Magpie

Saturday, May 10

No banned weapons found in Iraq.

The first paragraph of this Washington Post story sums it all up:

The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

The rest is just commentary.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:02 PM | Get permalink

Big shake-up in Iraq's occupation government.

The Washington Post reports that the US is recalling two top officials from Iraq as part of a major reorganization of what the Post calls " the troubled Pentagon operation to rebuild the country." Both Barbara Bodine, who runs the area including Baghad, and Jay Garner, the head of the US effort to rebuild the country, will be leaving the country soon. Dubya had already appointed Paul Bremer to be in overall charge of the US administration.

Bremer's appointment and Bodine's departure are occurring as concern grows in Washington and foreign capitals about the pace of the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. Several people involved in the process have said Garner and his staff -- as well as his superiors at the Pentagon -- did not properly plan for the task, from repairing damage suffered during the war to restarting government ministries and forming an Iraqi-led interim administration.

Iraqis have become increasingly frustrated with Garner's operation, saying that his team has failed to fulfill promises to hand out emergency payments, restore basic public services, address a wave of criminal activity and involve resident Iraqis in the planning for a new government. In Baghdad, many neighborhoods still lack electricity and running water, heaps of garbage line the streets and most shops remain closed because merchants are afraid of looters. [...]

The shortage of visible progress appears to have sparked consternation at the State Department, where officials argued that a civilian with diplomatic skills and foreign policy experience should coordinate reconstruction activities. The Defense Department chafed at that idea and insisted the program remain under military control. Ultimately, the State Department view won out at the White House on the grounds that having a civilian at the helm would inspire other nations to support the costly and complicated chore of transforming Iraq into a stable, democratic nation.

U.S. officials interviewed today said the U.S. presence in Iraq would likely become more assertive in coming weeks. The absence of strong leadership -- Iraqi or American -- is a subject of intense complaint among ordinary Iraqis, who are struggling with a lack of civil order after 35 years of authoritarian rule.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:43 PM | Get permalink

Dead or alive?

It's hard to tell, says Ted Rall as his his series of cartoons on central Asia continues at Eurasianet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:59 PM | Get permalink

Get Your War On.

There's a new one. Looks like it may be the last one, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:41 PM | Get permalink

Does Dubya read this stuff?

And if he hasn't read this in particular, Magpie is sure that his fundamentalist pals have probably pointed him to similar reading matter.

The European Union grows rapidly toward its full power that will produce a leader of unprecedented authority. Bible prophecy foretells that seven out of ten "kings" will back a world leader, who will forcibly rip power from the other three and give it to himself. The great question of our time, prophetically speaking, might be: Is the European Union the prophesied governmental body that will eventuate in becoming the ten kingdoms that will provide Antichrist with his beastly power?

No one can say for certain, although some seem to have no problem making such declarations, as if they personally helped God give the prophets the prophecies. All we will say here is that with all other prophetic indicators seemingly in full view upon the immediate geopolitical horizon, another profound ingredient has just been added to the fascinating mix. If the EU is not the body that will evolve into that most evil of history's empires, it must be that biblically prophesied empire's twin.

Via Pedantry.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:30 PM | Get permalink

US leans, Canada folds.

The Toronto Star reports that the Chretien government is backing off from its reported plan to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. The US had earlier made it clear that Canada would face consequences for any such change in its drug laws, including tighter controls on border crossings between the two countries.

The government will provide "alternative" civil penalties — fines, not jail — upon conviction and will leave enforcement and the collection of fines to the provinces.

Under the new scheme, a person convicted of possessing a small amount of pot would not register a criminal record, according to insiders.

The move, part of a renewed National Drug Strategy that could be tabled next week, will also include tougher measures to target illegal marijuana growing operations, including the doubling of penalties for drug trafficking, sources said.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:17 PM | Get permalink

Your (US) tax dollars at work: The continuing story.

Sometimes late news is just as important as fresh stories. Skippy spotted this story from last Sunday's Oakland Tribune about two high school students who were grilled by Secret Service agents for making threatening remarks about Dubya in class.

After the meeting with Secret Service agents, "I was traumatized," John said. "I was just sitting in class, just looking at the door to see if they were going to come get me or whatever."

"I was just trying to be funny," Billy said.

The way Whitney remembers it, John "said something like, 'We need a sniper to take care of Bush,' and Billy said, 'Yeah, I'd do it.'" [...]

The boys said the agents asked questions such as, "Are you a terrorist?", "What is your opinion of the president?" and "What would you say to the president if he was here?" Both said they would apologize.

John said the questions were intimidating, and claimed the agents told him he had no rights after what he had said about Bush.

The agents asked whether his family had guns at home, and whether he considered himself a good shot, John said. He answered yes to the first question and no to the second.

Billy said the agents also wanted to know if he had a picture of Bush with a target on it, and if he had ever been to Washington, D.C.

"I was crying at the moment," Billy recalled. He has not returned to Whitney's class since the incident.

While this crowgirl is well aware that it's a federal crime to threaten the president, she also thinks that there's a huge difference between remarks casually tossed off in jest — especially by teenagers — and real, credible threats to the president's life. Both the students' teacher (who called the Secret Service) and the Secret Service itself should have known better.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:52 PM | Get permalink

RIP.

Feminist magazine Nervy Girl is no more.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:29 PM | Get permalink

Just what the world needs: More nukes.

And the Republicans in Washington are happy to deliver — with the help of a few Senate Democrats.

The LA Times reports that the Senate Armed Forces Committee has approved a bill that ends an 11-year ban on researching and testing small nuclear bombs intended for battlefield use. The measure also provides money for creating a nuclear 'bunker buster.'

The Senate action is particularly ironic given Washington's current hand-wringing over North Korea's nuclear program. The full Senate is expected to vote on the measure sometime in June.

The administration's new tack has alarmed arms control advocates, who fear that the availability of smaller bombs that promise less secondary damage would encourage nations to use weapons that have been nearly unthinkable for half a century.

They worry that expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal would encourage more countries to build weapons and weaken already fragile international nonproliferation efforts.

"We're moving away from more than five decades of efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He questioned whether the United States needs additional nuclear weapons, especially given the growing capabilities of its conventional precision-guided munitions.

The administration's logic, Reed said, is that "we don't want to be constrained in any way about any weapon we want to field."

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:04 AM | Get permalink

Hard times.

In the first part of a two-part article in In These Time, economist Dean Baker warns that the economy is about to go from bad to worse — and that the die was cast well before Dubya took office.

In 2000, President Clinton could legitimately boast of the ?best economy in 30 years.? Unemployment was low, wages were rising at all income levels, and the poverty rate was headed downward at a rapid pace. But after President Bush took office in 2001, the economy fell into recession, shedding jobs and causing real wage growth to slow and eventually stop altogether.

A convenient story explains this sharp economic reversal. According to the script, Clinton eliminated the deficit through progressive tax increases and spending restraint. This deficit reduction lowered interest rates and spurred an investment boom, which was the basis for the extraordinary growth of the late ?90s. Then Bush came into office and quickly squandered the surplus with his tax cuts to the rich and military build-up. As a result, the deficit skyrocketed and the economy tanked.

It?s a good story, but the reality is quite different. The Clinton boom was built on three unsustainable bubbles. One of them, the stock bubble, has already burst. The other two bubbles?the dollar bubble and the housing bubble?are still with us. The dollar bubble is starting to deflate, and the housing bubble is perhaps just now reaching its peak. These bubbles created the basis for the 2001 recession and the economy?s continuing period of stagnation.

Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His weekly review of media reporting on economic issues appears at TomPaine.com. The most recent article is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:26 AM | Get permalink

Deadly loot.

Not only did US forces in Iraq fail to stop the looting of the National Museum, but they also failed to prevent the looting of Iraq's nuclear sites. The UK Independent describes in great detail the what civilians have taken from the Tuwaitha nuclear plant.

The labels were clearly visible when the caretaker of the al-Wrdiya village school pulled from a storeroom at the back of the building two looted plastic drums and a translucent off-white crate.

No, he said rather sheepishly, he hadn't shown them to the Iraqi and US experts who visited earlier in the day. One of the blue drums, both of which were stamped "Made in West Germany", carried on its side the words "Radio Aktiv". On the crate, resembling a large toolbox, underneath the designation "Hardigg Ind, USA", was the word again, this time in English, "Radioactive". Another, much smaller, white label warned in English "Observe Prescribed Separation Distances for Film and Personnel." None of the labels was in Arabic. [...]

Told about the drums, a senior IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] official said yesterday: "Our concerns about this site grow every day." The IAEA has been desperate to visit the site and has warned the US since 11 April to take action to stop looting. It is concerned about radiation and also fears the material could fall into the hands of those seeking to create makeshift nuclear weapons. But Washington has consistently refused to allow the IAEA inspectors in.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:38 AM | Get permalink

Friday, May 9

'Living in my headphones. The best place to be these days.'

Salam Pax has a long post today.

American civil administration in Iraq is having a shortage of Bright ideas. I keep wondering what happened to the months of "preparation" for a "post-saddam" Iraq. What happened to all these 100-page reports, where is that Dick Cheney report? Why is every single issue treated like they have never thought it would come up? What's with the juggling of people and ideas about how to form that "interim government"? Why does it feel like they are using the [lets-try-this-lets-try-that] strategy? Trial and error on a whole country?

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

It's Friday in North America.

So Wampum must be cranking up the time machine again.

US GULF ROLE IS AGREED ON, CHENEY SAYS SECRETARY REPORTS ACCORD ON MORE FORCES
Associated Press
May 10, 1991

SHANNON, Ireland -- Defense Secretary Richard Cheney said yesterday that he had won "broad agreement" from Persian Gulf governments on steps to strengthen their defenses and to permanently expand the US military presence in the region in the aftermath of the war with Iraq.

Cheney said the measures, some of them secret, are designed to make the oil- producing gulf states less vulnerable to regional military threats and to make it easier for US air, sea and ground forces to aid them...

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:33 PM | Get permalink

9/11: An interesting day.

The Center for Cooperative Research has used a multitude of sources to construct a timeline of Dubya's movements and actions on Sept. 11, 2001. To make an understatement, the account raises a few questions about what happened that day and why.

Bush's own recollection of the first crash only complicates the picture. Less than two months after the attacks, Bush made the preposterous claim that he had watched the first attack as it happened on live television. This is the seventh different account of how Bush learned about the first crash (in his limousine, from Loewer, from Card, from Rove, from Gottesman, from Rice, from television). On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked: "How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?" Bush replied, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it." [White House, 12/4/01]

There was no film footage of the first attack until at least the following day, and Bush didn't have access to a television until 15 or so minutes later. [Washington Times, 10/7/02] The Boston Herald later noted, "Think about that. Bush's remark implies he saw the first plane hit the tower. But we all know that video of the first plane hitting did not surface until the next day. Could Bush have meant he saw the second plane hit - which many Americans witnessed? No, because he said that he was in the classroom when Card whispered in his ear that a second plane hit." [Boston Herald, 10/22/02] Bush's recollection has many precise details. Is he simply confused? It's doubly strange why his advisors didn't correct him or - at the very least - stop him from repeating the same story only four weeks later. [White House, 1/5/02, CBS, 9/11/02] On January 5, 2002, Bush stated: "Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida ... and my Chief of Staff ? well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane..." [White House, 1/5/02]

Unfortunately, Bush has never been asked - not even once - to explain these statements. His memory not only contradicts every single media report, it also contradicts what he said that evening. In his speech to the nation that evening, Bush said: "Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans." [White House, 9/11/01] It's not known what these emergency plans were, because neither Bush nor anyone in his administration mentioned this immediate response again. Implementing "emergency response plans" seems to completely contradict Bush's "by the way" recollection of a small airplane accident.

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:15 PM | Get permalink

Imagine that.

The AP interviewed two of the prisoners just released from Guantanamo after they were returned to Aghanistan. Both of them are bitter about being held by the US for almost a year without being charged with a specific crime or being allowed to see a lawyer.

"I'm just angry that the Americans waited until we were in Guantanamo to interrogate us. Had they questioned us here in Afghanistan, it would have saved us a lot of trouble," said 28-year-old Mohammad Tahir.

"They could have realized a lot sooner that I was innocent." [...]

Wearing a dark blue traditional Afghan pantaloon suit, 22-year-old Rostum Shah said his American interrogators took him from his cell two or three times a week, his feet and hands bound in chains.

"All the time they asked us, 'Where are you from? Are you Taliban? Were you in Pakistan? Why were you captured with the Taliban?'" Shah said. "They said: 'If you're innocent, then why did you go to fight against your own people?'"

Shah answered like his fellow prisoner, Tahir.

"The Taliban forced us to fight," he said. "They took us away from our houses and told us it was our responsibility to fight." [...]

At their release, the men said, they received no acknowledgment that they were held unfairly - only a blue sports bag. "We didn't get much. They didn't give us any money," Tahir said. "We got this bag and what's in it."

Inside was a new pair of pants and tennis shoes, a jacket, underwear and a bottle of shampoo.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:48 PM | Get permalink

Golem, golem.

Magpie tries not to link to stuff we find via other weblogs unless we can add something new to what has already been said, so we passed up this one when we saw it yesterday. Luckily for you, Magpie's friend Miriam is very pushy.

Will God be pissed that I'm creating golems?

Creation of a golem is a special case. Only the most righteous of believers are allowed to create them. Some say that only those who are near to God and his wisdom will be able to follow the ritual to completion. So no, God shouldn't be pissed. [...]

Why was Golem so fixated on the Ring?

That's "Gollum" not "Golem" and you're in the wrong FAQ.

Via Making Light.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:04 PM | Get permalink

Going too far in Canada

The deputy leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party is under fire for anti-gay remarks she made during a parliamentary debate on same-sex unions.

"When it comes to people who wish to live together, whether they are women or men, why do they have to be out here in the public always debating that they want to call it marriage? Why are they in parades? Why are they dressed up as women on floats?" she said.

"They do not see us getting up on the floats, for heaven's sake, to say we are husband and wife. We do not do that. Why do they have to go around trying to get a whole lot of publicity? If they are going to live together, they can go live together and shut up about it. There is not any need for this nonsense whatsoever and we should not have to tolerate it in Canada," she went on to say.

Fellow Tory Scott Brison told the CBC that Wayne's remarks verge on bigotry, and he's calling for her to resign as deputy leader:

"Elsie's comments have brought such shame to the House of Commons and to the PC party and I just hope that Elsie recognizes that this time, she's gone too far ... Elsie's comments are very personal, very unprofessional and very hateful."

Brison is openly gay, and is running for the leadership of the federal Tories. Both he and Wayne represent ridings in the Atlantic province of New Brunswick.

Wayne has refused to resign, and has apologized for her remarks only to the extent of saying that she's sorry some people were offended.

Update: More political figures are criticizing Wayne. From a Globe & Mail article:

An Ontario politician added his voice Friday to the chorus of criticism. Rosedale MPP George Smitherman, also openly gay, said that Ms. Wayne had "clearly gone too far."

"For too long, Mrs. Wayne's intolerance has been dismissed because she is seen as folksy," he said. "[Her] ignorance has no place in this debate, particularly given her leadership role within the Progressive Conservative Party. She needs to go."

And from the Calgary Sun:

NDP MP Alexa McDonough called the views "screaming intolerance." [Until recently, she was leader of the federal New Democrats]

Tory Leader Joe Clark, known for his progressive views on gay rights, said Wayne has "extreme views" on this issue, while stressing they do not reflect his own or those held by the PC party.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:32 AM | Get permalink

It's about oil.

The US has taken its plans for post-war Iraq to the UN Security Council, in an attempt to get the UN to lift its sanctions against Iraq.

It also would take control over Iraq's vast oil revenues away from the United Nations and give it to the U.S.-led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein's regime. The money would finance the country's reconstruction -- with international oversight. The United Nations would have a limited, largely advisory role.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:14 AM | Get permalink

Holy Bat Cave!

You've probably never heard of the cave in LA's Bronson Canyon, but you've undoubtedly seen it.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:04 AM | Get permalink

Your US tax dollars at work. (Again.)

The US Senate has passed a bill amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to let the government to spy on people it believes are dangerous, but who are not acting as agents of a foreign power or known terrorist group. Civil liberties watchdogs (and many senators) believe this expansion of government surveillance powers is another dangerous erosion of constitutional protections.

The Federation of American Scientists has posted the record of the Senate debate on the FISA amendment. It's very interesting reading.

[Sen. Russ Feingold] We are told that one of the inspirations for this bill was the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker. One of the FBI's excuses for not seeking a warrant to search Mr. Moussaoui's computer prior to September 11 was that they could not identify a foreign power or group with which Moussaoui was associated. In other words, they could not meet the agent of a foreign power requirement to get a FISA warrant. In the case of Moussaoui, a warrant application was never even submitted to the FISA court.

As Senator Specter pointed out, many legal observers think the FBI simply misread the law, and it could and should have obtained a FISA warrant against Mr. Moussaoui if it had tried.

No matter, in any event, Senator Feinstein's amendment would fix the so-called Moussaoui problem just as well as the current bill. The permissive presumption would still ensure that future investigators do not need to show specific evidence of a particular foreign power or group for which the individual was an agent if they have other good evidence that the subject is preparing to engage in international terrorism, as they did in Moussaoui's case, but have not been able to identify the specific agent of a foreign power.

At the same time, Senator Feinstein's formulation would put some limit on the Government's ability to use this new power to dramatically extend FISA's reach. If the Government comes to a conclusion that an individual is truly acting on his or her own, then our criminal laws concerning when electronic surveillance and searches can be used, in my view, and I think in the view of many, are more than sufficient. True lone wolves can and should be investigated and prosecuted in our criminal justice system.

This crowgirl is tempted to bring up Mark Twain's comment that there are two things you never want to see made: sausage and legislation. But she won't.

Via Paper Chase.

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:52 AM | Get permalink

Surprise, surprise.

US forces will be staying in Iraq for longer than the one year previously cited by Washington.

``Anyone who thinks they know how long it's going to take is fooling themselves,'' Rumsfeld said. ``It's not knowable.''

This crowgirl wants to know if the length of the stay is a 'known unknown' or an 'unknown unknown.'

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:25 AM | Get permalink

Google dropping weblogs from main search. Maybe.

In the wake of Google's announcement that it will be starting a service that searches blogs, The Register is suggesting that blogs may get dropped from the main Google search altogether. Google did something similar after it acquired the Usenet archive of DejaNews; now, Usenet posts are searched using a separate Google tab.

Google has strived in vain to maintain the quality of its search results in the face of a blizzard of links generated by a small number of sources. (Google searches 3,083,324,652 pages as of 4PM PT today. Assuming there are one million bloggers, and generously assuming they have a hundred pages each, that amounts to 0.032 per cent of web content indexed by Google. Recent research by Pew put the number of blog readers as opposed to writers, as "statistically insignificant").

However, through dense and incestuous linking, results from blogs can drown out other sources.

"The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter," wrote [Chris] Roddy. "And through some fluke of their evil software, they seem to get indexed really fast, so when a major political or social event happens, Google is noised to the brim with blogs and you have to start at result number 40 or so before you get past the blogs." [...]

Gary Stock, chief technology office for Nexcerpt, Inc. agrees.

"A year or two ago you could hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky' and there was a good chance that you could find a good and authoritative page," he told us.

"It is less the case today. More and more people have more text to type, and may not have anything authoritative to say - they just throw up characters on the screen."

He says that the link-based algorithm called PageRank was designed, at Stanford University, with very different assumptions about the quality of information.

"They didn't foresee a tightly-bound body of wirers," reckons Stock. "They presumed that technicians at USC would link to the best papers from MIT, to the best local sites from a land trust or a river study - rather than a clique, a small group of people writing about each other constantly. They obviously bump the rankings system in a way for which it wasn't prepared."

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:52 AM | Get permalink

Yow!

London Mayor Ken Livingstone had a few choice words for the current occupant of the White House.

The mayor said: "I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties.

"He is not the legitimate president."

He later added: "This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown."

Livingstone was an outspoken opponent of the Blair government's involvement with the invasion of Iraq. The BBC has posted a profile of the mayor here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, May 8

The last journey.

The Peking Duck has posted some very nice pictures of his final days in China.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:58 PM | Get permalink

SARS good news and bad news.

The NY Times reports that the first study of the SARS virus genome shows that the virus is not mutating as it continues its spread from country to county. On the other hand, the same data indicates that the SARS virus is maintianing its virulence from generation to generation, unlike many other epidemic-causing viruses.

The genome study, by Dr. Edison T. Liu and his team in Singapore, involved comparing the complete genomes of SARS virus from nine cases there with virus isolated in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Vietnam. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal. [...]

A number of laboratories have also found that the SARS virus has not mutated significantly in the seven weeks since it was detected, Dr. Heymann said.

Dr. Earl G. Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa, said: "I hope that SARS will change, but I'm concerned. This virus seems to be happy with the genes it's got."

Dr. Brown, in a commentary on the study in The Lancet, suggested that because the SARS virus had changed relatively little in its first few months, it seemed unlikely to mutate into a milder form.

In an interview, Dr. Brown said that if a new virus was going to evolve into a more benign form, it normally did so in the early months of an outbreak, a pattern followed by the Ebola virus, which causes a deadly hemorrhagic fever.

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:46 PM | Get permalink

Rumsfeld and the revolving door.

The revolving door between private industry and the government is so-well known as to be almost a cliche. A story in the UK Guardian, however, shows that current US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's revolving door has involved him in a most interesting relationship with North Korea. While Rumsfeld now castigates the communist nation for being part of the so-called axis of evil, he was until 2001 a director of a company that was trying to provide the North Koreans with nuclear technology.

Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration.

The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime of positively engaging with the west.

The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government.

The company also opened an office in the country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr Rumsfeld's office said that the defence secretary did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time".

In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors".

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:28 PM | Get permalink

Patriot Act horsetrading in the US Senate.

The attempt by Senate Judiciary Committee head Orrin Hatch to eliminate most of the sunset provisions from the Patriot Act appears to be dead, at least for the moment. The NY Times reports that Hatch has struck a compromise with Democratic senators on the committee: He won't push to end the sunset provisions if they withdraw amendments to weaken the law. Despite this compromise, senators opposed to the Patriot Act worry that Republicans will look for another way to eliminate the act's sunset provisions.

In related news, the Times also reports that a bill to give the government broader surveillance powers against terrorist suspects who are not members of an organized group will probably be approved by the Senate.

Mr. Hatch, Republican of Utah, led a push beginning last month to attach to the bill an amendment that would have repealed time restrictions built into the 2001 measure.

Mr. Hatch adopted this tactic because he was said to believe that some Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were seeking to water down the bill by attaching amendments that would impose tougher legal standards and greater reporting requirements on law enforcement officials in their use of their new counterterrorism powers. Many Democrats have complained in recent months that the Justice Department has kept them in the dark about its counterterrorism activities since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Mr. Hatch's effort to make the Patriot Act permanent set off immediate criticism from civil liberties groups and lawmakers, including some Republicans, who said Congress needed more time to scrutinize how the act was working ? and whether law enforcement officials were abusing it. Some of the Republican opposition has come from lawmakers concerned about reach of "big government."

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:16 PM | Get permalink

National Museum looting not as bad as feared.

US and Iraqi authorities have recovered almost 40 thousand manuscripts and 700 other objects. Many of them were apparently stashed for safekeeping by museum workers well before the looting occurred.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:03 PM | Get permalink

Blurring another line.

The Boston Globe reports on another move by Dubya's administration to sneak around the church-state divide. This time, it's made some rule changes that will allow 'faith-based' groups to use the Bible or other religious texts in federally funded job training programs.

In guidelines published on April 4, the Labor Department said the job training grants ''may not be used for instruction in religion or sacred literature, worship, prayer, proselytizing, or other inherently religious practices.''

''The services provided under these grants must be secular and nonideological,'' the guidelines said then.

But in amended guidelines published in the Federal Register on April 18, the words ''sacred literature'' were removed, along with the sentence saying that the services provided must be secular and nonideological.

A Labor Department spokeswoman said there was no one available to explain why the language was changed. The office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the White House did not return a telephone call.

Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the change ''a wink and a nod to religious organizations'' to use religious literature in their secular work.

''They went to the trouble of putting out an amended notice to strike [a] section and to strike out `sacred literature,' '' Anders said. ''It's making very clear that they want to have this ambiguity'' in how much religion faith-based organizations can use in job training programs, he said.

Via Mikhaela.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:33 PM | Get permalink

Just a question.

If this piece by William Pfaff accurately reports what was true on April 30:

In its annual report to Congress on terrorism, the State Department said that the 199 recorded terrorist incidents last year represented a 44 percent drop from the previous year, and was the lowest total since 1969.

There were no terrorist attacks at all in the United States, five in Africa and nine in Western Europe. Nearly all the rest were in Asia (99), Latin America (50) and the Middle East (29). (Forty-one of the total 50 incidents reported as terrorism in all of Latin America last year were bombings of a U.S.-owned oil pipeline in Colombia.)

What the report actually indicates is that virtually all the incidents identified by the U.S. government as acts of "global terrorism" in 2002 occurred in four places: in Colombia; in Chechnya, with its separatist war; in Afghanistan, with the continuing low-scale war; and with the Palestinian intifada. Elsewhere, the Bali tourist bombing by Islamic extremists caused some 200 deaths.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, virtually none of this would have been called terrorism. It would have been called civil insurrection, or nationalist or separatist violence.

(And, given this Voice of America report, we can be pretty certain it does.)

How come the NY Times was able to report this six days later?

After a one-day meeting in Paris, the ministers from the Group of 8 countries declared that "terrorism continues to present both a pervasive and global threat to our societies that we have to respond to effectively and immediately."

Thanks to Bitter Shack for the tip on the IHT story.

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:54 PM | Get permalink

Canadian biotech battle gets kicked upstairs.

A long-running fight between a Saskatchewan farmer and Monsanto is going to the Supreme Court of Canada. The issue centers on Monsanto's genetically modified canola strain, called Roundup Ready. The strain is has been engineered to survive the application of pesticides that would kill 'natural' canola. Despite Monsanto's hefty fee for seeds (Can $15 per acre), Canadian farmers have planted millions of acres in Roundup Ready canola.

Monsanto claims that farmer Percy Schmeiser planted his fields with Roundup Ready in 2000, without paying for seeds. Courts have sided with the company so far, ordering Schmeiser to pay Can $170,000 in damages to Monsanto.

Mr. Schmeiser denies that he knowingly violated the patent. He contends that the herbicide-resistant crop grown in his fields may have resulted from seeds blowing off a passing truck or from pollination from nearby fields where his neighbours were growing Roundup Ready canola.

The case has become a cause-celebre in Western Canada and has attracted attention in other countries, making him something of a folk hero among farm and consumer activists who worry about the spread of genetically modified crops and the economic clout of the companies that hold patents for them.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:27 PM | Get permalink

'I just wake up in the morning and tell myself, "There's been a military coup."'

The LA Times reports on how the power to make US foreign policy has shifted from the State Department to the Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department.

"Why aren't eyebrows raised all over the United States that the secretary of Defense is pontificating about Syria?" the official, who declined to be identified, said, fuming.

"Can you imagine the Defense secretary after World War II telling the world how he was going to run Europe?" he added, noting it was Secretary of State George C. Marshall who delivered that seminal speech in 1947. [...]

Diplomats interviewed for this story ? all of whom insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the political infighting ? said they are profoundly worried about what they describe as the administration's arrogance or indifference to world public opinion, which they fear has wiped out, in less than two years, decades of effort to build goodwill toward the United States.

They cite as an example fallout from Iran being included in Bush's "axis of evil." Under the Clinton and Bush administrations, the State Department had been ordered to try to befriend Iranian moderates in order to counter that nation's Islamic fundamentalists. During the war in Afghanistan, American diplomats persuaded Tehran to allow U.S. military jets to fly over Iranian territory, a surprise foreign policy success.

However, within hours of Bush's State of the Union speech last year linking Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil," Tehran canceled U.S. overflight rights, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations.

"It has taken them an incredibly short time" to anger many other nations, said one veteran senior diplomat.

[Free reg. req'd for LA Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:22 PM | Get permalink

SARS in the provinces.

AsiaTimes reports on how one of China's poor central Asian provinces is coping with SARS. Faced with a severe lack of money, the provincial leadership is instead trying to mobilize a popular campaign against the disease. It's anyone's guess whether this effort will succeed.

Aside from isolation pains, there is another problem in Ningxia: SARS-related profiteering. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Yinchuan, in its urgent need for a large quantity of masks, jointly bought some 3,000 masks with a local hospital for frontline medical staff. Some of the staff felt something unusual while wearing the masks. When torn open, the so-called "16-layer masks" had only six to eight layers. Aside from the outside layers, all middle layers were merely scraps of white clothing with no protective function at all. Medical authorities immediately quarantined medical workers who had used those masks and worked to find the origin of the goods. Local inspection officers later labeled them as "Three No" products, meaning no trademark, no origin and no manufacturer on the packages. Unqualified for processing or selling medical instrument, the company that provided those masks also made 50 protective suits for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The 130-yuan (US$15.70) suits had been worn by frontline medical workers.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:20 PM | Get permalink

Another day in Baghdad.

No excerpts from this one. Just go read it.

Via AsiaTimes.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:56 AM | Get permalink

SARS more virulent than thought.

The WHO has revised upward its estimate of the SARS fatality rate. The new figures put it at 14–15 percent — more than twice the earlier estimates. People over 65 are particularly hard hit by the disease; over 50 percent of those who contract SARS will die.

If you are like most people, these numbers make you wonder what your chances are in the event you get SARS. Here's one way to think about it, via SARS Watch Org.

SARS Watch Org also has a round-up of the latest SARS news from China.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:44 AM | Get permalink

Getting easier to be green.

The Henson family has bought back control of the Muppets. The Muppets — famous from Sesame Street and movies — were created in the 1950s by the late Jim Henson. His heirs sold the rights to the characters to a German company three years ago.

Via skippy.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:16 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, May 7

The lastest from Kingsley, Hampshire.

The results of the election (see this earlier post) are counted, and now the pundits are figuring out what they mean.

Bob Stammers hit the nail on the head with his incisive analysis of email addresses the other component of electability not clearly understood by the participants in 1999.

The problem is that the spin doctors Pelham employed to arrange his email address for maximum voter appeal made a fundamental error in their market research and they failed to notice that no-one under the age of 70 votes in District or Parish elections. This means that the youth appealing virgin.net had entirely the wrong effect. The .net gives particular problems when applied to the senior members of society because it has a rather nerdy image and Pelham hasn't even got a beard.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:42 PM | Get permalink

Winter in the Isles.

Magpie wandered over to notsosoft.com for the first time in quite awhile, but things are on hold there until Meg gets done moving. She has, however, left the Megical Mystery Tour running.

I clicked and got these.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:00 PM | Get permalink

Non-traitors have nothing to hide.

So go ahead. Register.

Via librarian.net.

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

Fox News? Biased?

The UK's television watchdog agency is investigating charges of bias against Fox News. If found valid, the body could revoke the network's license.

Julian Petley, chairman of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, called on the ITC to act against Fox News: "I'm not in favour of censorship, but Murdoch would like to do with British television news what he has done with newspapers, which is to force people to compete on his own terms.

"So if we allow into Britain the kind of journalism represented by Fox, that would bring about a form of censorship ."

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:03 PM | Get permalink

Avoiding his daddy's fate.

Writing in Salon, Eric Boehlert looks at how presidential advisor Karl Rove is using the perpetual war on terror to ensure that Dubya gets four more years in the 2004 election.

Today, in Rove's the hands, the permanent war on terrorism is like a political gold mine. "Everything, including a war, is a potential campaign event for Karl," says James Moore, coauthor with Wayne Slater of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential." "He has great a skill at keeping messages simple and accessible. And the message today is the war and economy are wrapped up in security, that there's unfinished business with the war on terrorism and why would you change commander in chief in the middle of war? It's a helluva salable message."

With little-known presidential Democratic candidates currently trailing Bush badly in the polls, particularly over the issue of national security, Rove and the increasingly brash White House are openly using the might of the U.S. military to make sure this president does not suffer the same fate as his father, who chronically battled his own wimp factor.

"Rove's doing things a bit more boldly than he's done in the past because he's able to get away with them," says Moore, citing Bush's high-profile visit to an aircraft carrier last week. "The president was essentially a draft-dodger during the Vietnam War -- he disappeared for his last year of his [National Guard] flight service -- yet he's portrayed in a flight suit as some kind of war hero. But Democrats and the national media never address the hypocrisy," says Moore. "Both Karl Rove and the White House say, 'Why stop?' It won't come back to haunt them because the environment changed after 9/11."

[Subscription or ad view req'd for Salon website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:56 PM | Get permalink

Another fire sale in British Columbia.

Not content to sell off the provincial power grid (see this earlier post), BC's Liberal Party government is planning to privatize one of the province's main highways.

The successful private operator will pay the province a one-time fee for the right to operate the highway, but will recover costs through tolls, [Transportation Minister Judith] Reid added.

Tolls for cars and trucks will be increased by $3 to $13; commercial vehicle tolls will remain the same.

The BC Government and Service Employee's Union is not amused.

"What was supposed to be a temporary stop-gap measure to pay for the highway's construction will become a permanent unfair tax that discriminates against small communities, and imposes a hardship on low-income workers," [BCGSEU President George] Heyman said.

"And who's to say the Campbell Liberals will stop at the Hope to Merritt route? What they?re doing is paving the way for billions of dollars in tolls on future sales of highways across our province. The potential impact on local economies, tourism and public safety is staggering."

Via rabble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:45 PM | Get permalink

Uh-oh.

Somebody has been eating Magpie's words.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:15 PM | Get permalink

'Conflict of interest' doesn't even begin to do Perle justice.

What can we possibly say about these antics of Richard Perle's?

In July 2001, Perle became chairman of the 30-member Defense Policy Board, which meets regularly with Rumsfeld. The board's meetings are classified and members are allowed access to top-secret intelligence reports.

On Feb. 27, 2003, two speakers — Henry D. Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon advisor under Feith — gave presentations to the Defense Policy Board on the risks and prospects of U.S. conflict with North Korea. The same day, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which works for the Pentagon, also briefed the board on North Korea and Iraq among other subjects, according to several people in attendance.

Three weeks later, Perle participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call in which he advised investors on opportunities tied to the war in Iraq. Perle's talk was called "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

The New York Times first reported the conference call. But the classified briefings had not been disclosed previously.

Fred C. Ikle, who worked at the Pentagon under President Reagan and who joined the board in August 2001, said he was not troubled by Perle's talk to Goldman Sachs so soon after the board briefing. "Anyone who has been reading the newspapers for the past year knows about the crisis in North Korea," he said. "There was nothing discussed at the board meeting that was news."

But another person who attended the Feb. 27 meeting called Perle's subsequent engagement with Goldman Sachs inappropriate. "That bothered me because the title of the talk made it sound like he had the inside track on what we were going to do," said this person, who asked to speak off the record.

Retired Rear Adm. Thomas Brooks, who served on the policy board during the Clinton administration, said Perle's actions were "certainly questionable."

[Free reg. req'd for LA Times website.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:58 PM | Get permalink

Oooooh, shiny!

The American Heritage Dictionary is available online.

mag pie

NOUN: 1. Any of various birds of the family Corvidae found worldwide, having a long graduated tail and black, blue, or green plumage with white markings and noted for their chattering call. The species Pica pica, the black-billed magpie, is widespread in the Northern Hemisphere. Also called pie². 2. Any of various birds resembling the magpie, such as the Australian bell magpie of the family Cracticidae. 3. A person who chatters. 4. One who compulsively collects or hoards small objects.

ETYMOLOGY: Mag, a name used in proverbs about chatterers (a nickname for Margaret) + pie².

Via Electrolite.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:29 PM | Get permalink

Selective anti-terrorism.

While technical problems had Magpie off-line for the past few days, we missed some things. One of them was this incisive article by Haroon Siddiqi in the Toronto Star, in which he outlines the real agenda of the US in the eastern Europe, the Mideast, and central Asia:

Appallingly, he [Bush] has quietly cozied up to a most notorious terrorist group, the leftist Mujahideen-e-Khalq in Iraq.

Prior to the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Khalq was accused of killing Americans there. Post-revolution, it reportedly supported the student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. But frozen out of the spoils of power, the group turned against the Islamic regime, killing scores of civilians.

Routed out of Iran, it set up guerrilla bases in Iraq from where to harass and attack Iran.

On the diplomatic front, the Khalq took full advantage of America's antipathy to Iran and convinced 150 members of Congress to blindly sign petitions in its favour. But the U.S. and the European Union eventually caught up and branded it the terrorist organization that it has long been.

In the early days of the war on Iraq, American planes started bombing its bases. But the Khalq PR machines swung into action in Washington to get the guerrillas spared.

In a secret ceasefire deal, signed April 15 but not released until Wednesday, the Bush boys agreed to let the Khalq be. The group even gets to keep all its weapons.

So the Khalq moves from Saddam's patronage to Bush's.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:19 PM | Get permalink

Banana-republic economics.

In the current New Yorker, John Cassidy shreds what Dubya euphemistically calls a 'tax plan.'

In view of this problem, the White House has put forward a more subtle rationale for the dividend-tax cut: It will cause the stock market to rise, which will make consumers and businesses feel more confident. This, in turn, will boost spending, which will generate more hiring. But if any of these links fail to materialize, so will the new jobs.

Even taking the President at his word, each new job would cost the government five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in lost revenues, which is about seventeen times the salary of the average American worker. It would be far cheaper for the federal government to give private firms subsidies to hire more people, or to give money to the states, which are facing their worst financial crisis since the Second World War, and which at this moment are being forced to fire teachers, troopers, and health workers. Parks, museums, and libraries are closing; cultural programs are being cut. College-tuition fees are rising, and scholarships are vanishing. Hundreds of thousands of people stand to lose their state-provided health-care coverage. (Meanwhile, taxpayers will be laying out billions of dollars to reconstruct Iraq.)

Dubya's tax package makes this crowgirl nostalgic for Reagan's voodoo economics.

Via Working for Change.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:01 PM | Get permalink

Tim Tams update.

Way back in Magpie's early days (the second week of April), we looked at the brewing battle between Aussie biscuit giant Arnott's Arnott's and the upstart Dick Smith's. The issue was whether Dick Smith's new biscuit Temptin's infringes on the trademark for Arnott's Tim Tams — an Australian icon.

Arnott's (which is owned by US-based Campbell Soup Company) threatened a lawsuit if the packaging wasn't changed immediately, and they delivered on the threat. Earlier this week the two sides met in court for the first time. As The Age reports, the case shows all signs of becoming an Aussie David vs. Yank Goliath story.

Speaking outside court and over the chants of "Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi", Mr Smith said that launching the action under the Arnott's name was a stalling tactic designed to cost him more money.

It was also outrageous to try to "con" the public into believing Tim Tams was owned by Arnott's, he said.

"The trademark owner is not Arnott's, it is actually Campbell's of the USA, but this whole document they put up doesn't mention Campbell's, so now they are going to have to redo it," he said.

"Everyone tells me they have no case and in the end as long as you spend lots of money we'll win, but we're not prepared to do that. They could send us into bankruptcy."

However, Mr Smith also had a word of thanks for the giant.

"I almost have to thank them, there is someone in their legal department who has said 'Let's give Dick Smith Foods a bit of free publicity', because that's what they are doing," he said.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:17 PM | Get permalink

It's big and it's red.

New Scientist has a report on a rather strange deep-water jellyfish that's been found off the California coast. It's a good meter across, and it has arms, not tentacles.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:27 PM | Get permalink

Four more years?

VP Dick Cheney says he'll be Dubya's running mate again in 2004.

This crowgirl is so excited that she nodded off while typing that.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:19 PM | Get permalink

Iraq gets more liberated by the moment.

The World Health Organization says that hospitals in the southern Iraq city of Basra have treated 17 confirmed cases of cholera among children. At this point, none of the cases have been fatal.

Cholera is spread by unclean water and bad sanitation. Given the continuing lack of running water for about 20 percent of the city's population, health officials fear that an epidemic is already in progress. A WHO epidemiologist says that it's likely that there are at least 9 unreported cases of cholera for each of the ones that have been seen by doctors so far.

Residents in the city of two million went for several weeks without running water. Many collected their drinking water from Shatt al-Arab river or pilfered water from working pipe lines.

To relieve the water shortages, British forces and aid agencies have continued to send water tankers through the city and surrounding towns daily. British engineers have succeeded in restoring about 80 per cent of the water system, but a lack of security in the city remains a major problem.

In the aftermath of the British takeover, rampant looting and lawlessness raged. The situation has improved, but some looting continues at schools and other public institutions, such as water plants and electric substations, UN officials said.

Although British forces are conducting regular patrols in the city, they lack the manpower to provide 24-hour guards.

"Not enough is being done," UN humanitarian spokesman David Wimhurst said. "Unless it's brought under control, this situation will continue. The end result could be catastrophic."

Via Globe & Mail.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:50 PM | Get permalink

Where is Raed?

Salam Pax is back.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:15 PM | Get permalink

The anticlimax.

Magpie is so surprised by this Newsday report.

President George W. Bush could have flown to the USS Abraham Lincoln in a helicopter Thursday but voluntarily chose the far more dramatic method of a carrier-deck landing in a Navy jet, the White House acknowledged yesterday.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had said last Wednesday that the Lincoln would be hundreds of miles from the southern California shore when Bush arrived, too far to allow Bush to reach it on a Marine helicopter, his usual method for short hops.

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

A hard man goes to Iraq.

Asia Times profiles Paul Bremer, the guy Dubya has chosen as his point man in Iraq. His past record doesn't provide much room for optimism about Iraq's lot during his watch.

He is not, by an stretch of the imagination, a dove. One article noted that like the neoconservatives, he has long called for a very hard line against what he calls "extremist Islam" and for aggressive tactics, including assassination, in pursuing and preempting suspected terrorists.

In a 1996 Wall Street Journal article he called on then-president Bill Clinton to deliver ultimatums to Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan to cease any support for terrorism or face military action. His rhetoric in that regard has been labeled as distinctly "Rumsfeldian" [...]

As Bremer has no particular Persian Gulf or Iraqi expertise, his selection seems to signal that the Bush administration is less interested in a democratic revival of Iraq than in ensuring that it cannot serve in the future as an kind of base for threats against the American homeland, which was one of the rationales offered by the Bush administration for its invasion in the first place.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:27 PM | Get permalink

Tuesday, May 6

More fallout from Dubya's aircraft carrier hijinks.

This time, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia tears Dubya a new one.

``I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw,'' Byrd said on the Senate floor. [...]

Byrd contrasted [Bush's] speech with the ``simple dignity'' of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.

``I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech,'' he said.

He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. ``This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial,'' he said.

``To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech,'' he said.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:14 PM | Get permalink

Down on the language farm.

New research published in Science magazine suggests that at least some major language groups resulted from the spread of farming. According to this article, expanding populations of farming cultures pushed out surrounding hunting and gathering cultures, expanding the area over which the language of the farmers was spoken. In cases when a group of hunter/gatherers was absorbed by a farming culture, they may well have adopted the farmers' language, too.

The Science article endorses a bold suggestion for the origin of Japanese. The writers say it is derived from the language of rice farmers who arrived from Korea around 400 B.C. and spread their agriculture northward from a southern island, Kyushu. Modern Japanese is not at all like Korean. But Korea had three ancient kingdoms, each with its own language. Modern Korean derived from the ancient Sillan. Japanese may have evolved from another ancient Korean language, Koguryo, the article says.

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:35 AM | Get permalink

A man on horseback?

Paul Krugman wants to know why Dubya is getting away with using military images (remember the flight suit?) for partisan political reasons. And how come no one seems to be upset about it.

Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don't qualify ? though we haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn't waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration's lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's main nuclear waste dump wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?

Well, Mr. Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence of awkward questions, his handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the national security issue in future.

Next year ? in early September ? the Republican Party will hold its nominating convention in New York. The party will exploit the time and location to the fullest. How many people will dare question the propriety of the proceedings?

And who will ask why, if the administration is so proud of its response to Sept. 11, it has gone to such lengths to prevent a thorough, independent inquiry into what actually happened? (An independent study commission wasn't created until after the 2002 election, and it has been given little time and a ludicrously tiny budget.)

There was a time when patriotic Americans from both parties would have denounced any president who tried to take political advantage of his role as commander in chief. But that, it seems, was another country.

[Free reg. req'd for NY Times.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:03 AM | Get permalink

Monday, May 5

Lack of posts since Saturday.

Magpie made the mistake of moving over to the new Blogger software. Problems. Lots of them.

But if you see this message, it means that normal blogging will resume shortly.

Update: Despite Blogger's continuing inability to solve this problem (it's been almost three days as i write this), I've decided to start posting normally in the hopes that the new stuff will eventually show up on the blog.

Another Update: Four days.

Yet Another Update: Magpie appears to be back to normal. Keep your fingers crossed.

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