Magpie

Saturday, April 8, 2006

The upcoming war against Iran.

When a government is in political trouble, there's nothing like a good war to get the public back in line. Given what Dubya's administraton appears ready to do to Iran, the prez and his minions might want to look at what happened to the generals who ruled Argentina in the early 1980s.

When the Argentine people grew restless after years of dictatorial rule, the generals started a war to take the Malvinas [Falkland Islands] back from the British, who had colonized the islands in the early 19th century despite Argentina's claim of sovereignty. After whipping up the propoer amount of nationalist hysteria, the generals sent Argentine soldiers and sailors off to take the islands back. At first, the April 1982 invasion went pretty much as planned. Argentine troops met almost no resistance, the colonial government surrendered within days, and the patriotic fervor whipped up by the war did indeed ease the generals' immediate domestic political problems.

Before the fall

Argentines rally to support the invasion of the Malvinas, unaware of the disaster that was only weeks away.
Are scenes similar to this — and the tragic outcome — in the cards for the US?
[Photo: Graciela Blaum]

Of course, the story doesn't end there.

When formulatiing their war plans, the Argentine generals figured that the remote location of the Malvinas in the South Atlantic, plus the islands' small population and negligible economic value, would make the UK unwilling to go to war. And, in normal times, that might have been true. However, 1982 wasn't a normal time in the UK. Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government was facing big political problems, as the opposition to her roll-back of Labour-era social programs wsa rising. Unfortunately for the Argentine generals, a successful war to kick the Argentines off the islands was just what the Iron Lady needed to get the British public behind her. Thatcher whipped up patriotic fervor and mobilized the UK's military, which set off in late April to re-take the Falklands. By the end of May, the islands were back in UK hands and Argentina had suffered the worst military defeat in its history. As a result, the Argentine people turned decisively against their military rulers, and democracy was restored to the country in less than a year — not exactly the outcome that the generals had predicted when they set out on their Malvinas adventure.

So what happened to the Argentine generals as a result of their decision to take on the UK over the Malvinas reminds us that the best-laid plans often go astray — and that there are few times that this is more likely to be the case than when governments go to war in order to solve domestic political problems.

Now we can move on to the main part of this post: A look at Sy Hersh's New Yorker article on Dubya's plans to attack Iran. As Hersh describes these plans, they appear to be far less well thought out than the plans that Dubya's administration made when it attacked Iraq.

Iran in Dubya's crosshairs

According to Hersh, Dubya has ordered the Pentagon to make plans for a massive bombing attack on Iran, with the ostensible goal of shutting down the Iranian nuclear program before there's any danger of that country acquiring nuclear weapons. The more important goal of the attack, however, is regime change. [Sound familiar?] Dubya and other White House officials want to remove the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who they believe is a threat to the peace of the region, and a possible new Hitler. [Sound even more familiar?] Dubya and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld apparently believe that a successful attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will lead to a revolt against Ahmadinejad's government. Sources told Hersh that US troops have already been ordered into Iran to lay the groundwork for an attack, and that US military planners have been considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran's nuclear-related facilities.

As Hersh explains, there's substantial opposition within the Pentagon to a bombing campaign in Iran, espeically one that includes nuclear weapons. This opposition is so strong that some high military officers may resign if the nuclear plans are approved. That possibility is growning extremely likely as an advisory group packed with Rumsfeld appointees is leaning toward the nuclear option.

The biggest problem for Dubya's attack plans, however, is that same one that faced the Argentine generals back in 1982: Unplanned and unexpected consequence from the attack. It's one thing to achieve the strictly military goals of destroying particular facilities in Iran. It's quite another to correctly anticipate what the effects of that attack will be on Iran's domestic politics, and — especially — how the Iranian government will retaliate for the attack.

Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world's oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the thirty-four-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that the U.S. Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting mine- sweepers to work. "It's impossible to block passage," he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.

Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might be focussed on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. "They would be at risk," he said, "and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world."

Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks "is consuming a lot of time" at U.S. intelligence agencies. "The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years," the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. "This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us." (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, "Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.")

The adviser went on, "If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle." The American, British, and other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, "the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck."

Given the predictions that Dubya's administration made about what would happen after its invasion of Iraq, the details revealed by Hersh don't exactly inspire confidence in the plans being made for Iran, do they? Especially given that Iran is four times as large as Iraq with almost three times as many people. Not to mention a military that has more up-to-date equipment than that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Like the Argentine generals. Dubya may be calculating that bombing Iran is a way to shore up his sagging political fortunes that has negligible dangers. It would certainly re-solidify support for the prez among the hard-core of his supporters, and it might increae support among others by throwing up the spectre of terrorism, nuclear-style.

But, as Hersh suggests in his article, the consequence of an invasion aren't likely to be negligible. God save us if Dubya actually carries through with his Iran plans.

There's a lot more scary stuff in Sy Hersh's article, which you can read here. I notice that the administration is already attacking the article. Given past attacks on Hersh's Iraq reporting, this probably show's that he's dead on-target with his Iran piece.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:08 PM | Get permalink

The Dubya administration's 'convenient' leaks.

In an excellent analysis piece, reporters Warren Strobel and Ron Hutcheson show how Lewis Libby's 'authorized leak' of secret information about Iraq to the press fits a pattern in which Dubya's administration leaks classified info whenever political needs require it. That leak also fits another pattern — the one in which Dubya, Cheney, and other high officials scream bloody murder about the irresponsibility of the very leaks that they authorized.

[Secret] information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated....

On Friday, White House officials said that the administration declassified information to rebut charges that Bush was manipulating intelligence.

Without specifically acknowledging Bush's actions in the Libby case, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: "There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence. We felt it was very much in the public interest that what information could be declassified be declassified."

McClellan didn't address why administration officials often declassified information that supported their allegations about Iraq but not intelligence that undercut their claims.

As the article describes, Libby's 'authorized leak' is far from the first time that the administration has used this method of influencing public opinion — it's just the most recent example that we can be certain of.

Via Knight Ridder Washington Bureau.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:50 AM | Get permalink

What does the Easter Bunny do during the rest of the year?

He kicks ass, that's what.

Via YouTube.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:32 AM | Get permalink

Leaker-in-Chief.

Political cartoonist John Sherffius has definitely been on a roll this week. First, he made it clear what it really means that the Supremes refused to stop Dubya from jailing US citizens indefinitely, without trial.

Today, Sherffius takes on the prez's role in the Plamegate leaks.

Leaky Dubya

[Cartoon © 2006 John Sherffius]

The full-sized cartoon is here. You can see more of Sherffius' cartoons over here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:19 AM | Get permalink

Friday, April 7, 2006

Those damn illegal immigrants!

From the current issue of the New Yorker:

New Yorker cartoon of undocumented Pilgrim immigrants

[Cartoon: J.B. Handelsman]

It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

Prints and t-shirts of the cartoon are available here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:59 PM | Get permalink

Tonight's NY Times scorecard.

On the up-side:

The Times ran a story on the Center for Media and Democracy's study on the use of video news releases [VNRs] by US TV stations. If you're an attentive Magpie reader, you'll already know that 77 stations used VNRs provided by PR firms without telling viewers that they were watching a PR piece, not a news report.

[If you're not an attentive Magpie reader, hie thee here. ]

On the down-side:

The Times buried the story in its Media & Advertising section, rather than putting it in the main US news section. If I hadn't already known that the story existed [Thanks, CJR Daily!] I'd probably never have found it.
The CMD's report listed 77 stations that were guilty of uncredited use of VNRs. The Times story managed not to identify any station by name. What makes this admission especially interesting is that two of the guilty stations are owned by — you guessed it — the New York Times Company. [Thanks, FishBowlDC!]

I guess we have a better idea now about how the paper that contains 'All the News That's Fit to Print' decides which news is really fit to print.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:45 AM | Get permalink

What would it be like if abortion were illegal in the US?

Really illegal?

That's the situation in the Central American nation of El Salvador, where all abortions have been illegal since 1998. And where a constitutional amendment protecting the right of fetuses from conception was adopted in 1999. In El Salvador, the term 'forensic vagina specialist' describes a job that actually exists.

What pro-life means in El Salvador

D.C. had a back-alley abortion in El Salvador. It put her in the hospital— and sent her to court.
[Photo: Donna Ferrato/NYT]

In this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine, reporter Jack Hitt has a cover story called 'Pro-Life Nation,' about how abortion has been criminalized in El Salvador. Hitt was interviewed on Thursday morning's Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. Transcribing part of that interview for this post gave me chills.

Maddow: El Salvador, you say, is the only country that has an active law enforcement apparatus around this stuff. Prosecutors actually employ people to do things like take womens' uteruses into evidence if they've been removed after hysterectomies in botched abortions. There's a whole system set up within prosecution ... within prosecutors' offices to follow up these crimes.

Hitt: Yeah. I interviewed a prosecutor and a judge who are involved in the routine, you know, process of handling abortion cases. And yes, when a doctor does a pelvic exam on a woman and sees any sign of an abortion, police are called and then, if there's any ambiguity in the doctor's assertions, the state has the right to essentially get a search warrant for the vagina, and to have a state-sponsored forensic gynecologist come and essentially examine the scene of the crime.

Maddow: By force if necessary?

Hitt: Well, it's not by force. There's a judicial — it's like a search warrant that has to be procured first, and then ... I have not heard of any woman resisting the search warrant.

Maddow: But if the woman doesn't consent and there's a search warrant. I mean ... In American law, right, if you don't consent to a search of your house and there's a search warrant, your house is gonna get searched.

Hitt: Right. There, I think the culture has not yet produced a woman in the hospital who would resist the search warrant. At least as not as far as I found when I was talking to people.

But, but that role exists. The country has a national forensic institute. It's like their national sort of CSI institute that does all their genetic testing and forensic studies and DNA collection, that kind of thing. And it's doctors from that forensic institute who are called in to do a separate examination of the woman for—

Maddow: Of the crime scene.

Hitt: Of the crime scene.

Maddow: The vagina or the uterus.

Hitt: Right.

AlterNet has posted the audio of Rachel Maddow's interview with Jack Hitt here. I'm sure I don't need to tell you to go listen to the whole thing. Pay special attention to Maddow's last couple of sentences.

As yet, Hitt's story in the NYT Magazine isn't online. I'll post a link as soon as I have one.

More: You'll find Hitt's story on abortion in El Salvador here.

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

The view from south of the border.

While we in the US are having another of our national debates on immigration, we are — as usual — spending so much time talking to each other that we're paying little or no attention to how the issue looks from outside the country. And, given that the focus of the debate, and especially the more racist and xenophobic portion of that debate, is on immigration from Mexico, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to see what Mexicans think about the US immigration debate.

Mexico in 1846

Map of the United States of Mexico.
[Henry S. Tanner, 1846]

That problem was noticed by the producers of the NPR program On The Media, too. And, on the lastest program, co-host Bob Garfield took up immigration with Hector Tobar, one of the LA Times' Mexico reporters. Here's part of the interview transcript:

BOB GARFIELD: In the United States, there are essentially two poles of thought about illegal immigration. One is that it's a net boon to the United States because it provides low-priced labor and all of the advantages of the great melting pot. The other side says that it's a vast drain on resources and that the illegal immigrants steal jobs from citizens. I'm curious. In Mexico, is there anything like a consensus on this issue? Is there a school of thought there that says illegal immigration to the States is actually not so great for Mexico?

HECTOR TOBAR: I think the focus here tends to be on the treatment that Mexicans receive in the United States and how each Mexican who goes to the States represents national pride. And every time that there is an incident on the border in which a border crosser is killed or a group of border crossers die, it reinforces the image of Mexicans as victimized when they go to the North. When a legislation is put forward in the United States that would criminalize them even further, that really is the focus of what the coverage is. There are only really a minority of voices who say that, in fact, immigration to the United States is a greater threat to Mexican national identity than it is to American national identity, and that the safety valve that currently exists here, whereby the poorest of the poor and the most desperate can leave and thereby liberate Mexican society of the need to feed them and to educate them, that can't remain open forever. We are going to have to deal with the root social and economic causes of migration eventually. And we better start doing it sooner rather than later.

BOB GARFIELD: As we've discussed, you're in the middle of an election season there, three major parties vying for the presidency and other spoils. To what extent have the candidates tried to exploit the immigration issue in their media campaigns? Is there any symbolism or imagery that's being invoked by the candidates to take best advantage of the public sentiment in support of the paisanos?

HECTOR TOBAR: The image that comes up again and again in the rhetoric is the image of the wall. You know, the idea, even though, of course, the wall might never be built, it's just a proposal - the idea that the United States could build another 700 miles of fencing and try to seal itself off, as the argument goes here, is something that really hits home. It's a very visceral issue for Mexicans. It's been referred to as a kind of Berlin Wall. It's been compared to the Great Wall of China. And so, that metaphor has worked its way into a lot of campaign speeches. You know, what are we going to do as a country in the face of this power next to us, the United States?

You can read the rest of the transcript here, or listen to the interview here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

You've no doubt run into reports about the 'missing link' fossil found by paleontologists in northern Canada. Called Tiktaalik roseae, this fish-like predator looked something like a crocodile and could grow to 9 feet long. More importantly, though, Tiktaalik had fins with an elbow joint — a characteristic that allowed it to life itself off the ground and, possibly, walk around on dry land.

It's Tiktaalik!

Tiktaalik fossil [left] and artist's conception of what it looked like.
[Graphics: Left, © Ted Daeschler.
Right, Shawn Gould, © National Geographic Society]

Tiktaalik is the first fossil that clearly shows a transitional stage between aquatic animals, like fish, and early land animals. Scientists believe it possible that there is a clear line of descent between Tiktaalik and modern land vertebrates, including humans.

All of this is a long-winded prelude for the real shiny thing here: a bunch of cool Tiktaalik art by illustrator Ray Troll.

Darwin & Tiktaalik

Darwin and his pal, Tiktaalik.
[Graphic: © 2006 Ray Troll]

As you can see, Troll's pretty much in a class by himself. He combines a scientist's eye for detail with a wackiness that's made him one of our favorite illustrators. You can see more of his Tiktaalik stuff here.

I first encountered Troll's art in the book Planet Ocean, a book about the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth that Troll did along with writer Brad Matsen. If you've never read it, you should track down a copy immediately. You'll learn a ton about evolution and the fossil record and you'll get to take in Troll's amazing illustrations. [If you can't wait to see the book, Troll has this Planet Ocean feature on his website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 AM | Get permalink

Hanging out with America's persecuted Christians.

A week ago, I posted about 'The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006,' a conference that gathered 400 right-wing religious activists and political leaders in Washington DC. Historian Elizabeth Castelli attended the conference, and has written a fascinating and scary article about what went on. [Castelli's specialty, by the way, is the history of Christian martyrdom.]

[The] participants in "The War on Christians and the Values Voter" seemed convinced that Bible-believing Christians are not being taken seriously by the politically powerful, despite the presence of so many of them at the conference. The rhetoric here moves back and forth between incommensurate claims — Christians are persecuted and powerless, on the one hand, but constitute an irresistible and unbeatable majority, on the other. Aligning its point of view with that of God and its actions with God's will, this movement must refuse to engage in political compromise because there can be no compromise when absolute truth or God are invoked. Hence the increasing intemperance of its rhetoric, the exuberance of its commitments, the unshakability of its resolve.

It is a movement that resoundingly denies that it is theocratic, dismissing such a characterization as one aimed at provocatively and cynically linking right-wing politicized Christianity to radical Islamism. At the same time, it is a movement that argues that political, social, and moral life must be solely grounded in scripture -- that there is no tension between the Bible and the founding documents of American political institutions, and that the separation of church and state demands an unacceptable compromise since, "if Jesus is your Lord, he is the Lord of everything," as one conference preacher put it....

Beginning with the premise that there is a war on Christianity, conference organizers and participants were eager to issue calls to arms in response. "We are under spiritual invasion!" intoned Rod Parsley, an evangelist from Ohio. "Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! LOCK AND LOAD!" (The audience responded to these imperatives with a raucous and exuberant standing ovation.) Parsley also claimed that those Christian churches not sharing the perspective of the Christians represented at the conference constitute "the devil's demilitarized zone," naïvely and fatally embracing "peace at any price...."

But what of the biblical Jesus and his message of nonviolence and nonresistance? As Rick Scarborough explained it at the end of the panel on persecution, all of those demanding gospel values — submission, tolerance, turning the other cheek — are fine in one's private life, but they have nothing to do with the public mission of the church. As for those who draw attention to the gospel's message of nonviolence, this is simply a matter of "the Left using our own tradition against us...."

To a person, the conference speakers and panelists divided the world up into simple binary oppositions, and most were content to demonize everyone who does not stand with them in this "with us or against us" war. The occasional invocations of Christian love, offered usually as a conciliatory afterthought, echoed dimly in a room reverberating with loud and unwavering bellicose righteousness. One speaker offered condescension instead of simple demonization: Janet Parshall, a Christian broadcaster who called herself a "war correspondent in Babylon" and who declared that there has been a war against Christians "since the garden," modulated the rhetoric slightly in two different ways. First, she upped the ante, arguing that the war is not against Christians per se but "against absolute truth and God." Then, she sought to complicate the identification of the enemy by suggesting that people who possess "opposing worldviews" are not themselves "the enemy" but rather "they have been captured by the enemy." What was implied here was that all holders of "opposing worldviews" — secularists, non-Christians of all stripes, gay men and lesbians, feminists, among others — are best understood as prisoners of war, captives in thrall to their captor, victims of an epistemological Stockholm syndrome and in need of liberation and deprogramming.

You'll find the rest of Castelli's article here.

The conference was organized by a group called Vision America, which has the mission to 'inform, encourage and mobilize pastors and their congregations to be proactive in restoring Judeo-Christian values to the moral and civic framework in their communities, states, and our nation.' Their website is well worth checking out if you want to understand what the people who attended the 'War on Christians' conference are thinking, as is the conference agenda.

Via The Revealer.

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

Thursday, April 6, 2006

How did this guy get into one of Dubya's 'town halls'?

You just know that the head of some White House advance person or local GOP operative is going to roll after the real world intruded into one of the prez's carefully controlled 'town hall meetings.' Or maybe not. Perhaps what looks like a slip-up was really a calculated move to help the prez ditch his 'bubble boy' image. [Don't you just love the fact that figuring out what's going on inside Dubya's administration requires the same methods that used to be used to figure out what was going on in the Soviet leadership?]

Harry Taylor gives Dubya hell Thursday in Charlotte, NC.
Check out the expressions of the women in the front row.
[Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP]

Whichever finally turns out to be true, there's no doubt that Dubya's exchange with a North Carolina man broke the usual pattern of the prez's public appearances.

"While I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water," real estate broker Harry Taylor told Bush at a town hall meeting. "I have never felt more ashamed of nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington."

The audience at Central Piedmont Community College booed, but Bush seemed to take the criticism in stride.

"I'm not your favorite guy," the president said. "What's your question?"

Taylor didn't have one, but he wasn't finished.

"I feel like, despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration," he told Bush. "And I would hope, from time to time, that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself."

Bush defended his decision to authorize domestic eavesdropping in cases involving conversations between the United States and terrorist suspects or their associates in other countries.

"I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program. ... Would I apologize for that? The answer is, absolutely not," he said to applause.

Via Knight Ridder Washington Bureau.

More: Someone's posted video of the exchange at Buzznet. You can watch it here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:58 PM | Get permalink

How low can US television journalism go? [Part 1]

Just when this magpie would think that it would be hard for TV journalism to lose any more of the precious little crediblity it has with the US public, in comes a story about how some TV stations are letting advertisers buy their way into newscasts:

"Australia Week" was a major production for the financially strapped [San Francisco station] KRON (Channel 4). For five straight days in early March, the station dedicated three hours of its five-hour morning newscast to their reporters' adventures Down Under.

There were segments touting "Sydney by Hot Air Balloon," "Shopping in Sydney," "a look at the varieties of fish found in Australia and the many ways of preparing them" as well as a sit-down interview with an Australian tourism official, during which a KRON reporter noted "the diversity of an Australian vacation, whether you're interested in nature, urban areas or both."

If this sounds like a travel brochure for the country, it was. Tourism Australia, the government body that promotes travel to the country, paid the airfare of the station's six reporters and their food and lodging expenses. In addition, Tourism Australia shelled out an undisclosed amount for advertising time on KRON during the special.

The special and others like it have raised more than a few eyebrows in the newsroom. "We're appalled," said one staffer, who declined to be named, fearing retribution. "We essentially let the government of Australia become our news directors."

KRON is far from the only offender, however. Stations in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon have also been caught making similar arrangements. There are many more details of the arrangements KRON and other stations are making with advertisers in this excellent SF Chronicle story.

While the continuing inroads of advertising into what passes for news in this country is a sad enough story in itself, what's truly awful is that the station executives and news directors involved in this stuff don't seem to think they're doing anything wrong.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:40 PM | Get permalink

How low can US television journalism go? [Part 2]

KOKH-25 presents a video news release from Intel,
just like it was a real news story.

If advertisers buying their way into TV newscasts isn't bad enough [see the post above], fake news stories continue to show up on US television. You might remember the controversies that arose when it came out that Dubya's administration was hiring PR firms to produce fake news storeis—'video news releases'— and that TV stations were airing these VNRs as real news. [For examples, see Magpie posts from 2004 here, here, and here.]

If anything the situation is worse now that it was a couple of years ago. According to a study from the Center for Media and Democracy, at least 77 TV stations aired 'video news releases' or 'satellite media tours' during the past 10 months, and failed to let viewers know that those stories were provided by PR firms — not produced by their own reporters. These fake news items were aired 98 different times in TV markets that include more than half of the people in the US.

Check out these highlights taken directly from the report summary:

KOKH-25 in Oklahoma City, OK, a FOX station owned by Sinclair, aired six of the VNRs tracked by CMD, making it this report's top repeat offender. Consistently, KOKH-25 failed to provide any disclosure to news audiences. The station also aired five of the six VNRs in their entirety, and kept the publicist's original narration each time.
In three instances, TV stations not only aired entire VNRs without disclosure, but had local anchors and reporters read directly from the script prepared by the broadcast PR firm. KTVI-2 in St. Louis, MO, had their anchor introduce, and their reporter re-voice, a VNR produced for Masterfoods and 1-800 Flowers, following the script nearly verbatim. WBFS-33 in Miami, FL, did the same with a VNR produced for the "professional services firm" Towers Perrin. And Ohio News Network did likewise with a VNR produced for Siemens.
WSJV-28 in South Bend, IN, introduced a VNR produced for General Motors as being from "FOX's Andrew Schmertz," implying that Schmertz was a reporter for the local station or the FOX network. In reality, he is a publicist at the largest U.S. broadcast PR firm, Medialink Worldwide. Another Medialink publicist, Kate Brookes, was presented as an on-air reporter by four TV stations airing a VNR produced for Siemens.
Two stations whose previous use of government VNRs was documented by the New York Times, WCIA-3 in Champaign, IL, and WHBQ-13 in Memphis, TN, also aired VNRs tracked by CMD. The March 2005 Times article reported that WHBQ's vice president for news "could not explain how his station came to broadcast" a State Department VNR, while WCIA's news director said that Agriculture Department VNRs "meet our journalistic standards."

I don't think that this magpie needs to add anything after those examples. And they're just the tip of the iceberg.

You can read the summary of the CMD report here. The CMD's main webpage is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:16 PM | Get permalink

No smoking gun yet, but it sure smells like gunpowder around here.

New papers filed in the Plamegate investigation place Dubya more directly into the 2003 White House decision to leak secret information about Iraq to the press. Those leaks attempted to influence press coverage of the Iraq war — especially that of the growing controversy over whether the administration had falsely claimed that Iraq had WMDs. While this new info doesn't show that Dubya ordered the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press, it does show that the prez was aware of the leaks that were coming from the White House — if not actually an instigator of those leaks.

Scooter goes to court

The new information comes from documents filed in federal court yesterday by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is leading the probe into the Plamegate affair. Part of those documents concern the testimony of Lewis Libby to the Plamegate grand jury. [Photo of Libby shows him heading in to testify last November. He has been indicted for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements in connection with the Plamegate investigation.] According to Libby, VP Dick Cheney told him to pass on secret information about Iraq to the press, and that Dubya had authorized that disclosure. According to the court papers, that authorization led to Libby's July 8, 2003, conversation with NY Times reporter Judith Miller, during which Valerie Plame's name was mentioned.

The documents also report Libby's testimony that Cheney specifically directed him to speak to other reporters about classified information regarding Iraq's alleged WMD programs and a cable authored by Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson. This leak was apparently done to counter public claims made by Wilson that the White House's justification for invading Iraq was riddled with holes.

Of course, other players in the leak story may have disputed Libby's testimony when they went before the Plamegate grand jury. But on the face of it, Libby's story clearly makes Cheney a prime mover in the leaks that led to Valerie Plame's outing as a CIA operative. Even more importantly, they indicate that Dubya was not the innnocent bystander that his public statements have made him out to be.

It's going to be very interesting to see how things develop from here.

The AP story on Libby's testimony is here. The Smoking Gun also has a story and an excerpt from the court documents here. You can read a PDF of yesterday's full court filing by Plamegate special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald if you go here.

More: If you're having trouble figuring out exactly how this new information fits into the ongoing Plamegate story, this Murray Waas article over at the National Journal should make things less confusing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:16 AM | Get permalink

What she said.

I'm listening right now to Air America, where Al Franken is interviewing reporter Helen Thomas, the longest-serving member of the White House press corps. Thomas is admired by many [including this magpie] for her doggedly persistent questioning of presidents — a trait that has won her no friends in Dubya's White House — and especially for her recent attempt to get Dubya to explain exactly why he took the country to war in Iraq. [See this earlier post for details.]

Thomas just said this:

Why should it take courage to ask our leaders the important questions? That's so sad.

Those two sentences say more about the current state of US journalism and the political state of the country than a pile of op-eds.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:55 AM | Get permalink

Anarchy in the UK.

No, not right now.

But on September 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols brought their song 'Anarchy in the UK' to the Granada TV show So It Goes. And, happily, the video has survived.

Sex Pistols [with Glen Matlock on bass, not Sid Vicious], 1976.

Any doubts this magpie had about whether the Pistols were a good live band have been put to rest by this video. They rock! [Although I suppose having a good bass player helped.]

The video is available as .mov and .m4v formats if you go here.

Via Bedazzled.

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

Down at the ~~old plantation~~ workplace.

One of the favorite arguments against any improvement in the wages and working conditions of US workers has been this: 'Business owners won't be able to make a profit.' Sometimes the amount of rhetoric cloaking the argument hides it from view, but it's almost always there. If you read history, you'll have seen the 'no profit' argument whenever there was a move to:

Eliminate child labor.
Establish minimum health and safety standards in any industry.
Pass laws establishing the right of workers to bargain collectively.
Get rid of the 60-hour work week.
Get rid of the 48-hour work week.
Force agricultural employers to provide decent housing and clean water to migrant farmworkers.
Give women equal pay for equal work.

As you can see, it's a very versatile argument. And almost always false, despite the assertions of corporations and big business.

As Terry points out at I See Invisible People, the latest version of this argument is being used to support the idea that the US needs a 'guest worker' program to help stem the tide of illegal immigration. In this line of thinking, the country needs immigrant workers to take those jobs that legal US residents aren't willing to work at. After all, even sub-minimum wages — as can be legally paid in farm work and certain other occupations — are a bonanza to people coming into the US from countries with really low wages, right?

Of course, the real problem is that legal US workers won't take certain jobs because employers refuse to pay a living wage for that work. And it's not just those jobs 'traditionally' thought to be the province of immigrant workers where this problem — and the argument for low wages — can be found:

In the Thursday {Spokane, WA] Spokesman-Review, there was an article bemoaning the number of qualitied certified nursing assistants (CNAs) that medical facilities are able to attract. Across the Inland Northwest, longstanding nursing assistant shortages are getting worse as the general population ages, experts said. In an industry notorious for low wages, hard work and high turnover, it's becoming increasingly difficult to hire and maintain qualified helpers.

Obviously, it's the laborers who are at fault for the 100% turnover rate, not the pay and conditions. "If we could only teach work ethic," said Dennie Seymour, director for workforce development for North Idaho College, whose comments were echoed by employers.

The chief problems are pay and staffing levels, experts said. In Idaho, wages start at around $6 an hour and range to a high of less than $9. There's no mandated ratio of staff to clients, said Robert Vande Merwe, executive director of the Idaho Health Care Association. Conditions are better in Washington, where pay typically is about $1 an hour more.
[snip]
A more basic fix would work, too, said Seymour.
"The solution would be to improve the conditions and the pay," she said. "I'm told that's not possible."

You read right—it's "not possible." Paying a living wage, which would attact more people to the profession, isn't even being considered. Instead, a proposal has been floated in Idaho to waive the English proficiency requirement for certification to open up additional labor pools. Anything rather than paying what the market determines the job is worth. Providing intimate, demanding care for the sick and elderly is judged to be of the same value as flipping fast food hamburgers under far better conditions.

Capitalism is only the answer when it provides downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on prices. When labor refuses to go along with the proposition, find a new impoverished labor pool which won't upset profits. When those workers have been exhausted, increase the load of those remaining and blame it on character flaws when they are unable to meet the increased expection for slave wages. Is it a coincidence that the vast majority of CNAs are women?

A job is only worth what the employer wants to pay, not what the market forces demand. This is not capitalism; it's plantation mentality.

Actually, a plantation owner had to care whether the slaves lived or died. Contemporary employers frequently see workers as expendable and replaceable. If you use up one worker, just get another one.

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

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

What do South Park and Battlestar Galactica have in common?

Both TV shows just won Peabody Awards.

These are the most prestigious broadcasting prizes given in the US. If you're a broadcaster or program producer, getting a Peabody is as good as it gets.

From the official awards list:

South Park Comedy Central

Primitive animation is part of the charm of TV's boldest, most politically incorrect satirical series. Its simple style also makes possible the show's unmatched topicality. Comedy Central. [...]

Battlestar Galactica SCI FI CHANNEL

A belated, brilliantly re-imagined revival of a so-so 1970s outer-space saga, the series about imperiled survivors of a besieged planet has revitalized sci-fi television with its parallax considerations of politics, religion, sex, even what it means to be "human." NBC Universal Television Studio.

Amazing, huh?

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:20 PM | Get permalink

London's calling.

Calling you straight to jail, buddy, if you sing the wrong song too loud.

British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said on Wednesday.

Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off.

The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem "London Calling," which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down" while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected". [Full lyrics here.]

Mann told newspapers the taxi had been fitted with a music system which allowed him to plug in his MP3 player and he had been playing The Clash, Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles to the driver.

"He didn't like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don't think there was any need to tell the police," Mann told the Daily Mirror.

A Durham police spokeswoman said Mann had been released after questioning -- but had missed his flight.

"The report was made with the best of intentions and we wouldn't want to discourage people from contacting us with genuine concerns," she said.

Via Reuters.

More: What the Reuters story doesn't say, but this BBC report does, is that Mann is 'of Indian origin' and that his ethnicity was a factor in his detention — something that makes what happened to him even more appalling. I have to wonder whether this story would be getting the same media attention if Mann had been detained simply for being Indian.

After his release, Mann was interviewed on the BBC Radio 5 Live program:

"I said to staff you've taken me off my flight due to my taste in music, in a more colourful way.

"I mean where does it stop? What if I was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, what if I was wearing odd socks, you know.

"I mean obviously the political climate these days is like walking on egg shells, but I mean there's caution and then there's taking it to the point where it's absurd and ludicrous."

Amen.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:40 PM | Get permalink

How to make ~~US$ 1 million~~ US$ 44.8 billion without even trying.

It's easy to do, once you know how. Just ask the US insurance industry, which made record profits last year even though 2005 was the most damaging hurricane year on record.

The secret: Shift the cost of paying claims onto policyholders and government. An excellent LA Times article by Peter Gossein explains just how the insurance industry pulled off this feat, and the price that the rest of us are paying for those record profits.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:25 PM | Get permalink

Wooohooo! It's Carnival of Feminists 12!

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which makes it time for another edition of the Carnival of Feminists! You can read the 12th Carnival in all of its feminist bloggy glory if you head over here to Written World. As usual, it's an ecelectic collection of the best feminist posts from around the web.

This time, I'm excerpting those posts that didn't fall easily into any category:

Leisha experiences the reopening of old wounds, and realizes that "healing a wounded soul is never a finished task."

When the British Royal Couple visited Saudi Arabia, it seems that Camilla was given "honorary man" status, as evidenced by her wardrobe when compared to what Saudi women are permitted to wear.

Emma finds an article on Feminist bloggers, who they represent and what value they actually are to the Feminist movement at large.

Muse at Me-ander rants about how people treat her as opposed to how they treat her husband.

Debbie and Laurie have discovered a brand new species of Strawfeminist! The Attention Stealer.

A new women's poetry blog, Womb Poetry, is now accepting submissions.

And finally, "My Head's Not Worth Stink" from Dementia Blues, which was among the first submissions. Ragnell notes that she intended to include it, but didn't notice the date until today. Because it was her own mistake, she's including the old post.

You can read the rest of the 12th Carnival if you go here.

The 13th Carnival is coming up on Wednesday, April 19th, and it will be hosted by I See Invisible People. The theme for the 13th edition is Feminism and Challenges — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. However, any post written after April 5 that addresses a woman's place in the world from a feminist point of view is welcome. To nominate a post, — and it's definitely okay to nominate one of your own — send an email to ISeeInvisiblePeople AT gmail.com. Or, if you prefer, you can use this submission form at the Blog Carnival home page.

The deadline for submitting a post to the 13th Carnival is midnight April 17th.

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

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:57 AM | Get permalink

Daylight Savings Time. Ugh.

Our pal alphabitch has gone on another of her wonderful rants, and she definitely manages to have the last cranky word about setting the clock ahead.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:55 AM | Get permalink

Keeping tabs on the class war.

I was thinking about summarizing a NY Times article about the first major study of the effects of Dubya's tax cut on investment income, which shows that the bulk of the benefits have not just gone to the rich — they've gone to the very rich. Like an average US$ 500,000 tax reduction for people who make US$ 10 million and over.

But instead of summarizing, I'm going to give you one paragraph from the story and let you read the rest of the article for yourself. Here's the paragraph:

The Times showed the new numbers to people on various sides of the debate over tax cuts. Stephen J. Entin, president of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, a Washington organization, and other supporters of the cuts said they did not go far enough because the more money the wealthiest had to invest, the more would go to investments that produce jobs. For investment income, Mr. Entin said, "the proper tax rate would be zero." [Emphasis added]

As they say, the rich aren't like the rest of us — they're far more arrogant.

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

Immigration deform.

In Monday's SF Chronicle, a story by Tyche Hendricks spells out as clearing as anything I've read exactly what's wrong with HR 4437, the punitive immigration bill that's already passed the US House of Representatives and which is now being debated in the Senate.

Not illegal

Another US family? Or a nest of felons?
[Photo: Mike Kepka/SF Chronicle]

When Anna Salazar was first dating her husband, Roberto, it didn't occur to her to ask his immigration status.

By the time the California native learned Roberto was an illegal immigrant, it didn't make a difference: She had met the love of her life. Now -- five years, a Valentine's Day wedding and two baby boys later -- they are facing Roberto's deportation to Mexico and a possible 10-year exile from the country where he has lived since he was 8.

If an immigration bill being protested across the country in recent weeks becomes law, Roberto, 30, also could be deemed an aggravated felon, sent to prison and then barred from the United States for life. The stakes for families like the Salazars are high as the national debate unfolds over that bill -- which passed the House of Representatives in December and includes 700 miles of fortified border fencing -- and over reforms the Senate is considering.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, defended the House legislation, which he sponsored, as "the first thing we have to do to fix our broken system."

Sensenbrenner's bill would build 700 miles of fencing along the border and have Anna Salazar, too, charged with an aggravated felony -- "harboring" her undocumented husband. She could face more than a year in prison, loss of her children to foster care during that time and forfeiture of her assets.

"So our kids get taken away. Is there anybody that that helps?" asked Anna, 24, as she set a morning snack of crackers, grapes and a deviled egg on the kitchen table for 2 1/2-year-old Robert. "Then we'd have a bunch of jails flooded with all these people" who have helped illegal immigrants.

The kind of country that would make criminals of the Salazars and build the a barrier reminiscent of the Berlin Wall or other Soviet-era border fortifications in Eastern Europe is not the country this magpie grew up in. And, if a lot of us fight hard enough, it will not be the kind of country any one of us dies in, either.

This coming Monday, April 10, there'll be demonstrations across the US to oppose the immigrant-bashing that has beome so fashionable recently — even among so-called progressives — and to remind Congress that a huge number of Americans want real immigration reform — not a nasty measure like HR 4437. You can find more information here at the Immigrant Solidarity Network, including a list of the April 10 activities around the country.

Thanks to Direland for the links.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:05 AM | Get permalink

How evil is Magpie?

This evil.

You Are 50% Evil

You are evil, but you haven't yet mastered the dark side.
Fear not though — you are on your way to world domination.

Truth be known, this magpie is actually 100% evil, but I lied on some of the test questions so that I could lull y'all into a false sense of security.

If you want to know how evil you are, this here is the spot.

Via Lab Kat.

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

Brokeback Elmo?

A photo taken Tuesday at the Wal-Mart in Englewood, Colorado:

If you like Sesame Street, you'll *love* Brokeback Mountain!

If you look closely, you'll notice that the DVDs for Brokeback Mountain are right next to those for Chronicles of Narnia and Sesame Street.

Looks like someone at Wal-Mart is pushing that there homosexual agenda. Quick! Someone alert Fox News!

Via The Consumerist.

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

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

How much is the US spending to prepare for a flu pandemic?

Stayin' Alive has the skinny: It's way less than you think.

Via Effect Measure.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:11 PM | Get permalink

Feds using FISA warrants to go after common criminals.

Journalist John McKinnon has a disturbing story in today's Wall Street Journal about how prosecutors are using FISA warrants to gather information to use against people accused of 'normal' crimes, not of terrorism.

McKinnon's story centers on the case against Samih Jammal, a grocery wholesaler in Tempe, Arizona who was suspected of helping to steal baby formula from Wal-Mart. Local authorities had been tracking Jamal's activities before 9/11 without luck, but that changed after the investigation was truned over to a local/federal joint task force:

Phoenix police, in a written report later provided to Mr. Jammal as part of his prosecution, said they had "confirmed" that he "had significant connections to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda." At some point after that -- prosecutors won't say precisely when -- authorities got a warrant to tap Mr. Jammal's phone and bug his office.

It wasn't an ordinary warrant, the sort routinely authorized by judges in response to applications from police and prosecutors who want to eavesdrop to catch crooks. It was a national-security warrant authorized by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, giving authorities much more leeway, and giving wiretap targets fewer rights.

Mr. Jammal, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was never charged with any offense related to terrorism. Yet evidence collected in the FISA eavesdropping played a role in his conviction last April on federal charges focused on fencing stolen baby formula, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

His case sits on the fine line between the government's responsibility to go all-out to prevent terrorism and its duty to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens accused of crimes. It's a line that has blurred considerably since 9/11 and the 2001 passage of the Patriot Act. It allows authorities to use FISA wiretaps authorized by special courts not only to gather foreign intelligence but to investigate domestic crimes.

Mr. Jammal is appealing, contending that FISA evidence used against him was illegally obtained and crippled his defense. He says the charges against him were trumped up by a government determined to show progress in the war against terror. "It's baby formula of mass destruction here," he said at one pretrial hearing.

With an ordinary warrant for electronic surveillance, authorities must show probable cause that the target committed a crime and limit eavesdropping to conversations about crimes. They must also eventually notify those who were bugged (even if they aren't accused of a crime) and must give defendants complete access to the warrant application, court orders and any actual recordings.

To get a FISA warrant, in contrast, authorities need to persuade a federal judge that there is probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power such as a terrorist organization. For U.S. citizens, prosecutors also must show that some crime might be involved. Armed with such a warrant, authorities can eavesdrop on any conversation, regardless of whether it involves a crime. They can withhold from defendants the basis for issuing the warrant, hindering legal challenges to the FISA evidence. And they can restrict defendants' access to the classified transcripts and tapes, which makes it harder for the defense to parry the government's charges or mount its own case....

Even with warrants, critics fear defendants' rights to a fair trial will be eroded, as authorities use intelligence-gathering techniques to pursue criminal cases. "If evidence is procured by methods that wouldn't stand up to the Fourth Amendment, the courts are going to have to stop it," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, top Democrat on the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution. Cases like Mr. Jammal's "should be challenged in court," he said. "That kind of thing shouldn't happen." [...]

Prior to passage of the Patriot Act, court interpretations required that the "primary" purpose of a FISA warrant had to be gathering foreign intelligence. The Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, broadened the rules so that intelligence gathering need only be a "significant" purpose of FISA wiretapping. Evidence obtained under FISA warrants has been used in a handful of cases involving charges not directly related to terrorism, including at least one immigration proceeding.

Mr. Jammal's case shows how much the legal environment changes when FISA wiretaps enter the picture in criminal cases. His first two court-appointed lawyers stepped down in part because the secret tapes required them to get security clearance. Even with such clearance, however, they wouldn't be able to discuss the tapes with their client. His third lawyer, who did get clearance, was able to review only translated summaries, not transcripts, of some intercepted conversations. At trial, the government played the jury a recording made under the FISA warrant that proved damaging to Mr. Jammal: a rambling 14-minute diatribe in which he sometimes rails against the U.S. government in Arabic, and talks about fleeing to Lebanon if officials came after him for unpaid taxes.

So, in a manner similar to how prosecutors started using the RICO law to go after almost anyone except people involved in organized crime, they're now using FISA as a method to trawl for evidence against people suspected of 'normal' crimes that would not be obtainable through normal channels.

What I find particularly disturbing about this story its context within the larger controversy over the use of FISA warrants by Dubya's administration. In terror cases, the prez has shown no patience for following even the highly relaxed standards of probable cause required for issuance of a FISA warrant. That impatience has obviously spilled over into the more day-to-day prosecutions by the Justice Department, and put average US residents in danger of being the target of government 'fishing expeditions' armed with FISA warrants.

That's not something that should be tolerated in what's supposed to be a free country.

Note: This article is behind the WSJ's pay firewall, but you can most likely access it via your library's newspaper database. We used ProQuest, where a search on 'FISA' brought the McKinnon article up at the top of the list.

Via USA Watch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:46 PM | Get permalink