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WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

If you like, you can send Magpie an email!



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Saturday, October 29

A hawk goes down. A neo-con hardliner rises.

While the Plamegate indictment of Lewis Libby has put US VP Dick Cheney's current chief of staff out of the picture, don't start celebrating yet. Libby's replacement may not be any better.

At Inter Press Service, Jim Lobe looks at the damage that Libby's resignation has done to the camp of hawks in Dubya's administration. Way before Dubya and Cheney were running the country, Libby had a huge hand in creating the guidelines for an aggressive US foreign policy:

After the first Gulf War, Cheney tasked Wolfowitz and Libby with developing the Defence Planning Guidance (DPG), a document designed to map out global U.S. strategy over a five- to 10-year period. When a draft of the document was leaked to the New York Times, its ambition and grandiosity so embarrassed the Bush administration that the two were almost fired from their posts.

The draft called for a world order based on U.S. military power rather than collective security mechanisms like the United Nations. It called for the U.S. to prevent the emergence of any possible global or even regional rival either through co-optation or confrontation, and defined the U.S. objective in the Middle East as "remain(ing) the predominant outside power in the region".

It also called for pre-emptive or even preventive military action against rogue states seeking nuclear weapons and the development of new nuclear weapons, and the use of "ad hoc assemblies", rather than alliances, such as NATO, in taking military action. It predicted that U.S. military intervention in maintaining order around the world would become a "constant fixture" of the new order.

This document, of course, became the basis for Dubya's foreign policy — and provided the ideological framework in which the invasion of Iraq became not only possible, but necessary. Libby's role in getting the invasion bandwagon going was critical:

Libby also prepared a draft of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 7, 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's alleged WMD programmes.

"This is bullshit," Powell reportedly shouted in anger and frustration while throwing the draft papers up in the air after reviewing it with CIA and State Department analysts on the eve of his U.N. appearance.

The night that Baghdad fell to U.S. forces two months later, Libby celebrated with a quiet, intimate dinner at the vice president's residence with the Cheneys, Wolfowitz, and Defence Policy Board member and war booster, Ken Adelman, and his wife, Carol, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

Asked by Lynne Cheney what he thought of the war's outcome, Libby quietly said, "Wonderful."

Libby, however, is gone now, and VP Cheney has reportedly selected his replacement: his chief counsel, David Addington. Addington, from the looks of a profile in the Washington Post, is a real piece of work:

Where there has been controversy over the past four years, there has often been Addington. He was a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects. He was a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts.

Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information. And he was a main backer of the nomination of Pentagon lawyer William J. Haynes II for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Haynes's confirmation has been a source of huge friction on Capitol Hill.

Colleagues say Addington stands out for his devotion to secrecy in an administration noted for its confidentiality. He declined to be interviewed or photographed for this article, and he did not respond to a list of specific points made in the article....

Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president.

So what does Addington's ascendency tell us about what Dubya and Cheney will be doing in response to the political setbacks they've suffered from Libby's indictment? [And, we shouldn't forget, from their problems in Iraq, with the various FEMA disasters, the indictement of House majority leader Tom DeLay, and the failure of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination.] While there's a case to be made that Dubya's administration could be in the first stages of imploding, much as the Nixon administration did as a result of Watergate, we think that's way too optimistic. Even when under siege, Dubya's minions have shown an uncanny ability to get the public looking at anything except the disaster du jour. And even when the administration loses control of events, such as it has now, the Democrats have shown a singular inability to act as a coherent opposition party.

Given that there is a GOP majority in both houses of Congress, impeachment isn't a possibility, as it was when Richard Nixon had to contend with a Democratic Congress. And even though dozens of Republican senators crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats to overwhelmingly rejectt Dubya's policy of condoning torture of terror suspects, that vote is notable mainly by how exceptional it was. On other issues, few Republicans in the House or Senate have risked their political futures to oppose the administration.

Basically, we're stuck with Dubya's administration until after the congressional elections in November 2006. And unless the Democrats can come up with a popular political and economic program that goes beyond their usual 'GOP-lite' fare, there's absolutely no guarantee that Dubya's low popularity will turn into a Republican defeat at the polls.

If we can figure all of this out, you know that the low-lifes at the White House reasoned it out long ago. And we can be sure that Cheney's choice of David Addington to replace Scooter Libby shows that, rather than circling the wagons, Dubya's administration is planning to give the country a stronger version of the governing style we've seen so far.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:55 PM | Get permalink



You are getting very sleepy.

And scientists are studying just what happens while you're in the arms of Morpheus.

News@nature.com has a fascinating, although sometimes rather technical, look at current research about sleep. About a half-dozen scientific articles are included. And, pleasantly, none of them are behind the subscription firewall.


States of sleep

FIGURE 1. Behavioural states in humans: States of waking, NREM sleep and REM sleep have behavioural, polygraphic and psychological manifestations. In the row labelled behaviour, changes in position (detectable by time-lapse photography or video) can occur during waking and in concert with phase changes of the sleep cycle. Two different mechanisms account for sleep imobility. The first is disfacilitation (during stages I–IV of NREM sleep). The second is inhibition (during REM sleep). During dreams, we imagine that we move, but we do not. Sample tracings of three variables used to distinguish the state are shown: an electromyogram (EMG), an electroencephalogram (EEG) and and electro-oculogram (EOG). The EMG tracings are highest during waking, intermediate during NREM sleep and lowest during REM sleep. The EEG and EOG are both activated during waking and inactivated during NREMsleep. Each sample shown is approximately 20 seconds long. The three bottom rows describe other subjective and objective state variables.


Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:49 AM | Get permalink



'Official A' is Rove.

An AP report says that the 'Official A' mentioned in the Plamegate indictment of Lewis Libby is Dubya's political advisor Karl Rove.

For me details about the indictment, see the post below.

More: Raw Story also says that Rove is 'Official A.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:30 AM | Get permalink



Friday, October 28

So who is this 'Official A,' anyway?

Now that Lewis 'Scooter' Libby has been indicted, what do we actually know about Plamegate and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation?

Well, there's the indictment, obviously. [Available in PDF format here and as a single-page HTML file here]. And then there's what Fitzgerald himself had to say in a press conference earlier today.

Most everything else is just hearsay and rumor, like the bulk of what we've been hearing over the past few weeks. And most of that has been wrong. [Including this post of ours.]

However, some very interesting information can be gleaned from just the indictment. [We'll leave the press conference for another time.] For example, VP Dick Cheney's role in outing Valerie Plame is getting clearer. Despite Cheney's September 2003 claim that he didn't know former ambassador Joseph Wilson, VP Dick Cheney obviously knew who Wilson's wife was at least two months earlier, and that she worked for the CIA. [Indictment, p. 5]

Indictment para 9

And despite NY Times reporter Judith Miller's conveniently fuzzy memory regarding where she got Valerie Plame's name from — Miller has said both that she didn't remember who told her about Plame, or that she 'probably' didn't get get Plame's name from Libby — Libby was indeed her source. Several times, actually. [Indictment pp. 6, 7, 8]

Indictment para 14

Indictment para 17

Indictment para 21

But the most tantalizing information in the indictment refers to an 'Offical A.' [Indictment p. 8]

Indictment para 24

This clearly indicates that someone in the White House had advance knowledge of Robert Novak's column outing Plame's identity as a CIA operative — and, most likely, that Novak's information, like Miller's, originated in the White House.

But just who is this 'Official A'? Rove? Cheney? Why is this person's identity being kept secret? Is it because they 'turned' on Libby in order to keep from being indicted themself? Or because they are still a subject of Fitzgerald's investigation?

We'll just have to stay tuned, won't we?

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:28 PM | Get permalink



What's your fantasy?

C'mon. You know you've got one.



[© 2005 Mikhaela B. Reid]

Check out the rest of the cartoon here.

If you want to see more of Mikhaela's political cartoons, take a look over here.

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



Thursday, October 27

An honor richly deserved.

Big Magpie congrats to Riverbend of Baghdad Burning, who has just been awarded the third prize in this year's Lettre Ulysse competition for literary reportage. The award was for her book Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq, which is a collection of posts from the blog she's been keeping since shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq. Baghdad Burning

You may have been as puzzled as we were by the fact that the award was for reportage. We'd never heard the term before, and had to read a bit in the Lettre Ulysse website to see exactly what sort of animal was being recognized. Reportage, it seems, occupies a mid-ground between journalism and literature:

The Art of Reportage has a long and distinguished tradition and may be counted among the most fascinating journalistic and literary forms. It is based upon personal experience, perception, and anecdotal evidence, representing a combination of the best of journalism and of creative nonfiction. Outstanding works in this genre have an effect far beyond the situation from which they arose, achieving importance as works of literature....

Reportage writers, with their immersion in the subject, bring unknown, hidden or forgotten realities and intricacies to light. By witnessing with their own eyes and collecting and consolidating a mass of information, in forming a picture of the whole, the reportage writer can deliver a greater degree of accuracy than is generally possible with other media formats. This is what gives reportage writing its significance and authority.

All of that describes what Riverbend has been doing, and then some. Her work at Baghdad Burning combines a shrewd analysis of current events in Iraq with an eye for the details of what 'normal' life has been like for Baghdadis since the invasion. When something happens in Iraq, we always look first to Riverbend to see if she's posted about it yet.

As to the particulars of the award Riverbend has received, here's the official announcment:

The third prize of 20,000 Euro went to:

* Riverbend (Iraq): Baghdad Burning. Girl Blog from Iraq, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, New York, 2005. Published in the UK by Marion Boyars Publishers, London, 2005. Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman, writes an Internet diary, using a pseudonym. Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills make her account of the life of a normal Iraqi family, which has also been published in book form as Baghdad Burning, one of the most uniquely critical documents of life in this abused country under the conditions of the war and the US military occupation.

It always gives us pleasure to see that someone's hard work is rewarded. This is particularly true with this award to Riverbend.

More: We thought we'd posted about Riverbend's book before, and a search of the archives showed that we were right. That post contains this link to a long interview that she did with Buzzflash last April when the the book was released. Here's an excerpt:

BuzzFlash: You are obviously a secular Iraqi, with great skills of observation in writing in English. You are also an independent, thinking young woman. Do you have fears of a fundamentalist Islamic takeover of the Iraqi government?

Riverbend: I have fears of fundamentalism of any type. I fear Sunni fundamentalism and Shia fundamentalism. I fear we might be slowly working our way towards a state run by Mullahs and clerics. I fear Iraq being turned into another Iran by parties like Da'awa and SCIRI, currently being promoted by the occupation powers. It is not Islam that I fear — I am a Muslim and a practicing one — it is the deformation of Islam practiced in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia that I fear. [...]

BuzzFlash: In your journal, you talk about what a restless sleeper you are, amidst the uncertainty and the noises of war. Have you ever dreamt of peace and normalcy returning to your life?

Riverbend: Peace and normalcy seem like a distant thing. One begins to forget what 'normal' was in the first place. We've come to realize that peace and normalcy are also relative. What we consider peace is obviously very different from the American concept of peace. Normality also changes with time. Three years ago, normal was being able to walk down the street with a sense of security. Today, normal is hearing at least three explosions a day and the hum of helicopters above.

At the end of the day, why dream of such mundane things as peace and normalcy? A stable, secure, prosperous, united and above all independent Iraq — that's a dream.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:08 PM | Get permalink



Can the US government lock you up and throw away the key?

That's the question at the center of Jose Padilla's appeal to the US Supreme Court. Padilla has been held by the feds for more than three years on charges that he received training from al-Qaead and then planned to detonate a 'dirty bomb' in the US.

Padilla's appeal is asking the Supremes to determine when the US government can jail people in military prisons and how long these people can remain imprisoned.

"Their position is not only can we do it, we can do it forever. In my opinion, that's very problematic and something we should all be very concerned about," [Padilla attorney Donna Newman] said.

Civil libertarians say that the US Constitution forbids the government from holding people without charges, and that allowing such detentions would inevitably lead to abuses.

Federal courts, however, have given mixed rulings on this issue. A federal court in South Carolina has ordered the feds either to charge Padilla or let him go. When the government appealed that decision, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave Dubya a blank check to use military detentions for people 'closely associated with al-Qaida, an entity with which the United States is at war.'

In the past, the US Supreme Court has not supported indefinite detentions, although changes in the Court's membership makes a future decision on this issue hard to predict.

The Court is not expected to make a decision as to whether it will hear Padilla's current appeal until sometime near the end of the current session.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:22 AM | Get permalink



Now whatever could this mean?

Curious news out of Washington, DC: The Office of the Special Counsel — that's Plamegate investigator Patrick Fitzgerald's office — is expanding its Washington digs. According to The Washington Note, the special counsel's office rented additional space right across the street from its current offices earlier this week.

We're having trouble figuring out why Fitzgerald would need more space if he wasn't expecting to be staying in business for awhile.

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



History repeating itself.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the New York-based alternative newspaper, The Village Voice. As part of their celebration, the editors have put up a slideshow of 50 of the most memorable Voice front pages, one for each year.

We thought the pair below belonged together.

Repeat performance

December 1990 [left]; October 2004 [right]


Looking at these covers, we're reminded of the now-famous words of Karl Marx from 1850s [although Marx's name is not often attached to the quote these days]: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Unfortunately, the current farce is being paid for in blood.

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



What 2000 looks like.

Political cartoonist Mike Luckovich marks the 2000 US war death in Iraq. Yes, those are all 2000 names hand-written in the letters.


2000 deaths in Iraq

[Cartoon © 2005 Mike Luckovich]


Here's part of what Luckovich said about the cartoon:

It was an emotional experience writing the names of the americans who have given their lives for our country. [It took him 13 hours.]

They and those fighting in Iraq today are heroes. I can't say that for those in our government who [misled] America into this war, without providing our troops proper equipment, or an exit. Through their arrogance, they have dishonored our brave fighting men and women.

You can download a PDF file of a larger version of the cartoon if you go here.

Via Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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



Wednesday, October 26

Light posting today.

We need to run a bunch of errands and practice some fiddle tunes, so we're basically taking today off from blogging — barring any big news with the Plamegate investigation or elsewhere.

We suggest spending time with some of those fine blogs listed over in the left column. And we'll see you late tonight or tomorrow.

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



Tuesday, October 25

Those anonymous sources.

Why is it that many of the same bloggers who were [rightfully] irate at the use of anonymous sources by the mainstream media are avidly pouncing upon any tidbit of information about possible indictments in the Plamegate investigation?

Almost all of the tidbits we've seen in the blogosphere have come from anonymous sources. Why are the Plamegate anonymice more reliable than, say, the Iraqi WMD anonymice? Do the Plamegate anonymice have significantly fewer hidden agendas?

Just wondering.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:59 PM | Get permalink



Bitter fruit.

Beginning in late 2003, photojournalist Paul Fusco began documenting the funerals of US servicemembers killed in Iraq. He eventually went to 27 funerals, in cities and towns across the country, from the Bronx to Wisconsin.

Fusco and his photo angency, Magnum, have produced 'Bitter Fruit,' a very moving multimedia presentation on the funerals, with a commentary from Fusco.


A soldier's funeral

This New York family lost a daughter in Iraq.


From Fusco's commentary:

I got interested in this subject of the funerals of American soldiers because I was appalled at our government lying our country into a war. I have no reservations about that at all. I think we were. I feel we were. I know we were.

And I was also horrified that the soldiers ? the deaths of the soldiers, the funerals of the soldiers had not become a national event. It was taking place in people's home towns. In a small section of the Bronx. A place in Brooklyn. But it was not a national story.

[...]

The local press knew, they were always there. And the local press and I were treated the same way. We were shut out as much as they could by the military people overseeing the funerals, because they always that the family didn't want any press. But you were never allowed to approach someone from the family to ask if that were true.

I don't think it was true. No family member ever turned on me and said 'Stop.' Never. No one ever said, 'Don't do that. No don't show me.' None. Not once.

I had a lot of soldiers say that to me: 'Don't. Stop. No you can't. Don't go there. Get back.'

[...]

I don't expect to get published in the United States. I don't expect the big magazines in the United States to publish it [Fusco's photos].

I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for us. I'm doing it for the people.

That loss, that pain, that suffering; we've got to understand that. We're responsible. We're committed. We should be committed to understanding the loss that's happened in this awful war.

Thanks to Daily Kos for the tip.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:17 PM | Get permalink



You really can find anything on the internet.

Like the lyrics to the theme from the film Shaft, rendered in Chaucerian English:

Wha be tha blake prevy lawe
That bene wantoun too alle tha feres?
SHAFT!
Ya damne righte!

Wha be tha carl tha riske is hals wolt
Fro is allye leve?
SHAFT!
Konne ye?

Wha be tha carl wha ne wolden flee
Whan peril bene all aboughte?
SHAFT!
Verray!

Alle clepe tha carl ane badde mooder-
SOFTE!
Speken of Shaft bene I.
THAN KONNE ALLES WE!

He be a man konne unnethes
Namo save is mayde konnes im.
JOHN SHAFT!

For comparison, Isaac Hayes' original lyrics for the song are here.

Via A Townie's Tale.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:43 PM | Get permalink



We're crying crocodile tears here at Magpie.

Oh, such big crocodile tears, too. And here's why:

After eight years of threats lobbying and bribes payoffs campaign contributions to the right legislators, big US banks finally got the restrictive new bankruptcy law they wanted earlier this year. Under that law, it's much harder for debtors to erase their debts entirely, and many debtors will be forced into credit counseling by agencies which are, in general, funded by — you guessed it — the banking industry.

The new law went into effect on October 15th and, as expected, there was a last-minute rush by debtors to file for bankruptcy under the old rules. Unfortunately for the banking industry, the bankruptcy bubble was much bigger than anyone expected. As a result, the five US banks that issue the largest number of credit cards say that their profits for the third quarter of 2005 will be millions of dollars less than predicted. And, say bank spokespeople, increased bank losses due to the new bankruptcy law could run into the billions by the end of the year.

Even before bankruptcy filings began rising this spring, an American Bankers Association survey of 350 member institutions found that credit card delinquencies had been increasing when measured by the number of accounts past due. (When measured by dollars lost, it has declined). In September, it reported that the rate rose to a record of 4.81 percent during the second quarter, driven in large part by the higher price of gasoline. And it is not expected go down anytime soon.

The losses are particularly troublesome for the nation's biggest banks, where credit cards have become powerful profit engines over the last few years while overall industry growth has slowed. Credit card issuers face myriad challenges, including stiff price competition, the need for costly reward programs, and declining direct mail response rates. And with rising interest rates, every issuer is seeing their profit margins squeezed

There's a ton of poetic justice in the banks' woes, since the banking and lending industries created the problems that the new bankruptcy law is supposed to solve. Here's how Consumers Union describes the recent history of credit in the US:

A large body of evidence links the rise in consumer bankruptcies in the last twenty years directly to an increase in consumer debt. Revolving debt, most of which is credit card debt, increased nearly fifteen-fold from January 1980 through 2004, from $54 billion to $791 billion. The higher the level of consumer debt, the more likely a family is to declare bankruptcy when misfortune strikes.

Much of this lending boom was fueled by the extension of credit to vulnerable consumers, including young people, lower income Americans and minorities, and the elderly. Some lenders, such as those offering "predatory" mortgage loans, targeted these borrowers with often deceptive offers that had abusive terms....

Credit card companies have reaped substantial profits by targeting riskier borrowers, and are typically the most profitable part of any bank's operations. According to the investment banking firm R.K. Hammer and Associates, credit card issuers posted the highest profits in 2004 since 1988.

"Creditor practices are literally driving consumers into default," said John Rao, staff attorney of the National Consumer Law Center. "I've seen case after case of credit card companies loading consumers up with additional charges beyond what was originally owed," he said. "By the time these people land in bankruptcy, they owe more in interest and fees than they do on the original loan."

So to all those banks who are suffering so mightily because all those 'deadbeat' creditors took advantage of the 'permissive' old bankruptcy laws, this magpie wishes even lower profits in the fourth quarter. May all your chickens come home to roost.

Via NY Times.

More: For more information on the credit card industry, we highly recommend the website for the PBS program, Secret History of the Credit Card.

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



2000.

As of this morning, 2000 US servicemembers have died in combat since the invasion of Iraq began in 2003. The 2000th death was that of Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander Jr. of Killeen, Texas, who was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.


Freeway blog

Freeway blogging in St. Petersburg, Florida


No one, of course, knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians and combatants have died since the invasion. The best figure for reported civilian deaths is between 26,000 and 30,000.

The Freeway Blogger is urging people to put signs up along roadways across the US tomorrow to mark the 2000th death. You can get more info here.

Via AP and Iraq Body Count.

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



Blogging from the quake disaster area in Pakistan.

Sajjad Zaidi is usually works for an internet provider in Islamabad. But shortly after the major earthquake hit Pakistan and India, Zaidi took leave from his job to help with the relief effort, and he's blogging about that work.

His blog posts make for compelling reading, starting with earthquake itself on the 8th through to today's entry, which describes the looting and misappropriation of relief supplies as they pass through Muzaffarabad.

However, we were most struck by Zaidi's post about the village of Kamsar:
What's left of Kamsar
Now I come to the most rewarding and interesting part of my whole journey. The first village in the Neelum valley, that isn't yet accessible by road, is Kamsar. It is where refugees from Occupied Kashmir (Indian Administered Kashmir) have lived since the 1990s. As we later realized, the contrast between this group of amazing people and the thugs we encountered elsewhere was astonishing.

We got news that no medical teams had reached this village yet and that was what made us choose to go there. After a hike of about 45 minutes, Asif and I got there, while the other three lagged a long way behind, somewhere out of sight. Imtiaz, a young man in his 20s, greeted us and offered all the help he could muster. When no suitable place to setup camp could be found, he emptied his own tent....

The whole village seemed to have suffered very badly from the earthquake and it was obvious that they hardly had anything left in terms of provisions or belongings, yet they did whatever they could to make us feel at home. Instead of complaints or demands, all we got were blessings and good wishes. All this and getting a chance to treat so many people, from small children to women and the aged, was such a great experience that it made me regret having chosen my current line of work....

Now for the thing that really touched us. We were about to leave when we noticed a truck near the entrance to the village. Upon asking, Imtiaz said it was carrying food supplies somewhere when the quake struck. The driver abandoned it right there and disappeared. These people's belief in "amanat" (something left for safe-keeping) is so strong, that instead of using the supplies themselves, these people have been guarding the truck against looters until the rightful owner returns.

Aid is still urgently needed in Pakistan — especially given that the UN's goal of £180 million [about US$ 317 million] is nowhere close to being met. If you want to give, you'll find comprehensive lists of organizations that can use your help here and here.

Via Boing Boing.

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



Reality is much weirder than fiction.

For example, there's this restroom.


No comment

[Photographer unknown]

Can anyone explain just why it is that the world needed something like this? On second thought, don't explain it.

Via Factum.

More: And on a vaguely related note. [Thanks to Bitch Ph.D.]

Still more: The restroom in the photo is located at a Sofitel hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand. There's a puff piece on it here.

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



Monday, October 24

Rosa Parks, 1913 — 2005.

Rosa Parks 1956

Rosa Parks, 1955
[Photo: AP archive]


People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.- ? No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
— Rosa Parks, 1995


Civil rights activist Rosa Parks, whose refusal to take a seat at the back of a bus touched off the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, died Sunday in Detroit. She was 92.

Parks' refusal to comply with Alabama's law segregating public transportation by race led to the one of the first major political victories of the black civil rights movement, and began the transformation of an obscure Baptist minister named Martin Luther King into a major political figure.

From the NY Times obituary:

"Mrs. Parks's arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest," Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom. "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices."

Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950's Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for public consumption far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation.

Studio photo of Parks on busThat moment on the Cleveland Avenue bus also turned a very private woman into a reluctant symbol and torchbearer in the quest for racial equality and of a movement that became increasingly organized and sophisticated in making demands and getting results....

In "Stride Toward Freedom," Dr. King wrote:

"Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.' Mrs. Parks's refusal to move back was her intrepid affirmation that she had had enough. It was an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom. She was not 'planted' there by the N.A.A.C.P. or any other organization; she was planted there by her personal sense of dignity and self-respect. She was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn."

From Wikipedia's entry on the Montgmery bus boycott:

The boycott was precipitated by Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat in favor of a white passenger. In Montgomery, the dividing line between the front seats reserved for white passengers and the back ones reserved for black passengers was not fixed. When the front of the bus was full, the driver could order black passengers sitting towards the front of the bus to surrender their seat. Rosa Parks's seat was in that border area. She was arrested on Wednesday, December 1, 1955, for her refusal to move.... When found guilty later, she was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed.

Avoiding the busOn Thursday, December 9, 1955, Jo Ann Robinson would receive a call from Fred Gray, one of the city's two black lawyers, informing her that Rosa Parks had been arrested. That entire night Robinson worked tirelessly mimeographing over 35,000 handbills reading:

"Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown into jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colbert case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped... "The woman's case will come up on Monday. We are therefore asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday..."

The next morning at a church meeting with the new minister in the city, Martin Luther King, Jr., a citywide boycott of public transit as a protest for a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses was proposed and passed.

The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work, although it is unclear to what extent this was based on sympathy with the boycott, versus the simple desire to have their staff present and working. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.

Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used nonmotorized means to get around, such as bicycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked around. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded, but buses received extremely few, if any, passengers. Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow.

In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the White Citizens' Council, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. Like the Ku Klux Klan, the Councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy's houses were firebombed, and boycotters were physically attacked.

Rosa Parks 1999Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protestors were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine or serve 386 days in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. Eventually, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional, handing the protesters a clear victory. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. Martin Luther King capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision.

The Detroit Free Press obituary is here. The NY Times obituary is here.

The Rosa Parks Portal has an extensive bibliography of books and article on Parks. [Sadly, though, some of the links are expired.]

One of Park's last interviews, done in 1995, is here. There are audio and video excerpts available.

National Public Radio has an 2000 Weekend Edition interview with Douglas Brinkley, author of the biography Rosa Parks.

A biographical sketch of Parks, with many photos, is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:54 PM | Get permalink






Pop quiz!

Quick! Who's being talked about in the following quote? [No peeking at the link!]

"He's a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things."

Nope, it's not some leftist talking about Dubya. Or VP Cheney. [But we'll give half-credit for either answer.]

No, the quote above actually comes from one of those anonymous sources — this time a 'White House ally' — referring to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The comment is another example of how the GOP slime machine is gearing up for what it fears is going to be an avalanche of indictments coming from the Plamegate investigation headed by Fitzgerald.

Via NY Daily News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:46 PM | Get permalink



The Iraq war, fraudulent documents, and Plamegate indictments.

Despite all the prognostications flying around the blogosphere in the last couple of weeks, we've tried to avoid getting involved in the game of guessing what special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is up to. The fact is, none of us know what he's going to do — and this won't change until the point that indictments are [or aren't] issued.

However, we're going to make an exception to our rule in the case of this UPI story, given that it rests in part on Fitzgerald's documented interest [PDF file] in events surrounding Iraq's alleged attempts to obtain uranium. The news agency says that 'NATO intelligence sources' have confirmed that Fitzgerald's investigation is looking into the forgery of documents that allegedly proved that Saddam Hussein's regime had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger. Those documents were widely used by Washington and London to justify their claims that Iraqi WMDs were an imminent threat. If the UPI report proves to be accurate, it means that the investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press has broadened to examine a major aspect of how the White House justified the invasion of Iraq.

NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

There can be few more serious charges against a government than going to war on false pretences, or having deliberately inflated or suppressed the evidence that justified the war.

So will Fitzgerald have asked for indictments of figures involved in fabricating the yellowcake documents? Stay tuned.

There's lots more of interest in the UPI story. You should read it all.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:41 PM | Get permalink



Bad news.

Legal Fiction took a train ride:

So I was riding the train back from Boston to DC earlier today and I was listening to two Amnesty International workers at the table beside me (I was doing work in the cafe car) talking (loudly) about torture and their latest efforts, etc. One of them was essentially saying that she had given up and become totally cynical that Americans would ever care. The other tried to reassure her and explain why action was necessary. So this particular part of the conversation goes on from Wilmington to Baltimore.

At Baltimore, [investigative reporter] Sy Hersh gets on the train and sits with them at their table in the cafe car (I couldn't tell if he knew one of them or not). Anyway, after a few pleasantries, they asked him about his views on this particular question and whether there was something or someone giving him hope. Hersh replied, "We're fucked."

[If you aren't familiar with Sy Hersh's work, this New Yorker article from this past May is a good start.]

Via Crooks and Liars.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:18 PM | Get permalink



And since we're on the subject of Plamegate ...

Make sure to pick up this magazine at your favorite newsstand:


Clues Detective Stories


Tild ~ has more titles for you to peruse if you go here.

Via Pharyngula.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:39 PM | Get permalink



A GOP pre-emptive strike fizzles.

If we were running the GOP effort to discredit the Plamegate investigation led by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, we'd be choosing mouthpieces who aren't as targets as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Here's how Hutchison tried to minimize the importance of any indictments that result from Fitzgerald's investiagation:

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars." [Emphasis added]

But back in 1999, when the person being investigated was President Bill Clinton, Hutchison was singing a different tune about perjury:

[S]omething needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray. And I think it is most important that we make that statement and that it be on the record for history.

I very much worry that with the evidence that we have seen that grand juries across America are going to start asking questions about what is obstruction of justice, what is perjury. And I don?t want there to be any lessening of the standard. Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system and I don?t want it to be faded in any way. [Emphasis added]

So which is it Sen. Hutchison? Does perjury seriously undermine the US criminal justice system, or is it just a 'technicality' used when prosecutors can't find evidence of a real crime?

Via NY Times and Think Progress.

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



FBI breaking surveillance rules.

As civil liberties groups warned when the US Congress was passing the Patriot Act, federal law enforcement agencies appear to be abusing their expanded powers to conduct secret spying on people in the US.

According to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center show that the FBI has spied on US residents for up to 18 months at a time without proper oversight. The documents also show that, since 9/11, the secret Intelligence Oversight Board has investigated at least 287 possible FBI violations of the rules governing secret surveillance. That figure may be considerably higher, since the set of documents that EPIC obtained via the Freedom of Information Act isn't complete.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years — including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

EPIC general counsel David Sobel calls the documents 'the tip of the iceberg' that may indicate more serious oversight problems at the FBI and other intelligence agencies:

"It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

To deal with this problem, says Sobel, secret surveillance in the US must be more closely monitored by the Congress.

The FBI, naturally, has responded to EPIC's release of the surveillance documents by saying that there isn't any significant problem, and that the incidences pointed to by EPIC are mainly examples of minor violations of administrative timelines.

If you want to read the documents released today, EPIC has put them into a PDF file and posted it to the web here.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:16 PM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

Covers of US science fiction magazines. Hundreds of them!


Cover by Ed Emshwiller

F&SF February 1960. Cover by Ed Emshwiller.

We especially recommend the mid-1960s covers for Analog, and the Ed Emshwiller covers for a 1950s short-run magazine called Infinity.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:26 AM | Get permalink



Sunday, October 23

Would you like fries with that?

Cruel. Very cruel.

But right on the mark.


Harriet Miers goes to the court

[© 2005 Mike Luckovich]

Via Association of Amercian Editorial Cartoonists.

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



Different disaster, same story.

After Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast, members of the press reached New Orleans and other cities and towns long before the US military or federal disaster officials. This same story seems to be playing out in places devastated by the South Asia earthquake, as reporters from a UK newspaper repeatedly found themselves the first outsiders to arrive at many quake-stricken Pakistani villages.

Three times their hopes had been raised, and three times dashed. Each time the residents of Kundwala saw a helicopter above their flattened village on the edge of the Himalayas, they yelled themselves hoarse, believing that the authorities had come to help them. Each time, they were disappointed as the aircraft flew away.
Earthquake damage in Kundwala, Pakistan
Small wonder then that when The Sunday Telegraph walked into the remote hamlet in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province almost two weeks after the earthquake, locals assumed the visitor was a government official who had finally come to assess their plight....

The tales of confusion and chaos were repeated in every village this newspaper visited in the region, where the inhospitable terrain has almost completely defeated relief efforts. The fate of settlements more isolated than Kundwala can only be guessed at. Many are in the upper reaches of remote valleys where even mule paths have been blocked by landslides. As a result, thousands of survivors still sleep in the open air for lack of tents or plastic sheeting, and survivors' wounds turn gangrenous for lack of treatment.

"All of them only assist those who are connected to the metallic [paved] road, while those like us who are equally suffering are left at the mercy of God," said Syed Omar of the nearby Ashawal village. The plight of villages yet untouched by the aid effort became clear as United Nations officials gave a warning that the tragedy may eclipse even last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed close to 200,000 people.

Via UK Sunday Telegraph.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:20 AM | Get permalink



Pardoning the books.

We're now at about the middle of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of abstinence, reflection, and resoluton. One of the things that characterizes Ramadan is the notion of forgiveness. Just as God opens the gates of Paradise during Ramadan and pardons the faithful for their sins, individual Muslims also forgive others and lay aside grievances.

In many Muslim countries, governments mark Ramadan by issuing pardons to prisoners. In Arab News, Mohammed Al-Rasheed suggests that the Saudi government [and, by extension, others] should issue a pardon to the books that it has censored and banned.

We ask the minister [in charge of censorship] to put the book's case to His Majesty and explain the plight of the written word in this country. Our desire is to liberate ourselves and our books from this tyranny. We cannot claim that we are starved of information as we used to be, but it would be honorable to put an end to this useless yet harmful practice. It does not do us any good and it certainly does not do our country's image any favors.

Those petty tyrants at airports who will allow certain things in if carried by a certain type of people yet hold the rest of humanity hostage to their position should be fired. Worse, they should be made to read books, especially the ones they confiscate.

An open mind is a sign of maturity and self-confidence. An open heart is the hallmark of Ramadan. I plead the case of books and hope that the annual pardon includes them too.

Via LISNews.

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




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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