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

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

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Saturday, March 11, 2006

Please tell me this is a bad dream.

2004 Democratic loser John Kerry looks to be getting ready to run for president again in 2008. It's bad enough that Hillary Clinton could be the Dems' candidate.

Via Boston Globe.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:18 AM | Get permalink



Spreading Dubya's wisdom to the world.

While Dubya will go down in history for the many questionable and downright unsuitable people he's appointed to positions of public trust in the US, it's important to note that the prez's power to inflict his bad judgement doesn't stop at the nation's borders. Oh no. Since the prez gets to appoint each US ambassador, countries around the world get to 'enjoy' the fruits of Dubya's bad judgment.

The latest example is Dubya's nominee to be the new US ambassador to Australia, Robert McCallum. McCallum is currently an associate attorney at the Justice Department, but before that he was an attorney for tobacco giant RJ Reynolds — a combination that's made for interesting conflicts of interest:

In a landmark civil racketeering case last year, Mr McCallum was on a US Government team seeking sanctions against the tobacco industry.

Witnesses said Mr McCallum asked his own witnesses to tone down their testimony to go easy on the tobacco industry.

"We're trying to allow a legal industry to keep going," Mr McCallum said at the time.

Seven Democratic congressmen called for the Justice Department to investigate political interference in the case.

We're sure McCallum will fit in happily with the ethically impaired right-wing lot surrounding Aussie PM John Howard.

Via ABC News [Australia].

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:59 AM | Get permalink



Another one bites the dust.

And this one was especially nasty: Dubya's former chief domestic policy advisor Claude Allen.

How nasty was Allen?, I hear you ask. Well, here's how journalist Doug Ireland described Claude Allen in a January interview on Democracy Now, shortly after Dubya appointed him to that domestic policy post:

Claude Allen is a black conservative who is a darling of the religious right.... [For] many years he was a top aide to Jesse Helms, the United States senator from North Carolina, who was a notorious race-baiter in his campaigns. And Claude Allen worked for Jesse Helms and didn't quit even when Jesse Helms opposed making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. But more important, Claude Allen has a long record of subordinating public health to the agenda of the religious right. When he was Virginia's Commissioner of Health and Human Services [he] under republican governor Jim Gilmore, a conservative governor for example -- Claude Allen opposed legislation that would provide health insurance to children because the legislation included giving state money to underage girls for abortions who had been victims of rape, incest, and other forms of sexual abuse. And when the legislation was passed despite Claude Allen's opposition to it, he pulled a deliberate slowdown in enrolling the children of Virginia into this program, and he admitted that the reason he had done so was because of the abortion issues. So Allen was perfectly prepared to sacrifice the health and well-being of underage girls who had been victims of sexual abuse to the agenda of the Christian right, which he carries out so faithfully....

Claude Allen has been the AIDS community's -- one of its number one enemies for some years, because he is an opponent of condom use. He is a proponent for years of the theory that condoms do not work to prevent AIDS. And he has worked very hard to replace science-based sex education with the failed policy of abstinence-only sex education as the only way to prevent AIDS.

Quite a piece of work, wouldn't you say?

As we intimated at the beginning of the post, Allen has resigned from Dubya's administration. In fact, he resigned on Feb 9th, over a month ago, allegedly to spend more time with his family. As is so often the case with Dubya's appointees, however, the real reason for Allen's resignation was something else entirely: It seems that the upstanding citizen Claude Allen is a shoplifter:

Allen has been under investigation since at least January for the alleged thefts on 25 occasions at Target and Hecht's stores, said [Montgomery County, MD] police spokesman Lt. Eric Burnett. Police reviewed his credit card records to track his purchase.

Police believe Allen would buy items, take them to his car, then return to the store with his receipt. He would select the same items, then take them to the store return desk and show the receipt from the first purchase. Using that method, he would receive credit for the second items on his credit cards, Burnett said.

It sure is interesting about how so many of Dubya's appointees can be so concerned about the moral standards of the rest of the country, but have such low standards for their own behavior.

TalkLeft and digby have much more on Allen.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:14 AM | Get permalink



Tax info! Get your red hot tax info!

If the IRS gets its way, the person/company that prepares your federal tax return will be able to share your tax information with others. What a great idea, huh?

Three consumer organizations on Wednesday called the proposal shocking and urged the IRS to drop it.

They fear that many taxpayers could be rushed or duped into signing the consent form when they are signing their tax returns and related documents. They could end up losing control over financial data they wouldn't want their closest friends or family to see, much less outside marketing and database firms.

While the preparer would have to get the taxpayer's permission first, this still seems like the first appearance in the tent of that metaphorical camel.

To its credit, the IRS does propose specific rules regarding the format, content and font size of consent forms. Each consent would require a separate paper or electronic document. The consent must identify each type of product or service for which the tax preparer may solicit tax-return information. It also must specify which parts of the tax return are being disclosed.

The form would have to say: "Warning: Once your tax return information is disclosed to a third party per your consent, we have no control over what that third party does with your tax return information. If the third party uses or discloses your tax return information for purposes other than the purposes for which you authorized the disclosure, under Federal tax law, we are not responsible for that subsequent use or disclosure, and Federal tax law may not protect you from that disclosure."

It's hard to imagine that anyone would sign the form after reading that warning. But if no one would consent, then why even allow it?

The only ones who would really benefit from the new rules are large tax preparation firms like H&R Block. And, of course, none of those big firms are commenting on the IRS' proposed rule change.

From SF Chronicle via Pam's House Blend.

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



Friday, March 10, 2006

Sandra Day O'Connor blasts right-wing attacks on US courts.

Making a point.

O'Connor at another speaking engagement
on Monday.
[Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP]
 This morning, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg had quite the story about a speech given by former US Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor yesterday at Georgtown University.

In that speech, O'Connor lashed out against right-wing critics of the courts, who she believes are trying to destroy the independence of the judiciary under the guise of reigning in 'activist judges.' Although she didn't use their names, there's little question that two of O'Connor's main targets were Rep. Tom DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn — both Republicans.

O'Connor, a life-long Republican, made no bones about how dangerous she thinks these critics of the court are. From Totenberg's report:
I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

No recording was made of the speech, sadly. However, Raw Story has a transcript of Totenberg's NPR piece here, and you can listen to the piece itself here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:32 PM | Get permalink



Baghdad 2006 is looking a whole lot like Beirut 1976.

And no one should forget that the civil war in Lebanon went on until 1990.

There are significant differences between Lebanon and Iraq — especially in terms of each country's history of factionalism — so it's dangerous to assume that the Iraqi civil war will progress in the same way as the Lebanese war or last as long. Nonetheless, the developing situation in Iraq bears some striking resemblances to the civil war years in Lebanaon: Lack of a central government that exercises any real authority; dueling religious-based militias; and the growth of regional powers that exercise authority over parts of the country.

From a LA Times op-ed by Adam Shatz:

Like Lebanon, Iraq is an extraordinarily diverse country, a mosaic of religious and ethnic groups cobbled together by an imperial power almost a century ago. As in Lebanon during the civil war (which ran from 1975 to 1991), Iraq's communities, which once coexisted peacefully (although not on equal terms) have assumed an increasingly sectarian character, leaving the country without a center.

The void created by the collapse of the Iraqi dictatorship has been filled, as in Lebanon, by sectarian militias and/or guerrilla armies, which, in offering protection to frightened Iraqis, have turned religious differences to political advantage. As in Lebanon, these armies enjoy a measure of sponsorship from foreign parties (Americans, Iranians, jihadists-without-borders, et al) that sense, correctly, that the future of the region is at stake....

Every war is, of course, unique, and the Lebanon analogy only goes so far. In Lebanon, for instance, sectarianism is a veritable political tradition, a form of power-sharing with deep roots; in Iraq, sectarianism is more recent, resulting from the Baath Party's perpetuation of Sunni dominance under the guise of Arab nationalism and from decisions taken by the U.S. occupation authorities — notably an unnecessarily punitive de-Baathification program that, in Sunni eyes, was indistinguishable from de-Sunnification.

Where the division in Lebanon was between Muslims and Christians, in Iraq it is between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. And while Lebanon has a desirable port, it does not have Iraq's oil. And the Iraq war — both the American invasion and the struggle between Iraqi sects that the occupation has unleashed — has always been, in part, about control of the country's vast reserves of crude.

From an interview with Iraq specialist Marina Ottaway:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are we witnessing a country falling apart?

Marina Ottaway: At this point in Iraq, you do not have a central government -- so you don't have a legitimate authority running the country. You don't have a government with the power to establish or maintain order. What you have is a nominal government that can only stay in power because the Americans are there. The government is supposed to have derived legitimacy from the constitution and the elections. But I think the government we end up with, won't have much legitimacy either.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why not? After all, the Iraqis went to the polls and chose their representatives. That seems pretty legitimate, does it not?

Ottaway: It is now almost three months after the elections and there is still no government. The Iraqis continue postponing the opening of parliament because according to the constitution, after they open parliament, they only have two months to form the government. They don't think they can form a government that quickly. A government that takes over five months to form is not a government that is going to have very much legitimacy in the end. The country has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact.

From an article on Iraq's sovereignty vacuum by Michael Schwartz at TomDispatch:

The American-led occupation, though it controls the military bases in which its troops are encamped and parts of the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, and can go anywhere via large military operations, can no longer aspire even to behind-the-scenes sovereignty. From the beginning of the occupation, any claims the occupying power had to legitimacy were sacrificed when most cities were left to govern themselves. In June 2004, when the Bush administration officially handed "sovereignty" (which it already didn't possess) to the Iyad Allawi government which it had put in power, it withdrew any claims it might have had to such authority; and yet it also failed to deliver any of the ingredients of sovereignty to its supposed successor.

Local forces, south and north -- despite their ability to maintain order -- cannot fully consolidate their legitimacy either, even at the level of individual cities. Aside from the credibility gap created (even in Kurdish areas) by the indisputable ability of occupation forces to disrupt life via military incursions, there is a striking administrative incapacity that derives from a basic lack of resources -- in the better off regions of Kurdistan as well as in the south. To have access to such resources would involve controlling parts of the country's oil industry which will undoubtedly remain badly crippled as long as the insurgency in Sunni areas continues at its present levels. Nor can any local government begin to implement economic recovery programs without the partnership (or the departure) of the Americans, a partnership that -- even in Kurdistan -- is held captive to profound disagreements over policy.

As a result, what exists is a sovereignty stalemate. The longer it continues, the more it eats away at the resources and the legitimacy of the contending parties. Meanwhile in Baghdad, even after a government of some sort is finally formed by the various clashing factions, what exactly will it be able to do? After all, it possesses far less power and legitimacy than even local governments, north or south.

Thanks to Metafilter, from which we shamelessly stole most of the links.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:48 PM | Get permalink



Why exactly ...

... is this product needed?

[Unless you have a high tolerance for especially gratuitous sexism, you might want to read this article instead of going to the product's website.]


My brain hurts

In case you don't have one of your own, we guess.


It's described as 'Authentically natural vulva flavour.' [Trust me, I couldn't possibly make that up.] This magpie suspects, however, that the taste changes may not be so 'authentically natural' after the product is applied to a rubber doll.

Via Broadsheet.

[Ad view or paid sub req'd]

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:47 AM | Get permalink



Going down.

Dubya continues to see how low his approval ratings can go.

The poll suggests that most Americans wonder whether Bush is up to the job. The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday of 1,000 people, found that just 37 percent approve of his overall performance. That is the lowest of his presidency.

Bush's job approval among Republicans plummeted from 82 percent in February to 74 percent, a dangerous sign in a midterm election year when parties rely on enthusiasm from their most loyal voters. The biggest losses were among white males.

Via AP.

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



Qualifications are so overrated.

Especially a job that puts them at the head of a committee that gathers expert advice on homeland security for Dubya and the Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff?

Not content with all of the other bad appointments he's made, Dubya has named a 28-year old former White House staffer as head of the Homeland Security Advisory Committees. Doug Hoelscher's main qualifications for the job appears to be making travel arrangements for the prez and working for the Republican National Committee during the 2004 campaign.

With an administration that considered managing the Arabian Horse Association made Michael Brown qualified to run FEMA, putting someone even less qualified than Brown in charge of an important part of the Homeland Security Department shouldn't be a surprise.

Via GovExec.com.

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



US to close Abu Ghraib prison.

Of course, once Abu Ghraib is closed, all the US prisoners will be moved to another facility, yet to be named. And, after the US turns the prison over to the Iraqi government, it's entirely possible that the torture will continue under new management.

This magpie notes that the Pentagon isn't saying a peep about closing its notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. [Who knows? Maybe some of the current Abu Ghraib prisioners will be going there.] But then I've always been so picky about things.

Via NY Times and Spiegel.

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



Anti-Muslim sentiment on the rise in the US.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll has found that almost half of people in the US [46%] have an unfavorable view of Islam, and well over half of them [58%] think that Muslims are more prone to violence than followers of other religions. This last figure, incidentally, is higher now that it was just after 9/11.

Why the increase? It's the usual suspects:

Conservative and liberal experts said Americans' attitudes about Islam are fueled in part by political statements and media reports that focus almost solely on the actions of Muslim extremists....

James J. Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, said he is not surprised by the poll's results. Politicians, authors and media commentators have demonized the Arab world since 2001, he said.

"The intensity has not abated and remains a vein that's very near the surface, ready to be tapped at any moment," Zogby said. "Members of Congress have been exploiting this over the ports issue. Radio commentators have been talking about it nonstop."

Of course, neither the press nor the politicians in the US seem to be much concerned with the activities [and propensity toward violence] of Christian extremists. But then, that wouldn't be as easy and rewarding a task as Muslim-bashing, would it?

From Washington Post via veiled4allah.

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



Thursday, March 9, 2006

Making the world safe for censorship.

US web-filtering companies such as SmartFilter are doing a great job of it, says Xeni Jardin in an op-ed piece today:

The [Open Net Initiative] found that SmartFilter has been used by government-controlled monopoly providers in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. It has also been used by state-controlled providers in Iran, even though American companies are banned from selling technology products there. (Secure Computing denies selling products or updates to Iran, which is probably using pirated versions.)

According to OpenNet, filtering products from another American company, Websense, have also been used by a state-controlled service provider in Iran, ParsOnline. Yemen uses Websense products to filter content on its two government-owned service providers. Websense software, the initiative says, filters out "sex education and provocative clothing sites, gay- and lesbian-related materials, gambling sites, dating sites, drug-related sites, sites enabling anonymous Web surfing, proxy servers that circumvent filtering, and sites with content related to converting Muslims to other religions."

The initiative also found that Myanmar, arguably the most repressive regime in the world, uses censorware from the American company Fortinet. And Singapore's government-controlled Singnet server uses filtering technology from SurfControl, a company formed from the merger of several censorware companies that is now technically British but has its filtering operations headquarters in California.

The Open Net Initiative has much more about how governments are using internet filtering over here.

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:20 PM | Get permalink



Does the Pentagon pay people extra to come up with ideas this dumb?

The boys over at the Pentagon have this great new idea for some of the Trident missiles currently riding around on US submarines. According to the Washington Post, what they want to do is to remove the nuclear warheads from these missiles and replace them with conventional explosives. By doing so, the Pentagon says, the US will be capable of dropping a conventional bomb anywhere on the planet within an hour of when the order was given.


Nuclear or conventional?

The Trident on the left has the nuke. Or is it the one on the right?
And if we can't tell, what makes the Pentagon think anyone else can?


Leaving aside the question of whether being able to drop 'regular' bombs within an hour is a good idea, this magpie has to question the wisdom of delivering conventional explosives on a missile that looks like a nuclear weapon system. I mean, is it really a good idea to risk having the target country think it's under nuclear attack — and respond accordingly?

Even some people at the Pentagon are worried:

"Will it be interpreted as having a nuclear warhead and elicit . . . a nuclear response?" asked the senior defense official, acknowledging the potential "ambiguity" of the weapon if detected by early-warning systems. Such systems may not be able to determine if an incoming warhead is conventional or nuclear.

The worrisome scenario, he said, "is that they do see it, then they misinterpret it," he told a meeting of defense reporters. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not yet briefed Congress.

This plan deserves to be tossed onto the dustheap of history. Quickly.

Via The Nation.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:08 PM | Get permalink



Buddy, can you spare a dime $100?

Earlier this year, Air America Radio's affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona was doing really well. The liberal network's programming had struck a chord in the Valley of the Sun, taking KXXT from the bottom of the AM barrel to #4 in a field of 22 AM stations. But things changed at the beginning of March when KXXT was sold to a religious broadcaster, whose first act as the new owner was to pull the plug on Air America [and indy left talker Ed Schultz as well].


Save Air America Phoenix!

From the Save Air America Phoenix web page.


The former KXXT management and staff have regrouped and have made an arrangement with another station to go back on the air on April 3. Before then, however, they need to raise US $500,000 to cover their initial operating expenses. [Although they don't say, we imagine the bulk of this expense is airtime rental and, likely, salaries for the staff.] In the recent internet tradition, Air America Phoenix is raising money from the public, going the buy-a-pixel route. Right now, their pixel map is looking pretty bare, though.

Given that this mapgie spent two decades working in US community radio, I have my criticisms of what Air America puts out over the air. [Please oh please get Al Franken another co-host! And put Mike Malloy back on his medication!] But, given that Pacifica has self-destructed, Air America is our best hope for ending the right wing's domination of the radio airwaves. In an election year, and especially in a place like Arizona that's been slowly shifting to the left, we can't afford not to have a progressive on-air presence in Phoenix.

So I'm choosing to ignore my differences with Air America and I'm going to buy some pixels. We suggest that you buy some pixels, too.

Thanks to The Sideshow for reminding us about this.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:00 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

One of the really cool things about astronomy is that it's one of the few sciences where new discoveries are still often made by amateurs. As a case in point, take a look at a photograph of a new Red Spot on Jupiter, taken by a Philippine amateur on Feb 27.


Red Jr

Jupiter's new red spot [Photo: Christopher Go]

The official name of this storm is "Oval BA," but "Red Jr." might be better. It's about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot and almost exactly the same color.

Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller spots collided and merged. Using Hubble and other telescopes, astronomers watched with great interest. A similar merger centuries ago may have created the original Great Red Spot, a storm twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old.

At first, Oval BA remained white?the same color as the storms that combined to create it. But in recent months, things began to change:

"The oval was white in November 2005, it slowly turned brown in December 2005, and red a few weeks ago," reports Go. "Now it is the same color as the Great Red Spot!"

"Wow!" says Dr. Glenn Orton, an astronomer at JPL who specializes in studies of storms on Jupiter and other giant planets. "This is convincing. We've been monitoring Jupiter for years to see if Oval BA would turn red?and it finally seems to be happening." (Red Jr? Orton prefers "the not-so-Great Red Spot.")

And, no, nobody is quite sure why either of the Red Spots are red.

You can view a larger, full-planet image here. And if you want to see a really cool image of Jupiter's original Red Spot, look over here.

Via Science@NASA.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink



Want to help victims of domestic violence?

Click through here to have Allstate contribute US $1 to the National Network to End Domestic Violence Fund. Allstate is giving the buck for each of the first 75,000 unique visitors to the web page.

For more info on the National Network to End Domestic Violence Fund, go here.

Thanks to Alas, a Blog for the heads-up.

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



Yes, the official figures are lying.

On Feb 28, the Washington Post ran a story about how far more people had died in the aftermath of the Golden Mosque bombing than anyone in the US or Iraqi governments was admitting. According to the Post, over 1300 people were killed in the post-bombing violence. The Iraqi government put the figure at 379, and the US backed them up. In addition, other US media outlets ran stories saying that the death figures were much lower than what the Post had claimed.

I'm sure you've figured out where all of this backstory is going: Today, the Post is publishing a story from Ellen Knickmeyer, in which she reports that a Shi'a party in the Iraqi government has ordered government hospitals and morgues not to report execution-style killings, which drastically cut the 'official' death toll in the days after the mosque bombing. According to the Post, the post-bombing deaths exceeded 1,000 — putting the figure much closer to the newspaper's much-criticized earlier figure than to the 'official' numbers.

So the Iraqi government, Dubya's administration, and the Pentagon all used the Washington Post's earlier story as an excuse to beat up on the US press for impeding the war effort, even though all these parties undboubtedly knew that the Post's report was essentially accurate. What a huge surprise, eh?

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



Wednesday, March 8, 2006

What's at stake with South Dakota's abortion ban.

Yes, South Dakota's draconian new abortion law is undboubtedly heading for the US Supreme Court, where the presence of two new right-wing justices make is very possible that the Court could finally strike down Roe v. Wade. But, says Molly Ivins, the threat to women's right to choose goes far beyond abortion.


Wait until it rusts

[© 2006 Signe Wilkinson]

Look at some of the incompetent women we have running around in this country -- Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, now there are a couple of girls in need of guidance from the South Dakota legislature. Female doctors, lawyers, airplane pilots, engineers and, for that matter, female members of the South Dakota Legislature -- who could ever trust them with an important decision?

In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we'll reconsider women's property rights, civil right and voting rights.

Make sure that you read the whole column.

Via Working for Change.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:07 PM | Get permalink



We learn something new every day.

For example, this magpie always thought that forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term was way different than making a man pay child support for a child he fathered.

Obviously, we just didn't see how unfair child support is to men.


It's all yours, sweetheart

[© 2006 Elena Steier]


Seriously, not only are these guys making the 'You broke it, you own it' argument, but they're adding on 'Don't look at me for help — it won't be my fault if the kid starves.'

And I really have to love how they made sure that the news of the lawsuit would hit the press on Intenational Women's Day.

Assholes.

And so is the AP for taking this 'Roe v. Wade for Men' lawsuit seriously.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:19 PM | Get permalink



Ignorant troops are happy troops.

A few days ago, I posted about how the US Marines are censoring the websites and news sources that troops fighting in Iraq are allowed to access. The source of that info, Wonkette, has gotten more details on what's being blocked:

I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:
  • Wonkette – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
  • Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) – OK
  • Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
  • Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) – OK
  • ABC News “The Note” – OK
  • Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
  • G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) – OK

As we said the other day, Magpie readers in the US should pass this info onto their members of Congress, and ask them to find out what the hell is going on.

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



Who's to blame for the Iraqi civil war?

According to Dubya's administration and the right-wing echo chamber, the culprits are usually 'sectarianism' and 'ethnic rivalries.' Occasionally, one of the brighter bulbs on the right will acknowledge that some of the problems might be due to the arbitrary boundaries drawn around the new nation of Iraq by European colonialists at the end of the First World War.

But all of this, says Mideast expert Stephen Zunes, misses one of the biggest reasons for the spiraling violence in Iraq: Bad decsions made by the US right after the defeat of Saddam Hussein. We were particularly struck by this part of Zunes' argument:

Much of Iraq's current divisions can be traced to the decision of US occupation authorities immediately following the conquest to abolish the Iraqi army and purge the government bureaucracy — both bastions of secularism — thereby creating a vacuum which was soon filled by sectarian parties and militias.

In addition, the US occupation authorities — in an apparent effort of divide-and-rule — encouraged sectarianism by dividing up authority based not on technical skills or ideological affiliation but ethnic and religious identity. As with Lebanon, however, such efforts have actually exacerbated divisions, with virtually every political question debated not on its merits, but on which group it potentially benefits or harms. This has led to great instability, with political parties, parliamentary blocs and government ministries breaking down along sectarian lines.

Even army divisions are separated, with parts of western Baghdad being patrolled by army units dominated by Sunnis while eastern Baghdad is being patrolled by Shi'ite-dominated units. Without unifying national institutions, the breakup of the country remains a real possibility.

Via Asia Times.

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



Carnival of Feminists 10.

March 8th is International Women's Day, which makes it an especially auspicious time for the newest Carnival of Feminists — the 10th! — to appear. You can read all of its feminist bloggy goodness over here at indianwriting. If you haven't caught the Carnival before, it's a roundup of the best feminist posts from around the web, appearing twice a month.

Like the preceding carnivals, the posts in the 10th edition go all over the place. This time, I've chosen to sample the section on 'The Struggle':

Redneck Mother on Rwandan widows.
"One woman interviewed had two small children to raise alone after her husband killed himself. I think of J raising seven, and the only less-than-enthusiastic phrase in her short note to me: "I live a hard life, but I am patient." I hope her patience and hard work are rewarded with social stability and justice. I wonder what it will take for her country to get there."

*****

Sandy Piderit at Management Professor Notes on working women stretched to the limit, and specifically, the NYT's not-so-great track record regardings workplace treands in women's participation.

*****

And Bitch PhD on why we probably need a 36-hour day.

*****

On a report about a council scheme setting up "panic rooms" in private homes to protect women from abusive partners, The Bumblebee Blog has this to say:

"The best way to save money help women is to stop them getting beaten up in the first place.... Encouraging women to hide from their abusers is not the answer — taking a stand against those who are doing wrong should be the main course of action. Treat the problem at its root.

What would you rather: knowing that you were safe to go about your life, or knowing that one of your bedrooms has been turned into a prison cell for you to hide in whenever a known danger appears?"

Sound thinking, wouldn't you say, especially when Poppycock quotes the Amnesty International figures for domestic violence:
  • One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime.

  • On average, two women per week are killed by a male partner or former partner.

  • Nearly half of all female murder victims are killed by a partner or ex-partner.

  • The British Crime Survey estimates that approximately three-quarters of a million women (754,000) have been raped on at least one occasion since age 16.

  • One incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute.

*****

From Sthreeling, "The Common Thread" that binds women in India:

"Education hasnt made our lives safer or happier — it may at best have helped us be more aware of our rights and of their constant violation, giving our anger a clearer direction. but for the most part, we lead surprisingly similar lives... so its important that we keep reaching out to each other and not let society drive a wedge between us and other women, telling us how little we have in common because one is "Educated" and the other isn't..."

You can read the rest of the 10th Carnival if you go here.

The 11th Carnival is coming up on Wednesday, March 22nd, and it will be hosted by Angry for a Reason. The themes are international feminism and radical feminism. If you want to nominate a post — and it's definitely okay to nominate one of your own — send the nomination to union_clown AT yahoo DOT com. Or, if you prefer, you can use this submission form at the Blog Carnival home page.

And if you want to keep posted on what's up with the Carnival of Feminists, bookmark the home page.

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



Monday, March 6, 2006

No, I haven't forgotten Mapgie.

I've just been really busy in that real world today: visiting a friend in the hospital, learning those tunes I'm supposed to know for a class tonight, doing the monthly Costco run — that sort of stuff.

Expect some new posts later this evening [West Coast US time]. In the meantime, visit some of those fine blogs listed over there on the left.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:06 PM | Get permalink



Sunday, March 5, 2006

Forget the Oscars.

And say hello to the Sayid Awards — Iraq's new answer to those awards getting handed out in Hollywood tonight.

We'll leave it to Riverbend to list the nominees; we'll just tell you about the honorable mentions:

First and foremost, an honorable mention to Bush?s speech writers. It must be the most difficult job in the world writing scripts to make George W. Bush sound/look not great, not even good- but passable. It must also be challenging having to write speeches using words with a maximum of two syllables.

An honorable mention to the Saudis for their support of Sunni extremists and Wahabis, the Iranians for their support of Shia extremist, and Americans for their support of chaos.


Via Baghdad Burning.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:02 PM | Get permalink



Spreading freedom around the world.

For everybody except the US Marines ostensibly fighting for that freedom. It appears that the dim bulbs at Marine HQ have decided to 'protect' their rank and file from those nasty new organizations and websites that don't toe the current government line.

Read it and [if you're in the US] pass the info on to your member of Congress and demand to know what the hell is going on.

Via Wonkette.

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



Wow.

When this magpie lived in Minnesota, I'd always meant to toss a bucket of boiling water up into the air on a way-below-zero day. From the look of this video taken a bit farther north [in Saskatchewan], it looks like the results are even better than I'd imagined.


Look out for that cloud!

Do try this at home. If it's cold enough.


Via Boing Boing.

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



The word 'hyprocrisy' doesn't even begin to cover this.

The same administration that's made leaking information to the press a huge part of its process of spinning the news is now threatening to prosecute journalists for espionage if they leak stuff that Dubya would rather have remain secret. The administration is going after the leakers, too.

At Langley, the CIA's security office has been conducting numerous interviews and polygraph examinations of employees in an effort to discover whether any of them have had unauthorized contact with journalists. CIA Director Porter J. Goss has spoken about the issue at an "all hands" meeting of employees, and sent a recent cable to the field aimed at discouraging media contacts and reminding employees of the penalties for disclosing classified information, according to intelligence sources and people in touch with agency officials.

"It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information," Goss told a Senate committee.

The Justice Department also argued in a court filing last month that reporters can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information. The brief was filed in support of a case against two pro-Israeli lobbyists, who are the first nongovernment officials to be prosecuted for receiving and distributing classified information.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said last month that he is considering legislation that would criminalize the leaking of a wider range of classified information than what is now covered by law. The measure would be similar to earlier legislation that was vetoed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and opposed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in 2002.

But the vice chairman of the same committee, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), complained in a letter to the national intelligence director last month that "damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of the intelligence agencies."

As evidence, Rockefeller points to the case of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose identity was leaked to the media. A grand jury investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald resulted last year in the jailing of Judith Miller, then a reporter at the New York Times, for refusing to testify, and in criminal charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. In court papers, Libby has said that his "superiors" authorized him to disclose a classified government report.

At least one media expert says that 'you haven't seen this kind of crackdown on leaks since the Nixon administration.' Which doesn't surprise this magpie at all, given that the stakes now are about the same as during Nixon's time. And no, we don't mean protecting the nation against domestica and foreign enemies; we mean the political survival of a sitting president.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:11 PM | Get permalink




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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