Magpie

Saturday, October 8, 2005

Pakistan earthquake deaths go way up.

Authorities in Pakistan now say that the death toll for Saturday's quake is more than 18,000 people. Earlier reports had put that figure just over 1,000 dead in Pakistan and India combined.

Quake damage in Pakistan

Shattered Margala Towers apartments in Islamabad, Pakistan. [Photo: AFP]
The best guess by authorities is that another 40,000 people were injured in the magnitude 7.6 quake, which shook south Asia from Kabul to New Delhi.

The death toll and extent of damage were expected to soar once remote areas of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir were accessed.

Poor communication with those outlying regions were adding to already-difficult logistics. Many roads were wiped out in landslides caused by the quake.

"In certain areas, the entire villages -- they have collapsed. In certain areas, almost entire towns, they have vanished from the scene," Pakistan's military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, earlier told CNN. He described it as the largest relief operation the country has ever mobilized.

The military's focus was on evacuating injured people, establishing forward bases and opening up communications, Sultan said. Helicopters still were being hindered by bad weather, he added.

Via CNN.

More: Aid is urgently needed by people in the area affected by the earthquake. We didn't have much luck finding online donation sites, but we did find that Pakistan's embassies are accepting donations for to a relief fund: In the US, send checks to th Embassy of Pakistan, 3517 International Court, NW, Washington, DC 20008. Checks should be made payable to the President's Relief Fund.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:31 PM | Get permalink

There's a difference between being prepared and being paranoid.

Unfortunately, the people who created this 'personal pandemic preparedness plan' don't seem to know the difference.

Given that civilization as we know it didn't end with the 'Spanish flu' pandemic of 1918 [when there were far fewer treatment options for flu victims] or, more recently, with the Y2K computer glitch, it's a good bet that it won't end with a bird flu epidemic, either.

We're not minimizing the fact that the world is being very slow to deal with the fact that a flu pandemic is very likely. But following the normal rules for disaster preparation, which suggest that you keep on hand emergency supplies sufficient to get you and your family through three to seven days, will undoubtedly get you through any flu-related disruptions. Doing a Google search on 'disaster preparation' or 'earthquake prepartion' will point you to any number of good guides and checklists that will help you prepare realistically for an avian flu outbreak.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:51 AM | Get permalink

Friday, October 7, 2005

How's this for convenient timing?

Yesterday, Dubya gave his big speech about how fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are plotting to create a terrorist empire extending from Spain to Indonesia. And, lo and behold, the US now produces a copy of al-Qaida's strategy for a global 'jihad', right on the heels of that speech. And, even more of a coincidence, this document places Iraq at the center of al-Qaida's big plans, just like Dubya says it is.

Of course, we have to take this all on faith, since the US government has released only two quotes from what is supposed to be a 13-page document. According to the usual 'senior administration official' — jeez, is there a such thing as an anonymous 'junior administration official'? — the al-Qaida document turned up during operations in Iraq, and has been authenticated 'based on multiple sources over an extended period of time.'

The letter of instructions and requests outlines a four-stage plan, according to officials: First, expel American forces from Iraq. Second, establish a caliphate over as much of Iraq as possible. Third, extend the jihad to neighboring countries, with specific reference to Egypt and the Levant -- a term that describes Syria and Lebanon. And finally, war against Israel.

U.S. officials say they were struck by the letter's emphasis on the centrality of Iraq to al Qaeda's long-term mission. One of the two excerpts provided by officials quotes Zawahiri, a former doctor from Egypt, telling his Jordanian-born ally, "I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era."

We wonder how long it'll take until it's proven that this al-Qaida master plan for world domination is about as authentic as those intelligence reports showing that Saddam Hussein had vast stores of WMDs?

Via Washington Post.

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

Sticky business at the Ig Nobel prizes.

Yesterday was that big date on the scientific calendar: The awarding of this year's Ig Nobel prizes. These annual awards, sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, 'celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.' They also happen to be pretty damn funny.

At the Ig Nobel awards

Psychologist and author Robin Abrahams talks to William Lipscomb, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and dressed as a bottle of beer, at the Ig Nobel awards yesterday. [Photo: Reuters]
This year's Igs included the Chemistry prize awarded to Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger, at the University of Minnesota. The two scientists settled conclusively the question of whether people can swim faster in syrup than in water:

So the pair set up an experiment in two 25-yard swimming pools on campus ? requiring 22 separate levels of approval. They were offered 20 train cars? worth of corn syrup to mix with water, but the city of Minneapolis ended that plan by demanding $20,000 since draining the syrup would overload the sewage system.

Instead, they stirred 310 kilograms of guar gum powder into one pool. "It wasn't pretty when we came in the next morning," Cussler told New Scientist. "It looked like diluted snot."

But that did not stop 16 volunteer swimmers. All swam two lengths in each pool, showering as they went from the syrupy pool to clean water. Timing the swimmers, Cussler found that the thicker liquid increased the power of their strokes as much as it increased the drag on their bodies, so it made no difference. "It was fun," he says, but in the end it was "totally useless."

But our favorite Ig went to a group of individuals that should be familiar to anyone who uses the internet:

LITERATURE: The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.

You'll find a complete listing of this year's winners [and all previous years' winners] here.

New Scientist has a great article on this year's Igs, with more detailed descriptions of some awards, if you go . AP has more details on the Ig Nobel for Medicine here.

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

It's for sure that it's true.

Dubya's comments about God telling him to invade Iraq, that is.

We know it's gotta be true because the White House is already denying it.

Via BBC.

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

Ooooooh, shiny!

The photographs of Shadi Ghadirian.

Photo by Shadi Ghadirian

Photo from Ghadirian's Qajar series.
From Ghadirian's artist's statement:

I am a woman and I live in Iran. I am a photographer and this is the only thing I know how to do. I began work after completing my studies. Quite by accident, the subjects of my first two series were "women". However, since then, every time I think about a new series, in a way it is related to women.

It does not make a difference to me what place the Iranian woman has in the world because I am sure no one knows much about it.

Perhaps the only mentality of an outsider about the Iranian woman is a black chador, however I try to portray all the aspects of the Iranian woman. And this completely depends on my own situation.

When I did the Qajar series of photographs, I had just graduated and the duality and contradiction of life at that time provided the motive for me to display this contrast: a woman who one can not say to what time she belongs; a photograph from two eras; a woman who is dazed; a woman who is not connected to the objects in her possession. It was very natural that after marriage, vacuum cleaners and pots and pans find their way into my photographs; a woman with a different look, a woman who no matter in what part of the world she is living, still has these kinds of apprehensions.

You can view two galleries of Ghadirian's photographs here.

Via Gordon.Coale.

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

The cost of the Iraq war keeps going up.

And that's not just the cumulative cost of the war, either.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service [a non-partisan research arm of the US Congress]says the price tag for the Iraq war is now growing at a rate of US$ 7 billion per month. Just a year ago, the Pentagon said that it was spending less than US$ 5 billion monthly.

Another study, released by the Congressional Budget Office, says that US troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan can't be sustained unless the Pentagon starts rotating troops into the war zone more often and relies more heavily on the National Guard. And, says the CBO, those will only be short-term solutions. In the long run, current troop levels can't be sustained.

Via AP.

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

Thursday, October 6, 2005

We realize that this is just nit-picking.

Especially since we're sure our Dear Leader took our petty little criticism into consideration before he gave his big pep talk on fighting terrorism today. Nonetheless, we just have to ask about part of his description of the fundamentalist Muslim terrorists that the US must be prepared to fight in a decades-long war.

Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women.

That's totally unlike the way Rania al-Baz was treated when she spoke out against the violence against women that permeates Saudi society, right? Otherwise Dubya wouldn't have singled out Saudi Arabia as one of the great friends of the US in the Muslim world, would he?

Just asking.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:43 PM | Get permalink

God tells Dubya what to do.

Really.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO ... Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ?" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

Via BBC.

More: PZ Meyers at Pharyngula really nails it:

Someone explain to me why this kind of thing is considered OK if the invisible man muttering in his ear is named "God", but ol' W would be locked up in a rubber room somewhere if it were named "Satan", "Son of Sam", or "Gwzrxl of Neptune".

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:40 PM | Get permalink

Rove in front of grand jury again.

AP reports that federal prosecutors have accepted Dubya advisor Karl Rove's offer to testify for a fourth time in the grand jury investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. Prosecutors, however, have warned Rove that they can't guarantee he won't be indicted by . Federal rules require that witnesses who might face criminal charges be warned that their testimony can be used against them in future indictements.

Rove's testimony comes within days after NY Times reporter Judith Miller finally testified in front of the grand jury regarding what she knew about how Plame's identity as a CIA agent was released to the press. Rumors have been swirling for days that indictments of one or more White House officials are imminent.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:10 PM | Get permalink

It's back!

Given Dubya's tendency to want to solve domestic problems by handing them over to the military, any expansion of the US military's domestic role makes us really nervous, especially when the administration is trying to keep the public from noticing that expansion.

That's what's going on with a bill to give the military new domestic intelligence-gathering powers that's working its way through Congress. Under the version of the annual intelligence bill that's been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Defense Department would be able to use its intelligence agents to recruit people in the US as informants without revealing that they're doing this work for the US government. Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball point out that this provision had been in last year's intelligence bill, but was removed because of public opposition. However, that opposition didn't discourage the administration slipped the provision into this year's bill — without any public discussion.

At the same time, the Senate intelligence panel also included in the bill two other potentially controversial amendments — one that would allow the Pentagon and other U.S. intelligence agencies greater access to federal government databases on U.S. citizens, and another granting the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] new exemptions from disclosing any "operational files" under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "What they are doing is expanding the Defense Department's domestic intelligence activities in secret — with no public discussion," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil-liberties group that is often critical of government actions in the fight against terrorism....

[Martin] said the DIA recruitment provision must be looked at in the context of two other measures tucked into the Senate intelligence authorization bill. One of them specifically grants the DIA a blanket exemption from having to search any of its 'operational files' when it receives a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request. There is already such a FOIA exemption for CIA operational files. But Martin contended that some of the DIA's activities that are currently not covert would be covered by the new exemption, thereby extending a greater cone of secrecy around the agency....

Another little-noticed provision of the bill would create a four-year pilot program that would allow U.S. intelligence agencies to have access to data collected about U.S. residents by other government agencies and covered by the Privacy Act. The FBI can already obtain many such records — such as pilot licenses or Transportation Department licenses for driving hazardous-waste materials or other government permits and applications — for law-enforcement purposes. The new Senate intelligence provision would allow U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and the DIA, or "parent" agencies such as the Pentagon itself, to collect such information deemed by the agency director to be useful in intelligence gathering related to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. No court order would be required for the information to be shared. [Emaphasis added]

DIA representative Don Black says there's no need to worry about the new provisions. According to Black, they only give the DIA the same investigative powers that the FBI and CIA already have and that these powers are — yes — needed to fight terrorism.

Whenever the administration is using the 'war on terrorism' as an excuse, you know they're hiding the real reason for a policy change. And, given Dubya's recently expressed desire involve the military in disaster relief and use it to enforce quarantines in the event of an avian flu epidemic, the administration's continuing attempts to expand the domestic powers of military intelligence agencies is unlikely to have a benign reason.

Via Newsweek.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:55 AM | Get permalink

War in Iraq = War on Terrorism = Fighting the International Communist Conspiracy.

You can always tell how Dubya's doing politically by the number of press conferences and speeches that he gives. If all the nationa sees of the prez is well-engineered photo ops, you know things are doing well. But if Dubya is subjecting himself to press scrutiny or his administation is leaning on the media to give live coverage to 'important presidential messages', our Dear Leader's fortunes must be sagging.

Given the administration's disastrous handling of the Gulf coast hurricanes and the increasingly obvious collapse of its policies in Iraq [not to mention the multiple indictments of Tom DeLay and the apparent impending indictement of Karl Rove], we've been seeing a lot of Dubya lately. And the prez's speech on terrorism today clearly indicates that Dubya's handlers think he's in a whole heap of trouble.

Does he have enough flags?

Dubya getting ready to wrap himself in one of the flags. [Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters]

While remarks earlier in the week by VP Dick Cheney and chief White House press flack Scott McClellan had led us to expect that Dubya would attempt to blame the war on terror on the failures of previous presidents, he only hit the topic in passing, saying that terrorists expect the US to 'repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 — only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.' This remark, of course, ignores the fact that these 'failures' had little to do with fighting terror: In both cases, the US intervened in ongoing civil wars. But we're used to this administration's convenient memory lapses and casual twisting of historical fact, aren't we?

The big news today is that Dubya's speech unveiled his latest justification for the invasion of Iraq. Gone is the threat to the world posed by Saddam Hussein's WMDs. Gone is liberating the Iraqi people. Gone is bringing freedom to the Muslim world.

No, now the US is engaged in the sacred mission of fighting an international terrorist conspiracy that resembles nothing more than than an old and familiar GOP bogeyman: Communism. This terrorist conspiracy is attempting to take over the world, and if they aren't stopped in Iraq, the US will be facing a terrorist state stretching from Spain to Indonesia. If they aren't stopped in ~~Vietnam~~ Iraq, it won't be long until the terrorist sampans start arriving at the US coasts.

Check out these speech excerpts:

The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses....

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life....We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields....

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party, representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves....

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent....

And Islamic radicalism, like the ideology of communism, contains inherent contradictions that doom it to failure. By fearing freedom — by distrusting human creativity, and punishing change, and limiting the contributions of half the population — this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible, and human societies successful. The only thing modern about the militants' vision is the weapons they want to use against us....

If that's not Cold War rhetoric there, we don't know what is.

And the total bankruptcy of this administration's 'war on terroism' and war in Iraq is made glaringly evident by the fact that Dubya and his handlers have decided that the only way to get the people of the US to support these policies is by conjuring up the dead ghost of the International Communist Conspiracy.

We'd write more on this, but we need to go make sure that there aren't any terrorists hiding under our bed.

More: Think Progress has a nice selection of speech quotes showing how Dubya used the speech to play the 'fear card.' You might remember that he used that card successfully against John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. Like we said above, the administration is running scared.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:34 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Another blow for New Orleans.

After being devastated by Katrina, the local economy is now having to deal with the layoff of half of New Orleans' city workers. About 3000 workers will lose their jobs as of Saturday.

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:49 AM | Get permalink

Wanna be a political cartoonist?

Scott Bateman teaches you how to draw political cartoons, post-Katrina style!

You can be a political cartoonist!

[© 2005 Scott Bateman]
You can look at more of Bateman's cartoons here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:20 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

You think we can be pessimistic here at Magpie?

Try this post from Stirling Newberry. When it comes to looking at the next decade or so of US politics, we're an optimist by comparison.

While we agree with Newberry that the progressive left's marriage to the Democrats is a devil's bargain, we're not sure we share his pessimism as to how long it will take before the left gives up on its acquiescence to the party's 'GOP lite' policies. And we suspect that continuing climate-related problems are going to force an end to the current US oil-based economy sooner than Newberry believes.

However, we wholeheartedly agree with his conclusion:

It's 1973 people, before things got bad, and America - left, right and center, is eager to make the same mistakes all over again. The difference is that we don't have a generation of surplus to borrow against, and then a generation of credit to burn through.

Via BOPNews.

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

Separated at birth?

You be the judge.

Separated at birth?

Giant squid [left] and ulcer culprit H. pylori [right].
And we don't want to hear one single word about taxonomy, cladistics, or relative size. You probably believe in that evolution claptrap, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:56 PM | Get permalink

Do you get the feeling there's a hidden agenda here?

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of Dubya's few specific suggestions for how to ensure that future disaster relief efforts aren't bungled was to change the laws to make it easier for the military to take charge. Given that the military already has too high a domestic profile, in this magpie's opinion, that suggestion set off alarms ? especially given that there currently isn't any legal impediment to using the military to support relief and rescue efforts.

Those alarms we heard earlier got even louder this morning when Dubya said the following during his press conference, in response to a question about how the feds are preparing for a possible avian flu epidemic:

The policy decisions for a President in dealing with an avian flu outbreak are difficult. One example: If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country, and how do you then enforce a quarantine? When -- it's one thing to shut down airplanes; it's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine? One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move.

We weren't the only one disturbed by this. Over at Effect Measure, one of the blog's anonymous 'senior health care scientists and practitioners' posted this:

Outside of the fact this kind of thinking is pretty scary stuff, most public health experts know it won't work. Movement is too free and easily accomplished and the American people cannot be forced to do something they think will hurt them or their families. They'll find a way around it with ease. Remember that a quarantine would have to be essentially complete and airtight, because this is a self-reproducing organism. Only one or a few people getting through or for that matter entering the US from elsewhere where the disease is active would negate such a Draconian measure. Bush's public health experts certainly have told him this, so one can assume its object is not to stop disease spread but to control the population.

Indeed, given our total lack of preparation and the lack of leadership of the Administration, the biggest effect of a pandemic might be a breakdown in social order. So Bush is preparing the ground ahead of time.

Given how Dubya's administration responded to 9/11, we suppose it's not surprising that the prez's solution for emergencies and disasters is 'Call in the troops.' Hoever, the erosion of civil liberties that's taken place over the past four years in the name of fighting terrorism should give any reasonable person pause when the prez starts talking about turning what have been civil responsibilities over to military authorities.

Now let's put on our tinfoil hats for a moment. Let's suppose that the Congress decides to change federal laws so that the president can unilaterally decide to use the armed forces to enforce a quarantine of areas affected by avian flu. Is it unreasonable to be worried about how much Dubya's support for the use of preventive detention in terror cases would figure into any military response to an epidemic? Or, for that matter, would Dubya's [at least tacit] approval of torture by the US military show up in the way quarantined areas are controlled? Can we expect to see domestic Abu Ghraibs if the prez thinks he needs to prevent a breakdown of social order?

We want to think that even Dubya wouldn't go so far as to make those paranoid speculations a reality. But given his total lack of concern for any rights except property rights, and his 'flexible' approach to the US Constitution, we don't know how much restraint the prez is capable of exercising.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:22 AM | Get permalink

¡Todos de los gran exitos de los Sex Pistols!

Strange Reaction has unearthed an interesting curio of the late 1970s: A Spanish band called Los Punkrockers doing their own version of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks album.

¡Los gran exitos de los Sex Pistols!

The origins of the album are obscure, but the best guess seems to be this from a Strange Reaction commenter:

This album was released by spanish Sex Pistols fans in 1978. In fact it was one of the first LPs of the spanish punk-rock, together with La Banda Trapera del Rio's debut, and the only stuff recorded by Los Punkrockers. Parody? I don't think so, that's the typical spanish accent, even though the legend says there were some well-known hard rock musicians of that time hidding themselves behind this anonymous name Los Punkrockers, but who knows?

However it came about, there's some great music on the album [for all of which Strange Reaction has posted MP3s]. While we wouldn't go so far as to say Los Punkrockers did a better version of Bollocks than the Pistols did, they had enough punk attitude to power a small city.

We especially like the versions of God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant.

Via WFMU's Beware of the Blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:22 AM | Get permalink

Monday, October 3, 2005

Indicted again.

A grand jury in Travis County, Texas has indicted US House majority leader Tom DeLay on a new money laundering charge.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:09 PM | Get permalink

Snort!

Harriet Miers' blog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:55 PM | Get permalink

Don't worry about that next disaster.

Tom Tomorrow reveals FEMA's plans for getting us all [well, almost all] safely out of town:

Get out of town!

[© 2005 Tom Tomorrow]
You can see the rest of the cartoon here.

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

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

'That was not something that Fox was interested in doing.'

NBC/MSNBC reporter David Shuster tells the Bloomington (Indiana) Herald-Times explains why he abandoned his career at Fox News in 2002:

At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton)," Shuster said. "I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.

"With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing," he said.

"Editorially, I had issues with story selection," Shuster went on. "But the bigger issue was that there wasn't a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn't care to take a closer look. I had serious issues with that."

Via Romenesko.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:10 PM | Get permalink

Another 'benefit' of Dubya's 'war on terrorism.'

This time, it's a dramatic drop in the number of criminal cases being handled by the FBI.

According to an audit by the US Justice Department's inspector general, non-terror related FBI cases have dropped by half since Dubya's 'war on terror' began. While the FBI opened almost 63 thousand criminal investigations in 2000, that number had dropped to just under 35 thousand in 2004. In addition, there were 2200 fewer field agents assigned to criminal investigations in 2004 than there were four years earlier.

These drops followed Director Robert Mueller's post-9/11 reorganization of the FBI to make fighting terrorists its main job.

FBI cases

[Source: Office of the Inspector General analysis of FBI Automated Case Support data.]
The steepest drops have been in drug investigations [which we can't say bother us all that much] but there were also fewer investigations into traditional areas of FBI concern, such as organized crime and bank robberies. The number of investigations into civil rights, corporate and health care fraud, and public corruption also took a nosedive.

Given the FBI's increasing inability to handle criminal investigations, the burden is shifting to state and local law enforcement agencies. However, these agencies are having trouble filling the gap, notes the audit, especially where complex financial investigations are involved. [We'd note that decreasing federal aid to law enforcement and state/local budget problems are causing crimes to go uninvestigated as well.]

You can read the inspector general's audit [in PDF form] here. The audit has been edited to remove 'sensitive law enforcement information.'

Via Reuters and Paper Chase.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:39 PM | Get permalink

Well, well, well.

We were doing a little poking around in databases to see what we could find about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' history, and we came up with the following from a July 17, 2000 Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff and Martha Brant, 'A Bush Mystery in Alabama: The three missing months of W's National Guard service':

As he barnstormed through Alabama in late June, Texas Gov. George W. Bush wanted the press to pick up on his issue du jour, soaring gasoline prices. But in Tuscaloosa he was blindsided by reporters asking picky questions about a little-known chapter in his past--three months of reserve duty with an Air National Guard unit in Montgomery, Ala., in 1972. The crux of the matter was that no one could find any record that Lieutenant Bush had reported for duty. On the defensive, Bush insisted he was "proud of my service in the National Guard" but stumbled when pressed for details. "I can't remember what I did," he said. "I just--I fulfilled my obligation."

Bush's advisers had anticipated that his military record would be scrutinized closely, but they didn't foresee this curve ball. More than two years ago the Bush camp launched a secretive research operation designed to scour all records relating to his Vietnam-era service as a pilot in the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the Texas Air National Guard. The goal was to identify potential vulnerabilities early on and deflect any charges that Bush got favorable treatment. Until recently, the campaign was confident that this worked. But as the latest flap shows, questions about Bush's military service haven't entirely disappeared.

The Bushies' concern began while he was running for a second term as governor. A hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named Harriet Miers was retained to investigate the issue; state records show Miers was paid $19,000 by the Bush gubernatorial campaign. She and other aides quickly identified a problem — rumors that Bush had help from his father in getting into the National Guard back in 1968. Ben Barnes, a prominent Texas Democrat and a former speaker of the House in the state legislature, told friends he used his influence to get George W a guard slot after receiving a request from Houston oilman Sid Adger. Barnes said Adger told him he was calling on behalf of the elder George Bush, then a Texas congressman. Both Bushes deny seeking any help from Barnes or Adger, who has since passed away. Concerned that Barnes might go public with his allegations, the Bush campaign sent Don Evans, a friend of W's, to hear Barnes's story. Barnes acknowledged that he hadn't actually spoken directly to Bush Sr. and had no documents to back up his story. As the Bush campaign saw it, that let both Bushes off the hook. And the National Guard question seemed under control. [Emphasis added]

It looks like Dubya has plenty of reasons to hand a Supreme Court plum to Miers.

Research note: The article isn't available for free unless you have access to a magazine database. [We used eLibrary via our local library.] Otherwise, you can get a free trial at Keepmedia, which gives you 30 days access to their database; the link to the Newsweek story is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:35 PM | Get permalink

Human Rights Watch slams war crimes by Iraqi insurgents.

In a 140-page report issued today, Human Rights Watch accuses Iraqi insurgent groups of violating international law by targeting civilians in their attacks. "According to HRW official Sarah Leah Whitson: 'There are no justifications for targeting civilians, in Iraq or anywhere else. Armed groups as well as governments must respect the laws of war.'

While acknowledging the human rights abuses carried out by US, UK, and Iraqi forces, the report debunks the arguments that insurgents use to justify their attacks on civilians. The bottom line, according to HRW, is that the laws of war require all forces in a conflict — insurgent or otherwise — to protect civilians and noncombatants. Deliberately targeting civilians, such as has been done by some Iraqi insurgent groups, is a war crime.

The report calls for all all insurgent groups to order their members to avoid attacks on civilians, and to condemn any groups that engage in such attacks. It also calls for supporters of the insurgency to condemn unlawful attacks. [The report notes with approval that at least one insurgent group has 'ordered its members to avoid attacks on civilians and apparently stopped operations in urban areas where civilians might get hurt.']

The new report analyzes the insurgency in Iraq and highlights the groups that are most responsible for the abuse, namely al-Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq, which have all targeted civilians for abductions and executions. The first two groups have repeatedly boasted about massive car bombs and suicide bombs in mosques, markets, bus stations and other civilian areas. Such acts are war crimes and in some cases may constitute crimes against humanity, which are defined as serious crimes committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.

The report documents the assassinations of government officials, politicians, judges, journalists, humanitarian aid workers, doctors, professors and those deemed to be collaborating with the foreign forces in Iraq, including translators, cleaners and others who perform civilian jobs for the U.S.-led Multi-National Force. Insurgents have directed suicide and car bomb attacks at Shi`a mosques, Christian churches and Kurdish political parties with the purpose of killing civilians. Allegations that these communities are legitimate targets because they support the foreign forces in Iraq have no basis in international law, which requires the protection of any civilian who is not actively participating in the hostilities.

Insurgent groups also have tortured and summarily executed civilians and captured combatants in their custody, sometimes by beheading. And they have carried out attacks against legitimate military targets, such as army convoys, in such a manner that the foreseeable loss of civilian life was greatly disproportionate to the military gain.

You can read the full report online here, or you can click here to download a PDF version.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:42 PM | Get permalink

How badly did Katrina/Rita damage the US petroleum infrastructure?

We'd wager that destruction is more widespread than has been acknowledged if the usually optimistic US Energy Dept. is warning the country to expect six months of disruptions and high prices.

Via USA Today.

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

We were always suspicious of those Teletubbies.

They seemed to be a weird sort of hyperactivity lurking under their cheerful demeanors. Now we know why.

Photo of cocaine bricks with Teletubbies labels

Photo of cocaine bricks with Teletubbies labels

Cocaine seized from Colombian drug runners. The bricks were hidden inside coffee shipping bags.
[Photo: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement]

Via Smoking Gun.

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

Oh look! Dubya wants people to conserve energy.

Reuters reports that the White House is going to unveil a campaign to get people to save energy and cut their energy bills. While saving energy is always a good idea, the timing of Dubya's conversion to the conservation ethic is, to put it mildly, pretty damn suspicious. Our bet is that the main reason that Dubya is advocating conservation is his fear of the political consequences of the high heating oil and natural gas bills that are expected to hit US consumers this winter: If the peoples' energy bills are smaller, people won't be as pissed off. And won't be as likely to look for a political target for their anger.

And, of course, getting people to conserve energy is far easier [and more politically palatable to Dubya's backers] than leaning on energy companies so that they rein back price hikes. Or to do anything to help wean the country from its oil habit.

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

Dubya names ex-FEMA head Michael Brown to the Supreme Court.

Okay, we're lying about that. But he's named White House counsel Harriet Miers to the seat being vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor — and Miers is about as qualified for the nation's high court as Brown was to be the country's top disaster official.

Dubya and Court nominee Harriet Miers

Just another Michael Brown? [Photo: White House/Paul Morse]
To begin with, Miers has no experience on the bench. None. Zip. The closest she's gotten was a two-year clerkship with a federal district court judge during Richard Nixon's first term. Since then, according to the CV at the White House website, she's been a trial lawyer, a member of the Dallas city council, head of the Texas lottery commission, and a White House functionary. Hell, our qualifications for the Supreme Court are just about as good.

But this magpie doesn't have Miers' most important qualification: she's one of Dubya's cronies.

Once we heard of Miers' nomination, we went immediately to some of the best observers of the Supreme Court that we know: the crew over at SCOTUSblog. Lyle Denniston thinks that the major challenge for Miers and her supporters will be proving she is qualified to sit on the high court:

One of the more interesting questions, at this early stage of the nomination process, is whether the American Bar Association will find Miers to be qualified for the Court. Although the ABA's views are not highly regarded by the Bush Administration, a failure by the ABA to endorse her could be crucial, if the nomination gets into trouble on any other ground.

Miers suffers, perhaps greatly, by comparison to the President Bush's other nominee, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and few observers would expect her to perform at anywhere near to his level before the Judiciary Committee. Only senators wholly committed to Bush's choice, perhaps solely because he made it, are likely to have an easy time with the nomination if her performance is visibly lacking.

There will be, of course, a major fight over access to legal papers she has written over the years in her public positions; the White House almost certainly will resist on grounds of attorney-client privilege. Roberts was able to make it through without disclosure of a good deal of his legal advice, but Miers may not be able to duplicate that feat.

SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein thinks the nomination is in such danger that Miers will be rejected by the Senate ? and not just at the hands of Democrats:

The nomination obviously will be vigorously supported by groups created for the purpose of pressing the President's nominees, and vigorously opposed by groups on the other side. But within the conservative wing of the Republican party, there is thus far (very early in the process) only great disappointment, not enthusiasm. They would prefer Miers to be rejected in the hope - misguided, I think - that the President would then nominate, for example, Janice Rogers Brown. Moderate Republicans have no substantial incentive to support Miers, and the President seems to have somewhat less capital to invest here. On the Democratic side, there will be inevitable - perhaps knee-jerk - opposition. Nor does Miers have a built in "fan base" of people in Washington, in contrast to the people (Democratic and Republican) who knew and respected John Roberts. Even if Democrats aren't truly gravely concerned, they will see this as an opportunity to damage the President. The themes of the opposition will be cronyism and inexperience. Democratic questioning at the hearings will be an onslaught of questions about federal constitutional law that Miers in all likelihood won't want to, or won't be able to (because her jobs haven't called on her to study the issues), answer.

Goldstein, incidentally, posted his comments just before he went off to argue a case before the US Supreme Court.

But the most damning comments on the nomination that we've seen so far come from the blog of former White House speechwriter David Frum:

She rose to her present position by her absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States.

You won't find that particular comment on Frum's blog, though. As Ben Wikler points out, that paragraph has been deleted from Frum's post on the Miers nomination. Wikler speculates that Frum may have gotten an angry call from the White House.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:15 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, October 2, 2005

Getting ready for the battle of New Orleans.

Now that all the flood water is expected to be pumped out of New Orleans within days, forces are arraying themselves to fight for control over how the city will be rebuilt. The decisions made during that process will determine whether New Orleans continues to be a multi-ethnic city or whether it becomes a 'business-friendly' metropolis with the French Quarter tacked on as a kind of funky Disneyland. Or, to put it another way, those decisions will determine which of the city's pre-Katrina residents get to come home, and which get to take their place in the ashcan of history.

Geoff Coats, cofounder of the Urban Conservancy, which works to preserve the textured fabric of New Orleans life, said he is not confident that harmony of purpose will be found. "People from across those divides didn't necessarily trust each other before this," Coats said. And Kalamu ya Salaam, a writer and black resident of the city's Algiers section, is gloomily pessimistic. To his thinking, most black residents evacuated from New Orleans will have no chance to effect the planning process. "These people didn't have the money to leave, so what makes you think they'll have the money to come back?" he asked. "They're not going to put 150,000 poor black people back in one place. It's not going to happen again."

In Salaam's view, the hurricane has given the monied powers the chance to reconfigure a crime-plagued city whose population, before the storm, had been 67 percent black and 28 percent below the federal poverty line. "We've seen the end of an era," Salaam said. "Our way of life is gone...."

Coats said one concern is that New Orleans will be transformed into a "theme park" lacking a complex human element that has sustained it for nearly four centuries. Minus a middle class and its lower-income population, Coats said, "we'd have a very different city. In the worst case, you'd have this strip that hugs the river that includes the French Quarter and is fun for tourists and the conventions and becomes a caricature of itself."

What makes New Orleans so special, Coats said, is a blend of incomes, races, and architecture that is the antithesis of new, generic development across the country....

Other observers have speculated that the Lower Ninth Ward might never be rebuilt and that its low-lying property will be razed to form a natural buffer against future floods. But to Lousteau and Coats, such a move would rob New Orleans of irreplaceable architecture and the cultural wellspring that creates this city's legendary music and cuisine.

"Where do you think the musicians live who play in the clubs? They don't live in the French Quarter. The cooks, too," Coats said. However, he added, "we may have to make very difficult choices as to whether some areas get rebuilt or not and how they get rebuilt. . . . They're going to be very painful and very hard."

Via Boston Globe.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:55 PM | Get permalink

No comment.

From this story on how Dubya is trying to find a way to reverse his dramatic slide in popularity since August:

"Doing his job has always been his strongest suit," said one adviser close to the White House. "Let Bush be Bush. Let him lead. It's what Bush does in times like these."

[And believe us, it ain't easy refraining from comment on a quote like that.]

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:33 PM | Get permalink

What do you do with 91,000 tons of ice cubes?

If you're FEMA, and you ordered the ice to keep people, food, and medicine cool in the Katrina disaster area, what you do is ponder that question for a long time while truckers drive the ice all over the place. As a result, FEMA spent over US$ 100 million on ice that was never delivered.

The story of trucker Mark Kostinec, who spent two weeks driving a load of ice around, is apparently not unusual.

[On Sept. 2,] his dispatcher called with an urgent government job: Pick up 20 tons of ice in Greenville, Pa., and take it to Carthage, Mo., a staging area for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Mr. Kostinec, 40, a driver for Universe Truck Lines of Omaha, was happy to help with the crisis. But at Carthage, instead of unloading, he was told to take his 2,000 bags of ice on to Montgomery, Ala.

After a day and a half in Montgomery, he was sent to Camp Shelby, in Mississippi. From there, on Sept. 8, he was waved onward to Selma, Ala. And after two days in Selma he was redirected to Emporia, Va., along with scores of other frustrated drivers who had been following similarly circuitous routes.

At Emporia, Mr. Kostinec sat for an entire week, his trailer burning fuel around the clock to keep the ice frozen, as FEMA officials studied whether supplies originally purchased for Hurricane Katrina might be used for Hurricane Ophelia. But in the end only 3 of about 150 ice trucks were sent to North Carolina, he said. So on Sept. 17, Mr. Kostinec headed to Fremont, Neb., where he unloaded his ice into a government-rented storage freezer the next day.

Via NY Times.

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

Connecticut's first same-sex unions took place on Saturday.

And, according to the NY Times, the world did not end as a result.

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

'There's something very strange about you.'

The Association of Independent Creative Editors recently had a competition in which assistant film editors had to take a existing trailer for one of five well-known films and re-cut it to put the film into a different genre. The one in which The Shining was turned a romantic comedy has been all over the net. The metamorphosis of West Side Story into a horror film hasn't been seen as much.

But our fave is the one from which we grabbed the screen shot below, which reveals the story we always knew was lurking in the Hayley Mills version of The Parent Trap: a heartwarming story of young lesbians in love.

The real Parent Trap

The remixed trailer is the work of Paul Lacalandra at Moondog Edit. To watch the remix, just go to Moondog, click on Lacalandra's name, and then on the obvious link. Make sure your browser can run ActiveX

Via Making Light.

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