Magpie

Saturday, August 9

And then there are stories like this.

You'll remember Katherine Harris. She was the Florida Secretary of State who oversaw the election fraud in 2000 that stole the White House from Al Gore. She parlayed her notoriety into a seat in the US House of Representatives.

According to this story, at least some of her consituents were unwilling to let Harris run a so-called town hall meeting like a White House press conference.

After introductions at 5:30 p.m., Harris spoke for nearly half of the allotted hour. It was after 6 p.m. when she asked for questions.

Harris told attendees she wanted all questions asked first before she answered.

The lines at the microphones were long.

The boos were loud.

"We want our answers now," a man in the back of the room shouted.

She said, "Doing it this way will allow more people to speak."

Harris' logic didn't sit well with the standing-room-only crowd.

The crowd's mood already was testy before the meeting began. Security guards and Harris' staff confiscated any written material people tried to bring into the hall.

The confiscated literature included analysis of the Medicare prescription bills passed in the House and Senate in June as well as a chart showing Harris' voting record since she began her term in January.

The fliers were distributed during an earlier news conference staged in the parking lot by senior citizens to protest House and Senate bills designed to provide prescription drug coverage through Medicare.

This crowgirl really likes it when there's some good news to point to.

Via Body and Soul.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:36 PM | Get permalink

Green Linnet saga.

For those looking for more on the dispute between Irish traditional music label Green Linnet and some of its artists, the latest press we've seen is this story from the Hartford Advocate. Not too much new, other than some suitably catty quotes from both sides.

There are earlier Magpie posts on the Green Linnet dispute, but Blogger won't let us access our archives.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:38 PM | Get permalink

Got a spare US $4 million?

Washington obviously had it sitting around. And instead of spending it on getting child credits to those people left out of Dubya's tax bill, or putting it against the massive deficits that the administration is running up, they decided to spend it on Hi, an Arabic-language magazine aimed at youth in the Mideast, published under the auspices of the State Department. Officials are very wary about calling the magazine propaganda. Instead, reports the Washington Post, they say Hi is a 'lifestyle magazine' that keeps away from political subjects.

The premiere issue of the glossy, full-color 72-page monthly appeared in July with a cover story on the experiences of Arab students in American colleges and shorter articles on yoga, sandboarding, singer Norah Jones, Arab American actor Tony Shalhoub and marriage counseling -- the latter story illustrated with a photo of Dr. Phil McGraw, the Oprah-spawned TV tough-love guru. [...]

"Arab Music Invades the West," proclaims the cover of the second issue, now arriving on Middle Eastern newsstands. That headline touts an article on Sting, Lenny Kravitz and other Western pop stars who have collaborated with Arab musicians. The issue also features stories on Internet matchmaking, digital art and Hispanic life in the United States, plus a short item on Adam Sandler's revelation of what a lousy student he was in high school.

"There are plenty of political magazines," says [Christopher W.S.] Ross [special coordinator for public diplomacy at the State Department]. "This is, in a very subtle way, a vehicle for American values. There have been people in Congress who have said, 'Why can't we explain our American values?' Well, here is one way to do that."

Hi is funded by the State Department, but designed and edited by the Magazine Group, a company that publishes mainly trade and industry magazines. Currently, 50,000 copies are being distributed in a half-dozen or so Mideast countries, but the Magazine Group is hoping to get Hi into additional countries and bring the circulation up to a quarter million.

So does publishing Hi make any sense? Is the money well spent? Experts contacted by the Post had responses that were mixed at best.

"I think it's a great magazine. I would like to subscribe to it myself," says Mohammed Nawawy, an Egyptian-born journalism professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts and co-author of a book on the al-Jazeera TV network.

But, Nawawy suggests, the magazine is addressing the wrong problem. "The problem with young Arabs is not how they perceive U.S. culture or the American way of life," he says. "They're watching American movies and wearing American jeans and lining up to get visas to come to the United States. The problem is how they perceive United States foreign policy, and that can only be changed by actions on the ground in Iraq and Israel."

Samer Shehata, who teaches at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, agrees. Hi is "clearly well done" and "visually beautiful," Shehata wrote in an e-mail while traveling to Egypt. But, like Nawawy, he believes that Arabs do not hate America or American culture, but loathe its foreign policy toward the Middle East.

"A magazine directed at Arab youth, regardless of how well done," he wrote, "will not convince people otherwise."

There's also a website to go with the magazine here. If any Arabic-speaking readers feel like posting a comment about the site's contents, Magpie would love to hear what you think.

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

Those Iraqi trailers found back in April and May.

The NY Times reports that someone in the US intelligence community is finally saying what a lot of the world already knew: they were used for making hydrogen, not for chemical or biological warfare.

Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.

The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.

The Times also reports CIA and Defense Department sources as saying they still stand behind the conclusions of the white paper, despite the DIA's findings.

Magpie posted about the trailers on May 31 and June 7, but unfortunately Blogger has screwed up the archives, so we can't provide links.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:56 AM | Get permalink

Wasn't the name 'USA PATRIOT Act' cynical enough?

Now we have to worry about Attorney General John Ashcroft's 'VICTORY Act' — Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act. (Obviously, they tossed in the Y to make better propaganda.)

The NY Daily News reports that Ashcroft is going on a 10-day, 20-city 'Victory Tour' to hype the new proposal, which will be introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee by Sen. Orrin Hatch next month.

If passed, the feds would be allowed to:

— Clamp down on Arab hawala transactions ...

— Get business records without a court order in terrorism probes and delay notification.

— Track wireless communications with a roving warrant.

— Increase sentences for drug kingpins to 40 years in prison and $4 million in fines.

This crowgirl's stomach is churning over the name of this legislation. Obviously there is no limit to the type of manipulations that this lot in Washington is ready to try in order to achieve their ends.

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 AM | Get permalink

Friday, August 8

Dubya's popularity continues to slide.

It's dropped down to the lowest levels since well before the Iraq war, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.

The poll shows that only 53 percent of the people surveyed approve of how Dubya is handling his job. His disapproval rating has risen to its highest level ever, with 37 percent of the respondents saying that they're unhappy with his job performance.

Bush's overall approval rating climbed to 86 percent just after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It declined through much of 2002 and early 2003 before rallying to 74 percent at the height of the war in Iraq.

The Pew poll found a sharp rise in the number of people -- to 57 percent -- who now say the economy, not terrorism, is the most important presidential priority. Terrorism was identified as the most pressing problem by 27 percent.

Given the importance of the economy to US voters, Magpie expects that Washington is going to start 'massaging' the economic numbers even more than it has already. We've already noticed that the initial numbers reported — the ones that get the most press coverage — are frequently revised downward a couple of weeks later — when, of course, nobody is paying any attention. What do you bet that a lot more 'mistaken' numbers than usual are issued between now and the 2004 election?

Via Reuters.

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

Tribal license plates OK in Kansas.

One of the recurring themes in the body of law governing Indian tribes in the US is the conflict between tribal governments and the states within whose boundaries the tribe is located. Often supported by the US Supreme Court, states continually lay siege to tribal sovereignty, attempting (and sometimes succeeding) to whittle away powers that tribes believe are rightfully theirs.

One of the powers exercised by dozens of tribes is that of registering motor vehicles and issuing license plates. In Kansas, however, the right of the Prairie Band Potawatomi to do this has been challenged by the state government. The state Department of Revenue has maintained that Potawatomi plates are good only on the reservation — if a tribal member wanted to drive elsewhere, said the department, they had to buy Kansas plates.

After a tribal member got a ticket in 1999 for driving a vehicle with Potawotomi plates on a state highway, the tribe went to federal court to force Kansas to recognize the tribe's right to register vehicles. On Wednesday, the court ruled in favor of the tribe.

[U.S. District Judge Julie] Robinson said in her opinion that if the state prevailed in the case, the federally recognized tribe would be deprived of its right of self-governance. But if the tribe prevailed, "the state's titling and registration program will be minimally affected."

"Such restraint seems insignificant considering the state already recognizes tribally issued tags from other jurisdictions," Robinson said.

In 1999, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that license plates that are issued by the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma and are recognized by that state must also be recognized by Kansas.

Although the state can still decide to appeal Robinson's ruling, tribal leaders are elated by their court victory:

Gary Mitchell, the tribe's vice chairman, said the ruling supported the sovereign authority of tribes in Kansas and elsewhere.

"It's unfortunate it has taken nearly four years of litigation to have these federal rights recognized by the state of Kansas," he said.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:15 PM | Get permalink

Slow blog day.

Blogging will be very light today. Magpie needs to learn The Wise Maid on the fiddle by tonight.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:37 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, August 7

Why didn't Gore make speeches like this in his 2000 campaign?

Magpie is not a big fan of the former US vice president — we voted for him only because the thought of Dubya in the White House was too odious to imagine. But we have to admit that Al Gores' speech today at New York University was really good. He makes broad indictments of Dubya's adminstrations handling of economic and foreign policy, using the strongest language we've heard Gore use. (If anyone actually attended the speech, we'd love to know how his delivery was.)

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.

Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression.

And no, this isn't the opening salvo for another presidential bid — Gore makes that very clear.

The transcript of the speech is here.

Thanks Kathleen!

Update: Streaming video of the speech is here. [Requires RealPlayer.]

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

Mentioning the F-word.

No, not that one. We're talking about something really nasty: fascism.

One of the things that Magpie has admired about Molly Ivins' writing over the years is her continuing ability to believe the the US government is capable of things like fairness, democracy, and justice even when she's reporting on activities that show little or no evidence of any of those qualities.

With her current column, it looks like Dubya's administration has finally done in Ivins' optimism about where the US is heading. When someone who's been around for as long as Ivins has implies that the country might be sliding towards fascism, Magpie gets a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

The "Watch on the Rhine" quality of our public life these days deserves serious attention. As one who studies the small, buried stories on the back pages of major newspapers, I am becoming increasingly uneasy. This is more than just, "Boy, do their policies suck." There's a creepy advance of something more menacing than bad policies.

I keep thinking of Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called ‘corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." When was the last time we saw this administration do something that involved standing up to some corporate special interest in favor of the great majority of the people?

Via Working for Change.

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

Building public radio's farm team.

In the months since Magpie showed up in the blogosphere, we've linked a number of times to radio pieces posted at Transom. (The most recent of these is the link to 'The Most German Day Ever' that you'll find if you scroll down a half-dozen posts or so.) Today, the NY Times has a piece on how Transom is helping new radio producers hone their skills, and start getting their work out to the public.

"We have a huge problem with new talent," says Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life."

"This is an aging institution," he said. "There's no place for people to come and learn this stuff."

Mr. Glass cites his own experience - "When I was 19, I walked into NPR headquarters and talked my way into a job"- as an example of what is impossible today. "Now if you're young and you go to a radio station, they'll turn you into a news stringer," he said. "You're not going to learn to do stories that are emotional or funny or personally expressive."

That had been René Gutel's experience before she posted her first feature at Transom last month. Called "1,000 Postcards," it is a warm look back at the daily cards her father sent her while she was in college. Ms. Gutel, 25, put the piece together in her spare time; her full-time jobs have so far involved reporting local news for the public radio station KSKA and then the commercial TV station KTUU, both in Anchorage. Now she is rethinking her career goals. "I got into public radio to do quirky, long-form audio pieces," she said, noting that she is already pondering the next one.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:15 PM | Get permalink

Putting profits before people's health.

If there was question of whether drug companies' opposition to allowing US consumers to buy prescription drugs in Canada is based on greed, rather than concerns about the safety or quality of Canadian medicines, the recent actions by major drug companies has erased any doubt. The BBC reports that drug giant Pfizer has notified Canadian pharmacists that it has stopped suppling drugs to wholesalers in that country. All sales must now go directly through Pfizer. (Among other drugs, Pfizer makes Viagra.)

Pfizer's move comes just a few days after the US House of Representatives approved a bill allowing the import of Canadian drugs. UK drug maker GlaxoSmithKline has already had a similar ban on wholesale drug sales. Several other firms are investigating large orders from Canada, including US companies Merck and Wyeth, the UK/Swedish firm AstraZenca.

US drug firms are angry that Canadian wholesalers and online pharmacies are re-exporting medicines back to the US to meet huge demand from elderly US citizens who prefer to pay cheaper Canadian prices.

Canadian internet pharmacies can sell medicines at as little as 30% of the US price because Canada has price controls on drugs. [...]

Pfizer said it wanted to "better enforce our terms of sale, which are that our products are only sold in Canada for Canadian patients and that they are not for export".

But US consumer lobby group Public Citizen said Pfizer was being "greedy" to protect its profits.

Magpie notes that the US is the only industrialized country whose government does not regulate the price of pharmaceuticals.

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

A cheery little Flash presentation.

Over here.

It's unremitting. But true.

Via The Daily Dystopian.

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

Terror suspect cops a plea.

One of seven Portland (OR) men charged by the US government with committing terrorism-related crimes has pleaded guilty in a plea-bargain arrangement with federal prosecutors.

Maher "Mike" Hawash, one of seven Portland-area suspects charged with terrorism related crimes, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban, but will not face other charges in exchange for testimony against other suspects.

Hawash, a software engineer who worked for Intel, had initially pleaded innocent to charges of conspiracy to wage war against the United States, conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida and conspiracy to contribute services to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

In exchange for testimony, federal prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the U.S. and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban.

He will serve a minimum of seven years in federal prison under the deal, which was approved by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Hawash agreed to testify in federal court, before grand juries and before any potential military tribunals.

It's a sign of the times that Magpie has to wonder whether Hawash is actually guilty, or whether he took a plea bargain after being threatened with a military tribunal. Not that John Ashcroft's Justice Department would ever make such a threat, mind you.

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

Nailing the closet door shut.

The Supreme Court may have ruled that homosexual sex is legal, but that doesn't mean that life is easy in the US if you queer (of whatever flavor). As Richard Goldstein suggests in the Village Voice, there are signs of a massive anti-gay political backlash that could happen despite the social and cultural gains that LGBT people have made in the past couple of decades. In particular, Goldstein points to how the religious right has successfully organized among working class people of all races, and how the failure of the LGBT movement to do the same could be fatal. If most Americans think that queers are white, affluent, and happy, he warns, it's going to be very difficult to counter the right's attempts to roll back whatever legal protections queer folk have gained for themselves through much hard work.

Cultural commentators don't spend much time in the harsher precincts of Bush's America. In their secure circles, gay rights is a testament to freedom, not a threat. The mainstream gay movement sees the world through this same rosy lens. Its middle-class focus keeps it from noticing the dissed and dispossessed, who tend to view gays as sinners with way too much power. This bitter perspective will seem familiar to students of Jewish history. Not that queers are headed for concentration camps, but unless the triumphal mood submits to a reality check, the current wave of resentment could become tidal. It's crucial not to confuse a pop trend with a juggernaut.

American history is rife with examples of progress rolled back. Blacks who rose during reconstruction were crushed by the Jim Crow laws that followed. Women who entered the workforce during the Second World War were redomesticated in the 1950s. There's no such thing as a one-way road to liberation. Yet the media prompt gay people to put on a happy face, and this upbeat image is compounded by the reluctance of gays to talk about their pain—it's considered wussy these days.

"Even our friends and families aren't aware of the challenges we must deal with," says Nadine Smith, co-chair of the Federation of Statewide LGBT Advocacy Organizations. "The reason is that we shield them from this knowledge. We have to be much more willing to talk about the frustration in our lives, and we've got to tell the truth about how the lack of legal protections impacts us in real, human ways."

Via Mikhaela.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:51 AM | Get permalink

Another US soldier who's probably going to get in trouble.

PFC Isaac Kindblade is currently serving with the US Army's 671st Engineer Company in Iraq. He has a very candid op-ed piece about a soldier's life on occupation duty in the Portland Oregonian.

A lot is made of our military's might. Our Abrams tanks, our Apache helicopters, computers, satellites, this and that. All that stuff is great, but it's essentially useless in peacekeeping ops. It is up to the soldiers on the ground armed with M-16s and a precious few words of Arabic.

The task is daunting, and the conditions are frightening. We can't help but think of "Black Hawk Down" when we're in Baghdad surrounded by swarms of people. Soldiers are being attacked, injured and killed every day. The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads.

The president says, "Bring 'em on." The generals say we don't need more troops. Well, they're not over here.

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

Israel, Palestine, and denial.

One of the buzz terms that Magpie really hates is peace process, or its more up-to-date equivalent, road map. When we hear either of these used to describe the political jockeying going on in an area of conflict, we can be almost certain that the parties in conflict are getting farther from settling their dispute, not closer. This was definitely true with the various crises in the Balkans, and it's (if anything) even more true concerning the long-running Palestine-Israel conflict.

One of the main characteristics of a peace process is denial. Both the party in the stronger position and the 'honest broker' have to be able to pretend that there is movement toward a solution even when no such movement really exists. (The interminable talks between the UN, European Union, and the Milosovic government in Yugoslavia regarding Yugoslav human rights violations is a good example.) When the actions of a party contradict their words, everyone has to act like the words still describe the facts on the ground, even though they don't. (Think about how the Sharon government in Israel talks about removing settlements from the West Bank, but in fact allows existing settlements to grow.) And even though different rules for the use of force are different are applied to the stronger and weaker parties, everyone has to act like no difference exists. (Palestinian terrorism 'forces" Israel to take military action by Palestinian terrorism, but any violent response by Palestinians to Israeli instransigence is, by definition, just more terrorism.)

In Haaretz, Yossi Sarid has an excellent piece about the difference between rhetoric and reality in how Israel is acting toward the Palestinians. According to Sarid, the Sharon government is feeding tall tales to Washington, and Washington — and Dubya in particular — is eating them up.

The day is not far off when Abu Mazen and his government will fall. It's only a matter of time. Then, Ariel Sharon will get Yasser Arafat back, and he will be relieved to be rid of Abu Mazen's moderation. Sharon always had huge difficulties speaking to moderate Palestinians, while he swims like a fish in a sea of Palestinian extremism. There's a problem with moderates. You have to encourage and strengthen them, offer them real proposals and make a real start on the famous "painful concessions." Sharon doesn't have any such intentions. All he wanted to do is get home from Washington in one piece.

Sharon's behavior is not surprising to anyone who has known him for many years. The surprise is President Bush, who has evinced a strange passion for tall tales. It is completely unclear why the American president has decided to consume overflowing portions of complete lies served up to him by Ariel Sharon. Therefore, when Abu Mazen falls, and his government with him, the blame will fall on Sharon, but mainly on Bush, who maintains the pretension of an "honest broker."

Does Bush know that Sharon is lying to him, or does he still believe him? Does Bush pretend to believe because of political convenience and domestic considerations?

It's a mystery and will remain a mystery that this particular president, who presents himself as one who you don't "get smart with," is prepared, for some reason, for the tail, Sharon, to wag him.

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

Wednesday, August 6

The voice is the thing.

Features found in almost all musical traditions may have been determined by characteristics of the human voice, reports New Scientist. A new study analyzed thousands of speech samples, and 'found peaks in acoustic energy that precisely mirror the distances between important notes in the twelve-tone scale.' Subsets of that scale are used by almost all music.

"The mysteries of music have a biologically principled explanation," says Dale Purves, at Duke University, North Carolina, and lead author of the study. "A reasonable speculation is that we hear these tonal relationships because they are involved in our interpretation of each other's speech." [...]

Different musical traditions have characteristic sound because many cultures have devised scales from a subset of the full chromatic scale, with different distances, or "intervals," between the tones. Chinese music is based on five-tone scales, while scales common in Western music have seven tones.

But all cultures favour certain intervals from the chromatic scale, and listeners judge these same intervals to create the most harmonious combinations of two tones.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:00 PM | Get permalink

Governor Terminator?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of California. As a Republican, of course.

But given that California also gave the country George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, and Sonny Bono, Magpie probably shouldn't be surprised.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:47 PM | Get permalink

A minor ethical lapse.

Imagine this: You're a federal judge in the state of Wyoming. A case comes to you that involves the federal ban on roads in 58.5 million acres of national forest land. That ban affects the ability of companies to explore for oil and gas. The clincher is that you own US $400,000 worth of stock in oil and gas companies — over a third of your portfolio. Given all of this, do you rule on the case, or do you withdraw because of conflict of interest?

If you're US District Judge Clarence Brimmer, you go right ahead and rule on the case. And not only do you strike down the road ban, but your decision cites the effect of the roadless rule on oil and gas exploration.

Judicial watchdog groups are not impressed, reports the LA Times, and two of them have asked the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to reprimand Brimmer and bar him from ruling in cases that involve oil and gas interests.

"Both the importance of the case and the size of Judge Brimmer's holdings make this stand out as an egregious example of a case in which a judge's [personal financial] interests are at stake," said Douglas T. Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, an environmental law and judicial watchdog group.

The judge's conduct "severely undermines the credibility of the judiciary, the hallmarks of which are supposed to be objectivity and fairness," added Melanie Sloan, director of the Washington-based legal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

Both federal law and judicial rules direct judges to disqualify themselves from cases if they have financial interests in the parties, the subject matter or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.

Judges are responsible for avoiding conflicts of interest.

"It's rare that it happens, and when it does it's often inadvertent," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at the New York University Law School. "This can't be inadvertent because he has half his wealth in oil and gas."

Brimmer has issued a statement saying that he acted propely in the case.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 PM | Get permalink

Pink alert! Pink alert!

It was a close thing, but Dubya's quick action saved us. Will Durst fills us in on how the Prez's warning about same-sex marriage saved the US from a terrible fate.

The specter of gay dominance over our culture looms on the horizon like a black, size gazillion, three-button Gianni Versace suit with contrast piping and a silk crew t. How long before the streets of every small American town are transformed into idyllic playgrounds for men and women strolling unashamed, holding hands flaunting their "normalcy" in front of our children?

It's an imminent peril and not merely a desperate distraction like the loony left insists. I repeat: this is not a distraction. Just like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq weren't a distraction. No, this is even more of not a distraction than the weapons in Iraq weren't a mass distraction. What I mean is, this is even less destruction than that. In other words, no distraction at all. You know what I mean.

Via Working for Change.

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

The most German day ever.

Transom is a showcase for new works by radio producers. Not the usual sort of public radio stuff, mind you, as the currently showcased program demonstrates.

It has Swedish queens. It has beer. It has ride-on lawnmowers and a national anthem. What more could you possibly want from a radio story, we ask you?

To listen, go here. If you have the bandwidth, choose the version that's accompanied by a Flash presentation. Magpie guarantees you won't be sorry.

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

Hmmmmm.

Magpie wonders if this might be the solution for our unfinished master's thesis.

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

The same-sex marriage party.

Long-time queer activist Michael Bronski suggests that maybe that party needs to be spoiled a bit.

My problem is not with queer people getting legally hitched, per se. Any change in our culture that brings fuller equality under the law — as mandated by the Constitution — is a good thing. Queer couples who want to marry should get the same benefits now offered only to heterosexual couples. My problem is that gay political organizing seems to have become obsessed with winning the right to marry. I fear that queer political organizers have been caught up in the exhilaration of the moment and that they’re not looking into the future — or the past — as much as they should. I fear that for many people, winning the right to marry has become the raison d’être of the movement, not only its alpha but especially its omega. Indeed, cultural and political commentator Andrew Sullivan, author of 1995’s Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality and the editor, with Joseph Landau, of 1997’s Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con, has proclaimed, "When we get the right for same-sex marriage, we have done all we need to do, we can just pack the movement up and close it down." [...]

As an old-time gay liberationist, I find the frenzy around marriage organizing exciting but depressing. I would never have imagined that a movement that started out in the bars, the streets, and in public cruising places could have come this far. The gay-liberation movement had a vision of radical change and making the world a better place. Securing the right to marry will make the world a better place, but it will not change the world. Heck, it doesn’t even change marriage. In the end, it is such a small gain for such a big fight.

In 1969, we didn’t just want — as we said then — a piece of the pie we had been denied for so long. We wanted to take over the bakery and produce a huge array of tasty, extravagant, nutritious, luscious, and inviting foodstuffs for queers and everyone else. I don’t think we ever imagined that our movement would one day be happy to settle for such small crumbs, no matter how sweet.

This crowgirl was really pleased to see a gay man put the early connection between the women's movement and the gay liberation movement at the center of his argument.

Via Mikhaela.

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

Rockin' on with the 'Burqa Band.'

veiled4allah points us to this story from Afghanistan.

The female trio appears on screen as three blue ghosts in a makeshift studio in Kabul; bound by their robes they nevertheless let it all hang out on the drums, electric bass and microphone.

“You give me all your love, you give me all your kisses, and then you touch my burqa, and don’t know who it is...” the lead singer moans in halting but determined English.

It’s a surprising image in a city where cultural events were virtually outlawed and dance steps can be made out under the gyrating robes, moves that would have meant almost certain death a few years ago.

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

Privatizing the Internet.

If big business has its way, the Internet is going to become more of a toll road than it already is. Forget stuff like the 'digital divide' (remember that?) — telecoms and content providers want to make it easy for them to flood the 'Net with their stuff, while making it prohibitively expensive for anyone else to do it.

One front in the corporate high-tech takeover of the Internet can be seen in Congress. On July 21, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing on the "Regulatory Status of Broadband." There, a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others, told Congress that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be able to impose volume-based fee structures, based on bits transmitted per month. This is part of a behind-the-scenes struggle by the Net's content providers and retailers to cut deals with the ISPs so that each sector will have unimpaired access to consumers and can maximize profits.

The industry coalition spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company. Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission.

Via little red cookbook.

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

Helping strangers.

Over the past two decades in the US, the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy has become harder and harder to exercise. Because of pressure from anti-choice forces, many hospitals and clinics will not perform abortions; few medical schools teach abortion procedures; and few doctors are willing to take the risks to their personal safety that being an abortion provider entails. In addition, many states harass women with waiting periods and parental consent rules in order to deter abortions, despite their legality under the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling.

Currently, 87 percent of US counties do not have local abortion services, which obviously means that many women have to travel to end a pregnancy. If a woman is in her second trimester of pregnancy, however, her search for an abortion provider becomes even harder. Very few states allow them past 20 weeks, and some (like Maine) have almost no providers who will do an abortion after the 15th week.

New York has one of the most unrestrictive abortion laws in the country, and providers there will perform the procedure up to the 24th week. Women's eNews has a story about the Haven Coalition, a volunteer group of women who for the last two years have been providing food, housing, and other services to women who travel to New York City for their abortions. So far, the group has helped over 100 women.

As the coordinator for the Haven Coalition, Shames oversees an ad hoc network of approximately 30 pro-choice advocates who live in New York City. All of them provide free overnight accommodations for impoverished women who have come to the city to get a second-trimester abortion, that is legally prohibited or just too hard to get in their own area, and cannot afford the cost of a hotel room and meals.

"I call Haven the Underground Railroad for women seeking abortions," says Shames, describing how she recently hosted a 41-year-old woman who needed an abortion because she was already barely supporting her mother and two children on her factory earnings and would lose her job if she had another baby. Shames put her up for two nights. Despite her insistence that the woman rest, Shames recalls with a smile how "she kept sneaking back into the kitchen to wash the dishes."

Shames has seen some women come to New York just a day or two too late for a second-trimester abortion and have to go back home to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term. Some women are sent home because advocacy groups can't raise the necessary funds to pay for their abortions. Shames expects women to rely more heavily on Haven as abortion rights are chipped away under the Bush administration.

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

Tuesday, August 5

Reading the economic tea leaves.

Over at General Glut's Globblog, the General tries to make some sense out of the numbers about the US service economy released earlier today. As usual, there's a dark cloud inside the silver lining. The General hints that the word deflation might be getting heard more often really soon now.

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

Molly Ivins (again).

You have to love a woman who can get an accurate picture of where the US is going by sorting out the piles of paper on her desk.

There are messy-desk people and there are clean-desk people. I'm a major messy. About every six months, I am seized by a desire to Get Organized, so I start doing archaeological excavations into the midden heap on my desk. The result this time was a sort of time-lapse photography of where the country is headed.

Going through stacks of old newspaper articles, speeches, reports, studies and press releases at a high rate of speed left one overwhelming impression: deception ... government by deception. I'd like pass along some of what I found without the usual journalistic standards of sourcing because I want to recreate the impression it all left -- rather like leafing through a book rapidly, catching sentence here and there. Leaving aside the missing weapons of mass destruction (hey, we found the oil), I found so many little things that fit the same pattern.

Ivins' list of 'little things' is quite impressive. Go over and take a look.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:35 PM | Get permalink

Afghan women demand equality.

A women's group in Afghanistan has presented the commission drafting a constitution with 100,000 signed copies of a demand that the new constitution give equal rights to women and men.

The 'Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women' was written by Negar, a group founded in exile to oppose the Taliban government, which was overthrown by the US in 2001. The document was written while the Taliban still ruled in Afghanistan.

The document demands a host of fundamental rights, including "the elimination of all forms of discrimination and segregation based on gender," the right to move about "freely and independently" and the right to decide whether to wear a burqa -- the ubiquitous, all-encompassing veil worn by most Afghan women.

"Negar believes that without equal citizenship for both men and women, Afghanistan cannot achieve its legitimacy as an independent, sovereign and self-ruling state of the world," the group said in the statement.

"It is imperative that the constitution restore these rights in order to save Afghanistan from remaining a failed state with an uncertain future," the statement said.

The final draft of the new constitution will be debated by a 'grand council' beginning in October.

For a recent look at the conditions of women in 'liberated' Afghanistan, see this Reuters story. Even though the story has the typical Western obsession with the wearing of burqas, as opposed to other conditions Afghan women face, some good information still manages to seep through.

For a more general look at women's rights in the overall context of human rights in Afghanistan, see this report from Human Rights Watch.

This crowgirl notices how Reuters buried the women's objections to burqa-centered analysis down at the very bottom of the story.

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

Where does bad policy come from?

In the case of the US Department of Defense, retired Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski thinks she knows.

Like many of her fellow officers in the Air Force and other US service branches, Kwiatkowski breathed a sigh of relief when Bill Clinton left office. In her last 10 months before retirement, however, she served at the Pentagon in he Secretary of Defense's Under Secretariat for Policy. What she saw there changed her mind about whether things had improved under Dubya and Rumsfeld's stewardship. In Kwiatkowski's words, the way decisions were made was 'aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline.'

Cross-agency cliques: Much has been written about the role of the founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute and their new positions in the Bush administration. Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and that an overwhelming number of these appointees have such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies -- in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.

Within the Central Intelligence Agency, it was less clear to me who the appointees were, if any. This might explain the level of interest in the CIA taken by the Office of the Vice President. In any case, I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at State or the National Security Council because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel. This cliquishness is cause for amusement in such movies as Never Been Kissed or The Hot Chick. In the development and implementation of war planning it is neither amusing nor beneficial for American security because opposing points of view and information that doesn't "fit" aren't considered.

Via A Rational Animal.

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

Same-sex marriage cartoons.

There's been a raft of them since the Prez opened his big mouth on the subject, and Mikhaela points to a whole bunch.

Don't miss this one about Dubya's forbidden love.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 AM | Get permalink

Oooooooh, shiny!

An online exhibition of 150 years of illustrated letters.

Magpie liked this one.

Via wood s lot.

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

Note to US immigrants.

Don't get a speeding ticket unless your papers are in order. NY Times columnist Bob Herbert hasyet another cautionary tale from the post-9/11 world.

Via little red cookbook.

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

Progressive Islam.

No, that's not a contradiction in terms. It's an intellectual and theological current in Islam that's very much alive in the US and other countries in the Islamic 'periphery.'

It's also the name of a book by Omid Safi, who teaches Islamic Studies at Colgate University in New York state. Muslim Wake Up! has an interview with Safi, in which he discusses how other Muslims have reacted to his book; how Washington is trying to use the 'reform' of Islam for its own purposes; and whether current progressive thinking in Islam is the harbinger of a broader movement to come.

MWU!: Why does it seem like progressive Islam is finding much more vibrancy in the US—more so than in predominantly Muslim countries?

OS: There has been a tendency to call it a “New American Islam.” But that’s not new. People have been talking about a new interpretation of Islam starting in the periphery for many years now. But there are two factors we have to consider. The first is the reality that, even in the age of Ashcroft and other zealots, the freedoms in America are enabling us to have this conversation that we wouldn’t be able to conduct in many Muslim countries. That’s because America has a strong progressive tradition and pre-existing progressive communities.

The second point we should remember is that this is not an American-invented idea. There are similar movements in South Africa, Iran, and Malaysia that are even more sophisticated and generations ahead of where we are here.

MWU!: What has been most influential in shaping your thoughts on Progressive Islam?

OS: Certainly the compassion for all living creatures that is found in Sufism and the writings of Rumi have had a great impact on me. But there is no question that I have also been influenced by other traditions. When I look at the Buddhist emphasis on non-violence, for example, I go back and see how this could be handled in an Islamic context. I would mention Gandhi, Dr. King, the Dalai Lama as major influences.

MWU!: Tell us more about your experience in dealing with the traditional Muslim American establishment.

OS: I get invited much more frequently to talk at synagogues and churches than at mosques.

The national Muslim American organizations don’t take full advantage of Muslim academics. Some people on certain issues will show up, but there is a distrust of scholars who have studied Islamic Studies in the west—it’s that whole "Islamization of Knowledge" garbage. In the end, as Abdolkarim Soroush says, knowledge is knowledge, and a ghettoized and xenophobic mentality will only make us weaker.

Make sure to read the comments. The discussion is lively, to say the least.

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

Monday, August 4

The Chinese menace.

This past week has seen a lot of angst in Washington after the release of a Pentagon report on China's increasing military capabilities. Much of the administration response has centered on China's ability to threaten Taiwan and US bases in Okinawa and the Japanese mainland.

An article by David Isenberg in Asia Times suggests that much of the Pentagon report is exactly the same as a similar one issued in 2002 to little fanfare, and that the Chinese threat may only loom so large because of what the Pentagon left out of the report, rather than anything new that it put in.

The Pentagon report is interesting both for what it reports and for what it omits. There are many new details in the usual sections on the modernization of China's air, naval, ground, air, missile-defense and strategic missile forces, but they do not always provide context.

For example, one reads about China's acquisition of new Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, but there is no mention of the loss of one of its indigenous Ming-class submarines this year that resulted in the deaths of 70 sailors.

Similarly, while there are lots of details regarding Russian weapons sales and technology transfers to China, there is almost nothing on similar transfers from Israel, which has been a longtime supplier to China, dating back to the mid-1980s. Israel provided significant help to China's F-10 fighter. Nor does it note that Russia wants to keep China as a customer but not a competitor. Thus Russia only sells military hardware that is one generation out of date and only defense products - without giving China the capability to produce those products itself.

Also, one does not learn from reading the report that generally Chinese military technology integration is inconsistent and has poor quality control, experiences lengthy weapons development cycles (15 years average), has logistical deficiencies, and suffers from doctrinal and operational challenges.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:11 PM | Get permalink

Politicizing everything.

In the NY Times, economist Paul Krugman tells us exactly why we can't trust the numbers coming out of Dubya's government.

The agency's analysts find that they are no longer helping to formulate policy; instead, their job is to rationalize decisions that have already been made. And more and more, they find that they are expected to play up evidence, however weak, that seems to support the administration's case, while suppressing evidence that doesn't.

Am I describing the C.I.A.? The E.P.A.? The National Institutes of Health? Actually, I'm talking about the Treasury Department, but the ambiguity is no coincidence. Across the board, the Bush administration has politicized policy analysis. Whether the subject is stem cells or global warming, budget deficits or weapons of mass destruction, government agencies are under intense pressure to say what the White House wants to hear. And the long-term consequences are likely to be dire.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:31 PM | Get permalink

Molly Ivins weighs in on the 'Killer Ds.'

If you're still having trouble understanding why almost all of the Democrats in the Texas Senate high-tailed it to New Mexico last week, Magpie's fave Texas columnist makes everything perfectly clear in the manner only she can. Mandatory reading.

Basically, the reason 11 Democratic senators from Texas are on the lam in New Mexico is BECAUSE IT'S NOT FAIR.

You may think that's childish, but there are some important principles at stake here. Like, you're supposed to play by the rules. And you're not supposed to change the rules in the middle of the game. And then, just a minor point, there is the small matter of democracy.

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

Can we say stupid idea?

If Magpie needed any more proof of the bankruptcy of the current two-party political monopoly in the US, this would convince us. If we told you what it was, you'd think Magpie was on drugs, so follow the link.

Via Political State Report.

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

A suspicious character.

xymphora has an excellent post detailing how former UN arms inspector David Kay may be helping Washington solve the political problems that have resulted from the lack of any WMDs in Iraq. Be sure to follow the links.

What is David Kay up to in Iraq? Kay is a very suspicious character, and may even have been the person responsible for telling the Bush Administration that the International Atomic Energy Agency had produced a report in 1991 that indicated that Iraq was at the time just six months away from having a nuclear bomb, a report that Bush and Blair both used in their war propaganda but which in fact never existed. Many people, including me, thought that Kay was going to discover the weapons of mass destruction that he had previously planted in Iraq, thus saving Bush's bacon. This still might happen, although as we move farther along and he still has not found anything it appears more likely that he is going to come up with some other answer to Bush's problems with the missing weapons of mass destruction. Both Kay's words and the words of the Bush Administration seem to be leading us to the idea that Saddam had a 'program' of producing weapons of mass destruction, and the concept of a 'program' replacing the discovery of actual weapons seems to be the new answer of the Bush Administration.

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

Sunday, August 3

Less draconian, but fewer unions.

Peter Noakes emigrated from Australia to Canada six years ago. He's found out that Canadians aren't Australians, and the other way around.

In everyday communication with Canadians I notice a big difference from the Australian culture. Aussies use a lot of 'baby talk.' They talk about Chrissie pressies at Christmas time, they refer to women as sheilas and men as blokes, and in general their speech is dismembered and coarse. Canadians do not have such a lazy tongue and, in general, I find them more pleasant to listen to. Another marked difference is that Canadian speech is far less sexist than in Australia, which is as male chauvinistic as it sounds.

Aussies are generally more profane and crude than Canucks. Even a Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, got away with calling a heckler a 'silly old buggar' on national TV. However, having said that, at one of my work places, I learned the full richness of the Maritimer's talent for creative profanity, and often nearly died laughing.

Via rabble.

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

All that glitters.

Those truckloads of gold bars that the US military found back in May weren't, reports Reuters. At the time the trucks were captured, estimates were that their cargo was worth over US $500 million — even though the driver of one of the trucks said his load was copper. Assays of the bars carried out since May have shown that the driver was telling the truth.

In a report to Congress detailing U.S. reconstruction efforts, the White House budget office said 1,100 gold-coloured bars were recovered in Iraq and that samples were taken to Kuwait for testing.

"Analysis of the initial sampling of ingots revealed they were comprised of approximately 64 per cent copper and 34 per cent zinc. Consultation with metallurgists indicates the bars analyzed to date are most likely melted-down shell casings," the report said.

Via The Agonist.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:02 PM | Get permalink

What if.

Over at The Eyeranian, Pedram Moellamian wonders how history would have been different if the US hadn't backed a coup against the government of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. It's a very interesting thought experiment, indeed.

Iran would have practiced and learned democracy over the past 50 years, starting with the nationalist government of Dr. Mossadegh and declaring a Republic, then going through various other types of governments and seeing some of the diverse beliefs in assorted posts and governments and eventually becoming that example of freedom in middle-east that others now try to import there by force. No political oppression, prisoners of conscience, torture, Shah's secret police (SAVAK) or IRI's myriad of security outfits and mass executions.

Update: It occurred to Magpie that not everyone is familiar with the 1953 coup. The best source we could find online without an exhaustive search is this paper by Mark Gasiorowski. The roles of the US and UK in the coup are described in great detail.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:51 PM | Get permalink

Moving day.

Another of Magpie's favorite blogs, Body and Soul, has moved over to TypePad and put on some fancy new clothes. If you want to look at the new digs, go here. (Don't worry — Magpie doesn't mind if you go away for a bit.) And do remember to update your bookmarks!

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:38 PM | Get permalink

Arrest of Mongolian parliamentarian raises civil liberties questions.

Mongolia isn't a country that we in North America hear about frequently. A look at EurasiaNet, however, shows that events well worth our attention are happening in that central Asian country.

According to EurasiaNet, the violent arrest of Gundalai (an opposition parliamentarian) is having strong political repercussions. [Note: Most Mongolians have a single name.] Gundalai is deputy chair of the Democratic Party, which is the country's largest opposition group. Mongolian authorities kept him from leaving the country on an airliner, and then arrested him on charges of trying to cross the border illegally after he returned to Democratic Party headquarters.

Pictures of Gundalai being dragged across the ground and the parliamentarian's driver in a chokehold were quickly published in non-state-controlled media, with one of the shots already enlarged and hanging on the Democratic Party building in the center of the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar the day of the arrest.

Gundalai and the chair of the Democratic Party, M. Enkhsaikhan, are currently under investigation for their recent allegations that Justice Minister Ts. Nyamdorj released secret materials to a foreign intelligence service. Democratic Party leaders claim that they have 45 pages of "top secret" materials to prove the claims.

According to U. Enkhtur, the chief of the fourth department of the Police Investigative Office, officers were responding to a 30 June order filed to prevent Gundalai from leaving the country to "escape the investigation." [...]

The parliamentarian was refused an exit stamp at the airport while on his way to the Democracy and Human Rights Conference in Singapore but was not given a reason. Mongolian law states that only the parliament can withdraw the immunity of its members.

Gundalai denied having any knowledge of the order forbidding his travel abroad and chose to try to pass through border control without the exit stamp, citing his parliamentary immunity. Officers eventually had him removed from the Korean Air jetliner he had boarded and then followed him back into town.

The violence during Gundalai's arrest has spurred public protests in Ulaanbaator, with Mongolian opposition and human rights groups saying that the arrest is evidence of the poor state of of civil liberties in the country. Opposition groups are also angy about the way that state-controlled media covered the arrest.

A Democratic Party demonstration the day after Gundalai's arrest failed to make the news on Mongolian national radio and television, and neither covered the violence that witnesses say attended the initial arrest, though it was front-page news in many newspapers.

"There are many people in the countryside who have no idea of what happened," Political Academy director Ganbat said. "Mongolian national TV and radio have become powerful tools for propaganda. And in this situation of absence of adequate information, it is very difficult to talk about an adequate response from Mongolian civil society to such violations."

According to Ganbat, the incident also highlights the disadvantageous situation of Mongolia's rural dwellers--who make up as much as one-third of the population--due to the lack of wider access to independent media or educational opportunities.

The group of approximately 10 human rights NGOs also expressed their concern over the state of the democratic system in Mongolia at a 28 July press conference.

"This was a serious and frightening violation of human rights and freedoms and a big step back in our democracy," said J. Zanaa, the head of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) human rights NGO. "Those types of violations happen every day to ordinary citizens, but this time it happened to a parliamentarian," Zanaa said.

The human rights NGOs gathered at the press conference issued a statement cautioning that police violations of human rights have become a "normal occurrence," with Mongolia fast becoming a "police state."

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

Can Indian tribes maintain their traditional culture on top of a Superfund site?

Members of the Quapaws, Seneca-Cayugas, and six other tribes living in Oklahoma's Tar Creek basin fear that the answer may be 'No,' reports the LA Times.

After the state of Oklahoma was created out of lands reserved for dozens of Indian tribes in the early 20th century, the Tar Creek basin became a major lead and zinc mining area. As has been the case in other parts of the country, the mine operators have left vast quantities of poisonous materials behind them, to leach into the soil and enter the water table, creeks, and lakes. For tribal members who eat traditional foods and collect plants to use as medicine and in ceremonies, the leavings of the miners are a real risk to traditional practices that define who they are as a people.

"If [contamination] levels render tribal practices unsafe," says Earl Hatley, an environmental consultant to six of the eight tribes here, "then cultural genocide will occur and tribes will die."

In the 20 years since the federal government targeted this former lead- and zinc-mining region for priority cleanup, the tribes say their concerns have gone largely ignored.

Criticism of the government's efforts is not new. About $100 million has been spent so far, but lead in the soil still threatens children, Tar Creek still flows orange with acid mine water, cave-ins go on and open mine shafts remain.

About 17% of the area's population is American Indian. But the Environmental Protection Agency's past assessments of health risks did not take into account how their lifestyles might expose them to contaminants.

Tribal people might be more inclined than the mainstream culture to use plants as medicine, the tribes say, or to cook river fish whole.

"I wouldn't say someone is out to get the tribes, per se," said Tabitha Worley, the Quapaw Tribe's environmental director. "But by a lack of action, by no one taking notice, by no one working on fixing the problem, I think it leads to that."

[Free reg. req'd.]

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

'Sexing up' evidence in New Zealand.

New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (SIS) is being accused of 'sexing up' evidence of terrorist activities against an Algerian politician who has been held in solitary confinement for the last nine months. The charge was made by the Green Party's foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke after the Refugee Status Appeals Authority in Auckland cleared Ahmed Zaoui of terrorist charges.

Zaoui arrived in New Zealand in December, seeking political asylum. He is a member of the Islamic Front for Salvation, a banned political party in Algeria, and was elected to the Algerian parliament 10 years ago. He was forced to flee Algeria after the government refused to acknowledge the results of that election and banned the Islamic parties that would have constituted a parliamentary majority.

"I think its our own Campbell affair where the SIS seems to be sexing up some of the evidence against Ahmed Zaoui but the thorough investigation of the appeals authority has shown it up," Locke said.

He was referring to claims that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications adviser Alistair Campbell had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons, a document Blair used to justify Britain going to war on Iraq.

In its decision the authority said it was surprising how questionable much of the SIS information was about the Algerian politician detained at Auckland's maximum security Paremoremo prison for nine months on suspicion of terrorism, saying much of it was taken from news reports and the Internet.

Zaoui's lawyers are questioning the accuracy of other classified information the service claims to have, on which the government's decision on whether to deport the Algerian politician hinges.

"If the SIS information to the RSAA was full of errors, what does that say about the classified information they had," said one of Zaoui's lawyers, Deborah Manning.

The refugee panel's decision does not end Zaoui's problems, however. He has to remain in prison until the SIS determines whether he should be allowed to stay in New Zealand, or be deported. A critical piece of evidence in that decision is a 'security risk certificate' issued by the SIS. That certificate is based on secret intelligence that the agency has so far refused to make public, despite calls by the Greens and others to do so. The decision on Zaoui's status is expected within a week.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:21 AM | Get permalink

Yet another US terror warning.

Now everyone needs to stay off those ferry boats.

This comes on top of last week's warning that al-Qaeda may be thinking about using aircraft for more terrorist acts, and yesterday's abrupt cancellation of a 50-year-old program that allowed foreigners to change planes at US airports without a visa — also done in the name of preventing terrorism. As others have asked recently, just what is Washington trying to call our attention away from with this new string of terror warnings?

Update: Magpie was looking at a Reuters story about the warnings and came across this sentence:

Ashcroft said U.S. authorities had not authenticated the tape but he dismissed as ironic the notion al Qaeda would wait to inflict further harm on the United States. [underline added]

Obviously, Ashcroft doesn't understand the meaning of the word ironic. Ashcroft could correctly use the words wrong, misguided, or stupid (for example) to describe people who dismiss the theat of further al-Qaeda attacks, but Magpie seriously doubts that any of those people are using irony when they suggest that the attorney general is full of something other than himself. Given that Ashcroft is the man who had to have a semi-nude statue in the Justice Department building put under drapes, we guess that his poor grasp of the English language should come as no surprise.

(This crowgirl hardly ever gets to make ad hominem attacks. They're so much fun.)

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:03 AM | Get permalink