Magpie

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Put on that aluminum sombrero again.

Because a fire in a building housing an Army counterintelligence group at Fort Meade, Maryland is just a little suspicious.

Lambert at Corrente pulls on his own tinfoil hat firmly with both hands and suggests what might have been going up in flames. And, importantly, why the fire was needed.

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

Quick! Close the border!

Terrorists are getting ready to flood across the Mexican border, hiding behind questionable documents they got from that hotbed of terroirism: Venezuela.

No, don't laugh. It's true.

Venezuela president Hugo Chavez

Evil Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez
scopes out America's vulnerable southern border.

I mean, a new report from the House Committee on Homeland Security says it could be happening even as I write this. You can't ask for a more authoritative source than that, right? And the GOP-controlled committee is being backed up by no less than Oliver North. And he wouldn't tell a lie just for political reasons, would he?

I'd write more about this threat to the Republic, but I have to see if any terrorists are hiding under my bed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:18 AM | Get permalink

Is the pot of water we're sitting in about to start boiling?

I'd say that having to get a travel permit to leave the US would definitely take the temperature several degrees.

The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proposed that airlines cruise lines, and operators of all other ships and planes -- including charter flights, air taxis, fishing vessels, etc. -- be required to get individual permission ("clearance") from the DHS for each passenger on all flights or ocean voyages to, from, or via the USA. Unless the answer is "Yes" -- if the answer is "no" or "maybe", or if the DHS doesn't answer at all -- the airline wouldn't be allowed to give you a boarding pass, or let you or your luggage on the plane.

Edward Hasbrouck has the details here.

As Cernig points out, the really disturbing thing about the plan is that the only reason it hasn't already gone into effect is because the military thinks it will cramp their style and the airlines think it is too expensive. Not one word from anyone 'important' about how restricting free travel violates human rights.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:29 AM | Get permalink

Did you hear about the suicide bomber in Davenport, Iowa?

The one who tried to do his deed on the recent fifth anniversary of 9/11?

Neither did I.

Apparently most of the US press believes that a suicide attack isn't terrorism if you're white, right-wing, and attacking a women's health clinic.

At Orcinus, David Neiwert goes much deeper into the story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:16 AM | Get permalink

Voting by mail.

It's just not the same as casting a ballot in person, is it?

Via I See Invisible People.

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

Today's blue light special.

It appears that Dubya's 'war on terror' has been a bit slow in getting to the grocery store shelves of Costa Rica.

Terror-brand products on Costa Rican grocery shelf

Which shelf is Fear on, I wonder?
[Photo: skot9000]

By the way, the products in question are cleaning supplies, not explosives. Or fruit drinks.

You can view a larger, uncropped version of the photo here.

Via Boing Boing.

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

Water, water, everywhere ...

... except in Kenya's Ngiro River, which is being drained by the demands of agribusiness for the purpose of growing flowers for the European market.

According to the head of the water authority, the 12 largest flower firms which farm hundreds of hectares of flowers, fruit and vegetables in the region ... may be taking as much as 25% of water normally available to more than 100,000 small farmers.

"The big flower farms should be taking water only [during] the floods, but they are taking it from high up the mountains whenever they need it. They are all stealing water. We follow the river at night and see them do it," said Severino Maitima, head of the recently set up, government-appointed Ewaso [river] Ngiro water authority, which manages all the water in the region.

"They steal it between 10pm and 2am. We do not know exactly how much they are taking, but it is a lot of water. They take it to replenish their stores when they think we sleep," he said.

Locals and campaigners say the river now peters out 60 miles short of where it used to, and the overuse of water was contributing directly to conflict between small-scale farmers. The big companies were accused of directly risking the lives of nomadic pastoralists.

"The flower companies are exporting our water. A flower is 90% water. We are one of the driest countries in the world and we are exporting water to one of the wettest. The minute that the flower firms came they met resistance. It was very acrimonious," said Mr Maitima. "They are in direct competition with the peasant farmers for water and the biggest companies pay the same as the smallest peasant for water."

Yesterday no supermarket would comment on the amount of water being used to grow its flowers from Kenya, but the largest horticulture company, British-owned Homegrown, which cultivates more than 300 hectares of flowers in the region and has built five major reservoirs and diverted a river on the slopes of Mount Kenya, accused other companies of taking water illegally.

Via UK Guardian.

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

Friday, October 20, 2006

Bringing an issue down to earth.

This ad that Michael J. Fox did for Democrat Claire McCaskill's campaign to be one of Missouri's US senators certainly does that for stem cell research.

Fox's tremors are due to Parkinson's disease, one of the many ailments that might be cured by stem cell research. Hopefully his ad will help turn what is a currently close race in Missouri into a rout of GOP senator Jim Talent.

Via Talking Points Memo.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:21 PM | Get permalink

So what if the Democrats do win in November?

Things are going to get very interesting, said journalist Sidney Blumenthal in an interview with LA City Beat:

We're headed into a potential constitutional crisis if the Democrats get one or both houses of Congress. They will certainly have subpoena power and I think the Bush administration is likely to resist the production of documents.

The idea in my book is that Bush has created a radical presidency that is unaccountable. And if a check-and-balance is introduced for the first time to Bush, instead of one-party rule, we're going to have another crisis. The conflict will increase, not diminish. As Bette Davis said, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:15 AM | Get permalink

Now I know.

Some months ago, I heard a riveting song on the radio, about what things are like in Dubya's US. Unfortunately, I didn't hear who the artist was and, as often happens, I never got around to finding out more about the song.

Cover of James McMurty's 'Childish Things' CD

Cover of James McMurty's 'Childish Things' CD

This morning, courtesy of Jonathan Weiler at The Gadflyer, I've finally found out that what I heard that day was 'We Can't Make It Here' by James McMurtry, off his 2005 CD Childish Things. Rather than describe the song, I'll just let you read the lyrics yourself:

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh*t don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the damn little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh*t, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore

Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry

I think those lyrics explain why the GOP looks to lose next month's elections better than any poll results I've seen.

You can listen to 'We Can't Make It Here' on McMurtry's website, here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:39 AM | Get permalink

No comment.

The general speaks:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Via Agence France Presse.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:26 AM | Get permalink

Vote Republican or Osama's gonna get ya.

That's the tack the Republican National Committee is taking with a new ad that will start appearing on US television over the next few days. Given the beating that the party's candidates are taking in opinion polls and the increasing likelihood of a Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress, it's not surprising that the GOP is trying to mobilize its base and pull in undecided voters by playing the fear card.

The new ad, called 'The Stakes, features images of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and highlights threatening statements that the two men have made over the past eight years. In case that was too subtle, all of this occurs over the sound of ticking — as in the timer on a dirty bomb. The ad ends with an overhead shot of nuclear explosion, that fades into images of terrorists on the march, and finally the message: These Are The Stakes. Vote Nov. 7.

Subtle, huh?

I encourage you to use the link below and watch the ad yourself — especially since you'll be doing it on the GOP's dime.

If you decide not to watch the ad, here's the description of the ad from the RNC's website:

"What is yet to come will be even greater" -- Osama Bin Laden, Al Jazeera, Dec. 21, 2001

"With God's permission we call on everyone who believes in God...to comply with His will to kill the Americans." — Osama Bin Laden (The World Islamic Front, Fatwa, Feb. 23, 1998)

[Text Fades: "kill the Americans"]

"They will not come to their senses unless the attacks fall on their heads and...until the battle has moved inside America." — Osama Bin Laden (Interview, Al-Jazeera, Oct. 21, 2001)

[Text Fades: "inside America."]

"We sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated. And we purchased some suitcase bombs." — Ayman Al-Zawahiri ("Al Qaeda: We Bought Nuke Cases," (New York) Daily News, March, 22, 2004)

[Text Fades: "suitcase bombs."]

"Our message is clear -- what you saw in New York and Washington and what you are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq, all these are nothing compared to what you will see next." -- Ayman Al-Zawahiri ("Al Qaeda Threatens More UK, U.S. Attacks," www.CNN.com, Aug. 4, 2005)

[Text Fades: "nothing compared to what you will see next."]

"What is yet to come will be even greater."

These Are The Stakes. Vote Nov. 7
www.GOP.com."

Obviously this ad has been in the works for awhile. Which makes me even more suspicious about the timing of the 'dirty bombs at the stadiums' terror attack hoax than I was yesterday when the story broke.

Via Reuters and Raw Story.

More: Over at NewsHog, Cernig points out how the 'suitcase bomb' quote in the GOP ad is an old and discredited fairy tale.

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

Thursday, October 19, 2006

A cell phone is kinda like a fart.

Really.

Via Inside Higher Ed.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:18 PM | Get permalink

Carnival of Feminists 25!

It's the Carnival's first birthday! And to mark the occasion, it's returned to Philobiblon, where founding mother Natalie Bennett hosted the first edition twelve months ago. You can read it here.

If you're unfamiliar with the Carnival of Feminists, it's a twice-monthly compendium of the best fenminist posts from around the web. As usual, the anniversary edition is chock-full of feminist bloggy goodness. As a teaser, here are a few of the links to posts on women in history.

Sappho on The Sappho Manifesto, celebrates her Revolutionary of the Week, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Jennings, who played a big part in getting public transport in New York racially desegregated.

I'm going to exercise here my "host's right" to a link, to point you to the autobiography of Ann Pettitt, who might be called "the woman who started the Greenham Common protest". Inspirational!

Also on more recent history, Louisefeminista on Stroppyblog celebrates Debbie Harry: uber cool and still going strong..., while on A Distant Soil, the death of cartoonist Hilda Terry is mourned, and her life celebrated.

To see the rest of the 25th Carnival, you'll need to go over here.

The 26th Carnival is coming up on Wednesday, 1 November, and it will be hosted by A Blog Without A Bicycle. It's a special issue on the theme Um, What is a Feminist Blog Anyway?. Suggestions for post topics are here. To nominate a post for the Carnival, — it's definitely okay to nominate one of your own — send your suggestions to ablogwithoutabicycle AT gmail DOT com or use the online submission form at the Blog Carnival home page. Be sure to include a one-sentence description (15-word maximum) of the blog on which the article appears and the blogger(s) who contribute to the blog and contact information for the blogger(s).

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

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:17 AM | Get permalink

Charles Darwin is going online!

Half of him is already there; the rest will follow by 2009. 'Charles Darwin has a posse' graphic

No, there's not some weird digitalization of Darwin's mortal remains going on, as interesting as that might be to some as we get closer to Halloween. Instead, I'm talking about a Cambridge University project to make Darwin's complete works available online and searchable. For free. So far, 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications have been digitized.

The resource is aimed at serious scholars, but can be used by anyone with an interest in Darwin and his theory on the evolution of life.

"The idea is to make these important works as accessible as possible; some people can only get at Darwin that way," said Dr John van Wyhe, the project's director.

Dr van Wyhe has spent the past four years searching the globe for copies of Darwin's own materials, and works written about the naturalist and his breakthrough ideas on natural selection.

The historian said he was inspired to build the library at darwin-online.org.uk when his own efforts to study Darwin while at university in Asia were frustrated.

"I wrote to lots of people all over the world to get hold of the texts for the project and I got a really positive reaction because they all liked the idea of there being one big collection," he told BBC News.

Darwin Online features many newly transcribed or never-before-published manuscripts written by the great man.

These include a remarkable field notebook from his famous Beagle voyage to the Galapagos Islands, where detailed observations of the wildlife would later forge his scientific arguments.

The real artefact was stolen in the 1980s and is still missing, but the text has been transcribed from a microfilm copy made two decades earlier.

"It is astonishing to see the notebook that Darwin had in his pocket as he walked around the Galapagos — the scribbled notes that he took as he clambered over the lava," said Randal Keynes, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

You can make your own visit to Darwin Online if you go here.

Via BBC News.

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

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Riverbend is back!

And she has a post about the recent study on civilian deaths in Iraq [PDF file] that has been so hotly attacked by Dubya's administration and right-wing US supporters of the Iraq war.

I'll let you go over to Baghdad Burning to read Riverbend's thoughts on the study yourself. I especially call your attention to the final paragraph of the post. Think on it hard.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:24 PM | Get permalink

How to ruin the US Congress in five easy steps.

Rolling Stone's 'Worst Congress Ever' cover

That's the subject of an excellent article by Matt Tabibi in the new issue of Rolling Stone. (It continues to amaze me that Rolling Stone has recently run some of the best political journalism in the US — despite the fact that their music and cultural coverage is the usual crap.)

Since I know you're wondering, the five steps are:

1. Rule by cabal
2. Work as little as possible — and screw up what little you do
3. Let the president do whatever he wants
4. Spend, spend, spend
5. Line your own pockets

Tabibi describes how the Republicans have implemented that five-step program in detail — often disgusting detail. Here's a taste to whet your appetite for reading the whole thing:

It is no big scoop that the majority party in Congress has always found ways of giving the shaft to the minority. But there is a marked difference in the size and the length of the shaft the Republicans have given the Democrats in the past six years. There has been a systematic effort not only to deny the Democrats any kind of power-sharing role in creating or refining legislation but to humiliate them publicly, show them up, pee in their faces. Washington was once a chummy fraternity in which members of both parties golfed together, played in the same pickup basketball games, probably even shared the same mistresses. Now it is a one-party town -- and congressional business is conducted accordingly, as though the half of the country that the Democrats represent simply does not exist.

American government was not designed for one-party rule but for rule by consensus -- so this current batch of Republicans has found a way to work around that product design. They have scuttled both the spirit and the letter of congressional procedure, turning the lawmaking process into a backroom deal, with power concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs behind the scenes. This reduces the legislature to a Belarus-style rubber stamp, where the opposition is just there for show, human pieces of stagecraft -- a fact the Republicans don't even bother to conceal.

A sidebar to the article lists the 10 worst members of Congress, nine of whom are Republicans. (A big see-gar to anyone who can guess the Democrat who made the list. No peeking!)

The article and sidebar are must-reads. Go to it!

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:25 PM | Get permalink

Now we know why Dubya thinks the GOP will win the November election.

Republicans plan to steal yet another election by doing massive purges of voter registration lists, using the flimsiest of pretenses to remove names of people who live in areas that are likely to vote Democratic.

There's good evidence that this is exactly what's being done in Ohio by Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. He's the same guy who oversaw the massive vote-rigging operation that delievered the state to Dubya in 2004.

The truly sordid details are here.

Via Daily Kos.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:35 PM | Get permalink

Pop quiz!

This time, it's not my quiz. Instead, I'm sending you over to NewsHog for Kat's Misogyny Pop Quiz.

Lots to think about there.

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

Cool music from the Isle of Man.

With all the political posting I've been doing lately, it's been quite awhile since I've had anything to say about traditional music, Irish or otherwise. That's going to change (for the moment at least) because I want to share some great music I heard for the first time earlier today.

The music comes from sisters Kirsty and Katie Lawrence, who hail from the Isle of Man — a Celtic land in the Irish Sea that's not part of the UK no matter what most people think. Man has its own indigenous tunes and musical style, but I can't say that I'd heard any Manx music before listening to some tracks from the Lawrences' self-released CD Tree Baatyn Beggey (or, in English, Three Little Boats).

Here's what Katie writes about the sisters' music and CD:

My main instruments are fiddle and keyboard/piano and Kirsty's instruments are 'cello and tin whistle. We've had a few small gigs in the past, but we can now lay claim to having played on the same stage as Snow Patrol and Alice Cooper. Fortunately, not at the same time (I didn't fancy the guillotine anyway).

The best way to describe our music is to say that it is traditional Manx music (and some Irish/Scottish), some of which has been jazzed up a little, particularly since I started playing keyboard more and also because Kirsty started playing 'cello more. We went through a Scandinavian stage, but at the moment, most of the music we play is Manx, Irish or Scottish and we also play a few of my tunes. This is reflected on the CD. We're not talking age old folk music, it's mainly instrumental with the odd song here and there. Kirsty does the singing...

There's a trio of tracks from the CD up on the Lawrence sisters' MySpace page here, and the sisters hit the mark two times out of three.

The weak track is 'Rosie and Andy's Mad Tune': While it's pleasant enough, it sounds too much like Eliza Carthy singing on a Kate Rusby out-take for my taste. But your mileage, as they say, might vary.

The other two tracks, though, just rock. Kirsty's cello playing on the slow Manx tune 'Graih Foalsey' is exquisite, and the sisters tear through a set of Irish tunes (Master Crowley's/Lough Mountain/Bunker Hill) with a drive and authority I'd sure love to have in my own playing. Katie's fiddling is particularly tasty.

Currently, the CD is available only by contacting the sisters via their MySpace page or emailing them at yessir_1980 AT hotmail.com. I know that when I get a job and have money to spend on music, I'm certainly gettign a copy of the Lawrences' CD for myself.

More: Before I forget, I discovered that Manx Radio has a very nice weekly folk program, which you can listen to here [WindowsMedia].

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

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Regarding Riverbend.

Since our earlier post wondering about the safety and whereabouts of Baghdad blogger Riverbend, we have this not so encouraging word from the website for The Feminist Press, the US publisher of Riverbend's book, Baghdad Burning.

To all of Riverbend's fans, thank you for your concern about her welfare. The Feminist Press has not heard from her since her last posting on August 5th, but we expect that she is safe somewhere with her family and that she will write when she can. If we hear from her before she posts again, we will put a notice of it here. In the meantime, our thoughts are with her.

And ours as well.

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

Ahem.

A proclamation from the prez.

Cough, cough.

Via TAPPED.

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

Ooooooh, shiny!

Back in May, I posted a link to what I called coolest picture of Saturn ever.

Well, I lied. This is the coolest picture of Saturn ever!

Cassini image of Saturn's ring system

Saturn's ring system in color-exaggerated view.
[Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute ]

The photo was taken in mid-September by the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. It shows the planet and ring system as they appear from a point inside Saturn's shadow.

This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The full mosaic consists of three rows of nine wide-angle camera footprints; only a portion of the full mosaic is shown here. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color.

The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that compose Saturn's faint rings.

Ring structures containing these tiny particles brighten substantially at high phase angles: i.e., viewing angles where the sun is almost directly behind the objects being imaged.

During this period of observation Cassini detected two new faint rings: one coincident with the shared orbit of the moons Janus and Epimetheus, and another coincident with Pallene's orbit....

The narrowly confined G ring is easily seen here, outside the bright main rings. Encircling the entire system is the much more extended E ring. The icy plumes of Enceladus, whose eruptions supply the E ring particles, betray the moon's position in the E ring's left-side edge.

Interior to the G ring and above the brighter main rings is the pale dot of Earth. Cassini views its point of origin from over a billion kilometers (and close to a billion miles) away in the icy depths of the outer solar system....

You can see a much larger version of the image if you go here.

Via NASA/JPL Cassini Huygens Mission.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:47 PM | Get permalink

Guns, misogyny, and violence against women.

Yesterday, I passed out at the keyboard before I got a chance to link to this op-ed by NY Times columnist Bob Herbert — an omission I want to remedy today. Herbert's op-ed points out how most people are missing the obvious point about the killings at the Amish school at Nickel Mines and in numerous other US schools: The victims are almost always girls. Rather than paraphrase Herbert's argument here, I'll just suggest that you go read the column and then let him and the NY Times know how much you appreciated the fact that his words got into print.

Hot on the heels of the Herbert column comes this excerpt from a new book by Joan Burbick, Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy. In the excerpt, Burbick points to the link between the macho culture of gun ownership and domestic violence. Again, I won't excerpt — go read the whole thing.

Via Majority Report Radio and AlterNet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:59 AM | Get permalink

Making it legal.

In case you hadn't noticed, the US officially slid one step closer to authoritariansim earlier today as Dubya signed the Military Commission Act of 2006. That law makes it legal to:

Hold prisoners inccommunicado in secret prisons.
Use extreme methods — that's 'torture' to the rest of us — to obtain information from prisoners and to use the evidence in military trials.
Lets the prez or anyone he designates label anyone — including US citizens — as an 'enemy combatant.'
Bars terror suspects from appealing their imprisonment in US courts. (In other words, kiss habeas corpus goodbye.)

If you still haven't grasped the impact of this new law, Helen Thomas' question to Dubya's press flack Tony Snow at yesterday's White House press briefing should make things crystal clear:

Q I wanted to talk about the bill the President will sign tomorrow.

MR. SNOW: Yes.

Q It makes him a final arbiter on torture.

MR. SNOW: Right.

Have a nice day. Remember not to do anything to piss off the prez.

More: Don't think they can lock you up and throw away the key? Check out the story of Ali Partovi, who's been sitting in prison since he was picked up in the big post-9/11 sweeps in 2001.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:14 AM | Get permalink

You know how if you keep old clothes long enough ...

... they eventually come back into style?

I never really thought that applied to magazine covers, too.

Cover of April 1971 issue of Mad magazine

April 1971 issue of Mad magazine.

You can see a larger version of the cover on this page (scroll down). And there are a ton of old comic book covers that you can peruse if you go here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:49 AM | Get permalink

Put on those tinfoil hats, kids!

Here's a lovely bit of paranoid speculation involving Dubya, the purchase of a 98,842 acre farm in Paraguay, a visit to the same country by Dubya's daughter Jenna, and the arrival there last year of 500 US troops.

Have fun!

From Bring It On!, via On Topic with Doug Krile.

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

Monday, October 16, 2006

Oh, did I need the laugh.

This made my day.

Via The Sideshow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:01 PM | Get permalink

Can we say 'November Surprise'?

From an AP report, datelined Baghdad:

A verdict against Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants charged with crimes against humanity in connection with an anti-Shiite crackdown in the 1980s will be announced Nov. 5, chief investigating judge Raid Juhi said Monday. Sentences for those found guilty will be issued the same day, he said.

November 5th? Isn't that just two days before the congressional elections that the GOP is increasingly afraid it's going to lose?

I wonder which strings in the 'independent' Iraqi government had to be pulled to get that date? The Saddam verdict won't be as good as yanking Osama bin Laden out of his cave, but it'll certainly get the attention of the GOP's right-wing base.

Via International Herald Tribune.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:41 PM | Get permalink

It's the oil, stupid.

Like there was any doubt about why Dubya embarked on his military adventure in Iraq.

From the first part of Joshua Holland's two-part article on Iraq's oil:

Satirical 'Got Oil?' poster of Bush with crude oil mustache

Satirical 'Got Oil?' poster of Bush with crude oil mustache

[The] real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast Western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to number one in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the Western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the North, near Kirkuk, and in the South near Basra. The Nation's Aram Roston predicts Iraq's Western desert will yield "untold riches."

Iraq also may have large natural gas deposits that so far remain virtually unexplored.

But even "untold riches" don't tell the whole story. Depending on how Iraq's petroleum law shakes out, the country's enormous reserves could break the back of OPEC, a wet dream in Western capitals for three decades. James Paul predicted that "even before Iraq had reached its full production potential of 8 million barrels or more per day, the companies would gain huge leverage over the international oil system. OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system." Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the U.S., could even pull out of the cartel entirely.

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron-Texaco, and the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said. [Emphais mine]

Read the rest of the article here.

Via AlterNet.

['Got Oil?' graphic by Nenad Cizl and Toni Tomasek]

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

Serendipity.

I love it when I go to a blog for one thing and come away with another. My current example is the wonderful 2001 performance by the Finnish group Varttina (see video below), which I found when trawling for incisive political commentary from a feminist perspective.

If you're not familiar with Varttina's music, you can find more info about the group here and here.

And if you're not already reading Echidne of the Snakes (where I found the link to the video), you really ought to start.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:52 AM | Get permalink

Where is Riverbend?

I just looked over at Baghdad Burning for the umpteenth time and I saw that Riverbend's most recent post is still the one of August 5th. Given what's been happening in Baghdad and Iraq in general, I'm worried that something bad could have happened to her or her family.

Has anyone out there heard any news?

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

A one-letter election.

According to Paul Krugman, the only thing that matters in the upcoming US congressional elections is the letter after each candidate's name. If you vote for anyone except a Democrat, he argues in his latest NY Times column, you may be letting Dubya's power run unchecked for another two years.

There are two reasons why party control is everything in this election.

The first, lesser reason is the demonstrated ability of Republican Congressional leaders to keep their members in line, even those members who cultivate a reputation as moderates or mavericks. G.O.P. politicians sometimes make a show of independence, as Senator John McCain did in seeming to stand up to President Bush on torture. But in the end, they always give the White House what it wants: after getting a lot of good press for his principled stand, Mr. McCain signed on to a torture bill that in effect gave Mr. Bush a completely free hand.

And if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it's by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.

Yet that's the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power.

Even if the Democrats take both houses, they won't be able to accomplish much in the way of new legislation. They won't have the votes to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate, let alone to override presidential vetoes....

But while the Democrats won't gain the ability to pass laws, if they win they will gain the ability to carry out investigations, and the legal right to compel testimony.

The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

If the Democrats take control, that will change — and voters should think very hard about whether they want that change. Those who think it's a good idea to investigate, say, allegations of cronyism and corruption in Iraq contracting should be aware that any vote cast for a Republican makes Congressional investigations less likely. Those who believe that the administration should be left alone to do its job should be aware that any vote for a Democrat makes investigations more likely.... [Emphasis mine]

If you want to read the whole column, you can go here if you're a NY Times subscriber or over here if (like this magpie) you're a freeloader.

Thanks to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:36 AM | Get permalink

The times they are a'changing?

It turns out that the one of the biggest changes that the Dubya's administration and the (since 1994) GOP controlled Congress has made in the country is to turn young people solidly toward the Democrats. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has compiled party identification data for people who turned age 20 under various presidencies, and the NY Times used that dat to come up with a very interesting chart. Since that chart is so huge, I've edited it to show just what's happened since Reagan was president.

Graphic showing party identification of voters of various ages, 1932–2006

Graphic showing party identification of voters of various ages, 1932–2006

[Source: Pew Center for the People and the Press survey
of 23,000 voters between Jan and Oct 2006; Graphic: Bill Marsh/NY Times]

If look at the full chart, you can see that the shift toward young people identifying as Democrats has not only accelerated since Bush I was in office, but that the shift toward the Democrats exceeds even the one that occurred during the Roosevelt and Truman years. While nothing is for certain, it's looking like the GOP may need to start preparing for a generation in the wilderness, much like the Democrats have been enduring since Ronald Reagan became president in 1980.

While I was over at the Pew Center website, I found a some other charts that have more direct bearing on this November's election. First, here are some charts showing the comparative enthusiasm of Democratic and Republican voters.

Graphic showing voter enthusiasm by party identification, 2006

Graphic showing voter enthusiasm by party identification, 2006

[Source/graphic: Pew Center for the People and the Press]

Unlike during the previous three midterm elections, the Pew survey shows that Democrats are following the current campaign more closely and are more enthusiastic about voting than are GOP voters. And, insofar as enthusiasm goes, the current figures are almost exactly the opposite of those for 1994, when the Republicans swept to control of Congress.

Even more worrisome for GOP strategists is the following chart, which shows that the Democrats have a huge lead among likely voters.

Graphic showing intentions of likely voters, 2006

Graphic showing intentions of likely voters, 2006

[Source/graphic: Pew Center for the People and the Press]

Again, the only really comparable year for the GOP is 1994. Even so, the current Democratic lead among likely voters is even larger than that the Republicans enjoyed the year they made their largest congressional gains in recent history.

So while its dangerous to assume that Democrats will necessarily win control of Congress next month, this new research from the Pew Center agrees with other polls showing that lots of GOP legislators should start looking for new jobs come next January.

But better for the country — and more worrying for the GOP — are the numbers showing that young voters have not been impressed by the way that Republicans have been running the country. As this group of voters gets older and increasingly likely to actually show up at the polls, long-term GOP political fortunes look to be heading right into the toilet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:40 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, October 15, 2006

No, I"m not wandering off on an unannounced hiatus.

I've just had other places I needed to be today. Expect posts late tonight or early Monday AM.

In the meantime, go visit some of those nice folks listed in the blogroll over there on the left.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:35 PM | Get permalink