad, Riverbend weighs in on the question of whether Newsweek's report of Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay is true.

We've been watching the protests about the Newsweek article with interest. I’m not surprised at the turnout at these protests- the thousands of Muslims angry at the desecration of the Quran. What did surprise me was the collective shock that seems to have struck the Islamic world like a slap in the face. How is this shocking? It's terrible and disturbing in the extreme- but how is it shocking? After what happened in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons how is this astonishing? American jailers in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown little respect for human life and dignity- why should they be expected to respect a holy book? [...]

Now Newsweek have retracted the story- obviously under pressure from the White House. Is it true? Probably… We've seen enough blatant disregard and disrespect for Islam in Iraq the last two years to make this story sound very plausible. On a daily basis, mosques are raided, clerics are dragged away with bags over their heads… Several months ago the world witnessed the execution of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque. Is this latest so very surprising?

Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam- some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.

By doing such things, this war is taken to another level- it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists- it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides.

Via Baghdad Burning.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:47 PM | Get permalink



This is nice to see.

A constructive response to the Newsweek/Koran desecration 'scandal':

In today's climate of heightened religious sensitivities and cultural clashes, now is the time for people of all faiths to better acquaint themselves with Islam's sacred text, the Holy Qur'an. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is proud to announce a new campaign intended to promote understanding of the Qur'an by distributing complimentary copies to the American public. This campaign, titled Explore the Qur'an, serves as a response to those who would defame and desecrate the holy book of Muslims without full knowledge of its teachings.

False and uninformed accusations have been leveled against the Qur'an for some time. But now, this initiative places the sacred text directly in the hands of those who claim to know the book's "darkest secrets" and encourages them to discover the truth about Islam. Explore the Qur'an allows the book to speak for itself, respond to its critics, and educate those of other faith traditions about the beautiful religion of Islam.

We'd like to think that if non-Muslims knew more about Islam — even as much as most non-Christians in the US learn about Christianity just by osmosis — that maybe there would be a bit less craziness around issues of faith in this country. We're glad to see CAIR taking the initiative to make it easier for non-Muslims to read the Koran.

If you'd like to request a copy of the Koran online, go here. To make a donation to CAIR's 'Explore the Qur'an' campaign, go here.

CAIR also has a daily news digest that it sends out via email. We've found it very useful and you might, too (especially if you're a blogger). There's a subscription form on the lower left of CAIR's main webpage.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:50 PM | Get permalink



Missing the point entirely.

That's not exactly news when we're talking about the 'mainstream' media in the US. And, as an excellent piece by Brian Montopoli points out, missing the point is the big story in how the media is covering the Newsweek scandal.

To begin with, the press is getting the basic fact of the retraction wrong: Newsweek didn't retract the report that the Koran had been put in a toilet at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The magazine only retracted its claim that its report was supported by information from the US military's Southern Command. As Montopoli notes, there have been a number of credible reports of this exact kind of Koran desecration that have come out of Guantanmo over the past three years. So it's no surprise that Newsweek didn't say that no descecration took place — the magazine only withdrew its claim that a report being submitted to the Southern Command contained information about such descration. This is a big difference, kids.

The failure of the press to make this distinction about the distraction has played right into the hands of Dubya's spin masters:

Consider another central issue: whether Newsweek's premature report actually spurred the riots. Thanks to the White House spin, and the media's lazy reporting, the conventional wisdom is now that it did. But the reality is that it probably did not, at least in any significant sense. According to a statement last Thursday by General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, after hearing from commanders on the scene in Afghanistan, the "rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else." As we've noted, that makes sense, based on the Taliban's past patterns and the fact that previous reports about Koran desecration at Guantanamo spurred no such riots. But the press has repeatedly failed to make that clear....

All this is particularly galling considering how much play the story is getting on the cable networks. It's not as if there isn't ample time to explain the facts to the viewers. Instead, Fox News, which we've had our eye on over the past couple days, has repeatedly stressed the fact that the White House feels that Newsweek's apology isn't enough, since, as White House press secretary Scott McClellan put it, "The report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."

It's easy to imagine why the White House is taking this approach. As a Newsweek journalist told the Los Angeles Times — speaking, ironically, from a position of anonymity — "The issue of how prisoners are treated at Guantanamo has not gone away. Now they want to deflect that by talking about how irresponsible Newsweek magazine was."

What's harder to explain is why reporters covering the story have swallowed this red herring. But let's try: Producers, it seems, would rather stir viewers' emotions that provide them with the truth. The story, in its oversimplified form, plays well into television news' longstanding bias towards conflict. It's Newsweek vs. the government, the liberal media vs. conservatives, and, for some, overeager advocacy journalists vs. America.

Via CJR Daily.

Unsolicited testamonial: The piece we've blogged above is only the latest example of excellent media analysis coming out of CJR Daily. The Daily is a project of the Columbia Journalism Review, which has been doing similar work in print for decades. A few years ago, we let our CJR subscription lapse because we were unhappy with the direction the magazine had taken, becoming more of a trade magazine for US journalists rather than a critical observer of journalism. The work that the Daily (then called Campaign Desk) did during the recent US election campaign got us to take another look at CJR, and we were pleased to see that the magazine is these days every bit as good as its web sibling. So we re-subscribed, and just last week signed up for another two years.

If you think the writing in CJR Daily that we link to is important, you might want to subscribe to CJR yourself.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:42 PM | Get permalink



A question for Scott McClellan.

If, as Dubya's press secretary Scott McClellan says, the 'Downing Street memo's assertion that the decision to invade Iraq had already been made in the summer of 2002 is 'flat out wrong,' how does McClellan explain this?

Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who was chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee when Democrats ruled, has written in his book, "Intelligence Matters," about a visit he made to MacDill Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Central Command, on Feb. 19, 2002.

[Note: The date of the Downing Street memo is 23 July 2002 — five months after Graham's visit.]

He was going for a status report on the mission in Afghanistan, Graham wrote, but CENTCOM'S Gen. Tommy Franks called him aside to tell him, "Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan."

"Excuse me?"' Graham replied.

"Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to prepare for an action in Iraq," Graham quoted Franks as saying. Graham wrote: "I was stunned. This was the first time I had been informed that the decision to go to war with Iraq had not only been made but was being implemented, to the substantial disadvantage of the war in Afghanistan."

Just wondering.

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



Dept. of 'We Wish We'd Said That.'

Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood offer up some eminently sensible comments on the Newsweek 'scandal':

The conventional wisdom emerged quickly: Newsweek got it wrong, and Newsweek is to blame for the deaths. The first conclusion is premature; the second is wrong.

First, it's not clear whether U.S. guards in Guantanamo or other prisons have placed copies of the Quran on a toilet or thrown pages (or a whole Quran) into a toilet. Detainees have made such claims, which have been reported by attorneys representing some of the men in custody and denied by U.S. officials. Newsweek's retraction is ambiguous, suggesting they believe the incident may have happened but no longer can demonstrate that it was cited in the specific U.S. government documents, as originally reported.

Given the abuse and torture — from sexual humiliation to beatings to criminal homicide — that has gone on in various U.S. military prison facilities, it's not hard to believe that the Quran stories could be true. Given that last month U.S. officials pressured the United Nations to eliminate the job of its top human-rights investigator in Afghanistan after that official criticized violations by U.S. forces in the country, it's not hard to be skeptical about U.S. motives. And given that even the human-rights commission of the generally compliant Afghan government is blocked by U.S. forces from visiting the prisons, it's not hard to believe that the U.S. officials may have something to hide.

Until we have more information, definitive conclusions are impossible. But if you go on a popular right-wing web site, you'll find the verdict that administration supporters are trying to make the final word: "Newsweek lied, people died."

Yes, people died during demonstrations, and political leaders in the Muslim world have cited the Quran stories to spark anti-U.S. feeling. But reporters outside the United States have pointed out that these demonstrations have not been spontaneous but were well-organized, often by groups of students. The frustration with U.S. policy that fuels these demonstrations isn't limited to the Quran incident, and to reduce the unrest to one magazine story is misleading. Indeed, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference last week that the senior commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Carl Eichenberry, reported that the violence "was not at all tied to the article in the magazine."

So, why the focus on the Newsweek story? It's part of the tried-and-true strategy of demonize, disguise, and divert. Demonize the news media to disguise the real causes of the resistance to occupation and divert attention from failed U.S. policies.

Via CommonDreams.

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



Life in Dubya's US.

From a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

In Seattle, if you're earning the minimum wage, you have to work 90 hours a week to afford to rent an average two-bedroom unit, let alone buy one....

The gap between housing prices and wages is continuing to widen, said Carla Okigwe, executive director of the Housing Development Consortium, a non-profit housing trade association in Seattle.

And that puts not just families at risk, but communities as well.

"Affordable housing is important for the stability of the community," Okigwe said. "If there's no place for young people who grew up there to get started, or for people who are growing old to stay, then you end up losing your people -- the very people who are most invested in the community."

The P-I compiled statistics to show how the full-time wages in various occupations compare with the amount of money needed to rent a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment, or to buy a median-priced home. The depressing statistics are here. We bet these Seattle figures aren't much different for anywhere in the US; we know that the situation here in Portland is at least as bad as in Seattle.

Dubya's continuing cuts in federally supported housing programs such as 'Section 8' certainly aren't helping the bad housing situation outlined by the P-I. And neither does the administration's opposition to raising the minimum wage.

But then, we're just a magpie. What do we know?

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:19 AM | Get permalink



Misplaced priorites?

Jim Lobe has an excellent commentary about the difference ways that the US press has handled two stories: the Newsweek Koran abuse story/retraction, and the 'Downing Street memo,' which undercuts the entire rationale for the invasion of Iraq. It's a telling comparison.

Here's a question for international news hounds. Who is the "son of a bitch" referred to in this comment by a U.S. Defence Department spokesman?

"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

Is he an unnamed Defence Department source who told Newsweek magazine that he had read a government document detailing an incident where U.S. military personnel at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, allegedly flushed a Koran down a toilet?

After all, that report, which was printed in a small item in last week's "Periscope" section of the magazine, spurred violent protests across the Muslim world, particularly in Afghanistan where at least 15 people were killed and the government of President Hamid Karzai badly shaken just a week before he was due to travel here.

Or is the "son of a bitch" U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration began fixing intelligence at least eight months before invading Iraq in order to make the public believe that Baghdad posed a serious threat to the United States and its allies?

After all, the war and its bloody aftermath have taken a toll of at least 30,000 lives, according to the most conservative estimates, and ongoing conflict continues to kill scores more every week with no end in sight.

Readers of the British press might be inclined to choose the second option based on the sensational leak to the London Times two weeks ago of the minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisers during which the head of the intelligence agency MI6, just back from Washington, reported that Bush had decided on war and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

While that was big news in Britain, it was hard to find any trace of it in the U.S. press.

You can read the rest of the commentary here.

Via Inter Press Service.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:27 AM | Get permalink



When is it legal to rape a woman?

When she's your wife and you're a man living in the US state of Tennessee.

Tennessee Guerilla Women have more on how the effort to remove the 'spousal exemption' from the state's rape law appears to be failing for the tenth time in a row.

We will resist the temptation to make any links between the high proportion of right-wing fundamentalist Christians in Tennessee and the fact that the 'spousal exemption' continues to exist.

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



The elusive crow photograph.

We went over to one of our favorite Portland blogs, southeastmain, and found June lamenting over the difficulty of photographing crows. As she rightly points out, crows seem to know just how far away they need to be to stay just out of zoom range. Our own experiences when trying to snap a crow photo is about the same, except we'd add that crows have a sixth sense that tells them when to move so that whatever picture a photographer does manage to get comes out blurry.

But persistence does count, and one day this magpie ran into a very tolerant crow that let us get amazingly close. We got some fine pictures, but the one below is the real prize.

Liftoff!

[Photo: Magpie, 2003]

We caught the crow as it was lifting off from the ground, just at the moment when it was beating its wings for the first time. It was just luck that we got the shot, but as a photographer friend always tells us, one of the main secrets to getting good photos is to keep clicking that shutter as fast as you can.

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



Monday, May 16, 2005

Newsweek's retraction of its Koran abuse story.

The most sensible response to the retraction that this magpie has encountered is this one from Jeralyn at TalkLeft We've reprinted most of it below:

The media once again is falling prey to the demands of the White House. The issue is not whether Newsweek should issue a retraction. It is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should appoint a special counsel to investigate detainee claims of torture and religious persecution. The Government cannot continue to investigate itself and proclaim its innocence.

The documents obtained by the ACLU through its Freedom of Information Act request, the lawsuits filed by detainees, the dozens of interviews and two years worth of mainstream media reports all make a compelling case that this kind of abuse occurred.

We must assure the Arab world that an independent and thorough investigation will occur, that the abuse, if confirmed, will stop and that those responsible will be held accountable.

The Arab world could care less about a retraction from Newsweek. It wants action by the U.S. Government. It deserves no less.

Given how upset the administration says it is over the damage that the Newsweek story has caused to the reputation of the US in the Muslim world, we're sure that the investigation that Jeralyn calls for is already in the works. Right?

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:39 PM | Get permalink



We wish we were making this up.

Two Australian academics are about to publish a paper suggesting that torture be made legal. And, no, they are not kidding.

According to a report in The Age, Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke say that torture is a 'morally defensible' interrogation method, even if it causes the death of innocent people. (Bagaric, incidentally, is the head of Deakin's law school.) Their forthcoming paper says that if many lives are in danger, torturing a suspect is acceptable, even if that person is tortured to death.

Professor Bagaric told The Age that he expected to be criticised for his views, particularly on torturing innocent people.

"Of course, it is far more repugnant to inflict harm on an innocent person than a wrongdoer," said Professor Bagaric, who has been head of Deakin's law school for more than two years.

"But in some extreme cases, where it is almost certain someone has information that could prevent many lives being lost and there is no other way to obtain that information, the mere fact that they're not directly involved in creating that threat doesn't mean they can wash their hands of responsibility."

Asked if he believed interrogators should be able to legally torture an innocent person to death if they had evidence the person knew about a major public threat, such as the September 11 attacks, Professor Bagaric replied: "Yes, you could."

He went on: "Let's say that straight after the first plane hit in New York you had a person in custody who admitted they had overheard the S-11 organisers' plans and knew there were going to be further attacks, but then refused to say any more. In those circumstances you would start with a minimum degree of harm, if that didn't work, you would escalate it.

"And if that unfortunately resulted in an innocent person being killed, in those circumstances that would be justified. I think as a society we would accept that one person being killed to save thousands is legitimate."

We're stunned.

Via Road to Surfdom.

More: You can read an excerpt of the Bagaric/Clarke paper on torture here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:27 PM | Get permalink



Dept. of Unmitigated Gall.

Dubya's administratoin is working hard to get as much mileage as possible out of the apparently wrong report, published in Newsweek, that a military source had confirmed that the Koran had been put into the toilet during interrogations at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. Here's what came out of the White House today:

"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not."

The spokesperson for an administration that pays journalists to promote its policies and which disguises PR releases as news stories has the nerve to talk about journalistic standards?

Give us a break.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:14 PM | Get permalink



Breaking news from another great democratic US ally.

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced three reformers to long prison terms for circulating a petition asking for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Their sentences range from seven to nine years in prison.

Via Human Rights Watch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:38 PM | Get permalink



Very interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted about the new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, and the dangers that his tenure will pose to the independence of US public broadcasters, especially PBS and NPR. Since then, Tomlinson has made a number of worrying moves, including today's NY Times report that he's ordered a study into whether NPR's news coverage favors Arabs over Israelis.

Tomlinson's request ignores the fact that CPB's own polling shows that most of the public believes NPR's news coverage to be fair and unbiased. But what's really worrying about the study of NPR's Mideast coverage is the outfit that Tomlinson has selected to conduct that study: the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Today at CJR Daily, Paul McLeary writes about problems with some of CMPA's past studies:

[As] Media Transparency has documented, CMPA has actually looked at public broadcasting before. In 1987 and '88, the Center looked at 225 PBS documentary programs, concluding that there is a liberal bias in its programming. The study, however, left out some important source material, excluding conservative programming such as William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" and Morton Kondracke's "American Interests" in order to ensure "a group of programs that were similar in style and content, to maximize the comparability of judgments." In other words, CMPA stacked the deck in order to demonstrate liberal bias.

Given the CMPA's declared "independent" status, it's also worth looking into where it gets its funding. Again, Media Transparency has the breakdown, and the donor list looks like a "Who's Who" of conservative foundations. That's not to say that CMPA is automatically in the pocket of big money conservatism, but since foundations generally give out money to those who have viewpoints not too far removed from their own, more often than not, where there's smoke, there's fire.

This magpie is willing to lay money as to what conclusions CMPA will reach about whether NPR's Mideast coverage is biased.

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

More: You can find an insider's story about the right wing's longstanding dislike of public radio and television, and a whole bunch about our friend Kenneth Tomilinson, in this transcript of a speech journalist Bill Moyers gave over the weekend at the National Conference on Media Reform.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:12 PM | Get permalink



Kuwaiti women win the right to vote.

Kuwait's parliament has voted to give Kuwaiti women full political rights, including the right to vote and the right to run in local and parliamentary elections. Of course, the vote came after Islamic fundamentalists in the parliament delayed long enough that women will not be able to participate in the local elections coming up on June 2.

While we don't want to detract from the importance of this news, we need to point out that women's suffrage in Kuwait had to wait 14 years from the end of the Gulf War — despite promises made by Kuwait's ruling family before and during the war. In fact, it took until the late 1990s for the country to give the right to vote to all of the male citizens.

So while we applaud today's decision in Kuwait, it's an action that should have been taken years ago.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:47 AM | Get permalink



A battlefield particularly fertile with lies.

UK journalist Patrick Cockburn says that while it's too soon to say whether the US has lost the war in Iraq, there's no doubt that it hasn't won. But, he says, the fact that Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other responsible for the miscalculations that led to the current quagmire haven't been fired is a sign that things aren't likely to get better in the future.

There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.

Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.

Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah.

Via UK Independent.

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




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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