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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, February 25

Iraq: 'On the edge of a hot knife.'

That's the word from journalist Chris Albritton in his latest update from Baghdad.


Mourning the dead in Baqouba
An unidentified relative mourns in the front of the coffins of his family members, in Baqouba, 60 km [35 mi) northeast of Baghdad, on Saturday. Provincial police said an unidentified gunmen broke into a house of a Shiite family killing 13 members. The name of a local mosque is written on the side of the coffin. [Photo: Mohammed Adan/AP]

We have reached a point where the facade of the "political process: has been shredded. The real power lies — and has always lain — in the hands of the sheikhs, the clerics — especially Moqtada — and the gunmen. The politicians in Baghdad can continue their silly little exercise in government building and the Americans and the foreign diplomatic corps can tell their audiences in their home countries how much progress Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is making at building bridges with Saleh Mutlak. But we on the ground know the truth. We're on the edge of a hot knife, and it's getting hotter. There may be a pause now, but only for now. And we might have pulled back from the abyss just in time. This might end soon after all and my doom-saying will be proven wrong.

But I don't think so. If there's another bombing of a Shi'ite shrine, or some other massacre of Sunnis, then all bets are off. Sistani has already instructed his followers to take matters into their own hands if the government can't keep them safe. For Iraqis, their fate appears to lie with the scruffy young men standing at the ends of their streets, not with the politicians in the Green Zone.

Albritton has sometimes had a more positive outlook on events in Iraq than this magpie thought was warranted, so his taking such a dark view of the current situation carries added weight. You can read his full post here.

Via Back to Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:27 PM | Get permalink



No comment needed.

Chris Albritton [who is reporting from Baghdad] says it all:

Unbelievable:
In Washington, the State Department insisted that US policy in Iraq was succeeding and denied that political negotiations had collapsed, only that they had paused. "Come on, let’s not blow this out of proportion," said spokesman Adam Ereli. He denied reports of widespread violence, speaking of "some incidents".

Look, I'm really sorry reality is intruding on your little fantasy but a lot of people are probably going to die in the coming days and weeks because of the idea that if you just repeat something enough times, it will come true.

Enough already. Shut your mouths; you people in Washington have caused enough damage already.

Via Back to Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:34 AM | Get permalink



Yes, I really do post about Irish music here.

And to prove it, here's a link to a really cool interview that NPR's Melissa Block did with one of this magpie's fave fiddlers, Liz Carroll of Chicago.


Fiddler Liz Carroll

Liz Carroll in full flight, 2004.
[Photo: Magpie]


Block was curious about that 'stuttery, fluttery' thing that she's heard Irish fiddlers play — which is, of course, a bowed triplet. To explain, Carroll played a whole mess of different bowed triplets at different speeds, including the 'scrunch' — known as a 'crunchy' triplet around our parts. And, later on in the interview, Carroll did pretty much the same type of demonstration of the current bane of this magpie's existence: the roll. So, essentially, you can get a fast lesson in how Liz Carroll does the most common Irish fiddle ornaments by listening [and re-listening] to the story.

Block later asked Carroll how she goes about composing a tune and, in particular, whether she thinks about the tradition of Irish fiddle tunes as she composes:

A lot of people will tell me that a lot of them [Carroll's compositions] do sound traditional. And they're like, wow, that's old, that's always been around. And I've definitely made up tunes where at the end of it I go 'Wow, I just can't believe that doesn't already exist.' It just fits in [to the tradition], but it's not, it's not another tune....

I'd like to think that maybe [my] tunes were likeable enough that they hopped from person to person. Somebody would have heard it at a session and said 'What's that?' and they'd pick it up. But one of the nicest things that's happened to me is that I can sit in a session and they'll go into a tune that's my tune. I assume that they're doing it for my sake. Maybe they just know that Liz is sitting there and we'll play her tune now. But instead I'll look around and they're all very seriously belting away at playing that tune as well as they can and they don't know it's mine. So there's a real satisfaction there. I just go 'All right. Okay. This is teriffic.' So it's kind of made it's way into the tradition and it doesn't have to be that I'm sitting there.

It's an excellent interview with some great music in it as well. You can hear the whole thing if you go here. [RealPlayer or Windows Media Player req'd to listen.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:21 AM | Get permalink



It really is a whole new world.

We posted yesterday about how one of the facts at the root of the controversy over an Arab-owned company operating US ports is how dependent the US has become on foreign money — largely because of Dubya's spiraling deficit. As if to prove the point, take a look at this editorial from a Dubai newspaper:

The US interest groups may have worked themselves up over the Dubai Ports World's winning bid for the P&O that allows the Dubai and UAE to control some of the most important ports around the world including those in the US. But other big markets elsewhere such as the growing economies of China, India and Far East are only too willing to welcome investments from this part of the world.

In fact, according to available economic inputs, the Middle Eastern wealth, buoyed by the recent upsurge in oil prices, is playing a crucial role in big markets other than those in the West....

This is a significant shift that could have important political and economic implications in the years to come. Since, historically speaking, the West — US and Europe — have always been a favourite destination for Gulf investments, this shift of economic focus is remarkable although not altogether. After all, post September 11, we are living in an altogether different world. [Emphasis added]

Translation: You need our money. We know you need our money. If you let domestic political considerations quash our bid to run your ports, we'll take our money elsewhere.

These words from David Ignatius come to mind:

Here's how bad it is: The worst thing that could happen to the United States, paradoxically, would be for Arab and other foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.

That's what five years of Dubya's presidency has done to the US. Welcome to the future.

Via Khaleej Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:10 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

They aren't real orange crate labels, but they should have been: 281 paintings by Ben Sakoguchi!


Lady Day Brand oranges

Lady Day Brand [1994; 10 in x 11 in]


From Sakoguchi's website:

From the 1880's to the 1950's, California oranges were sent to market packed in wooden crates with big, multi-colored labels pasted on the ends. Among Ben Sakoguchi's early influences were the bold graphics and fanciful images on the orange crates that were stacked behind his parents' grocery store.

In the 1970's — after cardboard cartons had replaced wooden crates — beautifully printed labels that had long been stored in packing houses were being sold as collectors' items at the flea markets Sakoguchi frequented. He was attracted by the familiar orange crate label format, and started using it in a series of small paintings.

Just as the actual labels had depicted a wide variety of subjects, Sakoguchi's paintings sampled events, issues and attitudes of modern culture. He produced several hundred orange crate label paintings (1974–1981) before moving on to other projects.

In 1994, Sakoguchi revisited the orange crate label format, and has continued the series....

You can view the 218 paintings that Sakoguchi made between 1994 and 2003 if you go over here.

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



Those commies teaching our students.

They can be pretty hard to ferret before they get a chance to fill impressionable young minds with disrespect for authority and notions of radicalism, subversion, and sexual perversion. Luckily, a group of upstanding citizens have published Classroom Bias for Dummies, which gives all of us an easy-to-use test for finding those socialists and homosexuals who are trying to lead our youth astray.

Teaching style

Citation format: Author, title, place of publication, publisher, year of publication — Biased
Citation format: Book, chapter, verse — Not Biased

Allows students to speak freely — Biased
Allows students to speak about freely about how freedom isn't free — Not Biased

Requires students to raise hands to ask questions — Biased
Requires students to raise hands to hail the professor — Not Biased

You can get the whole enchilada over here at Circle Jerk at the Square Dance.

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



Friday, February 24

By the way ...

That UAE-based company isn't taking over the operation of six ports in the US. It's going to be operating 21 ports.

Via UPI.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:21 PM | Get permalink



Who at Fox News got the lobotomy?

This magpie has nothing against looking for that proverbial silver lining. Even I do it sometimes.

But don't you think that the pro-Dubya spin at Fox News got a wee bit out of control yesterday during this segment of Your World with Neil Cavuto?


Have a nice war!

Have a nice war!


Media Matters has more details on the segment, plus another screen grab that's just as bad as the one above.

[Personally, this magpie would be far more interested in knowing more about the sheep in the garbage can mentioned in the crawl than I would in knowing how Fox finds a bright side to the possibility of civil war carnage in Iraq.]

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



The port takeover: It's not the Arabs, stupid!

A couple of days ago, we posted links to a couple of articles pointing out how the real problem with the takeover of major US ports by a Dubai-based corporation isn't related to national security. In one of the articles, John Nichols said that what's wrong with the port deal has more to do with corporate ownership of infrastructure that should continue to be owned by the public:

Everything must go!

[Cartoon: © 2006 Justin Bilicki]

 
Ports are essential pieces of the infrastructure of the United States, and they are best run by public authorities that are accountable to elected officials and the people those officials represent. While traditional port authorities still exist, they are increasing marginalized as privatization schemes have allowed corporations — often with tough anti-union attitudes and even tougher bottom lines — to take charge of more and more of the basic operations at the nation's ports.
And in the other, Joshua Holland proposed that the issue at the heart of the controversy is whether any factors other than financial ones can be used to determine which bidder wins a contract:

The U.S., EU and Japan — the dominant service economies — have been pushing hard to get a deal done on government procurement that would bring public purchasing of goods and services into the WTO framework. Their goal is to give foreign-based multinationals "national status," meaning that governments couldn't favor domestic firms over foreign firms for any reason (except for security issues, and this case wouldn't be likely to qualify as such).

Let's assume that this UAE port deal was the best one out there — that they offered the lowest bid among highly-qualified firms. Under the framework that we've been pushing, it would be a sanction-able violation of WTO rules to discriminate against the company because it's based in the Middle East.

[But] the problem is the issue writ large: governments use procurement — spending tax dollars — for purposes that defy pure considerations of economic efficiency....

Consider the Massachusetts Burma Law, about which I've written before, that put pressure on Burma's military junta by giving preference for state contracts to companies that didn't do business with that country. It was killed in the federal courts after the EU and ASEAN filed complaints against the U.S. with the WTO. And there wasn't even a binding agreement on government procurement then; they said it "violated the spirit" of the WTO.

Similarly, the sanctions against Apartheid South Africa would have been WTO-illegal if the organization had existed at the time.

It's a very small step from there to saying that governments can't favor minority-owned businesses or women-owned businesses or firms that pay a living wage to their employees. All of those criteria could be challenged as non-tariff "barriers to trade" by firms from countries that don't have similar rules, or like populations.

As good as both Nichols' and Holland's reasoning is, there's a still a piece missing from the picture: Why is the US having to deal with the question of foreign ownership [or in the case of the port deal, quasi-ownership] of important assets and infrastructure, anyway? According to David Ignatius, the blame for the nation's predicament can be laid at the door of the White House and Congress. It's the GOP's penchant for cutting taxes and running up deficits that have made the US beholden to foreign creditors to a degree not seen since the 19th century:

The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, in his useful online survey of economic information, rgemonitor.com. He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt — namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks. That's scary enough — as it has given big T-bill holders such as China and Saudi Arabia the ability to punish the U.S. dollar if they decide to unload their reserves.

But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."

Here's how bad it is: The worst thing that could happen to the United States, paradoxically, would be for Arab and other foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.

So the real threat to the US isn't the supposed security problems that would result if an Arab-owned company took over some US ports. The real threats to the nation come from how Dubya and the GOP-controlled Congress are cutting taxes and busting the budget. And from how, in the name of 'free trade,' the prez is willing to sign away the government's ability to use business contracts as a tool of public policy.

This magpie suggests that the issues dealt with in this post — corporate ownership of infrastructure; the use of contracts to further public goals; foreign debt — are the ones that progressives should be using in the argument over the port contract, not the Arab-bashing rhetoric that is too often coming even from people on the left. Let's leave the Arab bashing for the Bushies and the right wing — xenophobia doesn't look good on us.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:51 AM | Get permalink



How bad are things getting in Iraq?

A couple of paragraphs in this story should give anyone chills:

As Iraqi politicians took to the airwaves to calm the populace, many in the nation said they'd lost confidence that the government and its security forces could protect them. Residents from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra said it was now up to private citizens to take up arms.

A resurgence of private armies would be troublesome for U.S. officials, who've hung hopes of withdrawing American troops on establishing a democratically elected government and self-sufficient security forces. Instead, the government struggled Thursday to assert its authority over a tense situation in a country in which private militias controlled by religious or ethnic groups already have effective control of many cities.

Via Knight Ridder Washington Bureau.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:17 AM | Get permalink



Saving democracy in the US.

Bill Moyers is giving one hell of a speech on his current speaking tour out on the West Coast. If you don't already understand how corrupt the current US government is now, you'll get the picture after reading what Moyers has to say:

More corrupt than you want to imagine

[Graphic: 2 Political Junkies]
 
I have painted a bleak picture of democracy today. I believe it is a true picture. But it is not a hopeless picture. Something can be done about it. Organized people have always had to take on organized money. If they had not, blacks would still be three-fifths of a person, women wouldn't have the vote, workers couldn't organize, and children would still be working in the mines. Our democracy today is more real and more inclusive than existed in the days of the Founders because time and again, the people have organized themselves to insist that America become "a more perfect union."

It is time to fight again. These people in Washington have no right to be doing what they are doing. It's not their government, it's your government. They work for you. They're public employees — and if they let us down and sell us out, they should be fired. That goes for the lowliest bureaucrat in town to the senior leaders of Congress on up to the President of the United States.
You can read Moyers' full speech here, or download it in PDF form here.

Via Doc Searls.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:06 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

Photos of kids dressed up as cowpokes!


Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Somebody's cowgirl mum, around 1952.


At this writing, there are 79 photos in this Flickr exhibit. Lots of them are at least as good as the one above.

Via Boing Boing.

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



Pop quiz!

Compare and contrast Curious George and Brokeback Mountain.

Here's something to get you started:

Although Curious George and Brokeback Mountain share many similarities, they also share many differences. Both involve men in hats, but the meaning of the hat changes.

From Confessions of a Community College Dean, via Blog of a Bookslut.

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



Looking back from 2153.

Imagine this: The Second World War was fought to a draw, ending around 1947. For close to two centuries afterwards, an authoritarian German Empire ruled Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals. It was replaced by a democratic regime in the 2120s, and all of the German 'protectorates' became independent.

Thirty years later, 'revisionist' historians are looking back at the Empire's first years under Hitler and Speer.

"Everyone knows there were blots on the empire's record," [mid-23rd century history Gregor] Metzger says. "No one today would countenance, say, the early Reich's treatment of the Jews or the excesses in putting down the Muslim Rebellions in the Caucasus. But neither should we impose our modern values on the people of those times. Rather, we should try to understand them in their own context -- and appreciate their many accomplishments."

This scenario forms the basis for a rather discomforting future-history article by Chris Floyd in the Moscow Times. Check it out.

Via Uchronia.

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



No comment.

Dubya, speaking on Wednesday about why outsourcing US jobs isn't really a problem:

India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut ... Today, India's consumers associate American brands with quality and value, and this trade is creating opportunity at home.

Via San Jose [CA] Mercury News.

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



Thursday, February 23

Slow posting again.

Yes, it's another job interview that'll be keeping me offline this afternoon. And no, we don't know how Tuesday's interview came out yet.

More posts this evening, hopefully.

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



What's wrong with radio and TV in the US?

Is it the poor quality of much of the programming? Is it the concentration of station ownership into fewer and fewer hands? Is it the lack of balance in which political views are presented? Is it the glorification of violence in some programs? The continuing underrepresentation of women and people of color among station owners and broadcasting decisionmakers? Or maybe it's the total lack of news or public affairs programming on most US stations?

The FCC will save us!No, the really big problem facing the broadcasting industry won't be found on that list. The real danger to the nation is all those bad words going out over the air.

According to the Washington Post, the Federal Communications Commission is about to come down hard on a number of broadcasters who have broadcast indecent language — mainly the word shit.
In one case, the FCC is expected to rule against News Corp.'s Fox for an incident in which actress Nicole Richie uttered the vulgar term for excrement, a finding that may dissuade broadcasters from airing the term even in isolated instances.

The sources, who spoke on condition that they not be named because the decisions are not yet public, said the FCC was expected to find that companies including CBS, Fox and NBC or their affiliates had violated decency standards in a total of about a dozen cases.

This magpie is oh so happy that the feds are looking out for our tender sensibilities.

The lovely little logo above, by the way, comes right off one of the FCC's web pages.

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



Make the world go away.

Or at least make those damned reporters with their hard questions go away.

In the current issue of The Hill, Betsy Rothstein has a great article on the tactics that PR flaks communication specialists in Washington use to spin the news in a way that favors their bosess — especially when there's bad news.

Another way to deal with tricky matters is quickly moving on background with a reporter. A Senate Republican press secretary stammered something about "playing things straight with everyone" and how "there's no tricks" before going on background for this story.

Once there, he more comfortably declared, "You find a way to get a reporter what they need without tripping yourself up. You always try to help a reporter out, unless it's a reporter who has screwed you in some way. You can't blackball someone, but you don't go out of your way to help them. It's not rocket science."

Amy Auth, spokeswoman for Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), did what many press secretaries do when they don't initially know what to say — she said she'd call me back once she had a chance to think about what she does in the face of potentially bad press.

Sure enough, she called back. "I usually just say no comment," she said.

I especially liked Rothstein's shortlist of common tricks:

  • Say "I will call you back" and then don't.
  • Repeat the same phrase over and over.
  • Try to talk the reporter out of writing the story.
  • Act brusque and distant.
  • Don't return phone calls until the day after deadline.
  • Talk in short sentences.
  • Act as though you are in a hurry and need to get off the phone as soon as possible.

This magpie encountered all of those tactics and more during out years as a reporter. Our favorite counter-strategy was to say:

I've already talked to [fill in name of opponent] and I really wanted to get a statement from you before we print the story.

It worked like a charm. The PR flacks who could resist the possibility of getting in the last word were few and far between. [And yes, I sometimes said I'd talked to the other side when I hadn't.]

Via Romenesko.

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



'Things are not good in Baghdad.'

Riverbend says that people in Baghdad are nervously waiting to see whether the bombing of Samarra's Golden Mosque was the spark that ignites an Iraqi civil war:

There has been gunfire all over Baghdad since morning. The streets near our neighborhood were eerily empty and calm but there was a tension that had us all sitting on edge. We heard about problems in areas like Baladiyat where there was some rioting and vandalism, etc. and several mosques in Baghdad were attacked. I think what has everyone most disturbed is the fact that the reaction was so swift, like it was just waiting to happen.

All morning we've been hearing/watching both Shia and Sunni religious figures speak out against the explosions and emphasise that this is what is wanted by the enemies of Iraq — this is what they would like to achieve — divide and conquer. Extreme Shia are blaming extreme Sunnis and Iraq seems to be falling apart at the seams under foreign occupiers and local fanatics.

No one went to work today as the streets were mostly closed. The situation isn't good at all. I don't think I remember things being this tense — everyone is just watching and waiting quietly. There's so much talk of civil war and yet, with the people I know — Sunnis and Shia alike — I can hardly believe it is a possibility. Educated, sophisticated Iraqis are horrified with the idea of turning against each other, and even not-so-educated Iraqis seem very aware that this is a small part of a bigger, more ominous plan ...

Several mosques have been taken over by the Mahdi militia and the Badir people seem to be everywhere. Tomorrow no one is going to work or college or anywhere.

People are scared and watchful. We can only pray.

Via Baghdad Burning.

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



Wednesday, February 22

Carnival of Feminists 9.

It's that time of the month again, and the 9th Carnival of Feminists is available for your reading pleasure here at Mind the Gap. As usual, this edition is just loaded with cool stuff. If you haven't caught the Carnival before, it's a roundup of the best feminist posts from around the web, appearing twice a month.

Like the preceding carnivals, the posts in the 9th edition go all over the place. This time, I've chosen to sample the section on the body:

Stella from 'Where the Cornflakes are' explains why it's the gynocologists that have a problem: "She's such a twit that I really shouldn't have been surprised when I read the letter that began — "Stella has severe Osteogenesis Imperfecta and is wheelchair-bound. Surprisingly, however, she is sexually active and requires contraception." Read the rest and be outraged.

More outrage from Twisty of 'I Blame the Patriarchy,' who recounts the god awful story of Nia, a young woman taken off the drugs that helped her schizophrenia because her doctors decided that she'd prefer the voices to being fat. She didn't, as it happens.

Bookdrunk from 'Rhetorically Speaking' takes a critical look at the notion of cosmetic sugery as empowerment in an article in the Observer Woman magazine: "Rather than claiming 'all cosmetic surgery is bad,' we need to argue why we should presume — as in the tone of the Observer article — that all cosmetic surgery is beneficial." Indeed.

Shakespeare's Sister also considers plastic surgery and desperation it represents. Ok, in such a body obsessed culture, we might all be tempted .... but how desperate do you have to be to attend a botox party?

Dangereuse Trilingue discusses an honest-to-god sexism spat in the French geekosphere concerning an advert for Firefox using scantily clad women. The problem here is "about making a particular type of heterosexual male gaze directed towards conventionally attractive female attributes the norm, via using it, and the object of the attention, to incite people to do something entirely unrelated to eroticism and female bodies: use a particular web browser."

Textaisle from 'Arbusto de Menacity' asks what's the use of a 24-inch waist?

There's a mess of other feminist bloggy goodness in the 9th Carnival if you go over here.

The 10th Carnival is coming up on Wednesday, March 8th, and it will be hosted by Indian Writing. If you want to nominate a post — and it's definitely okay to nominate one of your own — send the nomination to indianwriting AT gmail DOT com by March 5th. Or, if you prefer, you can use this submission form at the Blog Carnival home page.

And if you want to keep posted on what's up with the Carnival of Feminists, bookmark the home page.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:22 PM | Get permalink



Very bad news from Iraq.

Earlier today, men in uniform planted two bombs inside the Golden Mosque [shrine of Imam Hasan al-Askari] in Samarra. Both bombs exploded, devastating one of the most holy shrines of Shi'a Islam. Iraq has erupted into violence, and there are fears that a long-feared civil war will begin.


Golden Mosque before and after the bombing

Before and after the bombing.
[AP photos: Khalid Mohammed, Hameed Rasheed]


Reporter Chris Albritton is in Iraq, and posted the following to his blog earlier today:

If this doesn't spark a much-feared civil war, we'll be lucky. This is the tensest Baghdad has been in two years, and this attack is especially provocative coming as it does during Arba'een, the 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussayn that follows the Shi'ite commemoration of Ashura.

Of course, Sistani might still ride in and save the day — again. We can hope.

But quite apart from all that, this will derail Washington's hopes for an inclusive Iraqi government that includes Sunnis in meaningful positions. The Shi'ite alliance in parliament is already pushing back against statements made by Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad on Monday, in which he said the security ministries (Interior and Defense) should go to "people who are non-sectarian ... who do not represent or have ties to militias. (Yeah, he's talking to you, Badr Corps.) Yesterday, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari fired back and said, in effect, bugger off.

"When someone asks us whether we want a sectarian government the answer is 'No, we do not want a sectarian government' — not because the U.S. ambassador says so or issues a warning," he told a news conference. "We think that sovereignty means no one interferes in our affairs."

Memo to Prime Minister: That ship has sailed, habibi. I guess interference in internal Iraqi affairs is only OK when you're the one being installed in power after riding in on the back of an American tank.

Snark aside, today's attack will mean it will be much, much harder to make the case for including Sunnis in the government, especially if it means giving up any of the important ministries. (Maybe the Sunnis would like the Youth and Sports ministry? The Olympics are coming up in a couple of years.) And even if the Shi'ite coalition wanted to include Sunnis, today's attack on the shrine will make it very hard to keep their constituencies loyal if they're seen as rewarding "terrorists," which many Shi'a now call all Sunnis.

Also significant is that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shi'ite in Iraq, called for seven days of mourning and protests — although he urged them to remain peaceful. I can't help but wonder, "Is he serious?" This is an emotional, volatile time and any protests are likely to turn violent, either from their own accord or through agent provocateurs who might use them as kindling for more fireworks.

And from a later update to the post:

Moqtada al-Sadr is holding takfiris (those who call others infidels, i.e., the Salafists and Wahabists), Ba'athists and the "occupation" responsible for the shrine attack. "It was not the Sunnis who attacked the shrine of imam Al-Hadi, God's peace be upon him, but rather the occupation; the takfiris, al-nawasib (a derogatory term the Shiites use to refer to Sunnis), God damn them; and the Ba'thists. We should not attack Sunni mosques. I ordered al-Mahdi Army to protect the Shi'ite and Sunni shrines and to show a high sense of responsibility, something they actually did." Moqtada has also called for a vote in parliament on expelling "foreign forces," the rascal.

Al-Sistani has condemned the attack on the Askari shrine, but also said — somewhat ominously — "The Iraqi Government is expected, now more than any time before, to fully shoulder its responsibilities and halt the wave of criminal acts that target the holy places. If the government's security organs are not capable of providing the necessary protection, the believers are capable of doing so with Almighty God's assistance." (emphasis added.) That's really not good.

Via Back to Iraq and Reuters.

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



The real problem with the US port takeover.

It's the corporations, not the Arabs, says John Nichols.

His post is short and sweet. And a definite must-read.

Via The Nation.

More: And when you're done reading Nichols, check out this longer piece in the same vein by Joshua Holland at the Gadflyer.

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



What's wrong with this picture?

Those kids over at Worth1000 are photoshopping away, moving today's high-tech products back into times where they don't belong.


It's so fab!

Transistor Ipod [Graphic: Kryptomaniacle]


You can view all of the entries in the current Worth1000 contest here. [I really liked this one.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:26 AM | Get permalink



Of course the Pentagon has been lying.

Since early January, human rights groups and lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners have reported that the US military has been dealing with a hunger strike by strapping prisoners into chairs and force-feeding them. And, during the time since then, US authorities have consistently denied these reports.

Well, guess what?

The military commander responsible for the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confirmed Tuesday that officials there last month turned to more aggressive methods to deter prisoners who were carrying out long-term hunger strikes to protest their incarceration.

The commander, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, head of the United States Southern Command, said soldiers at Guantánamo began strapping some of the detainees into "restraint chairs" to force-feed them and isolate them from one another after finding that some were deliberately vomiting or siphoning out the liquid they had been fed....

Lawyers for the detainees and several human rights groups have assailed the new methods used against the hunger strikers as inhumane, and as unjustified by the reported medical condition of the prisoners.

According to newly declassified interview notes, several detainees who had been on hunger strikes told their lawyers during visits late last month that the military had begun using harsher methods more widely in the second week of January. One Yemeni detainee, Emad Hassan, described the chair to lawyers in interviews on Jan. 24 and 25.

"The head is immobilized by a strap so it can't be moved, their hands are cuffed to the chair and the legs are shackled," the notes quote Mr. Hassan as saying. "They ask, 'Are you going to eat or not?' and if not, they insert the tube. People have been urinating and defecating on themselves in these feedings and vomiting and bleeding. They ask to be allowed to go to the bathroom, but they will not let them go. They have sometimes put diapers on them."

Via NY Times.

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



About turning those US ports over to the Dubai outfit.

Dubya didn't know a thing about it until after the deal had been approved.

But that doesn't worry this magpie. Nosirree. We're absolutely certain that the prez's minions had already taken this stuff and this stuff into consideration. So of course Dubya is confident that the deal is good for America.

Right?

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



Be very afraid.

Via Making Light, this magpie has learned that The Internationale can be sung to the tune of I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.


A Yankee Internationale?

Sing the workers' anthem to the Yankee tune? Nooooooooo!


Even worse, the comments to this post at Making Light is full of similar earworms. I had to stop reading after finding out that 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' can be sung to the tune of 'Take Me Out to the Ballpark.'

Someone, please get it out of my brain ... [whimper]

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



How the US and Iran stopped cooperating in Afghanistan.

For awhile in 2001 and 2002, during the aftermath of 9/11, the US and Iran were beginning to cooperate in an effort to clean the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan. According to historian and national security analyst Gareth Porter, however, that US-Iran cooperation was quickly scuttled by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Washington hardliners — both for ideological reasons and because Dubya's administration was shifting its attention to the upcoming Iraq invasion.

In October 2001, as the United States was just beginning its military operations in Afghanistan, State Department and NSC officials began meeting secretly with Iranian diplomats in Paris and Geneva, under the sponsorship of Lakhdar Brahimi, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Leverett says these discussions focused on "how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government".

It was thanks to the Northern Alliance Afghan troops, which were supported primarily by the Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out of Kabul in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan opposition groups were convened in Bonn under United Nations auspices to agree on a successor regime.

At that meeting, the Northern Alliance was demanding 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government, which was blocking agreement by other opposition groups. According to U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a "decisive role" in persuading the Northern Alliance delegate to compromise. Dobbins also recalls how the Iranians insisted on including language in the Bonn agreement on the war on terrorism.

The bureaucracy recognised that there was an opportunity to work with Iran not only on stabilising Afghanistan but on al Qaeda as well. As reported by the Washington Post on Oct. 22, 2004, the State Department's policy planning staff had written a paper in late November 2001 suggesting that the United States should propose more formal arrangements for cooperation with Iran on fighting al Qaeda.

That would have involved exchanging intelligence information with Tehran as well as coordinating border sweeps to capture al Qaeda fighters and leaders who were already beginning to move across the border into Pakistan and Iran. The CIA agreed with the proposal, according to the Post's sources, as did the head of the White House Office for Combating Terrorism, Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing.

But the cooperation against al Qaeda was not the priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the White House and the Pentagon....

Porter goes on to describe how hardliners in Dubya's administration torpedoed this tentative cooperation between the US and Iraq — including a 2002 Iranian offer to help supply 'training, uniforms, equipment, and barracks' for a significant part of the new Afghan government's military.

This story of lost opportunities for cooperation between the US and Iran is particularly sad given the current bad relations between the two countries. Perhaps if US hardliners hadn't been so focused on the upcoming [pointless] Iraq invasion, the early cooperation in Afghanistan could have led to significantly better Iran-US relations in other areas. Maybe the Khatami presidency wouldn't have failed. Perhaps the Iranian hardliners wouldn't have won the last national election.

But we'll never know. And, this magpie suspects, no one in the White House or Pentagon are losing any sleep over that fact.

Via Inter Press Service.

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



Why the veto threat from the prez?

I mean, it's not like Dubya has so much political capital to burn that he can afford to dig in his heels on the proposed takeover of several US ports by a Dubai-based corporation. Even members of his own party are demanding that the deal be put on hold.

This magpie suspects that Dubya's veto threat has less to do with any matter of principle or international politics than with the likely fact that some of the prez's backers and/or political cronies stand to make a lot of money on the deal.

Via NY Times.

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



Tuesday, February 21

Slow posting for most of the day.

I actually have a job interview today, which will be taking up my time until late this afternoon. Expect more posts sometime this evening [US Pacific time].

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



Controlling the past.

Dubya's administration has quietly reversed the de-classification process for thousands of documents in the National Archives. Under this new regime, the nation's various intelligence agencies have been going through the collections and pulling documents out of circulation — many of which had already been published by the State Department and others for which there is no rational reason for keeping them secret until quite recently.

Even worse, the existence of this re-classification program was itself classified information.

Among the 50 withdrawn documents that [intelligence historian Matthew] Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.

Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.

Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago....

The program's critics do not question the notion that wrongly declassified material should be withdrawn. Mr. Aid said he had been dismayed to see "scary" documents in open files at the National Archives, including detailed instructions on the use of high explosives.

But the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.

Via NY Times.

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



[Almost] no comment.

Stills from a promo video for FCUK's current women's clothing collection.


Just who's supposed to be watching?

Just who's supposed to be gazing upon this girlfight, hmmm?


You can watch the entire video here.

Yes, FCUK has both men's and women's clothing lines. And yes, the only still images for the current FCUK collection that show models fighting or partially clothed depict women, not men.

Via The Consumerist. Thanks to Coloribus for the screen grabs.

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



Monday, February 20

Warning to aspiring journalists!

If you want to do an internship at the NY Times, don't use someone who's criticized the paper as one of your references.

Allan Wolper tells what happened when one of his journalism students at Rutgers applied for an internship:

Kejal Vyas ... was in Delhi completing some academic work when he received this Feb. 1 e-mail from Nancy Sharkey, senior editor/recruiting for the New York Times, responding to his inquiry about an internship:

"Hi Kejal, Based on what Allan Wolper has written about us, I cannot imagine that he would want one of his students to intern here. I guess if we need students from New Jersey, we will go elsewhere. Best, Nancy."

Kejal was devastated. His hopes of working for America's most influential newspaper had been shattered because his professor had criticized the New York Times over several years in Editor & Publisher.

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, an organization that monitors censorship on college and high school campuses, was as stunned as I was when I told him Kejal's story.

"The message here for journalism professors is that if you want your students to get an internship at the New York Times, you don't criticize the Times in what you write," Goodman told me. "It seems grossly inappropriate and unfair. I've never heard of anything like this happening before."

You can read the rest of the story here.

What's sad here is how the attitude of the Times' editor mirrors that of Dubya's administration: Either tow our line or hit the road. Of course, I'm sure no one at the Times sees it that way.

Via Editor & Publisher.

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



Where are the mensches when you need them?

Don't look for them in Dubya's administration, says economist Paul Krugman in his latest New York Times column:

"Be a mensch," my parents told me. Literally, a mensch is a person. But by implication, a mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions. The people now running America aren't mensches.

Dick Cheney isn't a mensch. There have been many attempts to turn the shooting of Harry Whittington into a political metaphor, but the most characteristic moment was the final act — the Moscow show-trial moment in which the victim of Mr. Cheney's recklessness apologized for getting shot. Remember, Mr. Cheney, more than anyone else, misled us into the Iraq war. Then, when neither links to Al Qaeda nor W.M.D. materialized, he shifted the blame to the very intelligence agencies he bullied into inflating the threat.

Donald Rumsfeld isn't a mensch. Before the Iraq war Mr. Rumsfeld muzzled commanders who warned that we were going in with too few troops, and sidelined State Department experts who warned that we needed a plan for the invasion's aftermath. But when the war went wrong, he began talking about "unknown unknowns" and going to war with "the army you have," ducking responsibility for the failures of leadership that have turned the war into a stunning victory — for Iran.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, isn't a mensch. Remember his excuse for failing to respond to the drowning of New Orleans? "I remember on Tuesday morning," he said on "Meet the Press," "picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' " There were no such headlines, at least in major newspapers, and we now know that he received — and ignored — many warnings about the unfolding disaster.

Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, isn't a mensch. He insists that the prescription drug plan's catastrophic start doesn't reflect poorly on his department, that "no logical person" would have expected "a transition happening that is so large without some problems." In fact, Medicare's 1966 startup went very smoothly. That didn't happen this time because his department ignored outside experts who warned, months in advance, about exactly the disaster that has taken place.

I could go on. Officials in this administration never take responsibility for their actions. When something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault.

Was it always like this? I don't want to romanticize our political history, but I don't think so. Think of Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote a letter before D-Day accepting the blame if the landings failed. His modern equivalent would probably insist that the landings were a "catastrophic success," then try to lay the blame for their failure on the editorial page of The New York Times.

Where have all the mensches gone? The character of the administration reflects the character of the man at its head. President Bush is definitely not a mensch; his inability to admit mistakes or take responsibility for failure approaches the pathological. He surrounds himself with subordinates who share his aversion to facing unpleasant realities. And as long as his appointees remain personally loyal, he defends their performance, no matter how incompetent. After all, to do otherwise would be to admit that he made a mistake in choosing them. Last week he declared that Mr. Leavitt is doing, yes, "a heck of a job."

But how did such people attain power in the first place? Maybe it's the result of our infantilized media culture, in which politicians, like celebrities, are judged by the way they look, not the reality of their achievements. Mr. Bush isn't an effective leader, but he plays one on TV, and that's all that matters.

Whatever the reason for the woeful content of our leaders' character, it has horrifying consequences. You can't learn from mistakes if you won't admit making any mistakes, an observation that explains a lot about the policy disasters of recent years — the failed occupation of Iraq, the failed response to Katrina, the failed drug plan.

Above all, the anti-mensches now ruling America are destroying our moral standing. A recent National Journal report finds that we're continuing to hold many prisoners at Guantánamo even though the supposed evidence against them has been discredited. We're even holding at least eight prisoners who are no longer designated enemy combatants. Why? Well, releasing people you've imprisoned by mistake means admitting that you made a mistake. And that's something the people now running America never do.

Reprinting a whole column is normally a no-no around here, but this magpie couldn't figure out a way to cut Krugman's colunm without diminishing his argument.

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



The five most dangerous children's books ever written.

Every day, there's news of another children's book being challenged by concerned parents, and for good reason. Sean Hannity [as channeled by Brian Danilo], fills us in on this insidious threat to the well-being of the nation's youth.

3. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Though the writing is vapid and immature, the book manages to challenge both traditional gender roles and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Additionally, lines like "Goodnight cow jumping over the moon" make it clear that Brown, business partner of Susan B. Anthony and confidant of Saddam Hussein, does not support our troops.

It should also be noted that Brown, a known feminist, has a history of subversive behavior. Before her death, Rosa Parks admitted that part of the reason she sat at the front of the bus was that "Margaret was egging me on."

The other four books are equally dangerous. Beware!

From McSweeney's, via Blog of a Bookslut.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:05 AM | Get permalink



Ask a complicated question ...

... get a simple answer.

Tom Tomorrow shows us why we really shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about all that stuff.


It's not so complicated after all!

[© 2006 Tom Tomorrow]


You can see the rest of the cartoon here.

Via Salon. [Paid sub. or ad view req'd.]

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



More on the Mora memo.

Yesterday, we posted about how the Pentagon had been warned in 2002 that it was on a slippery slope by trying to circumvent international laws against torture of prisoners [such as those then at Guantánamo]. That warning was given in a 22-page memo written by Alberto Mora, then the general counsel for the US Navy. As the recently released batch of new pictures showing Iraqis tortured by their US captors at Abu Ghraib [see earlier posts here and here] reminds us, Mora's warning should have been heeded.

Since our original post, the New Yorker has posted Jane Mayer's piece about Mora's memo, which you'll find here. Here's how Mayer frames the story:

The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7, 2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful," "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

In important ways, Mora's memo is at odds with the official White House narrative. In 2002, President Bush declared that detainees should be treated "humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles" of the Geneva conventions. The Administration has articulated this standard many times. Last month, on January 12th, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, responding to charges of abuse at the U.S. base in Cuba, told reporters, "What took place at Guantánamo is a matter of public record today, and the investigations turned up nothing that suggested that there was any policy in the department other than humane treatment." A week later, the White House press spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked about a Human Rights Watch report that the Administration had made a "deliberate policy choice" to abuse detainees. He answered that the organization had hurt its credibility by making unfounded accusations. Top Administration officials have stressed that the interrogation policy was reviewed and sanctioned by government lawyers; last November, President Bush said, "Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture." Mora's memo, however, shows that almost from the start of the Administration's war on terror the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of Defense, intent upon having greater flexibility, charted a legally questionable course despite sustained objections from some of its own lawyers.

That's right: Dubya's administration not only lied about how they've treated prisoners captured in the 'war on terrorism,' but they've lied about whether anyone inside the government was advising them not to play fast and loose with the Geneva Conventions and other international law regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Go read the whole New Yorker story. Now.

And then read Mora's memo, which the New Yorker has posted here [PDF file].

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:26 AM | Get permalink



We don't usually gush over bike racks.

But this Swiss-designed rack has to be the coolest one we've ever seen.


Really cool bike rack!

Room for six bikes, no less.


The rack's designer is Adrien Rovero in Lausanne. We should all be lobbying our local governments to get some of these beauties.

Via BikePortland.org.

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



Sunday, February 19

Yet another warning ignored by Dubya's administration.

Not only could the torture of prisioners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo have been avoided, but it would have been avoided if the US military and Dubya's administration had paid attention to the warnings of Alberto Mora in 2002 — warnings given well before the worst of the abuses had occurred.

Then the Navy's general counsel, Mora presented Pentagon officials with a a 22-page memo[a copy of which as been obtained by the New Yorker magazine] warning them that trying to evade international rules on torture and the treatment of detainees would lead to abuse of prisoners. He also objected to legal theories being floated in the Justice Department, which said that Dubya had the power to authorize the violation of the Geneva Conventions. More called those theories illegal and dangerous.

Mora said Navy intelligence officers reported in 2002 that military-intelligence interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were engaging in escalating levels of physical and psychological abuse rumored to have been authorized at a high level in Washington.

"I was appalled by the whole thing," Mora told the magazine. "It was clearly abusive and it was clearly contrary to everything we were ever taught about American values."

Mora said he thought his concerns were being addressed by a special group set up by the Pentagon. But he discovered in January 2003 that a Justice Department opinion had negated his arguments with what he described as "an extreme and virtually unlimited theory of the extent of the president's commander in chief authority."

A story about Mora's warning to the Pentagon will appear in the Feb 27 issue of the New Yorker.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:09 PM | Get permalink



I don't know what I ate ...

... but it's sure roiling up this magpie's innards.

Posting will be slow to nonexistent for the rest of the day, most likely.

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



US Australia meaner under Dubya Howard.

It's not just the US that's become a nastier place to live since the mid-1990s, according to a new poll:

Aussie PM John Howard

Howard receiving orders from his US puppet master.
[Photographer unknown]
 
A survey of 1,000 voters has found half of them believe Australia has become a "meaner" country since John Howard was elected Prime Minister almost 10 years ago.

The Saulwick poll, published in today's Sydney Morning Herald, also found four-out-of-10 voters believe Australia has become a less fair society under the Coalition Government.

The survey gives the Prime Minister an 81 per cent disapproval rating on environment issues, 73 per cent disapprove of the Government's handling of health and 67 per cent are unhappy with the state of federal education.
If Australians dislike Howard's policie so much, why do they keep returning his Liberal/National party government to power?

It's the economy, stupid. The Sydney Morning Herald's longer article on the poll here explains why the state of Aussies' pocketbooks seems to outweigh almost every other issue.

Via ABC News [Australia].

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




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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