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[Find out more here]BLOGS WE LIKE 3quarksdaily New! Alas, a Blog alphabitch Back to Iraq Baghdad Burning Bitch Ph.D. blac (k) ademic Blogs by Women Body and Soul BOPNews Broadsheet Burnt Orange Report Confined Space Cursor Daily Kos Dangereuse trilingue Daou Report Echidne of the Snakes Effect Measure Eschaton (Atrios) fafblog feministe Feministing Firedoglake Follow Me Here gendergeek General Glut's Globlog Gordon.Coale I Blame the Patriarchy Juan Cole/Informed Comment Kicking Ass The King's Blog Left Coaster librarian.net Making Light Marian's Blog mediagirl Muslim Wake Up! Blog My Left Wing NathanNewman.org New Pages NewsHog The Next Left Null Device On Topic with Doug Krile New! Open Source Politics Orcinus Pacific Views Pandagon The Panda's Thumb Pedantry Peking Duck Philobiblon Pinko Feminist Hellcat Political Animal Reality-Based Community Riba Rambles The Rittenhouse Review Road to Surfdom Romenesko Ruminate This SCOTUSblog The Sideshow Sisyphus Shrugged skippy Suburban Guerrilla Talk Left Talking Points Memo TAPPED This Modern World veiled4allah Wampum War and Piece New! Whiskey Bar (Billmon) wood s lot xymphora MISSING IN ACTION General Glut's Globlog Little Red Cookbook Respectful of Otters 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! WHO LINKS TO MAGPIE? Ask Technorati. Or ask WhoLinksToMe.
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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. 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. 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. 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. 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] 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] But the most tantalizing information in the indictment refers to an 'Offical A.' [Indictment p. 8] 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. 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. 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.... 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: 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? | | 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. 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. 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.] 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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. 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: 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. 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. 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.
[Photo: AP archive] 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." 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. 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
Tom DeLay: Dead or alive?
You be the judge. Via Sisyphus Shrugged. | | Posted by Magpie at 7:50 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. 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. [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: 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. 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." 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! 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. 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. 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. Via LISNews. | | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink |
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