Magpie

Saturday, April 15

Hitler, Munich, Ahmadinejad, Iran.

Over at the Whiskey Bar, Billmon ties them all together. And no, not the way you think.

[While] the by-now stock comparison between {Iranian president] Ahmadinejad and Hitler is absurd militarily, politically it's not nearly as far fetched as the normal run of Orwellian newspeak.

I don't say this because of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denials or his public fantasies about Israel being wiped off the map. I certainly don't dismiss those remarks. I'm keenly aware that all too many "sensible" observers (most of them on the political right) dismissed Hitler's Mein Kampf ravings as merely a carny act to bring in the rubes. But I also know that firebreathing rhetoric about destroying the "Zionist entity" has been a staple of Middle Eastern political hate speech since Nasser's time if not before — just as talk about nuking Mecca has become an occasional feature of American political hate speech. I take such talk seriously, and I think everybody should, but I don't automatically assume that those who say such things are actually planning to commit genocide.

No, Ahmadinejad's resemblance to Hitler — and the reason why I find him a legitimately scary guy — is more a function of his role in the decay of the Iranian revolution, which is starting to take on some definite Weimer overtones....

A Marxist would probably say Ahmadinejad is playing the classic Bonapartist role: taking advantage of a political stalemate between social classes [the ayatollahs and the reformers] to forge a personal dictatorship. Or maybe he's just the inevitable product of an authoritarian system in terminal decline, like Milosevic in Yugoslavia. Or maybe he's really only explicable in Iranian terms.

I don't know. But Ahmadinejad's combination of demogogic appeal, ideological zealotry and end-times eschatology does make him a much more plausible stand-in for Hitler than an apparachik like Milosevic or a thug like Saddam. Even Juan Cole &151; hardly a neocon sympathizer — has called Ahmadinejad "essentially fascist."

What Ahmadinejad is not, however, is the absolute dictator of an advanced industrial state with a first-rate military. To pretend that he currently poses the same kind of threat to the world (or even to the Jewish people) that Hitler did in 1938 — or that he will pose such a threat any time within the next decade — is ridiculous. It also discredits the very legitimate concerns that the world should have about Iran and the future of the Iranian revolution.

Billmon has lots more to say in one of the best pieces of writing about the current standoff between Iran and the US I've read anywhere. Go read.

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

Warning: Lame excuses ahead.

And, warns Ted Rall, Dubya's upcoming excuses are going to be real doozies.

War? What war?

[Cartoon: © 2006 Ted Rall]

If you want to see what other excuses we're in store for from Dubya [and revisit some golden oldies], you can see the rest of the cartoon over here. And if you want to see more of Rall's stuff, check out his website.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

More: In a classic example of reality leaping ahead of even the most determined humor-monger, Molly Ivins points out an 'instant classic' excuse that came out of the White House this week.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:31 AM | Get permalink

Cheney is implicated further in Plamegate.

New evidence from the Plamegate investigaton puts VP Dick Cheney closer to the center of in the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson than had been previously believed.

VP Cheney shows how far from the center of Plamegate the new information puts him.

In July 2003, says journalist Murray Waas, Cheney ordered Lewis Libby to leak a highly classified CIA report to the media in the hopes that this report would undermine Wilson's criticisms of Dubya's Iraq policy. Waas gleaned this new information from Libby's testimony to the Plamegate grand jury and from unidentified sources who have read the report.

The document leaked by Libby was a CIA debriefing of Wilson after he returned from his mission to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from that country. It was Wilson's later public revelation that those claims were false that put him on the Dubya administration's enemies list. Waas notes, however, that this report did not mention Valerie Plame, who was Wilson's wife and covert CIA operative.

The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.

Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else."

But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband. [Emphasis mine]

As usual, there's tons of detail in Waas' story, which we highly recommend that you read. You'll find it here.

We also recommend Waas' earlier story about the evidence connecting Dubya to the Plamegate leaks.

Via National Journal.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:54 AM | Get permalink

You cast your vote, you take your chances.

Which is more strictly regulated — slot machines in Nevada or voting machines anywhere in the US?

You already know the answer, don't you? But go look at this interesting point-by-point comparison anyway.

Via Washington Post.

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

No comment.

From an article on spring shoes with six-inch heels in the NY Times:

Shoe pr0n

[Photo: Tony Cenicola/NYT]

Via Broadsheet [who definitely does have comments].

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

Magpie catches Cheney in the act.

See? It's VP Dick Cheney getting ready for that quail hunt.

Where's the friend -- er, quail?

[Graphic: Kurt Schaffenberger]

Oops! I've just been handed a message saying that's really an illustration from a sensationalistic 1953 Mechanix Illustrated article on the possible effects of nuclear radiation. So never mind about that Cheney stuff.

Thanks to Finkbuilt, from whom we shamelessly stole the whole idea for this post.

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

Friday, April 14

The GOP must really be peeing its pants because of all those immigration rallies.

Fear of an anti-GOP backlash by Latino and other voters in the November elections is the only to explain the shamelessness of the new ad that Republicans are running on Spanish-language radio stations in at least three Western states. In the ad, the GOP accuses Democrats of being behind the plan to make illegal immigration a feleony.

The 60-second spot says in Spanish that [Senate Democratic leader Harry] Reid "blocked our leaders from working together" and blames Democrats for legislation that passed the Republican-controlled House that would make illegal immigrants subject to felony charges.

"Reid's Democrat allies voted to treat millions of hardworking immigrants as felons," the ad says, "while President Bush and Republican leaders work for legislation that will protect our borders and honor our immigrants."

Given that it was Republican US representative James Sensenbrenner who introduced the draconian HR 4437 in the House and championed the provisions calling for criminalizing illegal immigration — and that it was the GOP that refused to remove that provision until after millions of Americans went to the street in protest — saying that Reid and the Democrats are behind the proposed immigration restrictions is exceptionally brazen on the GOP's part.

The ads are currently running in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; and Albuquerque and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Via AP and Arizona Republic. Thanks to Doug Krile for the tip about the Nevada ads.

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

It's official. Dubya's administration is indeed running a network of secret prisons.

And it obviously doesn't care who knows.

From an interview with Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte:

Negroponte also told TIME that three dozen or so of the worst al-Qaeda terrorists held in secret CIA prisons are likely to remain in captivity as long as the "war on terror continues." He added, "These people are being held. And they're bad actors. And as long as this situation continues, this war on terror continues, I'm not sure I can tell you what the ultimate disposition of those detainees will be." Negroponte's comments appear to be the first open acknowledgement of the secret U.S. detention system and the fact that captives such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad — involved in Sept. 11 or other major attacks on U.S. interests around the world — may be held indefinitely. [Emphasis mine]

It's not surprising that one of the people behind the creation of the Central American death squads of the 1980s wouldn't see a system of secret prisons and indefinite detetntions as being a problem. Why not hold those people indefinitely? After all, they're just getting the same treatment that Dubya's administration is meting out to US citizens like Jose Padilla.

Via TalkLeft.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:39 PM | Get permalink

Which bunker is the real target, hmm?

Political cartoonist Mike Luckovich reveals where those tactical nukes are really heading.

Buh-bye, Rummy!

[Cartoon © 2006 Mike Luckovich]

You can see the full-sized version of the cartoon here. And there's lots more of Luckovich's cartoons here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:48 PM | Get permalink

Our advice to Dubya's administration about lying in public.

It's simple: When you tell a lie with one hand, don't point to the lie with another.

In his latest column [bootlegged here], Paul Krugman has a beautiful example of how Dubya and his cronies are so arrogant in their lies that they don't bother to cover their tracks. During the 2004 presidential campaign, you might recall, the GOP hammered the Democrats' charge that Dubya's tax cuts mainly went to the rich. The prez himself took up this theme during one of his debates with John Kerry, claiming that 'most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans.' But despite piles of evidence that the truth is exactly the opposite of what Dubya claimed, the administration has stuck to its guns, insisting that criticisms of the tax cut are politically motivated lies.

Krugman picks up the story:

The Treasury Department has put out an exercise in spin called the "Tax Relief Kit," which tries to create the impression that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income families. Conspicuously missing from the document are any actual numbers about how the tax cuts were distributed among different income classes. Yet Treasury analysts have calculated those numbers, and there's enough information in the "kit" to figure out what they discovered....

Here's the bottom line: about 32 percent of the tax cuts went to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people whose income this year will be at least $341,773. About 53 percent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population. Remember, these are the administration's own numbers — numbers that it refuses to release to the public.

I'm sure that this column will provoke a furious counterattack from the administration, an all-out attempt to discredit my math. Yet if I'm wrong, there's an easy way to prove it: just release the raw data used to construct the table titled "Projected Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income in 2006." Memo to reporters: if the administration doesn't release those numbers, that's in effect a confession of guilt, an implicit admission that the data contradict the administration's spin.

As Krugman says, it's not surprising the Dubya's administration would lie about something as supposedly trivial as taxes when they have absolutely no trouble telling lies about Iraq, where people are dying every day as a result of those lies.

By the way, you can find a PDF of the Treasury Department's 'Tax Relief Kit' if you go here.

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

Yes, there is life on Earth!

With the help of MetaFilter, Magpie is able to reveal that life has been found on the third planet. Go here for a revealing look at life on Earth from the National Film Board of Mars.

Look! Life on Earth!

Screen grab from What On Earth! [1966].
[Graphic: Kaj Pindal/Les Drew]

If you hadn't already guessed, I'm really talking about one of those classic National Film Board of Canada productions from the 1960s and 1970s. Folks have posted a whole bunch of them over at YouTube. Besides the one about Mars, this magpie really likes Log Drivers' Waltz, a mostly animated film featuring music from Kate and Anna McGarrigle.

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

Don't look for an Iranian nuclear weapon any time soon.

Despite the Iranian government's announcement that it's joined the nuclear club, it'll be awhile until Tehran can make the enriched uranium needed for a nuclear device. That's the word from the head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Agency, whose opinion on the matter is probably better informed than mine. Or Dubya's.

Sergei Kiriyenko said the enrichment facility in the Iranian city of Natanz, equipped with 164 gas centrifuges, could not produce any significant amount of enriched uranium, which can be used to fuel power plants or produce atomic weapons.

"These centrifuges allow Iran to conduct laboratory uranium enrichment to a low level in insignificant amounts," Kiriyenko was quoted as saying. "The acquisition of highly enriched uranium is unfeasible today using this method."

Kiriyenko's is just the latest in a series of expert opinions holding that Iran is nowhere near having a functional nuclear weapons program — let alone an actual nuclear device. But this mapgie bets dollars to donuts that Dubya's administration will keep talking up the threat of an 'Iranian bomb' no matter what the evidence against the 'threat' is produced — politics trump reality at the White House every time.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:28 AM | Get permalink

Just how much domestic spying does a country need, anyway?

The Pentagon apparently doesn't think that the US has enough spying going on, as it slowly moves forward with plans to merge two military intelligence units that operate inside the country. One is the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 agency that's been caught spying on anti-war demonstrations and other consitutionally protected political activities, and keeping records on the people involved. The other is the Defense Security Service (DSS), which has long been responsible for evaluating the security arrangements of defense contractors. The DSS, not incidentally, has millions of files containing information about contractors' employees, collected during background investigations.

Newsweek's Mark Hosenball has been looking into the proposed merger and has found plenty of reasons to worry about its effects:

Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.

According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.

A CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractors' offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered "sensitive but unclassified"—a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records.... [And by] acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators.

And, if that's not enough, it's also been suggested that the merged agency should be moved to the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI already has its main labs and training facility.

Let's review:

The merged agencies would have files on millions of Americans from day one.
They'd have field investigators that could snoop into peoples' lives and activities, and generate even more files.
One of the agencies has already been caught spying on people who oppose government policies.
The merged agency could wind up being located right by important facilities of another federal outfit with a history of domestic spying problems: the FBI.

If that's not a recipe for a secret police force, I don't know what is.

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

If the film is even half as good as its trailer ...

... the indy documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' might just preach climate change and global warming to more than the already converted.

Hurricane Katrina takes aim at the Gulf Coast. [from the film]

Watch the trailer here.

Via Wampum.

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

'Abstinence-only' eduction isn't enough.

The children of the nation are falling prey to an even greater peril than sex.

Every year, many children are injured, and many accidents occur, because kids cross the street. This continues to occur, despite so-called "educational programs" that purport to tell kids how to cross the street ?safely? ? suggesting kids "Stop, Look, and Listen" or teaching that the clearly-misnamed "safe crossing" is possible at crosswalks and with crossing signals....

Indeed, a consideration of the matter will show that teaching kids about "crossing safety" simply encourages them to cross the street, sanctions their self-endangerment, with the predictably tragic consequences.

But don't worry, there's an answer.

Via I See Invisible People.

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

Thursday, April 13

The endless betrayal.

It would be hard to be more direct about the dire condition of the US after three decades of economic mismanagement and greed than Ian Welsh does in this post over at the Agonist:
It's class war!

The last thirty odd years has been the big screw. Regular people have not seen any wage increases, and have taken on debt, while the rich have gorged themselves till the money they bought by corrupting politicians has left them morally corpulent and without the least regard for their fellow citizens. Feeling that nothing they do matters, a near majority of US citizens don't even bother to vote — why bother when both the choices will simply vote for the interests of those who bought them years ago?

The first step to fixing all this is just to admit it. Yeah, there has been a class war and the rich won. The majority of Americans have spent the last thirty years being trickled on, and being told they should like it, beg for it, ask for more, and show gratitude for it to their betters.

The last class war was lost by ordinary Americans. The next war, the question of the next twenty years, is about whether the rich get to keep it all, and the middle class gets to pay off all the US's debts, while giving up good wages, their pensions and any chance at decent healthcare.

Which side are you going to be on? Because there are only going to be two sides, in the end.

Read the rest here.

Via Gordon.Coale.

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

Help wanted.

'Government of major North American country needs independent contractors to carry out covert operations and intelligence gathering in major oil producing nation south of the Caspian Sea. Familiarity with Khuzestan and Baluchistan a plus. History of terrorist activities and past association with the Axis of Evil are no problem.'

That's pretty much the job ad that Donald Rumsfeld could have placed when he started looking for someone to forment trouble inside Iraq. And, according to Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw Story, the Defense Department's chosen agents are the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a group on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. And, incidentally, Saddam Hussein's choice when he wanted to cause trouble in Iraq. Intelligence source told Alexandrovna that the MEK is already active inside Iran, carrying out activities in preparation for a US strike against the country. And, interestingly, the main mover behind the decision to use the MEK is reported to be none other than that great Mideast expert, VP Dick Cheney.

If the idea of using the MEK as a US surrogate sounds familiar, it should. Back in 2003, I posted this excerpt from a Knight Ridder report on how destablilizing Iran was already on the Dubya administration's to-do list:

Officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office are using both issues to press their view that the United States should adopt both overt and covert measures to undermine the Islamic regime in Tehran, said the officials, who are involved in the debate. Other officials argue that such a campaign would backfire by discrediting the moderate Iranians who are demanding political reforms.

Although one senior official engaged in the debate said "the military option is never off the table," others said no one was suggesting an invasion of Iran, although some officials think the United States should launch a limited air strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities if Iran appears on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon. By some estimates, Iran could have a nuclear weapon within two years.

Some Pentagon officials suggested using the remnants of an Iranian opposition group once backed by Saddam Hussein, the Mujahedeen Khalq (MEK), to instigate armed opposition to the Iranian government. U.S. military forces in Iraq have disarmed the roughly 6,000-strong MEK, which is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups. But the group's weapons are in storage and it hasn't disbanded. [My emphasis]

If the Raw Story report is confirmed, it means that Rumsfeld, the Pentagon, and the White House have learned even less from their mistakes in Iraq than even this magpie suspected. After all, it doesn't take a Ph.D. in history to know what happened the last time the US started supporting terrorists to destabilize one of the region's governments.

Can you say 'Afghanistan', Dubya? Or 'Taliban,' Mr Cheney?

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:43 PM | Get permalink

US, Iran keep wagging that dog.

The conflict between the US and Iran over the existence of an Iranian nuclear energy program — and, allegedly, an Iranian nuclear weapons program — is a sign that the leaders of both countries are in trouble, says Mideast analyst William Beeman. Both Dubya and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have extremely low public support in their countries, and the current confrontation allows both leaders to call attention away from the domestic political and economic difficulties. The problem with the path that both leaders have chosen is that the consequences of their posturing could be dangerous indeed.

U.S. and British officials when pressed admit there is no hard evidence that an Iranian nuclear weapons development program exists. They also admit that Iran's nuclear energy development program is their right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty....

Iran's posturing, which included an amusing set of festivities on April 11 with folkloric performers dancing while hoisting vials of enriched uranium against the backdrop of hundreds of flying white doves, conceals the fact that Iran is years away from producing enough nuclear fuel to power a generator, much less in the quantity and purity level that would allow it to construct a nuclear weapon....

This makes American and Iranian assertions and counter-assertions appear rather ridiculous. Indeed, the danger in this situation could be dismissed if there were other leaders in power. However, in both nations the leadership needs this conflict. President Bush and the Republican party face defeat in November without an issue to galvanize the voting public behind their assertion that they are best able to protect the United States from attack -- the only point on which they have outscored Democrats in recent polls. President Ahmadinejad also needs public support for his domestic political agenda -- an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.

This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a "spiral conflict" in which both parties escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.

And those reactions, warns Beeman, could easily have effects far beyond Iran's borders.

Via Pacific News Service.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:44 PM | Get permalink

Happy blogiversary!

We're a day late, but happy 2nd anniversary to one of the best feminist blogs around, Feministing.

Feministing has just about the coolest logo you could hope to see, too. Go take a look.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:27 AM | Get permalink

If you don't have facts, fear just might work.

And it looks like Dubya's administraiton is going for a re-run of how they used fear to stampede the US public into supporting a war in Iraq.

Here's Dubya in 2002:

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. [Speech at Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio on October 7]

And here's Stephen Rademaker, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation just yesterday:

Natanz [Iraq's nuclear facility] was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges. Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days. [Statement to the press in Moscow, April 12]

Notice any resemblance between the two claims? Any doubts as to whether the new one is just as false as the old one?

Via Bloomberg.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:03 AM | Get permalink

Do you have migraphobia?

Cartoonist Mark Fiore has an animation that explains the cause and cure for this increasingly common malady.

Stop changing that map on me!

I was here first!
[Image: © 2006 Mark Fiore]

Via Village Voice.

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

No comment needed.

From an excellent article by Sidney Blumenthal about the recent troubles of Dubya's presidency:

Bush is entangled in his own past. His explanations compound his troubles and point to the original falsehoods. Through his first term, Bush was able to escape by blaming the Democrats, casting aspersions on the motives of his critics and changing the subject. But his methods have become self-defeating. When he utters the word "truth" now most of the public is mistrustful. His accumulated history overshadows what he might say.

The collapse of trust was cemented into his presidency from the start. A compulsion for secrecy undergirds the Bush White House. Power, as Bush and Cheney see it, thrives by excluding diverse points of view. Bush's presidency operates on the notion that the fewer the questions, the better the decision.

Via Salon.

[Paid sub or ad view req'd.]

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

Guantánamo for kids.

It's a place in Jamaica called Tranquility Bay, one of of more than a thousand facilities run by members of a group called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools {WWASP].

We found this photo on the website for ISA, one of the WWASP school operators. They seem to think it's good advertising. [Original URL. Original caption: Boys lying on their faces in "observation placement" at Tranquility Bay.]

It's where well-off parents send their kids to be 'fixed' like they were a defective product. It's the operant conditioning methods of B.F. Skinner run wild: punish, reward, punish, reward, punish, punish punish. It's spending hours, days, or months lying in a 'stress position,' face down on the floor, not moving unless you want to get hit. It's pepper spray in the face. It used to be getting sent to 'dog cages' until the Mexican government closed that 'school' down. It's where kids learn obedience and respect for authority. It's a business run by big donors to the Republican parties, where a lot of money can be made with little or no regulation.

It's all described in a 2005 documentary produced for French and Swiss television called Tranquility Bay [Les Enfants Perdus de Tranquilty Bay], which so far has not found an outlet in the US. It's a powerful film that makes very disturbing viewing.

Variety has a review of Tranquility Bay here. You can watch the documentary here or you can download it as a torrent file here.

Via MetaFilter.

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

Wednesday, April 12

Yep, Dubya definitely knew that those Iraqi trailers had nothing to do with WMDs.

How can I tell? Because White House press secretary Scott McClellan apparently went ballistic at today's press briefing over the subject of whether, in 2003, Dubya said that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons when he knew that wasn't true.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the account "reckless reporting" and said Bush made his statement based on the intelligence assessment of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), an arm of the Pentagon....

McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.

When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report.

"This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air," he said.

Whenever the White House demands an apology from the press, you can be certain that reporters have gotten way too close to something the administration wants to keep out of the public eye.

The transcript of the briefing hasn't been posted by the White House yet, so I'm having to rely on a Reuters story for the info. Hopefully the transcript will reveal more about what got under Scotty's skin so badly.

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

Your [US] Homeland Security Department at work.

A member of the Marine Corps reserve missed his flight home at LA International Airport on Tuesday because his name appeared on the feds' no-fly list. At the time he was kept from boarding a plane back to Minnesota, Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown was returning from a tour in Iraq with his military police unit. He was detained even though he was traveling along with 26 other members of his reserve unit — and wearing his Marine uniform.

"I was told it was going to take some time because they informed me I was on a government watch list," Brown said. "People at the Northwest counter said they had to call somebody to get me cleared."

The presence of Brown's name on the watch list apparently resulted from an airport incident when he was on his way to Iraq.

He was trying to board a plane last June for training in California before heading to Iraq in September. But Transportation Security Administration screeners found gunpowder residue on his boots — likely left over from a previous two-month tour in Iraq.

"I tried to explain what was going on, that I'd just got home and was going back again," Brown said. "They made a big stink about it, and I ended up missing my flight to California."

Stories like this just don't stop coming, do they? I'm sure that this kind of vigiliance has real terrorists just shaking in their boots.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:50 AM | Get permalink

AT&T deals with its surveillance 'problem.'

One of the items that's been sitting in my blogging queue, waiting for me to have time to write up a post, is this report in Wired, involving communications giant AT&T and the US National Security Agency. According to a federal class-action lawsuit filed in by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AT&T has allegedly been giving the NSA full access to its customers' internet and telephone communications, and providing access to its extensive database of caller information. All of this, the EFF suit contends, is in direct violation of federal privacy laws and the rules set up by Congress to govern domestic surveillance programs.

Last week, EFF filed documents supporting its request for a preliminary injunction that would bar AT&T from continuing its alleged surveillance activities. EFF says that three of these are internal AT&T documents that explain how the surveillance system works. In a counter-move this week — and this is the part I'd having trouble making up if it wasn't true — AT&T has asked the court to make EFF give the documents back and not refer to them further in its lawsuit. Lovely, huh?

When you understand exactly what AT&T is supposed to be doing, you can see exactly why the communications giant is wanting to get those internal documents out of consideration by the court. In that same EFF filing last week, there was a sworn statement about the surveillance from former AT&T technician Mark Klein. While that statement is under seal, Klein's attorney released a separate statement in which Klein tells he became aware that his employer was doing something out of line:

In 2002, when I was working in an AT&T office in San Francisco, the site manager told me to expect a visit from a National Security Agency agent, who was to interview a management-level technician for a special job. The agent came, and by chance I met him and directed him to the appropriate people.

In January 2003, I, along with others, toured the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco -- actually three floors of an SBC building. There I saw a new room being built adjacent to the 4ESS switch room where the public's phone calls are routed. I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room. The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room.

In October 2003, the company transferred me to the San Francisco building to oversee the Worldnet Internet room, which included large routers, racks of modems for customers' dial-in services, and other equipment. I was responsible for troubleshooting problems on the fiber optic circuits and installing new circuits.

While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. I saw this in a design document available to me.... I also saw [other] design documents ... which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the "splitter" cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed ... connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.

One of the documents listed the equipment installed in the secret room, and this list included a Narus STA 6400, which is a "Semantic Traffic Analyzer". The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets....

My job required me to connect new circuits to the "splitter" cabinet and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with a technician back East, I learned that other such "splitter" cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data.

The final paragraph of Klein's statement goes right to the heart of the matter what's at stake in whether EFF is able to keep the AT&T documents and, ultimately, to succeed in stopping the surveillance activities that it alleges are going on in AT&T facilities:

Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA. And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.

Given all of this, if I were AT&T I'd be doing my damndest to get those documents out of EFF's hands [and the federal court's hands, too]. After all, keeping 'troublesome' information out of public view is way easier than quitting an unethical and illegal activity, isn't it?

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:42 AM | Get permalink

Not just your average soft drink.

The Nasa indigenous people of Colombia's Andes are marketing an increasingly popular soft drink called Coca-Sek, one ingredient for which is a syrup made from boiled coca leaves. The Nasas are hoping to take their drink nationwide, competing for the same market as drinks such as Red Bull and Gatorade. Print ads for Coca-Sek describe the citrus-flavored soft drink as 'more than an energizer.' Indeed.

While North Americans usually think of coca leaves as the main ingredient of cocaine, native people in all of South America's Andean countries have chewed the leaves or used them in food for centuries. The Nasas, like many indigenous people, consider coca leaves sacred.

[The] launch of Coca-Sek has ignited controversy in a country where Washington has spent $4 billion since 1999 combating the drug trade and terrorism.

The reasons are myriad: the tribe's market ambitions for the beverage; the inevitable comparisons with the original Coke, which dropped cocaine from its formula in 1905; and the recent election of Bolivian President Evo Morales, an indigenous coca grower who supports the production of legitimate coca products.

Coca-Sek has also reopened a debate over the limits of the sovereignty that indigenous groups in Colombia and other nations are afforded. The Nasa claim a sovereign right to commercialize the soft drink and other coca products, even though the law permitting its use clearly limits it to traditional, not commercial, ends...

Chewing coca leaves, which depresses the central nervous system, has enabled Indians to soften the effects of hunger, hard work and high altitude for centuries. Franky Rios, the engineer at Popayan's La Reina bottling plant who oversees the production of the beverage, said Coca-Sek delivers the various vitamins and minerals, including calcium, potassium and magnesium, found in the coca leaf.

"It's better than Gatorade," he said.

Via LA Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:08 AM | Get permalink

Saddam's trailers of mass destruction.

If you take your memory way back to April and May of 2003, you might remember hearing reports about a couple of trailers found in the Iraqi desert — trailers that were supposed to be mobile bioweapons labs. As we posted at the time [here and here], the proposition that Saddam's military was cooking up germ warfare in those trailers was a pretty shaky one at the very best. By that August, it was pretty damn obvious that the trailers had nothing to do with WMDs [as I'll discuss more later in this post].

Ooooh, scary!

One of those 'suspicious' trailers found by US forces in northern Iraq in April 2003. [Photo: AP]

None of the doubts expressed about the trailers back in April and May 2003 made any difference to Dubya or his various surrogates, however. For a year after the war began, administration officials used the existence of the trailers as a justification for the invasion of Iraq, with the prez himself telling Polish reporters on May 30, 2003 that 'We have found the weapons of mass destruction.'

Uh, no.

According to the Washington Post, Dubya's administration knew as early as May 27 that the trailers had nothing to do with WMDs. If you're counting [and you should be], that's two days before the prez's remark to the Polish press. On the 27th, a secret team of US and UK experts submitted a report containing their conclusions after a thorough study of the trailers in question. While that study remains classified, six members of the team have told the Post that the trailers were not used to make bioweapons:

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."

The Post story contains a lot of details about the team's work in Iraq, and about what happened to their report once it reached Washington, and it's well worth reading just to get an idea of the political struggles between the intelligence agencies and Dubya administration politicos. However, the story doesn't answer one question that this magpie had almost immediately: Why has it taken the Washington Post so long to report that the administrration lied about the trailers — information that's been floating around for well over two years?

Right after I read the Post story, I went into the Magpie archives to see what I'd posted about the trailers back in 2003. Besides the posts cited above, I also found this one, which links to this NY Times story from August 8, 2003, which seems to refer to the same secret team mentioned by the Post:

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

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

That report had dismissed as a "cover story" claims by senior Iraqi scientists that the trailers were used to make hydrogen for the weather balloons that were then used in artillery practice.

A Defense Department official said the alternative views expressed by members of the engineering team, not yet spelled out in a formal report, had prompted the Defense Intelligence Agency to "pursue additional information" to determine whether those Iraqi claims were indeed accurate....

The engineering team that has come to believe the trailers were used to produce hydrogen includes experts whose task was to assess the trailers from a purely technical standpoint, as opposed to one based on other sources of intelligence. Skeptical experts had previously cited a lack of equipment in the trailers for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production.

To be fair, the Times didn't really follow up on this 2003 story, either. But the fact remains that the country's major newspapers almost certainly could have uncovered the story of how Dubya's administration deliberately kept lying about Iraq's WMDs after the war was over long before now.

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

Busting bunkers.

Part of the Dubya administration's reputed plans for destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities involve strking its nuclear facilities with nuclear 'bunker busters' — or as those masters of euphemism in the Pentagon like to call them: 'Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators.' As this animation from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows, this is not only a bad idea, but a dangerous and ineffective one.

Fallout pattern from nuclear bunker buster

Fallout pattern from nuclear bunker buster

Fallout pattern from a bunker buster strike at Isfahan, Iran, 28 hours after detonation. As many as 3 million people could die, and fallout would endanger those downwind in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Fallout pattern based on a Pentagon simulation.
[Graphic: Union of Concerned Scientists]

The Union of Concerned Scientists has more information about bunker busters and the effects of using them if you go here.

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

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

A story to warm the cockles of this magpie's heart.

Guess what I just saw over at MSNBC?

Booooooooooooooo!

From the AP story:

Greeted with loud boos and some cheers, Vice President Dick Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch Tuesday at the Washington Nationals' home opener....

Last year, the capital's first with a baseball team since 1971, President Bush tossed out the first pitch at the home opener. Many fans were late to their seats because security lines at metal detectors — installed for the president's visit — were still 20 deep when the game began.

Those DC fans sure know how to make a guy feel welcome, eh?

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

Tuesday, April 11

Still going down.

A new Washington Post-ABC New poll shows that 60 percent of the US public disapproves of how the prez is running the country. Even worse for GOP strategists, Dubya's continuing low poll numbers are starting to rub off on the rest of the party. The new poll shows that 55 percent of registered voters plan to vote for Democratic candidates in the November congressional election, compared to only 40 percent who say they'll vote Republican. This is the most lopsided margin in favor of the Democrats in 20 years.

As I keep saying, this bad news couldn't be dropping into the lap of a more deserving guy.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:32 PM | Get permalink

Another one bites the dust.

One of the stalwarts of Dubya's 'Coalition of the Willing' in Iraq, Italy's right-wing PM and chief wacko Silvio Berlusconi, appears to have lost his re-election bid after one of the nastiest campaigns in Italian history. After hours of conflicting exit polls, final election returns showed that the center-left alliance headed by Romano Prodi won control of both houses of the legislature by the narrowest of margins.

Berlusconi was one of the strongest supporters of Dubya's invasion of Iraq, and just as fond of democracy at home as the prez. Italy will undoubtedly be better off without him.

Via BBC.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:46 PM | Get permalink

The new scarlet letter.

Political cartoonist Andrew Wahl of the Wenatchee World in Washington state, show us that not all the good cartoons are coming out of the big papers.

The scarlet letter

[Cartoon © 2006 Off the Wahl Productions]

The full-sized cartoon is here. You can see more of Wahl's cartoons over here.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:12 PM | Get permalink

Calming the immigration waters.

One of the ugly facts of the current immigration debate in the US is the huge amount of racism and xenophobia that immigrants — whether illegal or not — brings up with some people. Much of that response is due to the lack of hard information in the US media, plus a deliberate campaign of misinformation on the part of immigration opponents.

Over at AlterNet, Joshua Holland has put together a very informative and [thankfully] balanced article on immigration issues:

We need a clearer understanding of who immigrants are and what they do. According to the Census Bureau (PDF), less than half of all immigrants come from Central and South America. The same percentage of the foreign-born population has college degrees as Americans (although fewer have high school degrees).

The common notion that there are "good" immigrants who enter the United States legally, pay their taxes and work hard to raise their families, and "bad," shiftless immigrants who enter illegally, take services and give nothing in return while depressing native wages is at best overly simplistic. Up to 40 percent of the illegal population entered the country legally and overstayed their visas. Illegals pay payroll, sales and property taxes (mostly passed through rental property owners), which are the three taxes that take the biggest bite from all working-class families. According to a Pew study, a quarter of all immigrants live in "mixed" households where some members are U.S. citizens, some are legal residents and some are undocumented.

Today's "bad" immigrant, if given the chance, becomes tomorrow's "good" one. Currently, the two are likely to be cousins.

You can read the whole article here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:44 PM | Get permalink

The two-minute Passover service.

This post is for our housemate M, who just called to tell me about a Passover song called 'They Tried to Kill Us (We Survived. Let's Eat.)' [lyrics here.]

Opening prayers:
Thanks, God, for creating wine. (Drink wine.)

Thanks for creating produce. (Eat parsley.)

Overview: Once we were slaves in Egypt. Now we're free. That's why we're doing this.

Four questions:

1. What's up with the matzoh?
2. What's the deal with horseradish?
3. What's with the dipping of the herbs?
4. What's this whole slouching at the table business?

Answers:
1. When we left Egypt, we were in a hurry. There was no time for making decent bread.
2. Life was bitter, like horseradish.
3. It's called symbolism.
4. Free people get to slouch.

A funny story: Once, these five rabbis talked all night, then it was morning. (Heat soup now.)

This is only part of a Passover Haggadah written by Michael Rubiner. You'll find the rest here.

If you want to know more about Passover and the Haggadah, this Wikipedia article is a good starting point.

Via Slate.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:30 PM | Get permalink

Xena is very bright.

But it turns out that the solar system's 'tenth planet' is only slightly bigger than Pluto. New observations from the Hubble telescope show that Xena is only 5% larger than Pluto, instead of 25% to 30% larger than earlier thought.

Xena and Gabrielle

Artist's conception of Xena [officially Kuiper Belt object 2003 UB313] and its moon 'Gabrielle.'
[Image: A. Schaller/STScI/NASA/ESA

The fact that Xena is smaller than thought means it must reflect about 86% of the light that falls on it — making it about as bright as fresh snow and brighter than every other solar system body except Saturn's moon Enceladus. Spectral observations suggest its surface is covered with frozen methane, like Pluto.

But unlike Pluto, which is mottled by both bright and dark splotches, Xena is so uniformly bright that it is impossible to tell how fast it is rotating. "When we made the size measurement, we were thoroughly shocked," Brown told New Scientist. "Such a high albedo is simply unprecedented other than the very odd Enceladus."

So why is Xena so bright? The best guesses now are either that Xena's very eccentric orbit causes its atmosphere to thaw and re-freeze, thus replenishing its highly reflective methane surface, or methane may be venting from Xena's interior. But both theories are mostly speculation at this point.

There's lots more new info about Xena in this article at New Scientist Space.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:54 PM | Get permalink

Cat gets literary.

Here's the punchline:

Oh that cat!

For the rest of the joke, head over here.

You'll find tons more Cat and Girl if you go here.

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

No comment needed.

Monday in Seattle:

An American watches the parade

Chinese restaurant owner Vince Yong, who immigrated from Hong Kong four years ago, watches an immigration rally pass his business on its way to the Federal Building in downtown Seattle on Monday.
[Photo: Elaine Thompson/AP]

Via Spiegel.

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

Giving 'em what for.

La Queen Sucia thoroughly slaps down the racists and xenophobes foolish enough to try to tangle with her on immigration.

MICHAEL WHINES: 5. They refuse to assimilate, learn English, and send much of what they earn back to Mexico.

ALISA SAYS: The Pew Center for Hispanic research shows that by the third generation all immigrant grandchildren — NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE FROM OR THE LEGAL STATUS OF THEIR ANCESTORS — are COMPLETELY ASSIMILATED ENGLISH SPEAKERS.

There is not a single third-generation Hispanic in the United States whose primary or dominant language is Spanish. NOT ONE.

This is precisely the same assimilation pattern followed by the Germans, Italians, French and every other linguistic minority immigrant group to this nation.

As for remittances? Only one in five illegal immigrants send money to another nation.

I will offer as further argument a note I got from my father this morning. He is a sociology professor who has taught at Duke University and is currently at the University of New Mexico. He was born in Cuba and came to the U.S. at 15, and within two years could read, write and speak English better than you do. (Your spelling is miserable. Read often?)

On the issue or remittances, Dr. Nelson Valdes said: ?Certain uninformed critics of illegal immigration have written on your blog that remittances to Mexico and other nations take money out of the US economy. The same argument should be held against US foreign investments abroad. After all, the amount of corporate transfers of capital is greater than the amount of remittances sent by low-paid workers. Moreover, if the US is to oppose the money remittances of "migrant workers" - should the reverse argument be held? That is, should US corporations abroad NOT be allowed to remit profits to the United States?

Heck, let's put an end to globalization altogether!?

She summarily disposes of a half-dozen equally ill-informed correspondents in this post, which we urge you to go read.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:14 AM | Get permalink

I missed this.

But you shouldn't.

Sy Hersh on CNN

Thanks to TalkLeft, we now know that Seymour Hersh appeared on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on Sunday night, and discussed his New Yorker article about Dubya's plans to attack Iraq. Some of it is going to cause me to lose sleep:

BLITZER: Here's, among other things, what you write in the article: "A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was 'absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb' if it is not stopped. He said that the president believes that he must do 'what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,' and that 'saving Iran is going to be his legacy.' " So what's your bottom line? Do you believe, based on the reporting you did for this article, that the president of the United States is now aggressively plotting military action, a preemptive strike against Iran?

HERSH: The word I hear is messianic. He thinks, as I wrote, that he's the only one now who will have the courage to do it. He's politically free. I don't think he's overwhelmingly concerned about the '06 elections, congressional elections. I think he really thinks he has a chance, and this is going to be his mission. [Emphasis mine]

And some of it shows how much how what Dubya's administration is doing now resembles what happened before the Iraq war. Hersh's comments about how the administration is responding to his Iran article are very revealing:

BLITZER: Here are some of the comments we've gotten from top Pentagon officials, reacting to your article in the New Yorker.

Larry DiRita, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs: "We will not, other than to remind people that Sy Hersh has a single anonymous source who is not in government, and both Hersh and the source have made fantastic, unverified, and wrong allegations before."

You want to react to Larry DiRita?

HERSH: I think the last time that he was talking about was when I wrote about Abu Ghraib. I think the phrase they used in the Pentagon -- I was throwing "crap against the wall to see what will stick" at that point, when I first began to report that there were serious abuses in Abu Ghraib two years ago.

BLITZER: Another Pentagon spokesman, Brian Whitman says this in reaction to your article, and I'll read it: "The United States government has been very clear about its approach to dealing with Iran. The president and the State Department are working diligently with the international community to include organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations to address diplomatically the troublesome activities of the Iranian government.

Whitman goes on to say, "This reporter" -- referring to you -- "has a solid and well-earned reputation for making dramatic assertions based on thinly sourced, unverifiable anonymous sources. It should be noted that Mr. Hersh never sought any comment, clarification or interviews with responsible and knowledgeable officials of the Defense Department."

HERSH: The New Yorker sent a long, detailed memorandum to the Pentagon on Tuesday. I e-mailed other people in the government, getting no response, other responsible high-level officials, not getting a response.

And all I can tell you is that the response was given -- a very churlish response was given to us on Thursday night or Friday that didn't respond, as he doesn't, to the issue.

The question: Is there serious military planning going on? And all of this talk doesn't evade the issue. The answer is yes and they're not actually denying it. [Emphasis mine]

You can read the full transcript of the interview here. Hersh's portion of the program begins about one-third of the way down.

Crooks and liars has the video of the interview up here.

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

Numbers are so tricky.

If you forget to adjust for inflation, things can look way better or way worse than they really are. Given that we in the US are living through the Dubya years, we can count on the latter.

Take this, from USA Today's annual survey of CEO pay:

Median 2005 pay among chief executives running most of the nation's 100 largest companies soared 25% to $17.9 million, dwarfing the 3.1% average gain by typical American workers, USA TODAY found in its annual analysis of CEO pay.

Having CEO pay going up at eight times the rate of everyone else is bad enough, but look at what happens when you factor in inflation:

CEOs: 21.9% Everyone else: 0%

I don't think I need to say anything else.

Thanks to Hale Stewart at BOPNews for adjusting the numbers.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:11 AM | Get permalink

Monday, April 10

Gee, I feel much better knowing this.

In what appears to be a continuation of the Dubya administration's new policy of putting the prez out in front of a relatively unscreened public, our man Dubya appeared before students of international studies at Johns Hopkins University today. After his remarks, he fielded questions:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. It's an honor to have you here. I'm a first-year student in South Asia studies. My question is in regards to private military contractors. Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to these contractors in Iraq. I asked your Secretary of Defense a couple months ago what law governs their actions.

THE PRESIDENT: I was going to ask him. Go ahead. (Laughter.) Help. (Laughter.)

Q I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of enforcing its laws, much less against -- over our American military contractors. I would submit to you that in this case, this is one case that privatization is not a solution. And, Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that very much. I wasn't kidding -- (laughter.) I was going to -- I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I've got an interesting question. (Laughter.) This is what delegation -- I don't mean to be dodging the question, although it's kind of convenient in this case, but never -- (laughter.) I really will -- I'm going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? That's how I work. I'm -- thanks. (Laughter.)

Did you get that? Dubya has no idea what law applies to the private armies that his administration has turned loose on Iraq. He doesn't a clue as to how they're controlled, or even whether private armies are a good idea.

His answer tells us more than he probably wanted about his administration's approach to policy-making — whether in Iraq or otherwise: Don't worry about coming up with reasons or worrying about consequences, because everything we do is right.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:00 AM | Get permalink

A voice too loud to ignore.

Across the US, immigrants and immigration rights supporters went into the streets on Sunday in numbers that surpassed those of the huge demonstrations two weeks ago. They marched in San Diego, Dallas, St Paul [Minnesota], St Louis, Birmingham [Alabama], Salem [Oregon], Salt Lake City, and Detroit.

They are not illegal

Over a half million people filled the streets of downtown Dallas [left].
On right, rally shots from St. Paul [top], St. Louis {middle], and San Diego {bottom].

These people are not criminals. They are not illegal. They are, in many cases, our next-door neighbors. They've come to America for the same reasons my great-grandmother came from Sweden, my great-great grandparents from Ireland and Scotland, and generations of my family further back from Germany and England.

They come to work. They come to escape oppression. They come to make a better life for themselves and their children. They come here because of the promise of freedom and equality that this country has held out to the rest of the world, and they come here even though they know that this country doesn't always live up to that promise.

These people want to be Americans. They've worked hard to get here, and they've probably worked even harder once they arrived here. And by exercising the right of peaceful assembly to petition the government for redress of their grievances, they've shown that they take being an American more seriously than many of us who were born here.

This country was largely built by the sweat and tears of immigrants and the children of immigrants. We cannot let the pleas of this newest generation of immigrants go unanswered.

More demonstrations are planned in at least 60 US cities and towns for later today [Monday]. You can find out what's happening in your are here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:19 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, April 9

Dear Mr. President.

It's the title of a new song by Pink [along with the Indigo Girls] from her new album, Not Dead Yet. Go listen.

How does he sleep at night, hmm?

Via Atrios.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:06 PM | Get permalink

Repeating the big lie.

Well, one of the big lies, anyway.

Listening to the news earlier today, we heard an announcer read the follwoing part of a story by AP Baghad reporter Vanessa Arrington, in which she regurgitates some very old Dubya administration propaganda about Iraq:

Five roadside bombs killed at least three people in Iraq on Sunday — the three-year anniversary of the Baghdad's fall to U.S. forces. Iraq police and soldiers bolstered security in the capital to prevent attacks on "Freedom Day."

The holiday marks the April 9, 2003 event in which a huge crowd of Iraqis cheered as U.S. Marines hauled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdous Square, marking the collapse of his regime. [Emphasis mine]

Makes you think that the Marines toppled the statue at the behest of the Iraqis, doesn't it? Well, maybe Arrington and her AP editors should read this LA Times story from 3 July 2004:
Oops! Wrong flag!

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the [internal US Army report on the Iraq war] said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

After the colonel — who was not named in the report — selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member....

Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.

In fact, the Marines were so over-zealous in their dealing with the statue that they put a US flag over Saddam's head [see photo]. It was replaced with Iraq's flag only after Iraqi bystanders pointed out that their country's flag would be more appropriate.

If Vanessa Arrington is reporting from Baghdad and doesn't know that the statue-toppling was stage-managed by US forces, the AP should get her ass out of there and put in a reporter who knows better than to accept 'accepted knowledge' uncritically.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:47 PM | Get permalink

Back to ~~Iraq~~ Iran.

When we went over to Back to Iraq today, we found out that not only has Chris Allbritton left Iraq, but he's also parted ways with Time magazine to go freelance again. For those of you who don't remember Allbritton's earlier freelance work, he raised money online before the Iraq war to pay for him to cover events in Iraq and post his stories online. His immediate plan is to head for Iran, and afterwards to report generally on southwest Asia.

Speaking of Iran, Allbritton also posted his thoughts on whether a US attack on Iran is likely:

Now, the U.S. makes all sorts of plans. I'm sure there plans to nuke Canada or France mouldering away somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. That doesn't mean they'll ever be dusted off and implemented. So the real question is not "Are we making plans to nuke Iran?" but "How likely is it that we will implement plans to nuke Iran?" A friend of mine who follows this stuff closely told me that he doesn't think Bush has the political capital or time to pull off an attack. As he says, the worst-case/most-likely scenario is that this is a real Bush plan that will never see the light of day after Cheney has little fantasies in the VP bathroom over it. Neo-con porn, in other words. The best-case/least-likely scenario is that this is a feint to convince the Israelis we mean business so they will keep their planes on the ground. Or, alternately, Hersh could be dead-wrong about the whole thing. Maybe he's just doing that thing he does of dangling sexy rumors with enough meat on them to make them interesting and then seeing what bubbles up to the surface after he's turned up the heat. It's a good reportorial strategy to shake things up.

Or it might all be disinformation from the U.S. to get the Iranians to the table. Of course, there's no reason the buzz can't be all of these things and, frankly, that's pretty likely.

At any rate, things are about to get a lot more interesting in the region. I well remember the July 2002 1A story in the NYT outlining the Bush plans to invade Iraq. (4th ID [infantry division] from Turkey! Oops.) As many others have noted, the whole Iranian scenario of WMD, regime change, etc., is stunningly similar to the run-up to the Iraq war.

Allbritton has also re-opened the kitty for donations to support his freelance efforts. If he runs it like last time, people who donate will be the first ones to see his stories. At any rate, we donated to support his Iraq work and plan to donate to support his new efforts — more independent coverage of events in Iraq, Iran, and the Mideast would certainly be a Good Thing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:24 PM | Get permalink

You know that Dubya's Iraq adventure is in big trouble ...

... when you see articles like this one, written by retired Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was the Pentagon's top operations officer until four months before the invasion of Iraq. He left the military partly in protest against the Pentagon's acquiescence to what he saw as an an 'unecessary war,' the impetus for which was provided by 'zealots' whose 'rationale for war made no sense.' Newbold had kept silent about his opposition to the war until forced to go public by 'the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals.'

Newbold announced airstrikes on Iraq, 2001

Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold announces air strikes on Iraq on 19 Feb 2001. [Image: BBC]

Here's part of his article:

What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort. There have been exceptions, albeit uncommon, to the rule of silence among military leaders. Former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki, when challenged to offer his professional opinion during prewar congressional testimony, suggested that more troops might be needed for the invasion's aftermath. The Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense castigated him in public and marginalized him in his remaining months in his post. Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq—often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability.

You can read the entire article in the current issue of Time, or online if you go here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:41 PM | Get permalink

On clean-up duty in New Orleans.

Over at Feministe, zuzu has just returned from her trip to Louisiana to help Habitat for Humanity gut storm-damaged houses in St. Bernard parish. She's posted pictures, too.

Make sure to take a good look at the one with the fish — it gives a clear idea of how bad the flooding was.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:50 AM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

The March 29th solar eclipse as seen from the International Space Station!

Interestingly, the orientation of the original astronaut photo is upside-down from the way it's being distributed by NASA [and the way it appears below]. I imagine that this difference between the two versions is fairly common, given that the term 'up' is rather meaningless when you are in space.

Everything is going dark

The shadow of the moon falls on Earth as seen from the International Space Station, 230 miles above the planet, during a total solar eclipse at about 4:50 a.m. CST, Wednesday, March 29. Part of the Mediterranean Sea can be seen outside the shadow.
[Photo: Bill McArthur & Valery Tokarev/ISS]

Here's the official description of the photo:

The International Space Station (ISS) was in position to view the umbral (ground) shadow cast by the Moon as it moved between the Sun and the Earth during the solar eclipse on March 29, 2006. This astronaut image captures the umbral shadow across southern Turkey, northern Cyprus, and the Mediterranean Sea. People living in these regions observed a total solar eclipse, in which the Moon completely covers the Sun?s disk. The astronaut photograph was taken at approximately 2:00 p.m. local time. The terminator of the eclipse?the line between the light and dark parts of the Sun?s disk? is visible as it passes across central Turkey. This total solar eclipse is the fourth to have occurred since 1999. The portion of the ISS visible at image top is the Space Station Remote Manipulator System.

You'll find a larger version of the original image here, along with downloadable image files of various sizes.

Via Laputan Logic.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:21 AM | Get permalink

About that Iraqi civil war that's not happening yet.

Would somebody please tell this guy to get with the program?

Despite the violence, U.S. officials have discounted talk of civil war. However, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday that an "undeclared civil war" had already been raging for more than a year.

"Is there a civil war? Yes, there is an undeclared civil war that has been there for a year or more," Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal told The Associated Press. "All these bodies that are discovered in Baghdad, the slaughter of pilgrims heading to holy sites, the explosions, the destruction, the attacks against the mosques are all part of this."

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:53 AM | Get permalink

Trying to find that marriage made in heaven.

Saturday's edition of NPR's All Things Considered had a piece on classical guitarist Jason Vieaux and a new guitar that he was thinking of buying as a new concert instrument. Listening to him describe the criteria by which he judges a guitar — and hearing him put the new instrument through its paces &— was fascinating. Hats off to Debbie Elliott for producing a story that successfully portrays the intimate relationship that musicians have with their instruments.

You can listen to the story here.

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