Magpie

Saturday, June 7

Israel and Palestine.

Over at Haaretz, diplomatic columnist Akiva Eldar answers a slew of reader questions about the recent Israel-Palestine-US summit. Lots of interesting stuff there.

To what extent do you believe the Israeli government (mainly Ariel Sharon) is interested in implementing the road map?

Shadi Fadda
Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Akiva Eldar:
The Israeli government in its present makeup is not able and is not willing to implement the road map. Once Sharon issues the order to evacuate populated settlements, not just largely uninhabited outposts, both the NRP and National Union will leave the government. I believe that Sharon will do everything he can to avoid any crisis between Israel and the Bush administration. Assuming that Bush takes seriously all Sharon's commitments, and that the Palestinian government will not give Sharon a reason not to comply, he will implement the first phase of the plan. In order to implement the second phase, especially establishing a Palestinian state with provisional borders, the road map may require a new political map in Israel; i.e. replacing members of the Likud who may join the right-wing opposition, with the Labor Party.

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

The 'Killer Ds' and the Constitution.

The Washington Post has an excellent summary of the events surrounding the use of federal resources to help Texas Republican leaders find the whereabouts of Democratic legislators who were boycotting the state House of Representatives. Even with all the questions that are still in the air, the abuse of power by Republican leaders in Texas and Washington is rather apparent.

South Knox Bubba tell us why we should care about what happens to the people who pulled the federal strings.

Thanks to Talk Left for the pointer to South Knox Bubba.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:01 PM | Get permalink

Was it to attract the opposite sex?

Or to get rid of fleas and bugs? Check out this New Scientist article for the naked truth. Or the naked theory, anyway.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:27 PM | Get permalink

Iraqi trailers continue to haunt Tony Blair.

The UK government is trying to settle the question as to what those trailers were designed to do, reports the UK Observer. As WMDs continue to be scarce on the ground in Iraq, Tony Blair's government has come under increasing criticism for its insistence that Iraqi WMDs were a clear threat to the UK and other nations. The increasing evidence that the two trailers found by the US are not chemical or biological weapons labs is only adding to the PM's problems.

The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really are germ labs.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:33 PM | Get permalink

New to the blogroll.

A big ol' Magpie welcome to Ruminate This.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:39 PM | Get permalink

More political fallout from the 'missing' WMDs.

USA Today reports that Dubya's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes — where the US attacks a country first, rather than waiting for that country to commit a hostile act — may be in trouble in the Congress. Senators from both parties are increasingly nervous about the fact that Dubya's claims of WMDs in Iraq have not been backed up by evidence. Because of this, they say, future requests for pre-emptive strikes will be met with more skepticism.

The inability to find banned weapons in Iraq has put U.S. intelligence under a cloud. Congress is beginning inquiries into whether intelligence claims about Iraq were accurate or exaggerated by the White House to smooth the way to war.

A failure by the Bush administration to prove its prewar allegations could undermine the pre-emption doctrine. The next time the president comes to Capitol Hill warning of an emerging threat, one that requires military action to pre-empt and defeat, some lawmakers of both parties say they will be skeptical.

''If you're going to have a doctrine of pre-emption,'' said Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, ''then you sure as heck better have pluperfect intelligence.''

A Republican senator who spoke on condition of anonymity said that if President Bush went to Congress with another plan to strike an enemy state, ''It would have to be very clear and convincing intelligence for it not to cause a dispute.''

Via The Watch.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:32 PM | Get permalink

Iraqi antiquities found. Most of them, anyway.

Reuters reports that the bulk of the antiquities missing from the National Museum in Baghdad have been found in a secret vault.

Despite the recovery of many of the museum's treasures in the last week, the U.S.-led administration said 47 items from the main exhibition -- the museum's most treasured pieces -- had not been found.

A longer BBC story explain that the objects found in the vault are the bulk of the museum's exhibition collection. US authorities are quoted as saying that 3000 objects are still missing (including the 47 referred to in the Reuters story).

While this crowgirl is delighted that the number of objects looted from the museum is so much smaller than originally feared, she notes that not even 47 of them would be missing had the US posted guards at the museum when asked to by musuem authorities.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:18 PM | Get permalink

Can Dubya be impeached for lying about Iraq's WMDs?

Former White House counsel John Dean thinks so. His arguments in support of that conclusion are quite interesting, and well worth your time.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

For those with short memories (or who are too young to remember), John Dean was counsel to President Richard Nixon during the years of the Watergate scandal.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:59 PM | Get permalink

Made in USA.

Canada Post has discovered that many Canadian stamps are actually printed in Buffalo, NY.

The Canadian Printing Industries Association claims the practice violates the North American Free Trade Agreement because the country of origin isn't labelled on the stamps.

They complained to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, which must now decide whether to decree that each individual stamp carry a U.S. label.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:13 AM | Get permalink

'No reliable information.'

A report issued last September by the US Defense Intelligence Agency has further called into question the sweeping charges made by US officials against Iraq during the run-up to the war. The Knight-Ridder newspapers are carrying the most detailed story about the report that Magpie has seen so far.

According to Knight-Ridder, the claims made by top US officials 'weren't always backed up by available U.S. intelligence,' and that the picture of the threat that Iraq represented to the US and other countries was 'far starker than what the nation's spies knew.' Much of the evidence was 'false or debatable.'

"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has — or will — establish its chemical warfare agent-production facilities," said portions of the report made available to Knight Ridder.

While Iraq had biological stockpiles, "the size of those stockpiles is uncertain and is subject to debate," said the classified report, titled "Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities — An Operational Support Study."

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:09 AM | Get permalink

'Not entirely honest.'

A retired intelligence analyst told the AP that the US used distorted evidence and conjecture to justify the invasion of Iraq. Until last September, Greg Thielmann was the director of the strategic, proliferation and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He says that 'disingenous statements' came from 'the very top' of the government, and that these statement were the worst in the area of Iraq's possible nuclear weapons capability.

In Thielmann's view, Iraq could have presented an immediate threat to U.S. security in two areas: Either it was about to make a nuclear weapon, or it was forming close operational ties with al-Qaida terrorists.

Evidence was lacking for both, despite claims by President Bush and others, Thielmann said in an interview this week. Suspicions were presented as fact, contrary arguments ignored, he said. [...]

One example where officials took too far a leap from the facts, according to Thielmann: On Feb. 11, CIA Director Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq ``retains in violation of U.N. resolutions a small number of Scud missiles that it produced before the Gulf War.''

Intelligence analysts supposed Iraq may have had some missiles because they couldn't account for all the Scuds it had before the first Gulf War, Thielmann said. They could have been destroyed, dismantled, miscounted or still somewhere in Saddam's inventory.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Telling 'em who's boss.

Over at Eurasianet, cartoonist Ted Rall shows us how they keep them in line in Uzbekistan.

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

Those Iraqi trailers again.

The NY Times reports a serious difference of opinion over what those trailers were for. The analysts who've seen the trailers most recently appear to have the most serious doubts that they were used for chemical or biological warfare.

U.S. and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the ‘smoking gun’ so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion,” said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and like some others spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, “I am very upset with the process."

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 AM | Get permalink

Friday, June 6

More cooked books. And a farewell.

Wampum has two excellent posts on the new US unemployment numbers, here and here.

This morning, it took all of a minute to find the report's first inconsistency, in reference to the increase in "discouraged workers". Today's release places the number at 482,000 and asserts that level was "essentially unchanged from May 2002." I guess BLS isn't expecting anyone to be fact-checking their claims, as a simple glance at the May 2002 report shows the number of discouraged workers at 407,000. No biggie, really: one unemployed loser, 75,000 unemployed losers, a 20% increase over the year; it's really just nitpicking, isn't it?

Sadly, it looks like this will be the last time Magpie links to Wampum, as MB is giving up blogging for other pursuits. Magpie will miss her.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:16 PM | Get permalink

Knock, knock!

It's Get Your War On.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:55 PM | Get permalink

Kicking the right's butt.

Over at TomPaine.com, Robert Borosage has an excellent article about what the Democratic Party needs to do to change the terms of political debate in the US. His suggestion: Look at how the right wing did it.

Democrats would do well to learn from how the New Right responded to life in the political wilderness in the mid-1970s, when Nixon was in disgrace and Democrats controlled everything. At that moment, New Right strategists decided not to drift to the center but to build an independent capacity to drive their message, their values and their movement into the political debate. They sought to take over the Republican party from green-eyeshade moderates and make it their vehicle. They built the Heritage Foundation, an openly right-wing propaganda center. They invested in the Moral Majority, galvanizing the right-wing evangelical movement. They nailed together a network of conservative PACs, led by the National Conservative Political Action Committee. They mobilized a movement that transformed not only the Republican Party but the national political debate as well.

The rise of the New Right wasn't solely due to its own organizing. Liberalism failed to answer the challenges facing the country in the 1970s -- stagflation, growing pressures on families, moral decline, America held hostage. And the successes and excesses of the triumphant movements of the 1960s generated a furious reaction that the fueled the New Right. But only by organizing independently was the right able to grab the opportunity created by these dynamics.

Via little red cookbook.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:49 PM | Get permalink

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

He's made another speech in the Senate, this time about the missing WMDs. Make sure to go read it all.

What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. How is it that the President, who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern over the where-abouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Indeed, instead of leading the charge to uncover the discrepancy between what we were told before the war and what we have found – or failed to find – since the war, the White House is circling the wagons and scoffing at the notion that anyone in the Administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

Via Cursor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:39 PM | Get permalink

Another misleading headline.

Today seems to be the day for them at the AP. From this story on the NY Times site comes this headline:

Iraqi Nuke Site Was Close to Making Bomb

Scary, huh? Good thing the US invaded, yes? It certainly got Magpie to look at the story.

But here's the second paragraph:

Tuwaitha was once the heart of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which was close to developing an atomic bomb before the 1991 Gulf War. The program was discovered by IAEA experts, who destroyed equipment and materials and sealed ingredients that could be used for a future program.

So the threat was dealt with 12 years ago. The AP really needs to be more careful.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:00 PM | Get permalink

Scanning the headlines.

Magpie found this one on an AP story at the NY Times website:

Blix Questions Coalition's Intelligence

Sometimes you have to wonder whether headline writers do things like this intentionally.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Spinning Blix's WMD comments.

Headlines are important. Not only does a headline give an idea of what a news story is about, but it may also be the only part of a story that a person reads if they are in a hurry. In that light, consider this headline for an AP story that ran on MSNBC's news site.

Blix: Inspections could yet turn up banned weapons in Iraq

Got that? Now here's the lead paragraph:

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said he was surprised and disappointed at the low quality of British and U.S. intelligence given his teams in their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war.

Not much in common with the headline, is there? And the next few paragraphs continue along with quotes about how Blix thinks US/UK intelligence was of no value to his weapons inspectors.

And where's the optimistic prediction cited in the headline? All the way down in the sixth paragraph:

"I was disappointed that we were not able to continue and I watch with keen interest to see if they find something," he said, referring to American and British troops in Iraq who have failed to find weapons of mass destruction after visiting more than 230 suspected sites during the past 11 weeks.

Does Blix really expects WMDs to be found, as the headline implies? A more likely interpretation, from the context, is that Blix was being ironic or sarcastic. Magpie thinks that somebody should have read the story before they stuck a headline on it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:57 AM | Get permalink

US cell phone companies have a bad day.

A federal court says cell phone subscribers can take their phone number with them when they switch cell phone companies. The court upheld an FCC rule requiring that companies must put 'number portability' into place.

"It is obvious that any regulation that frees consumers from staying with carriers with whom they are dissatisfied affords them protection," the court said. "It was reasonable for the FCC to conclude that wireless consumers would switch carriers at even higher rates if they could keep their phone numbers."

This crowgirl notes that portability was supposed to happen in 1999, but that cell phone companies have been dragging their feet on implementing it for years.

[Link added much later. Bad Magpie!]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:54 AM | Get permalink

Breakfast with Rumsfeld.

In the New Yorker, Frank Gannon takes us with Rummy as he orders breakfast at Denny's.

That’s a good question. Am I ready to order? Let me answer it a little off to the side.

First of all, there are things that we know. I can look at this menu and see that. But there’s a danger there. Do I “know” that hash browns are not included in the Original Grand Slam Breakfast? It says that on the menu, which, by the way, is nicely laminated and we’re grateful to the laminator. But getting back to the hash-brown potatoes. I should “know” that they’re not included.

The real truth is, there are no “knowns.” This is a whole new menu. Are we in the past? No. Are we using the past’s menu? No. Are there things that we know we know? Not exactly.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:53 AM | Get permalink

Who ya gonna call?

In the Online Journalism Review, Mark Glaser writes about how bloggers armed with transcripts are keeping the media honest.

[N]ot everyone believes that the government is releasing totally unedited transcripts. Brendan Nyhan, of the excellent Spinsanity site, helped attract attention to the Dowd misquote. He e-mailed me, saying "posting full transcripts of interviews and briefings online is a great way for the administration to give the press and public a fuller picture of what was said, and sometimes is effective at putting quotes in context ...[But] in several cases, White House transcripts have omitted or corrected various misstatements from the president and spokesman Ari Fleischer, so the transcripts that are released are not necessarily unimpeachable."

This crowgirl wishes that Glaser had noted more of the good work done by bloggers on the left.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:49 AM | Get permalink

Jews returning to Germany.

UPI reports that there's been an upsurge of Jewish migration to Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since 1990, the Jewish population has grown from 33,000 to the present 200,000. However, this is still well below the half-million Jews who lived in Germany before Hitler.

Ironically, one reason for this state of affairs is the anti-Semitism in their countries of origin, chiefly successor states of the former Soviet Union, Julius H. Schoeps, head of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam, told United Press International Thursday.

"Of course there are other reasons as well, such as economic considerations and the chance to give their children a better education," Schoeps allowed. "Moreover, they see Germany as a 'safe country.'" [...]

"Thanks to these developments I believe there is a good chance for the emergence of a new German Jewry," said Schoeps, a historian who was born in World War II in Stockholm, where his parents had found exile. "I absolutely welcome this," Rabbi Carl Feit, a Talmudic scholar and cancer researcher at New York's Yeshiva University, told UPI in an interview.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:39 AM | Get permalink

No Pride at Justice.

The US Department of Justice has barred a gay pride event held by DoJ employees since 1997.

Justice Department officials told the group, called DOJ Pride, that it could not hold its annual event at the department because the White House had not formally recognized Gay Pride Month with a presidential proclamation, Marina Colby, a department policy analyst who is president of the group, said. The group represents several hundred gay and lesbian employees at the department.

"This sends a real chilling message to Justice Department employees who are gay and lesbian," said David Smith, a spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay advocacy group.

"This says, `You're not welcome,' " Mr. Smith said. "It says that employees can celebrate Asian-American heritage month, and Hispanic heritage month and so on, but you cannot."

Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, refused to comment.

Via The Agonist.

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

Coalition of the Willing.

Over at The Watch, Natasha was wondering how all those countries that the US leaned on or bought off to support the invasion of Iraq are doing. She found out, too.

Unfortunately the direct linkis bloggered. So when you get to The Watch, look for the post called 'Where Are They Now?' on June 5. And while you're there, check out her mess o' links to stories about Iran.

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

Despite it all.

The US government said that Farouk Ali-Haimoud was not only a member of a terrorist cell in Detroit, but that he was the most radical of the group. He was arrested and detained twice — the second time for 14 months. He has always said he was innocent, and on Tuesday he was acquitted of all charges against him. While two of his co-defendants were found guilty of terror charges, and a third on fraud, Ali-Hamoud believes that all of them will be found innocent on appeal.

Here's what he told the NY Times in an interview after his release from jail.

On Wednesday, after 14 months in jail, mostly in isolation, Mr. Ali-Haimoud said in an interview that he was shocked that any of them had been found guilty.

"None of us had links with terrorists in any way," he said. "I'm just a regular Muslim. I'm not an extremist."
He said he believed that the other defendants would be vindicated in appeals.

"The justice system is the best in the world," he said. "That's why a lot of people want to come to the United States."

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

A closer look at the bill of goods.

The NY Times has posted economist Paul Krugman's new column. Take a look at the teaser and then go read the whole thing .

Look at it this way: as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Tony Blair still being burned by WMD issue.

The BBC reports that the dossier that claimed Iraq could launch WMDs in 45 minutes went back and forth between UK intelligence agencies and the prime minister's office six to eight times.

A source close to British intelligence has told BBC diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason that ... Prime Minister Tony Blair was involved in the process at one point.

Mr Blair has vigorously denied that the document was "sexed up" in order to garner support for war.

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

Thursday, June 5

About the economy.

MB at Wampum is on a roll today, with excellent posts on how Washington is monkeying around with the unemplyoment figures; some very bad news for those who think the economy is recovering; and a surge in first-time unemployment claims.

This crowgirl thinks that MB is becoming one of the sharpest analysts of economic news in the blogosphere.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:37 PM | Get permalink

Overturn the FCC!

As Magpie noted earlier this week, there are rumblings in the Congress in favor of passing legislation to reverse Monday's FCC decision that loosened the broadcast media ownership rules in the US. Ruminate This points out that Common Cause is making it very easy for you to tell your member of Congress to vote to overturn that sucker.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:21 PM | Get permalink

An object lesson.

Always read to the bottom of a news story.

Magpie didn't read all of this one. Electrolite did, and found this little gem.

Frank's senior enlisted man, Sgt. Major Dwight Brown told the troops before Bush's appearance, "I don't want any damn catcalls from the crowd. We have the president of the United States coming to tell us what a great job we did destroying those heathen up in northern Iraq."

As Patrick Nielsen Hayden says, how do you explain that one away?

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

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

Terror alerts may not be working.

From a Washington Post story:

US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday that his frequent raising and lowering of the nation's threat-alert level has created the risk that citizens are growing jaded about terrorism . . .

This crowgirl thinks that Tom Ridge is a regular rocket scientist.

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

The Iraq visit Dubya should have had.

But didn't, as suggested by the UK Independent's Robert Fisk.

First, join a gas queue. George Bush will help to push his limousine to the back of the three-mile petrol line by the Hussein bridge - many motorists run dry before they reach the queue - and here he will wait ... and wait and wait. Eight hours if he’s lucky, maybe 12. Maybe 24.

Then George Bush can visit the 158 Iraqi government ministry buildings that should be the infrastructure of the new US-backed government which he has sworn to establish here. He will see, of course, that of the 158 buildings, every one was looted and then burned after the Americans occupied Baghdad.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:13 PM | Get permalink

Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights.

Jefferson liked squares. His house at Monticello is based on two balancing squares. He came up with the idea of measuring the public lands of the young United States in squares. And he apparently thought of the government of the US as a square, too.

Jefferson is a major figure in the early chapters of Measuring America by Andro Linklater, an interesting book about the role that standardized units of measure and land surveying played in the development of US democracy. At one point Linklater digresses on Jefferson's vision of the government:

As he made plain in a letter to James Madison from Paris in 1787, what he liked about the United States's propsed Constitution was the separation it made between the three elements of executive, legislature, and judiciary; but he insisted that it needed a fourth side to balance it, a Bill of Rights for the people. The shape eensured that forever afterward a debate would take place among the four parties — giving later generations the chance to hear the raucous echo of those Williamsburg discussions on which the young Jefferson had cut his intellectual teeth.

Magpie really likes the idea that the Bill of Rights is the 'fourth branch' of the government. Those ten amendments largely enumerate the rights reserved to the people of the US, as opposed to those powers exercised by the federal government. Jefferson, Magpie suspects, would see the way that opponents of the Patriot Act and other 'anti-terror' measures frame their arguments in terms of the Bill of Rights as being a fulfillment of his vision.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:28 PM | Get permalink

Blix on a roll — slams US/UK intelligence on Iraq.

Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix had a lot to say today. In an interview with the BBC, he complained about the tip-offs that US and British intelligence agencies passed on to the UN inspectors:

"Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction, and that shook me a bit, I must say."

He said UN inspectors had been promised the best information available.

"I thought - my God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find nothing, what about the rest?"

See this post below for more Blix comments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:47 PM | Get permalink

Ashcroft still isn't satisfied.

Coming on the heels of an Inspector-General's report criticizing the way in which the Justice Department treated immigrants suspected of involvement with terrorism, US Attorney General John Ashcroft is asking Congress for more anti-terror powers. Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee that the Patriot Act 'has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit, undermining our defenses.'

To compensate for these alleged shortcomings, the Attorney General asked for legislation that would allow the government to hold more suspects indefinite, and expand the number of 'terrorist' crimes punishable by death. He also wants to go after 'material supporters' of alleged terrorist groups, making it a crime for anyone to help or work with them.

If Ashcroft's requests sound familiar, that's because they resemble provisions of the so-called Patriot II, a draft bill that the Justice Department denied that it was thinking about presenting to Congress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:28 PM | Get permalink

Blix questions credibility of arms inspectors.

ABC News (Australia) reports that chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix is not sure that US/UK weapons inspectors have sufficient independence to successfully carry out their search for Iraqi WMDs.

"I do not want to question the integrity or the professionalism of the inspectors of the coalition, but anybody who functions under an army of occupation cannot have the same credibility as an independent inspector," Dr Blix told reporters after addressing the UN Security Council.

Blix told the Security Council that 'long lists' of WMD-related items can't be accounted for. However, he also cautioned that it 'is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:27 PM | Get permalink

Puttin' on the ritz.

One of Magpie's east coast correspondents suggests looking at this 'highly intellectual website.'

Cats all over the planet are cringing in fear.

Thanks, Lila!

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:26 PM | Get permalink

Republicans buckle on child credit.

Despite earlier blustering from the Republican leadership, both parties in the US Senate have cut a deal that will extend the new US $1000 child credit to the families left out of the tax cut law.

Under the deal, families earning between approximately $10,000 and $26,000 a year will get the additional US $400 child credit that Dubya's tax cut gave to very poor families. The downside of the agreement is that the child credit is being extended to families earning up to US $150,000.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:25 PM | Get permalink

The 'comp time' bill is dead. For the moment, anyway.

The Republican leadership of the US House of Representative has pulled the 'comp time' bill from the floor. The AP reports that there were not enough votes for passage, largely due to a massive lobbying campaign against the bill by organized labor.

The bill would have allowed employers to give workers extra time off ('comp time') instead of paying them for overtime. Workers would have to take the comp time when employers allowed, and employers could wait as long as 13 months before granting comp time.

The bill may not be dead, however. The AP reports that Republican leaders plan to re-introduce it after they 'unravel the campaign of lies' spread by the unions.

This crowgirl is really glad she sent that fax to her member of Congress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:05 PM | Get permalink

Good SARS news.

The World Health Organization says that SARS is 'clearly in decline.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:59 AM | Get permalink

Taxi!

London cabbie Mus Mustapha wrote a book about his fares over the course of a year. The UK Guardian's Laura Barton took a ride with Mustapha and found out how his book came about. Don't miss this one!

According to Mus, three things make a good cabbie: patience, humour, insight. "A smile, or the tone of your voice makes a lot of difference to someone's temperament," he says. "And unless you've got these ingredients you won't last out on the street," he warns, like some latter-day Fagin. "If someone sits behind me, I know they don't want to talk," he explains. "I'll say: 'How was your day?' and the way they respond tells me whether to carry on. Cabbies are good counsellors." But sometimes he'll get something back himself: "If I want medical advice I'll drive down Harley Street," he laughs. "It saves going to the doctor - he gets in my cab, he's not going anywhere! Legal advice? The Strand or Chancery Lane. And the beauty of this? He's paying me!"

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

Mirror, mirror.

During the Soviet era in Russia, some of their experts on the US came up with the concept of convergence. Briefly stated, it held that the forces of modernization were bringing about conditions in which the two superpowers were growing to resemble each other. Yes, there were ideological differences between the two countries, but their underlying worldviews and ways of being in the world were increasingly alike.

In Asia Times, Moscow-based analyst Peter Lavelle takes the concept of convergence and runs with it, comparing the Russia of Vladimir Putin with Dubya's United States. It's a real eye-opener.

There are similarities between the Bush and Putin regimes. Both are militaristic and are even involved against similar enemies in the same part of the world. Both Bush and Putin rely on an image as a "regular guy", to a degree obscuring Bush's lifelong financial privilege and recasting Putin as a romantic pragmatist whose KGB career brings Russia's Soviet past in contact with its future.

In both Bush's America and post-Soviet Russia, there is an increasing convergence of governmental and economic elites. Vice President Dick Cheney is in many ways like a post-Soviet Russian figure whose wealth is dependent on his government connections and oligarchic business lobbies. Few would probably contest that a privatization of American foreign policy has taken place when it comes to the restructuring of conquered lands like Afghanistan and Iraq. The deregulation of some American industries strongly appears to benefit those close to the Bush administration as well.

Foreign policy and business practices are not the only spheres in which Russia and the US are looking more and more similar. Even the issue of the level and quality of civil society can be compared. Certainly to judge by recent voting trends, there is a lack of interest in democracy (except as a slogan) in America. And, increasingly, the conventional media are being controlled by an oligarchy, some of the members of which (eg Rupert Murdoch) are close allies of the regime. Russia, for its part, makes little pretence to being a strong democracy, and that the electronic media follow the Kremlin's lead is obvious to all.

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

Wednesday, June 4

The good news just keeps on coming.

The US House of Representatives has voted to ban late-term abortions. Reproductive rights groups say the bill is so loosely drafted that, in banning so-called 'partial-birth abortions,' a number of other procedures performed in second- and third-trimester abortions have become criminal acts.

The new law is expected to be challenged in court almost immediately.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:31 PM | Get permalink

Press freedom in 'liberated' Iraq.

The US occupation government seems to think that there's way too much freedom being shown by Iraq's press. The AP reports that a code of conduct for the the press is in the works, which aims to prevent the airing of 'hateful and destabilizing messages' and preventing media from inciting 'violence or ethnic or racial hatred.'

The proposed new code isn't being greeted with open arms by Iraq's editors and politicians, however. Journalists especially are reminded of the media censorship under Saddam Hussein.

Editors at the new daily newspaper Al-Manar said U.S. soldiers turned up at its offices last week to tell them about a new media monitoring board and ask for their opinion.

''They plan to set up a committee and some jerks will be on it,'' said Mohamad Jubar, the editor in chief. ''I'll fight any attempt at censorship.'' [...]

''Is there a media code of conduct in the U.S. or U.K.? Why should there be such a thing here?'' asked Hamid al-Bayati, a leader of the Iran-linked Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Its new newspaper regularly criticizes the occupation.

While this crowgirl certainly doesn't find it particularly pleasant that one of the new Iraqi newspapers is serializing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, she still thinks that a press code is nothing less than that first tentative slide down a slippery slope.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:19 PM | Get permalink

You know . . .

That story did sound familiar.

Via This Modern World.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:17 PM | Get permalink

Speaking volumes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting piece by Stephanie Shields, explaining the difficulties of picking an image for a book cover.

I explained that I was looking for an image that conveyed strong emotion (preferably happiness or excitement), showed ethnic diversity (or avoided depicting one particular ethnicity), and avoided romantic or gender stereotypes (such as a woman crying). Yes, yes, they assured me, no problem. Then the results came in.

One diligent searcher wrote, "I've compiled a selection of nine related images for you. I didn't have much luck with this." Nine may seem like a lot, but not when the database contains hundreds of thousands of photos.

Via NewPages.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:49 PM | Get permalink

Guess where the buck stops?

Most of the billions of dollars that the G8 countries pledged to fight AIDS in developing nations will go into the coffers of giant pharmaceutical companies, reports the UK Independent.

To the disappointment of pressure groups monitoring the summit, the leaders failed to make progress on new trade rules to allow poor countries to buy cheap, generic versions of new medicines, including the drugs that can arrest Aids. [...]

Under present rules . . . a poor country might have to spend $1,500 (£920) a year to treat one HIV-infected person with brand name antiretroviral drugs. Generic medicines could reduce the cost to £185 a year per person. In other words, Mr [Nathan] Ford [of Médécins sans Frontières] explained, without a change in the trade rules, much of the money offered by America and Europe would simply come back to the large American and European pharmaceutical corporations.

Via little red cookbook.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:41 PM | Get permalink

Howdy.

To Smile at Me.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:25 PM | Get permalink

Global warming isn't slowing down.

In fact, reports New Scientist, it's doing just the opposite. Atmospheric scientists meeting in Berlin have concluded that temperature increases worldwide have been slowed by smoke in the atmosphere. As a result, global warming could wind up being two or three times worse than predicted as smoke levels drop.

[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] scientists have suspected for a decade that aerosols of smoke and other particles from burning rainforest, crop waste and fossil fuels are blocking sunlight and counteracting the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions. Until now, they reckoned that aerosols reduced greenhouse warming by perhaps a quarter, cutting increases by 0.2 °C. So the 0.6 °C of warming over the past century would have been 0.8 °C without aerosols.

But the Berlin workshop concluded that the real figure is even higher - aerosols may have reduced global warming by as much as three-quarters, cutting increases by 1.8 °C. If so, the good news is that aerosols have prevented the world getting almost two degrees warmer than it is now. But the bad news is that the climate system is much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously guessed.

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

O Canada.

The US isn't the only North American country where there are questions about how anti-terror laws are being used. Montrealer Adil Charkaoui is currently being detained under a security certificate (scroll down), which is the first step on the road to deportation. The Canadian government says he's an al-Qaeda 'sleeper agent.' Charkaoui's family says he is innocent.

You can listen to a story on the Charkaoui case done by community radio station CKUT here.

On Wednesday evening May 21st, Mr. Charkaoui, aged 30, a landed immigrant originally from Morocco and father of one with another child on the way, was arrested in Montreal and is currently being held in detention under a "national security certificate" charged with "secret evidence" which alleges he is a terrorist. Neither he or his defense know what the full charges are against him.

Examples of how the case is being covered in the mainstream Canadian media are here and here.

Via rabble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:32 PM | Get permalink

Blah, blah, blah.

The Pentagon says that nobody distorted intelligence reports to show that Iran's banned weapons were a threat to the US.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:10 PM | Get permalink

Look out! It's another giveaway to corporations.

Tomorrow (Thursday), the US House of Representatives will vote on a bill making it possible for employers to require overtime hours without having to pay workers for those hours. HR 1119 would change the current rules, under which worker who spends more than 40 hours a week on the job must be paid time-and-a-half for those additional hours. Instead, employers will be able to give workers 'comp time' — compensatory time off work at a later date. The real kicker, though, is that workers don't get to choose when they take that comp time. Not only is that decision up to employers, but an employer can wait up to 13 months to before letting a worker take any comp time they've earned. In addition, HR 1119 gets rid of the 40-hour rule, replacing it with a requirement that workers must be offered overtime if they work more than 80 hours in two weeks.

If HR 1119 becomes law, economic justice groups and unions believe that US workers will be putting in more time on the job, but receiving much smaller paychecks than they would under current rules. Here's some of what the AFL-CIO says:

Congressional Republicans and the Big Business community claim that substituting “comp” time in the future for overtime pay today gives workers more flexibility in their schedules. But their promises of flexibility are bogus, according to an analysis by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president and policy director of the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, because H.R. 1119 allows employers to veto employees’ decisions about when to use their time off.

“It’s nothing more than a scheme to allow employers to avoid paying for overtime—a scheme that will result in longer hours, lower incomes and less predictable workweeks for American workers,” says Eisenbrey.

In fact, H.R. 1119 could be a huge cash bonus for greedy employers, according to Eisenbrey. Under the measure, an employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until a year later, at the employer’s discretion. In addition to giving employers ultimate control over when—or even if—workers are allowed to use earned comp time, the proposed legislation gives no meaningful protection against employers pressuring workers to enter into comp time agreements and none against employers assigning overtime only to workers who agree to take time off instead of money.

You can read a summary of the Economic Policy Institute report on the comp time bill here.

Go here here to send a fax to your member of Congress.

This crowgirl has spent a lot of time in the high-tech industry, which is notorious for requiring overtime. If HR 1119 passes, she can see being asked to work 60 hours one week and 20 the following week so that her employer won't have to give out overtime pay or comp time.

Update: Eschaton explains excactly how the new overtime regime will work.

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

Iraq's WMDs are long gone.

That's what former Iraqi Brig. Gen. Alaa Saeed has told the LA Times. Saeed had a 30-year career in Iraq's chemical warfare program, most recently as head of quality control at the Muthana State Establishment. Muthana produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including nerve agents and mustard gas.

Saaed says that the bombing of Iraq in the first Gulf war, followed by years of UN weapon inspections, destroyed Iraq's WMD programs.

Saeed, perhaps the most senior weapons scientist to speak to a reporter since the war, says he would gladly accept a $200,000 reward U.S. officials here have quietly offered to anyone who can lead them to the poison gases, germ weapons and other illegal weapons that President Bush repeatedly insisted were secretly deployed in prewar Iraq.

But Saeed said he cannot take them to what he insists no longer exists.

"Their questions are the same as yours," he said. " 'Do you know of any documents or inventory of chemical agents? Any stockpiles? Any production programs? Any filled munitions? Do you have any idea where these weapons are?' I am ready to give them all the information I have. But the answer is always the same: 'No, no, no.'

"I tell them there are no hidden chemical or biological weapons," he said. "Maybe there is some other group, like the SSO [Hussein's ruthless Special Security Organization] or the Mukhabarat [the Gestapo-like intelligence agency], who have done it. I don't know. That is not my responsibility."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:45 AM | Get permalink

If you were looking for banned weapons in Iraq.

Wouldn't you stop by the place that probably made them? US weapons investigators haven't been that logical, reports the AP. For some reason, none of them have visited the Al-Fatah offices in Baghdad — even though this state-owned company ran Iraq's missile programs.

"We have the most sensitive documents here," said Marouf al-Chalabi, director-general of al-Fatah. "We were sure the Americans would target us but they haven't even dropped by."

Looters, however, have ransacked the place. The three-building complex has been stripped of everything from drafting tables to light switches.

Among the few things left behind, though, are what U.N. inspectors long believed existed but never obtained: design plans and test results for every missile system and warhead the Iraqis developed.

Plans for rocket engines, guidance systems and even missile warheads are strewn across the dusty office floors and swirl in the parking lot outside. Some have been blown into nearby bushes. "They're scattered everywhere," al-Chalabi said, marveling at the mess.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:39 AM | Get permalink

New in the UK Guardian.

It's the first column by Salam Pax.

Vacancies: President needed - fluent in English, will have limited powers only. Generous bonuses." This appeared on the first page of the Ahrar newspaper. Another new weekly. Newspapers are coming out of our ears these days. There are two questions which no one can answer: how many political parties are there now in Iraq? And how many newspapers are printed weekly?" Most of these papers are just two or four pages of party propaganda, no license or hassle. Just go print. I am thinking of getting my own: "Pax News - all the rumours, all the time".

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

Tuesday, June 3

Compassionate conservatism.

Remember those 6.5 million low-income families who didn't get the increased child tax credit under Dubya's tax plan? Well, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says that's just too bad. The NY Times reports that DeLay will oppose a Democratic-sponsored bill to give the credit to these families.

Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, said the increased tax credits would be approved only if they were part of a broader tax-cut package, possibly including permanent repeal of the estate tax or making state sales taxes deductible. A package of that size would require 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and Democratic opposition to big new tax cuts would make such passage almost impossible.

Clearly irked at the mounting criticism of Republicans for the last-minute decision not to give the credit to minimum-wage families, Mr. DeLay said those who favored the increased credit had had their chance in the debate over the bill.

"There are a lot of other things that are more important than that," Mr. DeLay said in a news conference today. "To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax."

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

NDP wins big in Manitoba.

The polls were right. According to the CBC, the left-leaning New Democratic Party has picked up 7 seats in the provincial legislature, and will govern Manitoba for a second term with a solid majority.

For more on what the Manitoba results mean, see this Magpie post from yesterday.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:53 PM | Get permalink

Haunted Ground.

Magpie was poking around the web, looking for information on how the post-9/11 visa restrictions are affecting Irish music schools and camps in the US. She didn't find what she was looking for (any leads would be appreciated — especially if you know where to find info on the demise of Gaelic Roots), but she did run into this review of Twin Cities writer Erin Hart's new novel, Haunted Ground. Magpie read the book recently, in one sitting, and she's now anxiously awaiting Hart's second effort.

Erin Hart was visiting friends in Ireland in 1986 when she heard that the perfectly preserved head of a beautiful red-haired woman had been found in a bog.

"It was clear the woman had been decapitated," Hart recalls. "When I heard that story, I remember thinking that I had been handed the greatest opening scene of any mystery, ever."

That cailin rua (red girl) is the focal point of Hart's first novel, "Haunted Ground," a mystery (with a little bit of romance) written out of the Minneapolis author's love for Ireland, traditional Irish music, forensics, history and folklore.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:56 PM | Get permalink

Buy a car, go to jail.

This story from the LA Times almost defies belief.

Jose Aguado Cervantes buys a car from a US government auction and takes it back to his home in Mexico. Several months later, he is crossing the border, and gets arrested for marijuana smuggling — US Customs agents found dope welded into bumper compartments. It turns out that the marijuana was there when the feds sold Cervantes the car, but that doesn't prevent him from having to spend more than three months in jail while the feds sort things out. Now a federal appeals court has upheld Cervantes' right to sue the US government, despite attempts by the feds to block the suit.

The whole tale is here.

The appeals court agreed Monday with an earlier district court ruling that he cannot recover damages for false arrest and imprisonment, because customs agents had reasonable cause to arrest him.

But the appellate judges disagreed with the lower court's ruling that Cervantes' negligence claims were similarly unwarranted.

The government's arguments, they said, "simply fail the straight-face test."

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:54 PM | Get permalink

Another bright idea backfires in Iraq.

Earlier this week, the US announced that it was go ahead with the assembly anyway.

"The U.S. cannot cancel a conference led by Iraqis," said Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, which until April was a London-based exile organization. [...]

"Yesterday, at the leadership meeting, it was reemphasized that the conference will go on," Qanbar told reporters at the INC's headquarters in Baghdad.

"The Leadership Council is unified around it,'' he said. "The national conference is an Iraqi-led effort. This is not an American issue."

[Free reg. req'd]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:42 AM | Get permalink

Nothing to do today?

You could always build a cruise missile in your garage.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:41 AM | Get permalink

12 steps to regime change in the US.

Don Hazen offers 'em up over at AlterNet. Magpie hasn't seen this much sensible practical advice coming from someone on the left in a long time.

Step #8: Deal With the Politics of Fear

Fear is the subtext of American politics. The Republicans know that fearful people tend to vote conservative, so generating and exploiting fear will be high on their agenda. Expect every kind of Republican surprise: Code Reds, new acts of terrorism, invasions of other countries, the sudden capture of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. There may be dirty tricks in this election.

Even though some of us don't feel it acutely, fear is a fundamental issue in America. It's no accident that we have more than 11,000 gun deaths a year while neighboring Canada has far fewer with as many guns per capita. America just passed the 2 million mark in the number of people incarcerated in prisons. While violent crime goes down, the presentation of violent crime in the media escalates.

Generating fear of "the other" is a staple of Republican politics. Only united can we can fight it. But this isn't simple and requires a lot of discussion, thought and creative ideas. The main point is to acknowledge that fear is on people's minds and not trivialize or deny it. The antidote to fear is joy and courage. It is mutual support and protection and a clear, forthright policy on national security. Progressive values are about protecting our families, our communities, making our lives safe and fulfilling. But we're not interested, as the Bush administration insists is necessary, in trading freedom for security. As Move On's Wes Boyd notes: "Luckily, Americans are made of sterner stuff and we'll continue to protect freedom and it will make us strong."

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:40 AM | Get permalink

Rewriting history.

After looking at the creative rewriting of recent history by supporters of the Iraq war, Molly Ivins makes some nominations for the Orwell Award.

Also contending for the Orwell award is White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. In response to questions about that rather expensive photo-op aboard the USS Lincoln (between $800,000 and $1 million just for delaying the aircraft carrier a day), Fleischer said, "It does a disservice to the men and women in our military" to suggest that the president "or the manner in which the president visited the military would be anything other than the exact appropriate thing to do." Everything the president does is the exact appropriate thing to do, and anyone who says otherwise is doing a disservice to the troops. Amazing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:39 AM | Get permalink

More on the Iran border incident.

The Washington Post has some information on the nationalities of the civilians captured by Iran on Sunday. Most of them, along with four US soldiers, were released after interrogation.

Earlier yesterday, the U.S. Navy Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain said in a statement that two small civilian boats carrying four U.S. soldiers and at least three civilians had disappeared in northern Persian Gulf waters on Sunday.

The statement said the boats were transporting "one U.S. civilian engineer, four U.S. Army soldiers, two Kuwaiti civilian operators and possibly one other unidentified person."

This CNN report has a map showing the general location where the incident took place.

Also see this earlier Magpie post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:25 AM | Get permalink

A picture is worth 1000 words.

A Magpie reader in France draws our attention to this 'evocative' photo of Dubya and Chirac.

Merci beaucoup, Chris!

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

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: Home of the whopper.

In the NY Times, Paul Krugman weighs in on the WMD controversy, and how it shows the general pattern of lies and distortions of fact that the current adminstration uses in pursuing its policy goals.

Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.

Am I exaggerating? Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have "found the weapons of mass destruction," the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. You've heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes.

And the bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy?

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Puppet masters.

Pacific New Service commentator Shahla Azizi shows how the British are really running Iran. At least that's the story on the street.

The majority of Iranians believe that the mullahs, the hard-line clerics, have the full backing of the British. In order to understand this line of thinking you have to look at the enormous influence of foreign powers here in the past. The British and the Soviets divided the country into southern and northern zones of power under their direct influence during WWII. Reza Shah, the founder of the previous dynasty, was put on a ship and sent to exile by the British because of his sympathies for Hitler. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was briefly ousted in 1953 but quickly put back in power by a coup d'etat that the CIA now admits having engineered. He was toppled by the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power with enormous popular backing.

Strange as it may sound to Western readers, a main line of popular thinking has flourished against this historical backdrop. It goes something like this:

The English are the wits and brains behind American actions in the region since WWII. The British know that in order to keep Iranian oil and resources for themselves, they have to keep the clerics, who are their agents, in power. They are now pushing them on the naive Americans. Iranians truly believe that if it were not for the marriage of the clerics and the British, this Islamic regime would not stay in power. Southern Iraq, which according to this theory is under British control, provides proof of this. Ayatollah Hakim, the Iraqi Shiite cleric exiled to Iran who returned to Iraq in May, must have British backing, or he would never have been allowed to return with such bravado.

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

How democracy works.

An illustrated guide.

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

Monday, June 2

New from Robert Fisk.

UK Independent correspondent Robert Fisk filed a report from the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on May 31. Some sneaky person has posted it over here.

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

This might be ominous.

Then again, it could just be a border incident that isn't going to matter.

The BBC reports that Iranians forcibly detained four US soldiers and five civilians on Sunday. They were traveling by boat on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, which runs on the border between Iran and Iraq, making it possible that their boat strayed into Iranian territory. The soldiers and three of the civilians were released on Monday, after several hours of interrogation. The BBC is not reporting the nationalities of the civilians.

As of the time of this post, the US Central Command's website has no information on the incident.

It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction from Washington.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:30 PM | Get permalink

What the papers say about Dubya's tax cut.

Wampum has done us a favor by compiling editorial comment about the tax cut so we don't have to run all over the web looking for it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:15 PM | Get permalink

Senators blast new FCC rules.

Reuters reports that a bipartisan groups of senators will introduce legislation to roll back the FCC's new broadcast ownership rules.

But Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi told a news conference there was no partisanship in Senate opposition to the new cap.

"A lot of Republicans, in fact, probably most of the Republicans in Congress, would not agree with this decision," said Lott, the former Republican leader of the Senate.

This crowgirl is absolutely dumbfounded that she and Trent Lott agree on something.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:09 PM | Get permalink

Elsewhere in the blogosphere.

At Bush Wars, Steve Perry goes through calculus of the terror alert scale, showing that Dubya wins no matter how the numbers come out.

Pedantry reveals the real Blair Witch Project.

Cursor points us to a study showing that 8 million single taxpayers won't see a dime from Dubya's tax cut.

Electolite sends us over to the story of a reporter who unknowingly hired Salam Pax.

Talk Left has lots to say about the Inspector General's report on how the US Justice Department treated immigrants after 9/11. Start here.

Sometimes it's not Democrats switching to the Republican party, notes Daily Kos, but the other way around.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:19 PM | Get permalink

Reformist Saudi editor gets the boot.

Asia Time continues their excellent reporting on the Mideast with a piece about the firing of al-Watan editor Jamal Khashoggi. Under Khashoggi, al-Watan took a strong stand against the exteme views and actions of Saudi Arabia's conservative Wahhabi clerics — especially against the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the religious police). Reporter Ian Urbina suggests that the reaction to Khashoggi's firing in the Arab press, especially the Saudi press, will be a strong indicator of how bad the Saudi crackdown on free expression will get.

Above all, the move is meant as a message from right-wing clerics that they will not tolerate the growing tide of criticism against them. Ever since September 11, there have been pointed questions about the role of these clerics in breeding radical and armed fundamentalists. Khashoggi was one of the few critical voices coming from within the kingdom itself, and in many ways he hoped that al-Watan would push the envelope toward increased press legitimacy so that other papers might follow the lead. [...]

[A]l-Watan was striking a more challenging posture toward these behavior police. The paper ran an article about the attempted suicide of a man who was detained with his children for 12 hours for the crime of having been caught smoking. Also stoking the ire of authorities was an article about the desire of many women to attend soccer games. Especially irksome were al-Watan's cartoons, which often depicted scraggly clerics in full-length garb equipped with rolled up fatwas (religious decrees) resembling sticks of dynamite. [...]

What fledgling attempts there may have been for a more critical press in Saudi Arabia took a big step backwards with the loss of Khashoggi. And unfortunately, this action does not seem to be an aberration. When asked about the firing and the possible legitimacy of criticism against the conservative clerics, Prince Nayef, the interior minister who oversees all press matters, lambasted reporters for even raising the matter. He was quoted as saying, "As a Saudi, you should be ashamed to be asking this question."

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:49 PM | Get permalink

Riding the victory train.

At least, that's how the fortunes of the Manitoba left look to rabble. New Democrat premier Gary Doerr appears to be heading for a landslide victory in tomorrow's elections. Journalist Doug Smith thinks that progressive forces in Canada should look carefully at how Doerr brought the NDP from a squeaker win in 1999 to the party's current position in the provincial catbird seat.

One of Gary Doer’s greatest strengths as a politician is his ability to rob his opponents of their issues. In the run up to the 1999 provincial election, when the NDP were still in opposition, he announced that the NDP would not repeal the balanced budget law. He then went further and voted for the Conservative’s pre-election budget, which contained a number of tantalizing tax cuts. Conservative plans to portray Doer as a spendthrift who opposed cutting their taxes vanished into thin air. As a strategy it demoralized some New Democrats but provided the margin for a slim NDP win in the 1999 election.

By successfully cutting off the opposition’s lines of attack, Doer has bought himself the political space to run a successful reform government and how many of those have there been in Canadian history? Health care and education have received significant funding increases, child care has been revitalized, inner city renewal corporations are included in the government’s economic strategy. The record on labour reform, welfare rates, the minimum wage, and the environment is not as inspiring. There has been a cease-fire in the war on the poor, but no sign that the government is prepared to commit itself to a war on poverty.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:37 PM | Get permalink

Is Dubya starving the beast?

LA Times columnist Robert Brownstein discusses the growing suspicion that Dubya's tax cuts were designed to drive up the deficit as a way to make it hard for Democrats (or future Democratic administrations) to create new programs or change Republican-set budget priorities.

Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), a former investment banker now on the Senate Budget Committee, says that while some Bush officials may have a supply-side faith that the tax cuts will pay for themselves through faster growth, he believes that "the ideologues in the administration" have a two-stage strategy: Engineer large deficits now and then use the red ink later to argue "for downsizing the role of government," particularly by retrenching Social Security and Medicare. [...]

This recalls the argument during Ronald Reagan's presidency when critics — notably the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a Democratic senator from New York — charged that the administration knew all along that Reagan's 1981 supply-side tax cuts would open huge deficits. No one found a smoking gun to prove that charge, though enough conservatives defended the deficits as a way to "starve the beast" (in other words, de-fund the government) to keep the suspicion swirling.

[Free reg. req'd]

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

Can you say 'media monopoly'?

The FCC can. And they passed new ownership rules for US broadcasters by a 3-2 vote, along party lines.

"I have heard the concerns expressed by the public about excessive consolidation," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said ahead of the vote. "They have introduced a note of caution in the choices we have made."

"I'm glad they won't be remembered as the Copps rules," said [commission member Michael] Copps, who has opposed Powell's attempts to relax media ownership rules at nearly every turn. "They will take the media and the country into very perilous waters. I think we are damaging localism, diversity and competition, making it harder for alternative viewpoints and information to see the light of day."

For details, see this Reuters report and this Washington Post story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:37 AM | Get permalink

Not a clue.

In Haaretz, Gideon Levy points out that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and much of the rest of his government have no real idea of what goes on in the occupied territories. And this lack of direct knowledge, he suggests, cannot have a good effect on policymaking.

What does Sharon know about life under curfew, in communities that have been under siege for years? What does he know about the humiliation at checkpoints, or about people being forced to travel on gravel and mud roads, at risk to their lives, in order to get a woman in labor to a hospital? About life on the brink of starvation? About a demolished home? About children who see their parents beaten and humiliated in the middle of the night? About prisoners and detainees held without trial who haven't spoken to their families for more than two years? About dialysis patients who are unable to reach the hospital for treatment? [...]

But how will the prime minister find out about life under the occupation if the only information he gets comes from army and security sources? The focus of interest of these elements is fighting a short-term war against terrorism, preemption and liquidation. It is impossible to get a full and true picture from them. [...]

Israeli prime ministers have long stopped visiting the Palestinian territories and rarely meet with their residents. This lack of knowledge on the part of those who will ultimately decide the fate of the territories without having the least idea of what is going on in them is almost macabre.

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

Sunday, June 1

Texas tribe wins a big one.

The Austin American-Statesman has an unusually good article about the recent judgement against the US government won by the Alabama-Coushatta Indian tribe of east Texas. The tribe recently won a US $270.6 million judgment against the feds from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims — the largest of its type ever. The money is to compensate the Alabama-Coushattas for ' oil and natural gas production, timber harvesting and trespassing by non-Indian settlers' from the the time Texas joined the Union in 1845 and that date when Congress terminated the tribe in 1954. In discussing the settlement, reporter Ralph Haurwitz delves deep into the history of the tribe, describes its current situation, and looks at the tortuous process the tribe had to follow in order to get redress for past injustices at the hands of the Texas and US governments.

Media coverage of Indian issues (by both mainstream and alternative media) is usually marked by misunderstandings of (among other things) treaty rights, aboriginal title, federal Indian policy and legislation, and the history of the tribe or tribes being covered. Haurwitz has avoided most of these pitfalls.

Few people outside the tribe and a small circle of lawyers and government officials are aware of the ruling, which the claims court sent to Congress in October. Eight months later, lawmakers have not filed a bill or otherwise taken action on the matter. Nevertheless, legal scholars say Congress almost always approves the court's recommendations.

But the tribe's unexpired aboriginal title adds an unprecedented wrinkle. Tribal leaders have not said what they would expect to receive, in land or money, for relinquishing aboriginal title. It is unlikely that Congress would pay the tribe for more than a century of damages without also resolving the potentially far more valuable title issue.

A resolution is essential because the ruling clouds the ownership of billions of dollars worth of land and improvements in all or portions of 11 counties. [...]

Unlike conventional legal title, aboriginal title is not recorded on a deed or in a courthouse. It is nevertheless a well-established legal principle, recognized not only by the United States but also by the previous sovereigns in the area at issue: the Republic of Texas, Mexico and Spain.

Aboriginal title endures in perpetuity unless it is abandoned by a tribe or extinguished through formal action by the sovereign, such as by treaty, by military force, by purchase or by the exercise of complete dominion. None of those things has occurred in the more than 200 years that the Alabama-Coushatta have lived in East Texas.

The State of Texas, because it is not a sovereign, had no power to terminate aboriginal title. So the Indians' forced relocation to a reservation established by the state in 1854 did not cancel their land rights. Congress enlarged the reservation to 4,182 acres in 1929 after years of ignoring the tribe's desperate need for more land.

The claims court said the federal government could not be held liable for the failure of previous sovereigns to respect the Indians' aboriginal title. So the recommended compensation of $270.6 million covers trespassing and resource extraction only on the 2.8 million acres of aboriginal land that the tribe lost after Texas became a state, not on the 2.7 million acres that Mexico and the Republic of Texas granted to non-Indian settlers.

The Native American Rights Fund has an article about the preliminary phase of settling the Alabama-Coushatta claim here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:11 PM | Get permalink

Be very afraid.

Writing in Egypt's Al-Ahram, Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Usher suggests that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's acceptance of Dubya's 'roadmap' isn't a step forward. Instead, says Usher, Sharon accepted the Dubya's peace plan only to head off a confrontation with the United States. As a result, Palestinians should be getting very nervous about where the Sharon government thinks the 'roadmap' is leading.

In early March -- when the world was distracted by Iraq -- Sharon quietly announced that the security barrier currently carving out chunks of Palestinian farmland near the northern West Bank border will go east, severing the central West Bank region from its Jordan Valley hinterland. In April he mused that mammoth Jewish settlements like Ariel that lie 20 kilometres within the West Bank would eventually be "on our side of the fence".

If so, these walls would cage the emerging "Palestinian entity" into three disconnected cantons in the north, centre and south of the West Bank, covering about 42 percent of its territory but hosting most of its two million or so denizens. This is the "occupation" Sharon wants to end: Israel's occupation of the Palestinian "people", not the occupation of the land and resources that is their patrimony.

"The provisional Palestinian state is a new term for Sharon's old strategy for achieving a long-term interim agreement," says PA Labour Minister Ghassan Khatib. "We know that if we get trapped in this phase we won't be able to move to the final status phase -- there is no chance Sharon will allow this. We also know that the provisional state will be autonomy in effect but occupation in practice. Only it won't be called autonomy -- it will be called statehood and Israel would be let off the hook."

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:08 PM | Get permalink

Feel like hanging on the ceiling?

Try gecko tape. Really.

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

Rumsfeld's attempt to make foreign policy are not a big hit.

To say the least.

The Knight-Ridder Newspapers are reporting on the time that high Washington officials are having to spend dealing with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's attempts to control foreign policy. It's been an open secret for some time that there have been major conflicts between the Defense and State departments over policy in Afghanistan and the middle east, for example. But this new report gives specific examples of policy decisions that Rumsfeld tried to make, which were then fought or reversed by others in Dubya's administration (including Dubya himself, at least once). These have included pulling US troop out of Germany, and out of the DMZ in Korea; and various issues around the detainees from Afghanistan, who are still being held by the US at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

From his first days in office, Rumsfeld has inundated Washington with a blizzard of memos regarding foreign policy, not usually the responsibility of a defense secretary.

"There are literally thousands of them," said one frequent recipient of Rumsfeld's foreign policy ideas and advice. "The theme is control. He wants everyone to have to play on his field."

It's been no secret in Washington that Rumsfeld and Powell have disagreed frequently on foreign policy questions. But the leaking of the existence of Rumsfeld's memos - remarkable in an administration known for its discipline - is a sign that the bitterness between the camps is intensifying.

Via Daily Kos.

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

The June 2 deadline is almost here.

If you live in the US, that means that the Federal Communications Commission is about to decide whether to adopt new rules that would let giant media companies to own even more of the media than they already do. If adopted, many observers believe the new rules will seal the fate of independent US broadcasters. Despite the efforts of Republican FCC commissioners to push this change through without notice — and despite an almost complete media blackout on the topic — activist groups (with the aid of Democratic FCC members) have mobilized public opinion on the issue. CNN reports that the FCC is being flooded with comments to the point that its Internet servers have been crashing.

Now it's your turn, if you haven't already contacted the FCC. It's important that you make your move quickly — sometime before 8 am Monday (Eastern US Time).

Go here for the FCC's email addresses and phone numbers. Or, if you still need more information, go here or here for all the facts and opinion you can possibly want.

(Magpie thanks Alas, a Blog for the deadline reminder.)

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:23 AM | Get permalink

WMD story in trouble in Australia, too.

A story in the Sydney Morning Herald quotes Aussie Defence Minister Robert Hill as saying that the government's decision to send troops to Iraq may have been influenced by bad intelligence about the military threat posed by the Saddam Hussein government posed — particularly that relating to WMDs.

But in an interview with the Herald, Senator Hill said it was too early to say that false conclusions were drawn about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability and he believed Australia was justified in joining the invasion. [...]

"On the basis of what we understood, the action was the right action to take," he said in Singapore. "If it turns out there were flaws in what we understood, then I think we ought to say there were flaws. But it's too early to say that.

"We do need to establish the full picture because it's important as we move on to learn all that there is to learn from this experience, including the intelligence side."

Australia had relied mainly on US and British intelligence pointing to the stockpiling and continued development of weapons of mass destruction.

Hill appears to be responding to criticism of Australia's decision to enter the war from within its intelligence community. About a week ago, a former intelligence officer charged that the government had ignored warnings that US intelligence on Iraq's WMDs was unreliable.

Andrew Wilkie, who resigned in March from the Office of National Assessments (ONA) over Australia's likely involvement in an Iraq war, said Australia's intelligence community long doubted U.S. claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"The U.S. information was faulty because there was a lot of political pressure to come up with a smoking gun," Wilkie told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"I think the U.S. agencies were also misinformed by disinformation that people in Iraq were wanting to pass to the U.S. to encourage the U.S. to intervene."

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:56 AM | Get permalink

Jerking the chain again.

Every time Dubya is in political trouble, it seems that the terrorism bogeyman rises up to distract the attention of the US public. Right now, he's under pressure because of the lack of WMDs in Iraq, and the failure of the Republican Congress to include a large number of poor families in the increased child tax credit. Given that the terror alert level was just dropped a couple of days ago, it would be hard to raise it back up.

So what is Washington doing? They're playing the al-Qaeda card instead, as the LA Times reports.

Al Qaeda has not only survived the U.S.-led crackdown against it, but it has found loopholes in the tactics of its pursuers and is exploiting them, according to interviews with U.S. officials here [Riyadh] and in Washington.

Of particular concern, these officials say, are indications that the terrorist network has infiltrated an unknown number of essentially untraceable operatives into the United States. Some of them are believed to be planning suicide bombings and "soft targets" such as subways within the next several months, U.S. officials said. [...]

"At the same time we have learned a lot about how Al Qaeda has operated, they have done their homework and figured out ways to get people in who can evade scrutiny and the techniques that have been successful in the past," said one senior U.S. official. "They're bringing in these people because they know they're not known to law enforcement and intelligence (officials). It gives them the opportunity to operate under the radar screen."

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

US continues to poke at France.

Reuters is reporting this little tidbit.

In a veiled warning to Chirac, a senior U.S. official on Bush's plane told journalists that terrorists hoped Western countries would continue squabbling rather than join to fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

"The forces out there that want to destabilize, that want to engage in terrorism (and) build weapons of mass destruction would like nothing better than to have the Western alliance... in an internecine battle about whose power needs to be checked," the official said.

This crowgirl wonders how well the French will like having their disagreements with the US equated with aiding and abetting terrorism.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:12 AM | Get permalink

Prying guns out of Iraqi hands.

The BBC reports that a gun amnesty in Iraq appears to be failing. The US occupation government has given Iraqis two weeks to turn in weapons without penalty before it starts enforcing a ban on anything larger than a 7.62 mm Kalashnikov. BBC correspondents say that not a single weapon has been turned in at any of the police stations they've visited in Baghdad.

Iraq has an ingrained gun culture and the number of weapons in circulation has proliferated since the end of the war.

The city has been traumatised by the ensuing lawlessness, and many Iraqis say a gun is the best - and sometimes the only - means of self-defence. [...]

Despite repeated raids by US troops, underground arms markets continue to flourish in Baghdad.

"For us weapon is a badge of honour," said arms dealer Abbas Fadhel.

"Even Saddam didn't dare to take away our weapons. In fact he used to give people rifles or shotguns as a present on big state occasions," he added.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:08 AM | Get permalink

Homeland insecurity in Big Sky country.

We all know that the leftists who congregate on the two coasts whine a lot about the way things have been going in the US since 9/11. But the ever-vigilant skippy has spotted a an encouraging outbreak of the same subversive talk in Montana.

For one thing, maintaining and employing the world’s largest collection of weapons of mass destruction comes with a steep price. Just yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle, in “Military waste under fire,” tells the tale of $1 trillion (yes, that’s TRILLION, as in $1,000 BILLION) for which the Department of Defense cannot account. A General Accounting Office report to Congress says the Army “lost track” of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, 36 Javelin missile command launch units and numerous financial transactions. To put this in perspective, a trillion dollars comes to more than three full years of the total “defense” budget. And how did Congress reward such disgusting management of the nation’s assets? As Rep. Henry Waxman said: “The Congress has increased defense spending from $300 billion to $400 billion over three years at the same time that the Pentagon has failed to address financial problems that dwarf those of Enron.”

Someone ought to whack Congress up-side the head with a 2-by-4 to get their attention on what’s going down out here in “the homeland.” Most states are struggling desperately, with some teetering on bankruptcy. Here in Montana, our college students are facing an estimated tuition increase of 24 percent per year for the next two years. Should they manage to somehow scrounge up the money to pay the higher tuition, they may well face, as did this year’s college graduating class, the worst job market in 20 years when they finally get their degrees.

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

Nurses' warning about SARS cases ignored.

A group of nurses at Toronto's North York General Hospital told the Toronto Star that they warned hospital authorities about a family in which five members showed SARS symptoms, but that their warnings were ignored. Two days after the nurses' warning, on May 22, hospital authorities publicly acknowleged a new outbreak.

Nurses say they raised serious concerns which were dismissed by doctors. Even a member of the exposed family pleaded with hospital staff: "Does anybody realize we all have this thing?"

Still, not enough was done, charge two emergency room nurses who spoke to the Star yesterday on condition of anonymity, for fear of being fired.

"There was a hurriedness to be done with SARS," said one. [...]

Staff concerns boiled up on May 20, just after the Victoria Day holiday weekend. Staff say they told their superiors they feared a SARS outbreak in the hospital because a family of patients had SARS-like symptoms.

They say [Dr. Glenn] Berall [co-chair of the hospital's SARS management team], along with Dr. Barbara Mederski, the hospital's infectious disease specialist, dismissed their concerns. Mederski did not respond to calls from the Star over the past two days. A hospital spokesperson said she was having "some well-deserved rest."

Hospital president Bonnie Adamson, a nurse, knew of the meeting, but did not attend. She was unavailable for comment yesterday. Nurses say she has been trying to advocate on their behalf.

Berall said public health officials investigated the family cluster, but ruled out SARS, given what they knew about the virus at the time.

"The original diagnosis of SARS required an epidemiological link. ... This particular family didn't have an epidemiological link. There was no link to any SARS patient or to travel in China and, therefore, the diagnosis of SARS couldn't be made," he said.

Now public health officials say a SARS diagnosis may not require such a link.

Thanks, Miriam!

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

Happy Fourth of July.

One without fireworks, if federal agencies can't get their acts together.

The AP reports that fireworks companies can't ship their fireworks because the departments of Transportation, Justice and Homeland Security haven't gotten around to setting post-9/11 rules for transporting fireworks. Given that there are no rules telling them how to comply the Safe Explosives Act, railroads haven't been willing to carry fireworks — meaning that Asian-made fireworks are piling up in ports on the US west coast.

"It's getting stupid. Do they really think a terrorist will use a firecracker to blow up a building?" said Don Lantis, of North Sioux City, S.D., whose family-owned pyrotechnics company puts on 300 to 400 shows around the country every Independence Day.

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