Magpie

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sorry for the slow posting.

A friend is visiting from Winnipeg, so my time is being spent showing her the sights around Portland and watching in amazement as she buys more stuff faster than I would have thought humanly possible.

You know what to do until I get back.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 PM | Get permalink

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

No, this is not a joke.

I couldn't possibly have made up something this creepy.

Ad for 'Armor of God' pajamas

The full details are here.

This country really scares me sometimes.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:37 AM | Get permalink

The next battle in Lebanon.

Lebanon is a country that has long been divided along religious, ethnic, and political lines to the point that many of these divisions are recognized in the way the country's constitution allocates political power. These divisions have often led violence — the most recent major example being the bloody and destructive civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990. Many now fear that the major fallout from the inconclusive Israel-Hezbollah war is likely to be an another bitter struggle for political power.

In Lebanon's latest war-ravaged landscape, age-old tensions that were never properly addressed are more raw and public than ever. Many Christians grumble aloud that Israel should have "finished the job." Sunni Muslims are caught between satisfaction at seeing Israel taken down a notch and the terror of being sidelined by Hezbollah, an Iranian-bankrolled Shiite Muslim force. Shiites, who form the backbone of Hezbollah's support base, were the conflict's biggest victims, losing relatives, homes and jobs.

Many Lebanese from all backgrounds fear that Hezbollah, now the most powerful political and military force in the country, will inch back to its early goal of establishing Islamic rule over Lebanon.

Misbah Ahdab, a Sunni legislator from the ruling parliamentary bloc, said Hezbollah was creating "a parallel system" instead of making overtures to back the central government. Fear of angering Hezbollah is keeping many politicians silent, he said, even though they fret privately over the future of a country led by a militant Islamist group.

"It's totally ridiculous to begin rebuilding again when it's going to be destroyed in two years," he said. "And people are talking about unity."

Already, the militant Shiites of Hezbollah effectively rule the country: They alone have the power to keep the Lebanese end of the cease-fire, endless piles of dollars for reconstruction and the vast support of regional Arabs, who were so thrilled to see Israel bloodied that they overlooked non-Arab Iran's financing of their triumph.

It's hard for me to see any way that Hezbollah won't come out of such a struggle in a stronger position than it's in now. I can't imagine that this outcome is what Israel's war planners had in mind when they decided that Hezbollah would be an easy nut to crack.

Hannah Allam and Leila Fadel's full article on Lebanon's current political sitution is well worth your time.

Via McClatchy Washington Bureau.

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

Monday, August 21, 2006

Flying while Arab.

If you're flying JetBlue, you might want to think twice about wearing that t-shirt with an Arabic message on it. They aren't going to let you board the plane unless you take it off. And JetBlue doesn't care what the shirt says.

How much do you want to be that the airline doesn't harass passengers whose t-shirt has a message in, say, Japanese?

Via In the Middle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:03 PM | Get permalink

Taking the US back to the ~~19th~~ 16th century.

Mean-spirited critics of Dubya's administration (such as this magpie) just love to accuse the prez and his minions of trying to take the country back to the late 19th century, when the US goverment was run by and for big corporations. (And if you think the corporations are in charge now, you really need to read up on your US history.)

Economist Paul Krugman, however, thinks the evidence shows that Dubya wants to go back much further than the 19th century. Given his administration's penchant for setting up private fiefs beyond the reach of the courts (think Coaliton Provisional Authority and Iraq), mercenaries (think Blackwater and Iraq), and tax farmers (think IRS hiring collection agencies to collect taxes), Krugman thinks that Dubya wants to go back to the governing style of 16th century monarchies.

In the bad old days, government was a haphazard affair. There was no bureaucracy to collect taxes, so the king subcontracted the job to private "tax farmers," who often engaged in extortion. There was no regular army, so the king hired mercenaries, who tended to wander off and pillage the nearest village. There was no regular system of administration, so the king assigned the task to favored courtiers, who tended to be corrupt, incompetent or both.

Modern governments solved these problems by creating a professional revenue department to collect taxes, a professional officer corps to enforce military discipline, and a professional civil service. But President Bush apparently doesn't like these innovations, preferring to govern as if he were King Louis XII.

So the tax farmers are coming back, and the mercenaries already have. There are about 20,000 armed "security contractors" in Iraq, and they have been assigned critical tasks, from guarding top officials to training the Iraqi Army....

[W]hy does the Bush administration want to run a modern superpower as if it were a 16th-century monarchy? Maybe people who've spent their political careers denouncing government as the root of all evil can't grasp the idea of governing well. Or maybe it's cynical politics: privatization provides both an opportunity to evade accountability and a vast source of patronage.

But the price is enormous. This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work. No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering.

If you've paid your dues to NY Times Select, you can read Krugman's whole column here. If you haven't, may I suggest a visit here?

Thanks to the Peking Duck.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:31 PM | Get permalink

Driving while Arab.

Remember those three young Arab-American men who were arrested in rural Michigan for allegedly plotting to blow up the Mackinac Bridge? The ones whose apparent crime was really that they had the temerity to be driving through rural Michigan the day after the 'exploding sports drink' terror plot was revealed?

Despite being cleared by local authorities and the FBI, the three men are still being held by the feds, faced with an extremely dubious charge that probably has more to do with the egg on the Justice Department's face than with any terrorist threat.

Attorney Nabih Ayad drove two hours north from the Arab-American enclave of Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, to tiny Caro, Mich., last Wednesday in hopes of springing three of his clients from the Tuscola County jail.

The clients, three young Palestinian-Americans from Texas, had been arrested while driving their van from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart buying cheap cellphones. The county prosecutor had filed state terrorism charges against the trio, believing they were jihadis plotting to blow up the Mackinac Bridge. Though Ayad knew that the terrorism case was already collapsing, and expected his clients would soon be in the clear, he still wanted to get them out of jail on bond in the interim.

When Ayad reached Caro, however, his clients weren't there. Someone at the courthouse told him the men had been taken to Bay City by U.S. marshals. The state case had been dropped, but the men were facing new federal charges. Except they were no longer accused of being terrorists. They were charged with trafficking in cellphones -- a common practice of buying in bulk and reselling that Ayad insists isn't even illegal. "These are B.S. charges," he fumed via his own cellphone on Wednesday as he drove from Caro to Bay City in search of his clients. "We are going to fight them all the way."

Ayad said prosecutors are trying to save face by charging the men with anything they can, now that initial reports of a plot against the bridge have proved dubious. "To us, it's a way of doing damage control," Ayad said. "They want to come up with anything to get themselves out of this hole they are in."

Salon has the rest of the story here. [Paid sub or ad view req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:07 AM | Get permalink

If there's anything worse ...

... than being awakened by Dubya whining and threatening on the radio, I can't think of it right now.

The very first thing I heard when my radio clicked on at 7 am was an NPR announcer saying that the prez was going to be speaking momentarily. Being a smart magpie, even when half awake, I immediately turned the radio off and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, I'm not a really smart magpie, and I forgot that the radio would be turning itself back on at 7:30. Which it did.

Dubya had finished his little speech by then and was taking questions from the press. Pretty much every answer involved a reminder of the danger that terrorists pose, and how the prez will protect the country by staying the course in Iraq, unlike the Democrats who don't understand what's going on and who are willing to cut and run. And when Dubya wasn't saying talking about Iraq, he was reminding us about how tax cuts have built a strong economy, and how the Democrats just want to raise everyone's taxes. Pretty much a standard performance from Karl Rove's playbook, although the prez was rather petulant even by his own whiny standards

But what really sticks in my mind was how Dubya answered a question about Iraq by quoting a general who he didn't name. According to that general, said the prez, if the US pulled out of Iraq, the terrorists would be showing up in the US.

Better start checking under your beds to make sure Osama isn't lurking under there.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:55 AM | Get permalink