Magpie

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Ooooooh, shiny!

Chinese propaganda posters!

While many of them [such as these] are extremely didactic, others — especially the more recent ones — are beautiful pieces of art. The one below is a good example of the latter:

Chinese propaganda poster, 1961

The fragrance of rice floats a thousand miles.
Everybody becomes a hero. [1961]
For comparison, check out this collection of Soviet/Russian posters.

[Cross-posted at Pacific Views with a different illustration.]

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:11 PM | Get permalink

Talk about irony overload.

US veep Dick Cheney is going to be giving out journalism awards at Washington's National Press Club on Monday.

We understand that Dubya's administration has offered Saddam Hussein his freedom in return for handing out some human rights awards, too.

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

Bye-bye, Cooney.

On Wednesday, we posted about how Philip Cooney, a Dubya administration official with no scientific background, had been editing scientific reports to de-emphasize the link between greenhouse gases and climate change. On Thursday, members of the press gave White House press secretary Scott McClellan an uncharacteristically strong grilling over Cooney's background and activities — and McClellan was forced to admit that Cooney's editing work was standard procedure for scientific reviews on Dubya's watch.

Yesterday being Friday, it was the traditional day of the week for Dubya's administration to release bad news. This time around, that bad news was the uncomfortable fact of Cooney's sudden resignation from his position as chair of Dubya's Council on Environmental Quality.

As expected, the White House says that there is no connection between Cooney's resignation and the uproar over his report editing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:01 AM | Get permalink

Friday, June 10, 2005

While a picture is as good as 1000 words ...

... well-chosen numbers can speak at least as loudly:

Apparently, 2,200 journalists have been issued credentials for the Michael Jackson trial.

As a frame of reference, at the height of combat in Iraq, there were 800 embedded reporters.

Via Random Walks.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:33 PM | Get permalink

Putting stuff on cats.

Why? Because they're there.

Who put this here?

Gypsy is a slob [Chasemice - El Paso, Tx]
Via MetaFilter.

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

Where is Dubya's 'war on terrorism' heading next?

West Africa.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:37 AM | Get permalink

What he said.

From President Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address to the US Congress:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights -- among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact, however, that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry, people who are (and) out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, or race or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of (every) farmers to raise and sell their (his) products at a return which will give them (him) and their (his) families (family) a decent living;

The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;

And finally, the right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

Roosevelt's 'second Bill of Rights' certainly works for this magpie.

And we think that the present-day Democratic party need look no further than Roosevelt for a platform with which to distinguish themselves from Dubya's Republicans and to begin moving the country forward again.

By the way, Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union is worth reading in its entirety. In that speech, he laid out his program for returning the country to peacetime. It's disheartening how much of what he suggested still remains to be done.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:26 AM | Get permalink

GOP continues attack on US public broadcasting.

The Dubya administration's attempt to turn public broadcasting into a propaganda arm of the government is far from over.

This week, a former vice-chair of the Republican Party emerged as the leading candidate to be the new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. According to the Washington Post, Patricia de Stacy Harrison is being backed for the position by CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson. Tomlinson, you'll recall, is a right-winger who wants to correct public television's 'liberal bias.'

Harrison comes with the usual set of Dubya administration qualifications. She's a former lobbyist for companies trying to fight environmental regulations. She served in the Commerce Department under Bush I, and has been in the State Department under Dubya:

In her State Department role, Harrison has praised the work of the department's Office of Broadcasting Services, which in early 2002 began producing feature reports, some coordinated by the White House, that promoted the administration's arguments for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The reports were distributed free to domestic and international TV stations. In testimony before Congress last year, Harrison said the Bush administration regarded these "good news" segments as "powerful strategic tools" for swaying public opinion.

Harrison was also co-chair of the GOP between 1997 and 2001, a position in which she raised money for Dubya and other Republican candidates. And, last but not least, she has absolutely no broadcasting experience.

Appointing another ideologue to the CPB isn't the end of Republican plans for public broadcasting, however. GOP leaders figure that if they can't control public broadcasters by loading the CPB with right-wingers, they'll just cut their funding. Yesterday, a House panel voted to cut the CPB's funding almost in half and to kill altogether a program that funds public TV programs for children.

Of course, Congressional Republicans say that there's no political motive for the CPB cuts. And pigs have wings, too.

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

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Then and now.

Like other baby boomers in the US, economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman grew up in a country with a strong middle class, and where the huge economic inequalities of the past were thought to be ... well, something from the past.

But no more. As Krugman points out, the middle-class society that the US enjoyed in the 1960s is long gone. And not gone by accident, either.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

Krugman says more. Go read it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:57 PM | Get permalink

Isnt' it interesting?

That these high-profile terror arrests in California came at the same time that a US Senate committee approved new FBI surveillance powers as part of an expanded Patriot Act? And isn't it even more interesting that the arrests happened a day or so before Dubya went on the stump pressing Congress to make the Patriot Act permanent?

But then we thought that Dubya's administration was raising and lowering the terror alert level for political reasons. And we all know that that never happened.

Right?

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:49 PM | Get permalink

Can you say 'Iraqi civil war'?

Now that the Iraqi government has put its stamp of approval on a sectarian militia, it won't be long until we're all saying those words frequently.

In a move certain to further inflame sectarian tensions with Sunni Arabs, the country's top leaders said today that they strongly supported the existence of an Iranian-trained Shiite militia and praised the militia's role in trying to secure the country.

It was the first time the new Iraqi government has publicly backed an armed group that was created along sectarian lines, and it was an implicit rejection of repeated requests by American officials that the government disband all militias in the country.

The widening sectarian rift was further underscored today when top Sunni Arab leaders demanded that a 55-member constitutional committee dominated by Shiites and Kurds add at least 25 Sunni seats to the committee. The Sunnis said they wanted those seats to have full membership powers.

In recent days, Shiite committee members have proposed adding 12 to 15 non-voting seats to the committee for Sunnis.

But remember: Dubya's administration says that things in Iraq have never been better.

Via NY Times.

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

US holding thousands of Iraqis without due process.

And here's the part you probably knew was coming: These people are being held by the US in violation of international law.

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan says that 10,000 people are being held in detention in Iraq without access to courts or lawyers. More than half — 6,000 people — are being held by the so-called Multinational Force, which basically means the US. Annan says that these detentions are 'one of the major human rights challenges' facing Iraq.

According to the Iraqi Justice Ministry, there were about 10,000 detainees in all of Iraq as of April, "6,000 of whom were in the custody of the Multinational Force" commanded by the United States, Annan said.

"Despite the release of some detainees, their number continues to grow. Prolonged detention without access to lawyers and courts is prohibited under international law including during states of emergency," his report said.

A Security Council resolution adopted a year ago ending the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq let the U.S. military keep taking and holding prisoners even after the June 2004 handover of power to Iraqis, in apparent contradiction of the Geneva conventions.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:40 AM | Get permalink

We're not going to talk about where the women bloggers are.

We're sure you've already run into the latest iteration of that staple blogosphere topic elsewhere.

What we will do is to point you to this very interesting post about a study showing that if a blog comment can be identified as being made by a woman, it will get fewer responses than a similar one made by a man.

Males and females made humorous or provocative comments at roughly the same rate, for example, and when they were responded to the "quality" of those responses was similar (i.e. a flame from a woman is as likely to receive a flame in response as a flame from a male)... but they weren't responded to at the same rate. The literature related to this kind of analysis shows that men tend to adopt a combative conversational approach in forums like DailyKos and that female participants in male-dominated forums often adopt male norms, so what we see here is that, on DailyKos, playing by the same rules doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get the same response... or any response at all.

You can read the full study here.

Via Pandagon.

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

Business as usual in Dubya's administration: Global warming edition.

Yesterday, we posted on how a former oil industry lobbyist without any scientific training was editing federal scientific reports to minimize the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. This topic came up at yesterday's White House press briefing by Scott McClellan, and it resulted in some world-class obfuscation. And the usual lying.

We've inluded almost all of the exchange below — we just couldn't figure out where to cut it without doing damage. But more importantly, reading the whole thing is the best way to see how McClellan repeatedly tried to draw reporters' attention away how the administration changed scientific reports for political reasons, and how difficult unusually tenacious questioning from members of the White House press corps made that task.

You should especially look out for the following:

McClellan says that the type of edits that Cooney did on global warming reports were a usual part of the administration's review procedure.
McClellan admits that 'policy people' edit scientific reports.
McClellan can not show any scientific background for Cooney. You can bet that if there were any such info, he would have had it right there to give to reporters. McClellan's bluster was an attempt [unsuccessful] to call reporters' attention away from Cooney's background.
McClellan totally side-steps the issue of Cooney's connections to the oil industry.

[All emphasis in the transcript is added.]

Q: Scott, the Government Accountability Project, a private group, has obtained internal White House documents that show that a White House official that was formerly a lobbyist for the oil industry has doctored and edited administration scientific reports in ways that consistently emphasize supposed uncertainties about global warming -- uncertainties that the vast consensus of science doesn't think are that severe. And I wonder, does the President think that helps the credibility of the administration on scientific issues?

MR. McCLELLAN: Actually, first, I disagree with the characterization. I think that your characterization is contradicted by the scientific community. The National Academies of Science came out with a report in 2001 that was requested by the President; it took a look at science of climate change, and in that very report it talked about how there are considerable uncertainties. So some of the language that you referenced was based on the very report from the scientific community that the President had requested.

And in terms of this report that came out earlier today, let me just step back and talk to you a little bit about our interagency review process, because that's all this is. We have an interagency review process when it comes to issues like climate change and the environment. There are some 15 federal agencies that are involved in that interagency review process. It includes policy people; it includes scientists. And when we're getting ready to put out a report, it goes through that interagency review process so people can have their input into the report.

One of the very reports highlighted in the article today was the administration's 10-year plan for climate science. And that plan was widely praised by the scientific community, including the National Academies of Science.

Q: The person in question, Phil Cooney, does he have any scientific background at all?

MR. McCLELLAN: Like I said, there are policy people and scientists who are involved in this process, in the interagency review process. And he's one of the policy people involved in that process, and someone who's very familiar with the issues relating to climate change and the environment.

Q: Because of his work lobbying for the oil industry?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'll be glad to get you his background, Terry. But he's one of many people who are involved in the interagency review process, including those 15 federal agencies, and the White House offices like the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Council on Environmental Quality. And the Office of Science and Technology Policy is very ably led by Dr. Marburger; he is a well-respected scientist. And they are very involved in that interagency review process. And that office not only is involved in the review process, but signs off on these reports before they go out. And they have signed off on these reports because they know that they are scientifically sound.

Q: But administration scientists, Mr. Hansen at the Goddard Center in New York, a NASA scientist for 25 years, and others have come forward saying that the politicization of science in this administration -- these are not democratic activists; this is a scientist who works for the government -- has reached an extreme. And they point to instances like Mr. Cooney's editing and doctoring of these summaries, scientific summaries as proof of that.

MR. McCLELLAN: I encourage you to go look at the reports, because one of the reports that you highlighted was widely praised by the scientific community, including the National Academies of Science. These reports should always be based on our scientific knowledge and what is the best available science. And that's what we expect. And that's what those reports are based on.

Q: So the administration scientists who are saying you have politicized scientific research are just wrong?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I -- go back and look at what the scientific community said about that 10-year plan on climate science, and what the National Academies of Science said. And I point you back to the very first question you brought up when you talked about how there's some dispute that there are uncertainties regarding the science of climate of change.

Q That they are serious, that there --

MR. McCLELLAN: Right --

Q: -- that there's uncertainty about the fact of global warming, and that there's a significant human component to it. The consensus is in.

MR. McCLELLAN: A couple things. The National Academy of Science report back in 2001 said there are considerable uncertainties about the science of climate change. Now, there are some things we do know. That report pointed out that surface temperatures are still rising, and that that is in large part because of human activity.

That's why this President is not waiting for us to have the full knowledge of science, as it continues to come in and we continue to learn more. The President is acting. We are moving forward on the President's initiative to cut greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent come 2012. We are making steady progress. We are on track to meet that goal. We are moving forward on partnerships like the methane-to-markets initiative that the President outlined, and that the very individual you bring up was very involved in developing. This will help us produce cleaner burning electricity, and it will help capture a greenhouse gas emission and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These are very important initiatives. We're also leading the way, when it comes to research, around the world. We are providing more resources and funding into the research and development of new technologies, cleaner technologies, that will help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Q: But in every example that you've cited --

MR. McCLELLAN: Oh, do you all want to --

Q: In every example that we have seen, and Mr. Cooney's emendations and deletions from these reports have been to the effect of making them less critical, less stringent, less apparently in need of immediate action. In other words, he's done everything in the examples we've seen to pull back from worst-case scenario. He is not a scientist.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's your opinion, and I think your opinion is wrong.

Q: No, no, no, it's evident in the reading of it. He is not a scientist. It upsets the scientific community that non-scientists are doing this. That's why they say that he has a political agenda. Why wouldn't they think that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Bill, let me repeat what I just said: This is not based on any one individual. This is an interagency review process, where everybody who is involved in these issues should have input into these reports. And that's all this is. And if you go and look at the reports, namely the one I just referenced, the 10-year plan --

Q: That's the only one you can reference. There are others that you can't reference because he changed them in a significantly different way.

MR. McCLELLAN: Where?

Q: Well, right here, for example, in the October 2002 draft of Our Changing Planet. He says, "Many scientific observations indicate the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change." He made that, "may be." He cut out a section of another document on -- I can read that to you if you want, but you get the idea.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you're selectively quoting things. I think you ought to go and look at some of the things he pointed out in his --

Q: But the only thing you can point to is that one 2002 --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I just pointed to what Terry brought up, when he talked about serious uncertainties, or something to that effect, and that is language that was used in the National Academy of Science report. So, I mean, if you want to talk about the facts, I'm glad to do that, and I think the facts point out that our reports are based on the best scientific knowledge, and they're based on the input --

Q: But, Scott, you're not talking about the same thing here.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- they're based on the inputs of scientists.

Q: But, Scott, you're clearly -- I mean, the United States is -- and I'm not making a judgment about this -- is out of step with other countries in the world, in terms of the existence of climate change and the causes of it. That debate is clear. I mean, the President, just yesterday, when asked about this, said, the United States is spending millions of dollars --

MR. McCLELLAN: Billions.

Q: -- billions of dollars to research this issue, which is to say that he has not reached a conclusion yet. Fine. But --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, no, no, let me just correct you on that one point. It's to say that there are still -- there is still a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the science of climate change, and that's pointed out in the National Academy of Science report that the President requested when he came into office.

Q: Right, but there is other -- there's the body of opinion here that still works against that. The point is, if you go back to June of 2003, an EPA report on climate change had a whole section on climate change simply deleted out of it, and critics charged the very same thing, which is that -- it's not that the view -- it's not a judgment about the view, it's that the process here, the science here is being overwhelmed by the politics. Is that not a fair criticism?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it has been contradicted by the scientific community, itself, when they look at these reports and they widely praise the report that I referenced. It was one of our major reports on climate change. It was our 10-year plan on climate science research. And that is an important undertaking that this administration led. And there's an interagency --

Q: There's ample evidence that you guys are -- that policy people are putting their own spin on the science.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I guess, David, you want to let me finish and respond. I'm trying to get you the information that you want, not that some people may want us to say, because that's not the case. I'm going to tell what the facts are. And the facts are that there is an interagency review process with a number of agencies involved that are impacted by -- or that are involved in these decisions, in these reports. And many people have input into that interagency review process.

Our reports are based on the best scientific knowledge. There are number of scientists involved in this. The Office of Science and Technology Policy is involved very much in this process, and the head of that office is a well-respected scientist. And he has signed off on these reports because they're based on sound science. They're based on the best available science.

The fact that McClellan didn't try to portray the situation with Cooney as an exception to the rules or a mispplication of procedure clearly shows that the administration doesn't see a problem with letting the oil industry determine the content of scientific reports and/or that it doesn't care what anyone outside the administration thinks about how it distorts scientific findings to suit its political agenda.

As we noted earlier, reporters were dogged in their pursuit of information about Cooney and about the administration's 'editing' process for government scientific reports. We hope that this tenacity continues and that today's good showing by some White House reporters wasn't just a blip.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Fear of Islam.

According to Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, that's one of the main reasons for the recent rejection of the European constitution by French and Dutch voters: the fear of an Islamic threat has taken the place of the fear of communism. A large part of that fear stems from a badly remembered — or not remembered — history of the relations between Islam and the West that goes back to the Crusades, and which includes the Western colonization of much of the Muslim world. And fear of Islam is hardly exclusive to Europeans; people in the US show it to a similar degree, especially since 9/11 and the subsequent 'war on terror.'

The dark result of European imperial adventuring in the Muslim world was twofold: first, the usual exploitation of native peoples and resources, with attendant destruction of culture, and, second, the powerful reaction among Muslims and Arab populations against colonialism, a reaction that included an internal corrupting of Islamic traditions. The accidental wealth of oil in the Middle East made both external exploitation and internal corruption absolutely ruinous. The political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden) is rooted more in a defensive fending off of assault from ''the West" than in anything intrinsic to Islam. The American war on terror, striking the worst notes of the old imperial insult, only exacerbates this reactionary fanaticism (generating, for example, legions of suicide bombers).

Having forgotten the deeper history, nervous Europeans seem also to have forgotten how large numbers of Muslims settled in the continent's cities in the first place. In the 1960s and 1970s, Turks, Arabs, and North Africans were welcomed as ''guest workers," taking up menial labor with the implicit understanding that they could never hope to be received as citizens of the nations that exploited them. The rank injustice of a system depending on a permanent underclass was bound to issue in political resistance, and now it has, but with a religious edge.

The point is that this conflict has its origins more in ''the West" than in the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America. They, too, like prelates, crusaders, conquistadors, and colonizers, have turned fear of Islam into a source of power. This history teaches that such self-serving projection can indeed result in the creation of an enemy ready and willing to make the nightmare real.

Via veiled4allah.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:56 PM | Get permalink

If you don't like the results, change 'em.

That's been the attitude of Dubya's administration to federal reports on global warming and greenhouse gases. And if you need someone to change the reports, who better than someone who used to lead the oil industry's effort to block the government from putting limits on greenhouse gas emissions?

According to the NY Times, a White House official has repeatedly edited reports in order to de-emphasise the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In most cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

Manipulation of science reports is nothing new for Dubya's administration. In 2003, for example, the UK Observer reported on attempts by a right-wing lobbying group to get warnings about climate change edited out of government reports. Guess whose name came up in that context?

Emails and internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue.

Central to the revelations of double dealing is the discovery of an email sent to Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, by Myron Ebell, a director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI is an ultra-conservative lobby group that has received more than $1 million in donations since 1998 from the oil giant Exxon, which sells Esso petrol in Britain.

The email, dated 3 June 2002, reveals how White House officials wanted the CEI's help to play down the impact of a report last summer by the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in which the US admitted for the first time that humans are contributing to global warming. 'Thanks for calling and asking for our help,' Ebell tells Cooney.

The email discusses possible tactics for playing down the report and getting rid of EPA officials, including its then head, Christine Whitman. 'It seems to me that the folks at the EPA are the obvious fall guys and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible,' Ebell wrote in the email. 'Perhaps tomorrow we will call for Whitman to be fired,' he added.

From today's report, it's evident that Cooney took the CEI request very seriously indeed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:10 AM | Get permalink

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Touch my gem sweater!

[Requires QuickTime]

Via MetaFilter.

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

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

What's it mean when you let religious fundamentalists write the laws?

It means life.

Well, life in prison, anyway.

Via Feministe.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:02 PM | Get permalink

How religious are people in the US?

A recent AP/Ipsos poll showed that religion is more important in their lives than it is to people in nine other countries [Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, and Spain]. But what does that mean?

Well, it probably doesn't mean that people attend services regularly. While most polls in the US say that about 40 percent of Americans regularly go to religious services, the real number is probably much lower says Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds:

One of the problem comes in how the question is asked in a poll. Different questions yield different results. For example, in a survey you might ask, "What did you do last weekend?" listing for the person a number of possible activities, including church-going. This will yield a very different response than if you asked, "Did you attend church last Sunday?"

One factor is that people often answer according to what they think someone like them wants or ought to do. So people tend to overreport on the number of sexual partners they?ve had and how much money they give to charity, and tend to underreport on illegal drug use and the like. Hence, church attendance is often inflated.

In 1998 C. Kirk Hadaway and P.L. Marler published an article in the Christian Century entitled, Did You Really Go To Church This Week? Behind the Poll Data where they examine many of these factors. The authors focused on individual counties in the US and Canada, surveying actual church/synagogue attendance and comparing it with random surveys they were conducting. They found that actual church attendance was about half the rate indicated by national public opinion polls. Their estimate for US actual church attendance is around 20%.

Dave Olson, director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, surveying only Christian churches (i.e., evangelical, mainline, and Catholic) has come up with a similar number. The percentage of Americans regularly attending church is 18.7%.

So while the AP/Ipsos poll [like many similar polls before it] show people in the US saying that religion is very important in their lives, the apparent difference between what people say and do when asked about their religious observances makes us hesitant to guess how much religion actually informs peoples' actions and decisions.

Via Red State Rabble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:52 PM | Get permalink

Dubya and Blair tapdance around the Downing Street memo.

From today's press conference at the White House: Lies and more lies:

Q Thank you, sir. On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street memo from July 2002 says intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam through military action. Is this an accurate reflection of what happened? Could both of you respond?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Well, I can respond to that very easily. No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all. And let me remind you that that memorandum was written before we then went to the United Nations. Now, no one knows more intimately the discussions that we were conducting as two countries at the time than me. And the fact is we decided to go to the United Nations and went through that process, which resulted in the November 2002 United Nations resolution, to give a final chance to Saddam Hussein to comply with international law. He didn't do so. And that was the reason why we had to take military action.

But all the way through that period of time, we were trying to look for a way of managing to resolve this without conflict. As it happened, we weren't able to do that because -- as I think was very clear -- there was no way that Saddam Hussein was ever going to change the way that he worked, or the way that he acted.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I -- you know, I read kind of the characterizations of the memo, particularly when they dropped it out in the middle of his race. I'm not sure who "they dropped it out" is, but -- I'm not suggesting that you all dropped it out there. (Laughter.) And somebody said, well, you know, we had made up our mind to go to use military force to deal with Saddam. There's nothing farther from the truth.

My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well.

And so we worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully, take a -- put a united front up to Saddam Hussein, and say, the world speaks, and he ignored the world. Remember, 1441 passed the Security Council unanimously. He made the decision. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

Both leaders basically held fast to the 'official' version of why the war happened, which was in tatters even before the Downing Street memo appeared. If you'd had any doubts that the scenario described in the memo accurately reflected the way that the US and UK governments engineered a war, Blair and Dubya's responses today should remove them.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:40 PM | Get permalink

Baristas of the world, unite!

The heyday of the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] may be long past, but the One Big Union is far from being tossed out in the dustbin of history.

The Workers' Comp Insider has an excellent post on how the IWW is organizing a union for Starbucks workers in Manhattan.

IWW Starbucks union logo

Starbucks is a $15 billion company with over 7,500 locations around the world. According to the union, in New York City Starbucks workers start at $7.75 an hour and eventually receive paltry raises. The union accuses Starbucks of developing a scheme whereby all Baristas work on a part-time basis and are not guaranteed a set number of hours per week, thus making it exceedingly difficult for workers to budget for necessities like rent, utilities, and food.

The union doesn't address the issue of benefits directly, but it appears that half time (20 hours per week) workers qualify for a fairly robust benefits package, including health, dental and retirement. These benefits certainly have the potential to separate Starbucks employees from those in other fast food industries. However, there may be an issue with scheduling -- a few disgruntled employees claimed that managers deliberately scheduled them for just shy of the required 20 hour average, so they were unable to participate in the benefits plan.

The IWW Starbucks workers website is here.

Via Confined Space.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:31 PM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

Vintage drug ads!

Opium, anyone?

Pantopon ad [1940]
Via Making Light.

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

Extra! Extra!

CNN broadcasts actual news about the world outside the US.

Really. It's true.

Via CJR Daily.

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

Your [US] tax dollars at work.

The Homeland Security Department is continuing on the road to purchasing 500 drive-through radiation detectors at US$ 250,000 a pop. Critics say that the detectors can't tell the difference between enriched uranium and the natural radiation in cat litter.

Via USA Today.

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

Monday, June 6, 2005

Can't solve those nagging etiquette problems?

Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov has all the answers!

Karimov's etiquette tips

Cartoon: © 2005 Ted Rall
You can see more of Ted Rall's cartoons at his website. And all of his cartoons about Central Asia can be viewed here.

Via EurasiaNet.

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

So much for any hopes that the new pope is a closet moderate.

From a Reuters report:

Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.

"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said. [Emphasis ours]

It's not surprising that Benedict slammed same-sex marriages and unions. What does surprise this magpie is that the pope criticizes birth control and — especially — divorce in the same breath. We doubt that this kind of statement is going to play well among US or Western European Catholics.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:07 PM | Get permalink

Serving their country by losing their shirts.

Around 10 days ago, we posted about a buried story in a Seattle P-I report on employment problems that US vets face when trying to return to their pre-service jobs. We pointed out how the same facts could be used to show that small businesses are being hit hard as their employees are posted to Iraq.

Thanks to Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway, we have this story that comes at the problems faced by small businesses from another angle: What if the person being sent to Iraq owns the business?

Self-employed reservists and small-business owners who are called to duty run into problems other reservists don't. Most employees' jobs are protected by the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) when they are called to duty. But small-business owners like Adams have little support to help them save companies they have labored to build.

"When you get mobilized in the National Guard, they go through to make sure you have power of attorneys, all your affairs are in order, you have insurance, make sure your wife knows what to do. They tell you about the Soldiers' and Sailors' act [which protects reservists called up from eviction and provides some debt relief]. That's all real good if you're not an owner of a business," Adams said. "But it doesn't affect business credit cards or business loans or business notes."

Many small-business owners who must leave their companies behind, often at a moment's notice, have no plan for managing the business, or for a partner to take over. As a result, they find themselves deeply in debt or forced to shut down while they serve their country. Some businesses never recover.

"USERRA doesn't really cover self-employment, and so there is no protection per se," said Maj. Robert Palmer, Air Force Reservist and public affairs officer for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, a Department of Defense agency. "Obviously, mobilization can be catastrophic to someone who is self-employed or a small-business owner. There's no question that it's a huge challenge. A reservist who is self-employed or owns his or her own small business has to calculate the risk."

We'd love to see figures on how many of the reservists and National Guard members who've been called up to serve in Iraq and elsewhere are small business owners, and how many of those are facing financial problems as a result. Unless these numbers are negligible — which we doubt — the ripple effect of these business problems can't be good for the US economy.

And, as we've said before, the problems that businesses face as employees (and owners) get deployed overseas are going to help erode public support for Dubya's military adventures.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:45 PM | Get permalink

GOP fails to kick out Washington governor.

A Republican attempt to overturn the results of November's gubernatorial election in Washington state has failed, as a Chelan County judge ruled that the GOP failed to show that voting problems in King County and elsewhere provided Democrat Christine Gregoire with her narrow win. Gregoire won the governorship by 129 votes after two recounts.

[Chelan County Superior Court Judge John] Bridges said there was evidence that 1,678 illegal votes were cast in the 2004 election, including 1,391 votes by felons. However Bridges said there was no evidence that Gregoire benefitted from the illegal votes.

Bridges said there was also no evidence of misconduct by election workers or that the probems with the election were the result of "partisan bias."

The judge said the Republican lawsuit failed to meet the high standard necessary for the courts to intervene in an election.

"When the people have spoken, their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts," Bridges said.

Republicans will almost certainly appeal today's decision to the Washington Supreme Court.

Via Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:02 AM | Get permalink

An update on the bird flu outbreak in western China.

Epidemica has gotten better translations of the unofficial reports of human deaths caused by an avian flu outbreak in Qinghai province. While the new translations lend some credibility to the notion that Chinese authorities could be hiding the early stages of an epidemic (similar to what happened with the SARS outbreak in Beijing), those translations also raise significant questions:

This composite account certainly has the ring of truth to it and is in accordance with the Chinese government's actions during the outbreak of SARS in 2002. If true, the Chinese authorities are taking a stunning risk: Trying to quietly stamp out the first cluster of human H5N1 cases before they can spread to China's densely-populated east coast. If that happens, the virus will surely spread and diversify, winning a beachhead in the human population from which it will not be easily eradicated nor contained.

Conversely, that seeming authenticity could also indicate these reports are being planted by a party or parties who wished to foment fear and unrest both within and outside China's borders. Imagine for a second that is your goal: Wouldn't you see the H5N1 outbreak amongst geese as the perfect time to launch a campaign to spread rumours about a bird flu outbreak? Wouldn't you take as your template China's own admitted duplicity and repression during the SARS outbreak? Wouldn't you also craft a way to end the campaign without revealing its true nature...?

Perhaps that, then, is the last, best proof that China is not undergoing an H5N1 epidemic: There have been no cases reported outside Qinghai; there have been no confirmed cases of H5N1 within the migratory bird population outside China.

Epidemica's new verdict is the same as its old one: The Chinese need to let outside flu experts into Qinghai immediately.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:01 AM | Get permalink

Medical marijuana?

The US Supreme Court says that state laws can't prevent the feds from arresting medical marijuana users. The vote was 6-3.

Via AP.

More: You can read the Court's decision here.

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

Maybe we shouldn't be thinking 'creeping fascism' in the US.

Perhaps 'creeping socialist realism' would be more accurate?

Check out this poster that Jim Henley found posted in a MARC train in Maryland.

Keep your eyes peeled, comrades!

What do we mean, 'socialist realism'? How about this?

Soviet-era poster

'The USSR is the crack brigade of the world proletariat'
[Gustav Klustis, 1931]
Via The Sideshow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:45 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Somehow we missed this guy.

Joe Bageant — that's the guy we mean. He's been writing articles that have been tearing up the net for awhile now and somehow we never managed to see any of them.

But tonight we read an interview with Bageant that contained this paragraph:

Until the progressive left gets out there on the street and recruits every ignorant piece of white trash and person of colour it ain't gonna happen. But here in the US, the so-called left is comfortable being in the catering class of college professors, managers, journalists, school teachers and others required to keep the capitalist system humming, they ain't gonna take any risks. They just don't get it that if they do not love their labouring brothers, beer belly, ignorance, crack habit and all, their ass is grass too. It's only a matter of time. But they simply do not believe these people are their brothers, or even human, for that matter. America is a class system first and foremost.

And then we read a Bageant article called 'Let's drink to the slobbering classes.' Yow!

The problem with the post-modern middle class and left is that they've forgotten about the class issue. Especially now that they are educated middle class citizens, urban dwellers, Jews and Germans and Italians and Irishmen, Asians and Poles, all far better off than their ancestors. They've come far from their Ellis Island roots and are now what is known as the "two shithouse Irish," in redneck parlance.

Besides that, it's not easy for educated people with orderly lives to be on the side of overweight, undereducated, deeply indebted, and bitterly frustrated and prejudiced people, folks who have finally given up after being kicked in the ass one too many times. The system is so rigged against them that even those who strive seldom get out, which is in itself a lesson to others. These people, the people of debt counselors, joint custody, repoed vehicles and mobile homes, have been lied to, cheated, and robbed, mocked on television, and now once again spat upon by their supposed betters, this time the angry liberals. Show me the party that represents them. Who could they have voted for that would have improved their situations? Let's face it, under the Democrats they would be getting screwed somewhat less (maybe), but they would not be getting ahead. In real wages they have lost ground under Dems as well as the GOP since 1973.

The neo-conservatives have been much aided by middle class liberals who find it easier to confront racism and homophobia than to face down their own latent class prejudices. Liberal issue and identity politics are the best things that ever happened to the Republican Party. It is often much easier for liberals to empathize with poor blacks with whose experience they share relatively little than the poor working class whites, who are just a little too close to home. Then too, once a family makes it into the true middles class and is sending all of its kids to university, etc., it is easy to become convinced that class struggle is a thing of the past. Hell, I even managed to convince myself of that for a few years before they kicked me out of the middle class. Again. Of course the same pack of capitalist hyenas that have always waited in the bushes by the civilization's roadside never went away. Now they are slinking out to pick off the weakest among us. The sick, the uneducated, people of color. So far though, most middle class liberals seem contented to blink and stand back watch the hyenas feast upon the workingman. No way they are gonna get into the thick of it, no way are they going to drink Budweiser.

But the ascendant middle class, that second deck of professions, the landlord, the banker, the doctor, lawyer that represent middle class social and economic advancement, also represent, from the laborer's point of view, the predatory class. Predatory for the simple reason that the poor and working classes need their vital services, yet a single hour of those services equals at least a full day of a worker's paycheck. And one never gets off with a single hour of services. Right? The very things that fatten the middle class keep a workingman "dick down in the dirt," as they say around here.

Screw the NY Times and its milquetoast effort at reporting on class. If you really want to know what class is about, read Bageant. You can find a whole mess of his articles in PDF form here. We're working our way through them now.

Why don't you join us?

Thanks to Gordon.Coale for pointing us Bageant's way.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:04 AM | Get permalink

Everyday racism.

We can't decide whether the tale related in this post at Did You Know? is appalling or funny. Maybe it's both.

Via Alas, a Blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:43 AM | Get permalink