The Scope

2003-08-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Moving

The Scope has moved. You can find it at it's new home, with a new look and some new features.

2003-07-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Keep religion out of it

By now, I thought that I couldn't be shocked by anything in politics. I was proven wrong this morning. From an article in today's New York Times:

A scheduled vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee today on one of President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees turned into an extraordinary debate over whether Democrats were blocking Catholics from being named to the federal bench or whether such an accusation was a politically motivated slur.
{...}
Mr. Pryor, the subject of the debate, is a staunch conservative who has urged a greater role for Christianity in American public life and has issued especially blunt denunciations of the Supreme Court for its rulings upholding the right to abortion. When Mr. Pryor appeared before the committee on June 11, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who is chairman, asked him to acknowledge that his beliefs stemmed from his strict Catholicism.

Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and Mr. Pryor's principal supporter, called him "this solid Catholic individual" and said that his opposition to abortion, for example, in cases of rape and incest, was good Catholic doctrine. Therefore, he said, if someone is opposed for holding that position, "Are we not saying that good Catholics need not apply?"

Mr. Hatch offered a similar analysis, saying that he was concerned that the Democrats were trying to enforce a policy in which "traditional pro-life Catholics cannot serve on the federal bench."

Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, accused the Republicans of "waving the bloody shirt that this committee is unfair to Catholics." He said that as a Catholic, he did not agree that there was only one proper stand on abortion. He sarcastically thanked Mr. Sessions, a Methodist, and Mr. Hatch, a Mormon, for explaining Catholic doctrine to him.

I was thinking that Pryor, since he's such a "good Catholic," must oppose the death penalty based on his religion and would surely block executions if given the chance. Although it's unrelated to the duties of a judge, he must have also been against the war in Iraq.

The Washington Times, believe it or not, gave voice to a Democrat sharing my incredulity (although the article played the argument as a disagreement that just arose, not giving credit to Hatch and Sessions for bringing religion into the debate):

"Let me tell you, the doctrine that abortion is not justified for rape and incest is Catholic doctrine," Mr. Sessions said. "It's the position of the pope, and it's the position of the Catholic Church.

"Are we saying that if you believe in that principle, you can't be a federal judge?" Mr. Sessions said.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and a pro-choice Catholic, responded, "As a person who was raised Catholic and is a practicing Catholic, I deeply resent this new line of attack from the right wing that anyone who opposes William Pryor is guilty of discrimination against him because he is a Catholic."

"There are many Catholics who see this nomination much differently than those who support Mr. Pryor," he said. "Many Catholics who oppose abortion personally do not believe the laws of the land should prohibit abortion for all others in extreme cases involving rape, incest and the life and health of the mother."

Mr. Durbin also told Mr. Sessions that Mr. Pryor's faithful adherence to Catholic doctrine is questionable.

"The Catholic Church is opposed to the death penalty," Mr. Durbin said. "Pryor is in favor of it. I'm not going to ask Senator Sessions to make a judgment as a Methodist whether that makes him a good Catholic or not."

I trust that the Republicans would not reject a judicial candidate with strong environmental beliefs, because that stems from being a Wicca. And surely they would not reject a Satanist, because that's a religion too.

I'm tired of people with political/religious agendas smearing any political disagreement as an act of religious intolerance. The levels that religion has in our politics is unfathomable to anyone from another advanced democracy. The US has one of the highest church attendance totals in any country. Although the separation of church and state is written in our Constitution, it's obvious to anyone without religion for whatever reason (athiest, agnostic, apathetic...yes, some people would rather spend their time and energy in other ways and don't really care if god exists, and they lead normal lives just like anyone else) that America is a Christian country. Disagree? Can anyone honestly believe that an openly atheistic person can be elected president?

Joe Lieberman proves that you no longer have to be Christian to be accepted politically, just as long as you have some faith. I find this to be the case mostly everywhere, even in liberal circles. People are tolerant of differences in faith but are uncomfortable with a rejection of faith.

I hope the Bright movement takes off. Read an essay about what being a Bright means and why it's important if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

2003-07-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Brain...not...working!...Conservative knee jerk reactions...leading to...opposite...conclusions! Help me, Town Hall!

I can't wait to how the right will handle this, if they talk about it at all:

Officials See Threat in Newspaper Cartoon

By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Secret Service is studying a pro-Bush cartoon in the Los Angeles Times, showing the president with a gun to his head, as a possible threat, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez said the drawing, which ran in Sunday's paper, was only meant to call attention to the unjust "political assassination" of Bush over his Iraq policy.

The cartoon, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from the Vietnam War, depicts Bush with his hands behind his back as a man labeled "Politics" prepares to shoot him in the head. The background of the drawing is a cityscape labeled "Iraq."

"We're aware of the image and we're in the process of determining what action if any can be taken," John Gill, Secret Service spokesman, said.

An official who asked not to be named said: "The Secret Service does take threats against all of their protectees very seriously and they have an obligation to look into any threat that's made against any of their protectees." The official did not elaborate.

The 1968 photograph on which the cartoon is based showed the instant before South Vietnam's national police commander pulled the trigger in a summary execution of a Vietcong prisoner on the streets of Saigon.

For those who don't read the LA Times (and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't choose to do so, what with all of the ads in the print edition and the ridiculously intrusive web registration), Michael Ramirez is the Times' editorial cartoonist, having taken over from the legendary Paul Conrad. Ramirez is a gifted artist, like Conrad, and is strongly conservative, the opposite of Conrad.

I more than welcome conservative viewpoints on opinion pages. But Ramirez's cartoons usually make me nauseous. I can handle the viewpoint, it's his hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-sledgehammer symbolism that turns me off. For example, during the Dems' fillibuster of Estrada, he drew a cartoon with a figure labelled "Democrats" and resembling George Wallace blocking Miguel Estrada from entering the doors to a courthouse.

The cartoon in question was another example of roll-your-eyes overstatement. Here, Ramirez is saying that Bush is being assassinated by the political process. The cartoon is a reference to the famous photo from Vietnam, as mentioned in the Reuters clip. At first I was amazed by Ramirez's rhetorical overkill, but then I started to wonder about the underlying meaning. It seems an odd picture to choose to base a pro-Bush cartoon on, if you know anything about the photo. It's a brutal look at a South Vietnamese police commander ('our guy') killing a Vietcong prisoner in an extra-judicial execution. That photo, along with the more famous photo of the naked girl on the road being burned by napalm, is well known as part of the media imagery seen by the American public that led to a drop in support for the war in Southeast Asia. Ramirez seems to have chosen the photo without any thought to its historical context or subtext.

Additionally, he drew a connection between America in Iraq and America in Vietnam, something I wouldn't expect a conservative to do voluntarily. Anytime a voice from the antiwar side raised the prospect of a quagmire in Iraq, conservatives dismissed the comparison immediately.

Finally, and the most obvious objection to everyone else besides knee-jerk Bush defenders, is it political assassination to question the steps that led our president to talk the majority of Americans into going to war? What would Ramirez have thought if a cartoon appeared during 1998/1999 with Clinton in Bush's position in his cartoon? Again, that thought is probably beyond the pale for some but is obviously raised by the cartoon. I think the spin, contradictory statements, and parsing of what makes a truthful statement (the British think it is true, that is what we cited, therefore the president did not lie) coming from the administration can be damaging enough when accurately reported without any need to try to politically assassinate Bush.

All that said, I find it outrageous that the Secret Service is going after Ramirez. Add this to the long list of people being questioned or confronted for personal statements or actions that in no way resemble crimes but are suspicious in our Orwellian culture of suspicion and fear. A cartoon symbolizing the execution of the president can raise eyebrows, especially if reading an article criticizing Fox News can get the FBI knocking on your door:

You Marc Schultz?" asks the tall one. He shows me his badge, introduces himself as Special Agent Clay Trippi. After assuring me that I'm not in trouble, he asks if there is someplace we can sit down and talk. We head back to Reference, where a table and chairs are set up. We sit down, and I'm again informed that I am not in trouble.

Then, Agent Trippi asks, "Do you drive a black Nissan Altima?" And I realize this meeting is not about a friend. Despite their reassurances, and despite the fact that I haven't committed any federal offenses (that I know of), I'm starting to feel a bit like I'm in trouble.
...
Then they ask if I carried anything into the shop -- and we're back to me.

My mind races. I think: a bomb? A knife? A balloon filled with narcotics? But no. I don't own any of those things. "Sunglasses," I say. "Maybe my cell phone?"

Not the right answer. I'm nervous now, wondering how I must look: average, mid-20s, unassuming retail employee. What could I have possibly been carrying?

Trippi's partner speaks up: "Any reading material? Papers?" I don't think so. Then Trippi decides to level with me: "I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."

You don't want that? Have I just been threatened by the FBI? Confusion and a light dusting of panic conspire to keep me speechless. Was I reading something that morning? Something that would constitute a problem?

The partner speaks up again: "Maybe a printout of some kind?"

Then it occurs to me: I was reading. It was an article my dad had printed off the Web. I remember carrying it into Caribou with me, reading it in line, and then while stirring cream into my coffee. I remember bringing it with me to the store, finishing it before we opened. I can't remember what the article was about, but I'm sure it was some kind of left-wing editorial, the kind that never fails to incite me to anger and despair over the state of the country.
...
Back in the store, Trippi gives me his card and tells me to call him if I remember anything. After he's gone, I call my dad back to see if he has calmed down, maybe come up with a name. We retrace some steps together, figure out the article was Hal Crowther's "Weapons of Mass Stupidity" from the Weekly Planet, a free independent out of Tampa. It comes back to me then, this scathing screed focusing on the way corporate interests have poisoned the country's media, focusing mostly on Fox News and Rupert Murdoch -- really infuriating, deadly accurate stuff about American journalism post-9-11. So I call the number on the card, leave a message with the name, author and origin of the column, and ask him to call me if he has any more questions.

To tell the truth, I'm kind of anxious to hear back from the FBI, if only for the chance to ask why anyone would find media criticism suspicious, or if maybe the sight of a dark, bearded man reading in public is itself enough to strike fear in the heart of a patriotic citizen.

My co-worker, Craig, says that we should probably be thankful the FBI takes these things seriously; I say it seems like a dark day when an American citizen regards reading as a threat, and downright pitch-black when the federal government agrees.

Let's hope that the Secret Service's interest in Ramirez will raise conservative's eyebrows and bring the creeping surveillance to their attention. After all, conservatives are opposed to government presence in our lives, right?

2003-07-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

Say goodbye to another environmental treaty

In Montreal earlier this month, the Bush administration demanded exemptions for use of the chemical methyl bromide, which was scheduled to be phased out under the Montreal Protocol. The story appeared in today's Independent:

Under an extension to the Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1997, the pesticide is being gradually phased out and replaced with substitutes; its use in the West is due to end completely in 2005. Nations are legally allowed to extend the use of small amounts in "critical" applications, but the US is demanding exemptions far beyond those permitted, for uses ranging from growing strawberries to tending golf courses.

It is also pressing to exploit a loophole in the treaty - allowing the use of the chemical to treat wood packaging - so that, instead of being phased out, its use would increase threefold.

The demands now go to an international conference in Nairobi this autumn. Experts fear that, if agreed, the treaty will begin to fall apart, not least because developing countries - which are following rich nations in phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals - could cease their efforts.

."The US is reneging on the agreement, and working very, very hard to get other countries to agree," said David Doniger, a former senior US government official dealing with ozone issues, who now works for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "If it succeeds, it threatens to unravel the whole fabric of the treaty."

Dr Joe Farman, the Cambridge scientist who discovered the Antarctic ozone hole, added: "This is madness. We do not need this chemical. We do need the ozone layer. How stupid can people be?"

After reading the article, I was interested in learning more about methyl bromide and decided to go a Google search on the topic.

The first result is an USDA page. Interestingly, the page is non-existent (at least for this morning). Thank god for Google's cache of the page. Looking at that, I found out that the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA is studying alternatives to the use of methyl bromide, the chemical that the Bush administration thinks farmers cannot do without (although it must be said that Clinton's 1999 budget pushed back the phaseout of the pesticide to the same timeline used by developing countries).

Doing some further digging in Lexis-Nexis (the perks of a university internet connection--getting subscription research serves), it seems that the administration has been getting support from Joe Barton (R-Texas), the House Energy and Commerce Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman. According to the June 4 issue of Agriculture/Climate Change, Barton

will consider a legislative fix to aid the U.S. agriculture industry if the Bush administration is unsuccessful during international negotiations this fall aimed at gaining a series of exemptions from the 2005 ban on methyl bromide, a widely used pesticide that scientists say is contributing significantly to the destruction of the earth's stratospheric ozone layer.

Barton, answering to a chorus of agricultural interests' concerns, told three top administration officials that he will
be closely following the progress of the United Nations-sponsored Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, scheduled to run Nov. 10-14 in Nairobi, Kenya. There, U.S. officials will be asking an international tribunal of 183 signatory nations to approve its pre-submitted list of critical use exemption requests, which would benefit the tomato, eggplant, forest tree seedling nursery, ginger and turfgrass industries, among others.

And it seems that at least one Democrat is willing to go along for the ride:

Barton did not provide specific details of how he would move legislatively to help the agriculture industry, except to note that Congress has addressed similar issues before through the appropriations process. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), the
subcommittee's ranking member, said in a brief interview that he'd be willing to help out the agriculture interests as long as
it is within Congress' power and it did not sidestep an international accord already approved by the United States. "Whatever we do should be done in a matter consistent with the treaty," he said.

In early June, California farm groups released a letter calling for longer use of the chemical, supported by Darrell Issa. Hey, isn't he busy orchestrating a recall?

At the end of June, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles H. Bronson (no joke) held a two-day workshop with federal officials on behalf of Florida farmers supporting methyl bromide.

All of this comes after a study published in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. Researchers in the Agricultural Health Study studied the causes of cancer among agricultural workers using pesticide. Here's what the press release said:

The latest report from the AHS evaluated the role of 45 pesticides and found that only a few of them showed evidence of a possible association with prostate cancer among pesticide applicators. Methyl bromide was linked to the risk of prostate cancer in the entire group, while exposure to six other pesticides was associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer only among men with a family history of the disease...

The current study included 55,332 men who are classified as either "private pesticide applicators" (92 percent) or "commercial pesticide applicators" (8 percent). Private applicators are farmers or nursery-workers. Commercial applicators work for pest control companies or for businesses such as warehouses or grain mills that use pesticides regularly. Between 1993 and 1999, 566 new prostate cancers developed among all applicators, compared to 495 that were predicted from the incidence rates in the two states. This means that the risk of developing prostate cancer was 14 percent greater for the pesticide applicators compared to the general population. The men in this study were followed for about 4.3 years.

Now I'm really interested. I do some more searching on methyl bromide, and find some very informative pages at CorpWatch. They have a special section on the Bromide Barons. One of the major producers of methyl bromide is Great Lakes Chemical, who used to be in the business of producing tetraethyl lead, which put the lead in leaded gasoline. Since tetraethyl (which accounted for half of Great Lake's profits as recently as 1995) is not good for engines, ethylene dibromide gets added. When that is burned, methyl bromide is produces. When leaded gasoline was phased out domestically, Great Lakes turned to pesticide production.

Completing the picture, groups making methyl bromide like to get together and retain the same political lobbyists. Spending was down in 2000, but check out the amounts given to Sparber & Associates in 1998. Great Lakes, the Bromine Science and Educational Forum, and the Methyl Bromide Working Group combined to give $220,000 to Sparber & Assoc. in 1998.

With support from congressmen and state officials, it looks like it's time to prepare another funeral for a environmental agreement while our president further isolates us from the rest of the world.

2003-07-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

Deja vu?

Anyone that's been reading Tom Englehardt's daily dispatches recently has been aware of the mounting examples used to describe the Iraq war that sound similar to those used in Vietnam.

Today's NY Times brings us another, from the mouth of Gen. John Abizaid and through the pen of Thom Shanker in his article:

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, pledged that the United States and its allies would not be driven from Iraq by the guerrilla attacks, which today killed one American soldier and wounded at least six others around Baghdad. But he cautioned that pacifying Iraq might require fresh American troops to spend yearlong tours there, double the normal duration of Army forces on peacekeeping duty.

The guerrilla war parallel should be obvious to anyone by now, but it was interesting to see a military official pledge that the forces would "not be driven" from the country.

The striking parallel, for me, was the proposed yearlong tour. All we need now is returning soldiers to talk about being "in country." That would actually require soldiers to return home, though.

Expect a large group of soldiers to come back to the US to be reunited with their families sometime around mid- to late-October 2004, by the way.

2003-07-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Slow posting

Updates will probably be infrequent for the next couple of weeks. I just moved last weekend, so I'm still unpacking. I'm also getting over losing my cat, Wesley. He escaped from the new apartment the night before my girlfriend and I were moving in, after we left him to get acquainted. But I've heard stories of cats returning after four or five days away from home, so hopefully he'll find his way back.

2003-06-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Independent article on detention and torture

There's an important article on detention and the war on terror in today's Independent. It raises an issue that always was in the back of my mind when the Washington Post article came out on the CIA interrogations and torture of prisoners, but wasn't prominently raised:

What is perhaps most disturbing about all this is that the US officials who have leaked the information have not done so out of a need to expose something that they see as shameful. On the contrary, they have made it clear that they wanted the world to know what is going on because they feel it is justified.
No fewer than 10 serving US national- security officials - including several people who have been witnesses to the handling of prisoners - came forward to speak to The Washington Post, which has published the most graphic account of what is going on in Bagram, and in several other unnamed US interrogation centres across the world. "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, one told the paper, "you probably aren't doing your job". He and the others involved are, in effect, saying: we are doing these things because we have to, and we want the world to know.

2003-06-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Tom Engelhardt on the Harry Potter phenomenon

Today's posting on TomDispatch is a good meditation on Harry Potter and the publishing business, something that I spent five years with when working in a bookstore. It was an independent, campus bookstore, a place uncomfortably situated between a local independent bookstore and a corporate-minded business. It's a good piece to read if you have any interest in the Wal-Martization of bookstores and other areas of culture:

In the almost thirty years I've been a book editor, I've watched the triaging of my world as small, independent publishing houses and then larger ones were engulfed one after another by giant entertainment conglomerates trying ever more desperately to scale those global heavens product in hand. The book is such a modest object (even if its goals -- to take you into another universe -- are immodest indeed), and because the effort that goes into breaking the code of any good book, of turning those squiggles of ink into worlds of being, is so intense, the book sits uncomfortably in today's entertainment package, where the codes are generally already broken for you. Because, Harry Potter and his ilk aside, publishing is not really a mass medium, publishing houses now exist more or less in the sub-basement of the entertainment conglomerate. They are mostly relegated to the Third World of our noisy culture and in the chain book palaces -- those "destinations" -- which now pass for bookstores, most books turn into wall paper. They fill the shelves and then, after a brief period, they disappear.

2003-06-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Election day

I just voted in the moveon.org primary. At least I think I did--the confirmation screen didn't load, and I couldn't go back to my ballot. It took several attempts to successfully get my ballot to load also. High traffic? A good sign, but not so good if it prevents ballots from being counted.

I was pleased to see that there is a separate section from the main vote to select candidates that you would enthusiastically support, so they can get a sense what Democrats are out of touch with the MoveOn members. I have a feeling that they will be the same ones on most ballots, mine included.

I was disappointed that MoveOn didn't take the opportunity to make the primary an IRV election, to avoid multiple ballots in order for a candidate to get 50%.

2003-06-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

What's been angering me lately

That Union Pacific officials initially balked at paying for hotel rooms for the City of Commerce residents whose homes were destroyed in Friday's train derailment:

Residents, 150 of whom were unable to return to their homes, spent Friday night at local hotels. Many returned Saturday to survey the damage.

Commerce city officials took 54 residents shopping Friday night at a local Target and spent about $10,000 to replace clothingshoes and underwear that was either lost in the crash or inaccessible because of the tons of debris still being cleared.

Union Pacific officials "just sat there and looked at each other when we talked about the need to put these people up last night," said City Councilwoman Nancy Ramos on Saturday.

"After a while we got tired of it and said, 'We'll just do it ourselves.' Our city manager whipped out his own credit card."

Gil Torres, a litigation manager for Union Pacific, said the railroad has agreed to reimburse the city for expenses and pay to rebuild houses.

I'm not sure how widely this story was reported, but last Friday 31 rail cars rolled out of a switching station without a locomotive to stop them, and they were deliberately derailed by Union Pacific. The cars were switched to a different rail line and eventually crashed in a working class residential neighborhood. I'm not a religious person, but it was something close to a miracle that no one was killed by the cars or the thousands of tons of lumber that were spilled.

The article from the LA Times linked to above quotes UP workers and officials to the effect that once the cars rolled out of the yard (27 miles away and almost 800 feet uphill than the crash site in Commerce) there was no hope of catching them with a locomotive.

But that scenario was not the only possible outcome, and UP could have taken steps to lessen possible damage and loss of life. For example, UP failed to contact emergency personnel before the derailment, and alerted the city after the crash had already been shown on television.

Also, the cars could have been derailed in a less populated area:

[UP spokesman John Bromley] also would not comment on speculation by company employees that there was an opportunity to divert four miles earlier, on a track headed toward Santa Fe Springs. Two Union Pacific conductors, who would not give their names, said Friday the freight cars would probably have derailed there as well, but in an area far less populated.

The Times story on Saturday noted that there is a rail yard past the neighborhood where the cars could have been derailed:

Commerce Mayor Jesus M. Cervantez was critical of Union Pacific officials.

"I do not know why they did this," he said Friday evening. "If they had thought about this, less than a mile away there is a railroad yard where there are no residents and they would not risk anyone's life. If they decided to do this intentionally, they should have at least informed the city. I'm very, very upset and the whole City Council will be demanding a complete investigation."

Cervantez said he spoke briefly with Union Pacific representatives earlier in the day who told him only that they had had a problem while switching rail lines.

"I believed them at the beginning, but I do not believe them anymore," the mayor said. Depending on the outcome of an investigation, he said, "we will hold them responsible for their actions."

2003-06-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Back from hell

Actually, Bakersfield is not that bad. I spent the weekend in the dusty city for my friends' engagement party. It was actually nice to be in the sun, which was missing in SoCal for most of last week.

2003-06-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Taking on the Village Voice empire

There's a new alternative weekly in LA. The fine LA Weekly was the only free paper with 20 pages of stripper ads in the back standing after New Times and Voice struck the now infamous deal the cut competition by shuttering papers.

The new paper is the LA City Beat, with its sister Valley Beat (new link at left). They're published by Southland Publications, which also publish the Pasadena Reporter, San Diego City Beat, and Ventura County Reporter. In other words, an alternative chain. I heard the publisher (?) of the LA papers on KPFK, and they plan to share big cover stories with all of the papers, and vice versa. Meet the new boss...

I guess we have to put up with that to have a good alt press in this city. And it would be hard to fault them after reading the cover story in the premier issue of Valley Beat (LA and the Valley have different covers), on Rocketdyne's environmental crimes in Simi Valley. I'll post on this later when I get a chance. It's truly shocking--read it now and wait for the second part.

2003-06-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

The holy war on Middle Eastern studies

Those familiar with Daniel Pipes and other academics in his cohort know that some conservative scholars are trying to do their part in the war on terror by carrying out a crusade against what they say is a bias against the United States and Israel in ME studies on campus.

Stanley Kurtz gave himself a big pat on the back on Monday in the NRO for putting enough pressure on Title VI programs to get the House Select Subcommittee on Select Education to hold a hearing today. The focus is on bias in international studies program, but no doubt much of the focus will be on ME studies.

I just found out about this yesterday in an email, as I missed Abu Aardvark's post from Monday on Kurtz and the hearing. The Aardvark writes:

Basically, [Martin] Kramer and company are upset that most scholars of the Middle East are insufficiently pro-Israeli, don't restrict their analysis of Islamic movements to denunciations of their Islamofascist evils, and often question American Middle East policy. Kurtz's re-presentation of his argument today demonstrates exactly what is wrong with this whole ideologically motivated attack. First, he - like Kramer and Pipes - radically overstates the influence and importance of Edward Said in contemporary Middle East studies. While Said has been important, he has virtually no real influence in the Political Science part of Middle East studies, as anyone with even the remotest familiarity with the scholarship of the last 5-10 years would know (if "anyone" had any interest in the truth, as opposed to rhetorical gamesmanship).

He has a later post on the matter. It seems that the original witness list left out any voice that would challenge Kurtz (who happens to be testifying) and his stance. Thankfully, someone from the SSRC is now scheduled to appear.

Kurtz promises in his column that "There could be fireworks. I will post a report on the hearings next week." Stay tuned for the other side of the story.

2003-06-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

Revisionism strikes again!

It seems that our president is sorry that he missed those fun culture wars from the 90s. That can be the only rational explanation for his bizarre lash out against revisionist historians.

Those pesky revisionists have struck again, only they're not undermining the American historical narrative by writing about women, African Americans, and Native Americans, but those WMD that we were supposed to have tripped over in Iraq since they were so plentiful. From Reuters:

President Bush countered those questioning his justification for the invasion of Iraq on Monday, dismissing "revisionist historians" and saying Washington acted to counter a persistent threat.

"Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them," Bush said in a speech to New Jersey business leaders.

I particularly like the "revisionist historians is what I like to call them" line, as if W. is the first person to come up with that description that is intended as a smear. It's like me saying that "liar that took our country into an illegal war on dubious grounds at best is what I like to call W.," as if I'm the first person to come up with that.

I love this, since I'm a "revisionist historian," albeit one in grad school. The revisionist slur is traditionally an easy way to discredit someone that points out uncomfortable truths about history or calls attention to groups or events that are ignored by other histories. It should also be said that any interesting history should be "revisionist," otherwise why would people be interested in a recycled account of the past that offers the same events already known by everyone?

The interesting thing is now the "revisionist" tag has been expanded to encompass all that question the Iraq war. It seems that what conservatives call revisionism--what they see as a deception of the American public by a group that is attempting to rewrite history to their liking--is indeed present. The best revisionists around are those that sold our country on a war by repeating unfounded arguments and lies. As the playground saying goes, "takes one to know one."

2003-06-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

Tom Tomorrow

A new "This Modern World" is up at Salon. Today we get to click through a commercial for Microsoft. Such is the Devil's Bargain we must make in order to enjoy Tom Tomorrow and Joe Conason.

This week's strip is great, especially the last panel. I won't spoil it, but he sticks it to the Democratic Leadership Council. It will also bring back fond memories of reading Highlights Magazine when you were a kid.

2003-05-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

What could TV look like after June 2?

With the FCC set to relax media control regulations on Monday, the LA Times has an article today on local television in Los Angeles.

There are three duopolies in LA: instances in which two separate stations are owned by the same parent company. KCBS-2 and KCAL-9 are owned by Viacom, KTTV-11 and KCOP-13 are owned by News Corp. (KTTV is the Fox affiliate), and KNBC-4 and the Telemundo Spanish language stations KVEA-52 and KWHY-22 are owned by GE.

It is worth pointing out that Los Angeles used to have four independent English-language stations (there are three major Spanish-language stations: the two Telemundo stations, and a Galavision station). KTTV has been Fox since the beginning of the Fox network, two are now in duopolies (KCAL and KCOP), and the fourth (KTLA-5) is a WB affiliate and is owned by the Los Angeles Times' parent company, Tribune Co.

The article gives a good picture of what media consolidation looks like in Los Angeles, and offers a possible glance at what might be appearing on television sets, the medium through which most people use to learn about the news, and for entertainment. It's hard to cry over what is happening in local television, but the fact that it remains the most important media outlet for most people should make us opposed to consolidation pay attention:

Some industry observers fear that such pairing of stations will lead to homogenization of programming, diluting the diversity of programming while alienating viewers.

"Viewers have less choices than they had before in terms of the voices they had on television," said Sylvia Teague, director of Reliable Resources for Broadcast Political Coverage, a project of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. The project develops and distributes resources for news coverage.

Teague, a former news executive and producer at KCAL and KCBS, said: "The stations have become interchangeable, and there's obvious blurring between the two. And with the joining together of the two newsrooms, there's not a whole lot of original reporting."

Newscasts that previously overlapped on KCAL and KCBS, and KTTV and KCOP have been moved so they do not directly compete. KCOP's sole newscast, a long-standing one-hour program that competed with KCAL, KTTV and KTLA-TV Channel 5, was cut in half and moved to 11 p.m., replaced by reruns of "Frasier" and "Seinfeld."

Reporters for KCAL and KCBS hold microphones with the names of the two stations on different sides. Even for the reporters, this can be confusing: While filing a May 12 live report on KCBS on a baby who had been shaken to death, reporter Michele Gile had her microphone flag turned to KCAL.

Management at the duopoly stations say that--at least for now--they are determined to maintain separate identities for the merged stations. Station executives say that the duopolies will be more obvious in the business practices than on the air.

"Yes, there will be crossover with reporters," said Nancy Bauer Gonzales, news director for KCBS and KCAL. "But our operation is designed that way so that the main thing is we have access to as many resources as possible."
{...}
KNBC President and General Manager Paula Madison also said that distinct identities are key in the three stations she oversees. Unlike the KCBS-KCAL merger, there is no on-camera crossover between KNBC and Telemundo. The stations have separate studios and news teams.

"It's not our intention to turn our station into KNBC en Espanol," said Madison. "We serve different audiences and we don't want to cannibalize each other's viewership. But in terms of finance, engineering, human resources and business, we will be very much together."

Don Corsini, president and general manager of KCAL and KCBS, said his stations may join up at some point with other Viacom companies such as MTV to produce shows. "We try to think about what would make the best business sense," he said.
{...}
The newscasts on KTTV are straightforward in their approach to issues and news, in sharp contrast to KCOP's newscast. Anchors Rick Garcia and Lauren Sanchez deliver the news while standing instead of sitting behind a desk, and their attire is fashionably casual. The major stories of the day lead the first part of the newscast, followed by a heavy concentration on features geared to younger viewers, accented by a soundtrack of techno music.

It's not too late to tell the FCC what you think. Go to MoveOn's petition and let Michael Powell know that you don't to get the news with a techno beat in the background.

2003-05-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

From the health and sports research dept.

From today's BBC News, "Fans suffer 'end of season blues'":

Football fans suffer severe withdrawal symptoms and depression when the season ends, say researchers. They suggest the football-free summer could leave up to two thirds of football fans - 9.2m people - with "end of season affective disorder".

They will be particularly blue this summer as football has come to a halt after almost 22 months of uninterrupted matches - including last year's World Cup.

Those close to football supporters should look out for signs of depression, lethargy, inability to converse and a feeling of hopelessness - feelings which may also be common during the season, if their team is not faring well.

That study only applies to English fans, but it no doubt holds true for fans in all of the major European leagues--except Scotland, where everyone knows that the same two clubs are the only ones with any chance at winning the championship. For Americans, we can turn to the much less prestigious but still exciting MLS.

The BBC keeps up on these football and health stories, it seems. In April, they reported on a separate study that found that watching your side win an exciting match can reduce heart attacks:

The researchers examined death rates from heart attack in France in the period around the national side's 3-0 win the 1998 World Cup final against Brazil.

They found that the day of the final itself saw a significant dip in the number of people who died from a heart attack.
{...}
Lead researcher Dr Frédéric Berthier told BBC News Online: "The reasons for the decreased death rate remain unclear.

"But we think that it may be due to the combined effect of the euphoria due to the victory and of the day off work as the final was on a Sunday."

But this is something that can cut both ways: seeing your team lose in a tense game can cause heart attacks. So says a study reported by, yes, the BBC:

Penalty shoot-outs can have far more serious consequences than elimination from a football tournament, a study suggests.
Researchers found that the number of heart attacks increased by 25% when England lost to Argentina in a penalty competition at the 1998 World Cup.
{...}
The risk of admission for heart attack increased by 25% on 30 June 1998 - the day of the England-Argentina match - and on the following two days.

So you can either be on cloud nine, or be heading to the hospital. But returning to the original article we learn that when the football ends, both for fans of the winners and of the losers, ennui sets in:

Psychologist John Castleton, who wrote the report, said: "Dependence is part of the human condition, we depend on our family, friends, interests and jobs to construct our identity and give meaning to our lives.

"Football fans clearly hold a deep rooted relationship with their team, and as a result - like any other close bond - to have that central pillar suddenly removed, could cause a quite obvious existential crisis.

"Often fans will feel a void, an emptiness or loss on a Saturday afternoon."

2003-05-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Krugman

Paul Krugman is one who has yet to drink the tax cut Kool Aid, bless his heart. The problem, however, is that if Bush should manage to get a second term (maybe by winning the presidential election, for a change) I think Krugman will end up going to the loony bin after one too many exasperated columns in which he wonders why he's the only one outraged over Bush's financial policies. He's not alone, he just needs to realize that not everyone else has a op-ed column in the Times.

From today's Krugman missive:

The pain of these benefit cuts will fall on the middle class and the poor, while the tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the rich. For example, the tax cut passed last week will raise the after-tax income of most people by less than 1 percent--not nearly enough to compensate them for the loss of benefits. But people with incomes over $1 million per year will, on average, see their after-tax income rise 4.4 percent.

The Financial Times suggests this is deliberate (and I agree): "For them," it says of those extreme Republicans, "undermining the multilateral international order is not enough; long-held views on income distribution also require radical revision."

How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years.

But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?

While all of that was going on last week, did anyone notice that the dollar is the weakest it's ever been against the Euro?

2003-05-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Horizons deconstructs

Fellow soccer/football inclined blogger Randinho of Beautiful Horizons (or Randy Paul, when not imagining himself to be the next Brazilian soccer sensation a la Ronaldinho), when not addressing South American political issues or making us jealous by describing his trips to Brazil, is quite good at challenging conceptions, or as he describes them, memes, in the blogosphere. Yesterday he ably refuted the claim that human rights NGOs like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch promote causes because they are biased (implication: anti-American).

He promises to also take on the idea "that 'the left' coddles dictators." Notice that the left is put into quotes, leading me to believe that a discussion of what constitutes the left is coming up, which could be good or bad. Either way, I don't think I've disagreed with something I've read by Randy but if I do it will still be intelligent and well-written.

2003-05-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

Unauthorized use of a milk crate

Apparently it's an offense in New York, or rather an offense when the police need to find something to write a ticket over.

From an AFP wire story, original story from NY Daily News:

Jesse Taveras, 19, stepped out for a breather from the hair-braiding salon where he works and sat down on a plastic milk crate that happened to be on the footpath.

A New York City police officer on the Grand Concourse, a main boulevard in the borough of the Bronx, walked up to Taveras and wrote him a ticket citing him for "unauthorised use of a milk crate".

The infraction can carry a fine of up to $105.
{...}
The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), the police union, asserts that Bloomberg is putting beat cops under pressure to write tickets, meet quotas and fill city coffers.

"The NYPD (New York Police Department) has become a summons machine, generating millions of dollars to close the city's budget gap while eroding the relationship between police and the communities they serve," the PBA said in a statement.

The city government denies these allegations, particularly concerning quotas.

Taveras says he asked Payan what he was doing wrong.

"You're sitting," the policeman reportedly replied. "We have to make our daily quota."

Noting Taveras's bewilderment, Payan's partner waved it off, according to the Daily News, saying: "It's no big deal. The judge will throw it out, anyway."

2003-05-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

Aceh

With Indonesia launching an offensive against rebels in Aceh, observers are fearing what we have seen from the Indonesian army in past operations, namely Timor. Should military terror erupt, as it has in the past, expect countries like Australia and the US to look the other way and allow the army to carry out its operation with brutal force. I hope that it does not, but Indonesia's track record is not promising.

ZNet posted a good article from Asia Times by Lesley McCulloch:

Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, rape and the targeted harassment of human-rights defenders. This was life in Aceh five years ago; it is also life in Aceh today. Add to that the attacks by unknown persons on peace-monitoring teams and their infrastructure, and the arrest of official negotiators, and one has described the environment within which the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) struggles to survive.

The agreement is an attempt to bring peace to the troubled Indonesian province, but the threatened collapse of the internationally brokered CoHA will pave the way for the Indonesian military to unleash its might on 4 million Acehnese, the majority of whom want an independent state...

2003-05-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

Some numbers

A short factsheet from the Institute for Southern Studies:

Liters of anthrax stockpiled by Iraq, according to President Bush's State of the Union Address: 25,000
Supposed liters of botulinum toxin Bush claimed Iraq possessed: 38,000
Supposed tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent: 500
Supposed number of munitions capable of delivering chemical agents: 30,000
Percent of "top weapons sites" that have been inspected by U.S. forces: 90
Number of chemical agents and weapons that have been found: 0
Pounds of banned chemical weapons currently housed in an Army depot in Anniston, Alabama: 46,830,000

2003-05-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

STOP THE FCC

Save any hope for voices of American democracy in our media landscape. On June 2, the FCC will most likely vote to lift blocks on media ownership. Do you want your newspaper, radio station, television station, and evil cable provider to all be owned by the same company? Doesn't that sound like corporate totalitarianism?

Let your representative and senator know what you think about the FCC giveaway to media giants, who make large campaign donations (care to guess who Michael Powell's, FCC chairman, father is? Hint: he's in the Bush Administration).

Go to MoveOn.org and stop the FCC!

2003-05-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

Media whores: Aaron Brown and even Walter Cronkite?

Reading stories like this, you are reminded again that their are no boundaries for blurring the lines between advertising and news, especially when it comes to Big Pharma. From today's NY Times, "A Respected Face, but it is News or an Ad?":

Aaron Brown of CNN, Walter Cronkite and other broadcast journalists have been hired to appear in videos resembling newscasts that are actually paid for by drug makers and other health care companies, blurring the line between journalism and advertising.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Cronkite, the former CBS News anchor, are the new hosts of video "news breaks" produced by a Boca Raton, Fla., company called WJMK Inc. that are shown on local public television stations between regular programs. They are replacing Morley Safer of CBS, who has appeared in hundreds of the videos but has concluded, according to a "60 Minutes" spokesman, that the work does not meet the standards of CBS News.

Based on information that it received yesterday, CNN said it was reviewing its decision to allow the participation of Mr. Brown, who has not yet appeared in a video.

The hosts of the videos, standing on an elaborate news-style set, provide a general introduction to segments that profile health care companies or their products. According to WJMK documents, the companies pay WJMK about $15,000 in connection with the segments and other services and are allowed to edit and approve the videos, which are two to five minutes long.
{...}
For years, local news stations, as part of their newscasts, have broadcast videos created by drug companies' public relations agencies — a practice that critics equate to publishing unedited press releases. Now, production companies are expanding that marketing tactic to public television and the Web and using celebrity journalists to add to the videos' credibility.

Government officials said that the new programming might run afoul of federal drug regulations, which prohibit drug makers from advertising experimental medicines or promoting drugs for ailments that they have not been approved to treat. Communications lawyers said that the WJMK programs might fail to meet public broadcasting rules, which require the disclosure of corporate sponsorship.

Critics of the news media say that the videos mislead viewers by packaging promotional material to look like news. Dr. Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said that he had seen similar videos in the past that tried to imitate news but never ones featuring working journalists, let alone such prominent ones as Mr. Safer and Mr. Brown.

"They are buying credibility," he said of the health care companies that pay for the appearances.
{...}
Ronald Konecky, Mr. Cronkite's lawyer, said his client had agreed to work for WJMK after being told that the videos would be educational and would not promote products. He said that Mr. Cronkite would resign if he found that was not the case.

In one WJMK video where Mr. Safer appeared as host, executives at Innapharma, a small pharmaceutical company, promoted the company's experimental antidepressant nemifitide. "Patients rapidly get well and they stay well for months or years," Dr. John P. Feighner, the company's president, says in the video. "I've never seen anything that compares."

Last month, Innapharma filed for bankruptcy protection after the Food and Drug Administration ordered it to stop human trials of the drug because a study showed it was toxic to beagles. Dr. Feighner said this week that the company still hoped to sell nemifitide and was planning studies to try to show that the toxicity is limited to dogs.

Dr. Feighner said that he thought that regulators would consider the video to be appropriate because the medicine was still years from approval when the video was produced three years ago.

The Innapharma video was part of a series called the American Medical Review, which is produced by WJMK. WJMK hired John Stossel of "20/20" on ABC in 1998 to serve as the host of the series. Mr. Stossel asked WJMK to release him from his contract in August 1999.

"Neither John nor ABC News were comfortable with the ultimate arrangement," said Jeffrey W. Schneider, vice president of ABC News. The network has asked WJMK to remove Mr. Stossel's photo from its Web site.

When John Stossel is disturbed by the ethics of a deal, you know it's really bad...

2003-05-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

Israeli Tourism Minister comes to America to meet with Christian Right

Amy Goodman had Daniel Ben Simon, Ha'aretz reporter, on her show this morning. They were discussing Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon's trip to the US, where he will meet with congressmen, people in the Christian Right, and others who think of the Mideast situation as a fight between Judiasm/Christianity and Islam (the catch is, Christian fundamentalists support Israel in order for the Apocalypse to come about, when all unconverted Jews will not be saved). Elon will speak out against the "road map", and has his own plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians: get rid of those pesky Palestinians!

As reported by Ben Simon in Ha'aretz,

In another few days, Tourism Minister Benny Elon (National Union) will make public a plan he has prepared that seeks to resolve the Palestinian question once and for all. Sharon is unlikely to adopt the plan, though. True, it proposes a two-state model, but as part of the plan, the Palestinian state will be established in Jordan and will then, of course, maintain friendly and peaceful relations with Israel. King Abdullah will not have to abdicate and there will be no urgent need to bring about the collapse of the Hashemite regime. Abdullah can become part of the new regime.

Elon saw no need to attend the emergency meeting; He has his own way to torpedo attempts of this kind by prime ministers. His immediate plan is to make a tour of the Bible Belt in the United States in which he will meet with politicians, public figures, lobbyists and thousands of Evangelists whose soul goes out to Zion. This is the new arena of activity for the Israeli right. For everyone who wants to thwart a political move involving Israel and the Palestinians, everyone who wants to organize a petition against the president of the United States, everyone who believes that the Land of Israel belongs in full and forever to the Jewish people - a visit to this community is mandatory.
{...}
"I am very much at home among the Christians who support Israel," Elon stated proudly. "These are people who are wild about Israel and believe in the annexation of Judea and Samaria and even in the transfer of Palestinians from the soil of the Land of Israel. Compared to them, I am considered a dove."

These believers are not acting solely for the sake of heaven. While many are motivated by the divine imperative in the Bible, from which they conclude that they should love the Jews, others are driven by messianic fervor. A war of Gog and Magog, they believe, will herald the second coming of Jesus, and the Jews will have to become Christians; those who refuse will be put to death.

Sharon, to his credit, has criticized Elon's trip, saying that it "causes severe damage to the state, especially when we are talking about a minister who is supposed to be representing the positions of the government."

The proposed "transfer" of Palestinians is a nice word for ethnic cleansing, in order to both prevent Palestinians living within Israel (usually called "Israeli Arabs") from attaining full citizenship rights, and to remove Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, allowing Israel to claim the West Bank and Gaza (Israel has the bad luck of having little water sources, while the West Bank has significant water resources, but that's where Israel has moved the Palestinians).

Elon also leads the Molodet party (Molodet is Hebrew for "homeland"). In an article on the website, Elon proposes transfer as a peace plan: "This solution is moral for both Jews, who have no other homeland, and for the Palestinian refugees whose cultural homeland is in Arab countries, specifically Jordan. The world has now reached the understanding the there is no peace in bi-national countries, and that there is a need for separation." Notice that not even Elon can claim that the Palestinians have a home somewhere other than Israel/Palestine; he writes that Arab countries are the "cultural homeland" for Palestinians.

Electronic Intifada has covered Elon: To justify a policy that fits the international legal definition of genocide, Elon, in an undated article posted on the Moledet website entitled "Breaking the Transfer Taboo,"quotes Leviticus from the Bible: "And I will give peace in the Land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land and the sword shall not go through your land."

The implication is that Palestinians are a sub-human race who can be treated like "evil beasts." Moledet believes that "The two sides of the Jordan River, comprising the Biblical Land of Israel and Balfour's Palestine, are both rightfully ours," but concedes that it is willing to allow the Palestinians to be expelled to the east of the river, in other words to Jordan.

The article on EI notes the US media's failure to cover these disgusting statements from parties that are a part of the Israeli ruling coalition. I wouldn't expect things to change when Elon meets with members of congress.

2003-05-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

11 Years, 8 Championships

Leeds' defeat of Arsenal sealed the Premiership title for Man Utd on Sunday, and if nothing sums up Arsenal's baffling disintegration more than a 3-2 home loss to Leeds, than I don't know what it is. Oh, maybe a 2-2 draw with Bolton.

The BBC has a feature on the 10 glorious weeks that saw Arsenal succumb to injury, suspension, and a disappointing exit from European competition by losing to Valencia, and Man Utd bounce back from their thrashing at the hands of Real to beat Liverpool 4-0 and Newcastle 6-2, and then the 2-2 draw with Arsenal at Highbury. To me, that was the turning point for both teams: Arsenal up 2-1 after Theirry Henry's offside goal, then Giggs heads in the equalizer not even two minutes later. Arsenal could have gone one point up on top of the standings, with a game in hand, but their porous defence allows a goal less than two minutes after they scored themselves.

2003-05-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

Release of child prisoners at Guantanamo?

Here it is, from today's Guardian:

Children held at Guantanamo Bay are expected to leave the American detention camp in the near future as part of what may be the biggest single release of prisoners since it was established, US military officials said last night.

But they rejected reports that the Pentagon was succumbing to international pressure after protests greeted news that the juveniles were in detention - or to a complaint from Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that US policy at the camp was straining relationships with allies.

Between one and two dozen inmates, mostly Afghans, will be released in the near future, according to unnamed military officials.

One official said he believed juveniles would be among them, though it was not clear whether that number would include all three of the boys aged 13 to 15 whose presence at Guantanamo caused outrage when it was revealed last month. It was also unclear whether they would be freed, or transferred to detention in their home nations.

Since the camp received its first detainees in early 2002, only 23 have been released, including inmates who were elderly or mentally ill.

The planned release, which Pentagon officials said would not be confirmed publicly until after it had happened, may well be the largest so far. The camp's 660 detainees are being held indefinitely, have no access to lawyers and have not been charged.

There's a lot of possible verbs used in the article, and unnamed sources always put my guard up. Suprising article coming from the Guardian. I would expect a vague article describing significant actions that could happen from the NY Times or the Washington Post, but not from those British lefties.

2003-05-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Happy May Day!

Today is the real labor day--the international day of the workers. If you think I'm spouting Red propaganda, find out what May Day is all about. May Day is an American invention; the first May Day with workers' actions was in 1886 in cities throughout America. Workers were calling for the radical notion of an eight-hour working day. This first May Day would end in tragedy with the events days later in Chicago. The Haymarket Square tragedy is more often remembered for the death of a police officer and the injury of several more on May 4, when a bomb from an unknown source was thrown at the police. A day earlier, on May 3, events were equally tragic:

..greater police provocation was reserved for Monday afternoon, May 3. At this time 6,000 striking lumber-shovers met near Black Road, about a quarter of a mile north of the McCormick Works, to appoint a committee to be sent to the lumber-yard owners. While August Spies was addressing the meeting, a group of some 200 detached itself spontaneously from the crowd of strikers, marched to McCormick's, and heckled and attacked the scabs, who were just then leaving for their homes. Within 10 or 15 minutes there were more than 200 policemen on the spot.

Meanwhile Spies, who was still speaking, and the strikers at the meeting, seeeing patrol wagons and hearing gunfire, started toward McCormick's, but were met by the police. The clubs and guns broke up the crowd; the police fired deliberately into the running strikers, so that at least four were killed and many wounded..

Eight of Chicago's most renowned anarchists were sentenced to death for the death of the police officer. Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11th, 1887, and Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison. The three others were set free in 1893; Illinois' Gov. Altgeld set them free because they were innocent and were the victims of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge". August Spies, who was hanged, said this at his trial:

I believe that the state of castes and classes--the state where one class dominates over and lives upon the labor of another class, and calls this order--yes, I believe that this barbaric form of social organization, with its legallized plunder and murder, is doomed to die and make room for a free society, voluntary association, or universal brotherhood, if you like. You may pronounce the sentence upon me, honorable judge, but let the world know that in A.D. 1886, in the state of Illinois, eight men were sentenced to death because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice!...
...Look upon the economic battlefields! Behold the carnage and plunder of the Christian patricians! Accompany me to the quarters of the wealth creators in this city. Go with me to the half starved miners of the Hocking Valley. Look at the pariahs in the Mongahela Valley, and many other mining districts in this country, or pass along the railroads of that great and most orderly and law abiding citizen Jay Gould. And tell me whether this order has in it any moral principle for which it should be preserved. I say that preservation of such an order is criminal--is murderous. It means the preservation of the systematic destruction of children and women in factories. It means the preservation of enforced idleness of large armies of men, and their degradation. It means the preservation of intemperance, and sexual as well as intellectual prostitution. It means the preservation of misery, want, and servility on the one hand, and the dangerous accumulation of spoils, idleness, voluptuousness, and tyranny on the other. It means the preservation of vice in every form. And last but not least, it means the preservation of the class struggle, of strikes, riots, and bloodshed. That is your "order" gentlemen. Yes, and it is worthy of you to be the champions of such an order. You are eminently fitted for that role. You have my compliments!

In 1980, the average CEO was paid 42 times as much as the average worker, in 2001 the average CEO was paid 411 times as much as the average worker. Read more.

Business Week, that radical magazine, had a great feature in 1999 on executive pay. In 1949, the highest paid executive was Louis B. Mayer. He earned $509,622, while the average worker earned $2,612--a ratio of 195:1. In 1998, Michael Eisner was the highest compensated executive. He earned $575,600,000, while the average worker earned $22,976--a difference of 25052 to 1.

Some numbers to think about. Happy May Day!

2003-04-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Connecting the cluster bombs

Two articles that struck me, when keeping both in mind:

In Sunday's LA Times, an article titled "Lack of Data Slowing Cluster Bomb Cleanup":

Kurdish sappers scouring the countryside for thousands of unexploded U.S. cluster bombs search with wooden stakes, gut instinct and the help of any survivors who stumble upon the lethal weapons.

It would be much faster and safer if the U.S. military provided details of where warplanes dropped cluster bombs in Iraq, but the only civilian agency clearing the devices has not yet been provided such information.

U.S. forces on the ground have been very open with technical information, such as an explanation of a new cluster bomb that the civilian mine-clearers hadn't seen before, said Sean Sutton, information manager for the Mines Advisory Group, a Britain-based charity.

But the group's request for map coordinates of cluster bomb targets has gone unanswered, he said. "I'm sure they will [tell us]," Sutton added. "It's only a matter of when, not if."

After the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kosovo, the United States and NATO eventually provided mine-clearing organizations with details on where cluster bombs had been dropped.

A U.S. military spokesman did not directly respond to questions on the issue Saturday. Rather, he stressed that is not the military's responsibility to help groups such as MAG with the cleanup.

"It's not for us to go with them; then we're responsible for what they're doing," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, with the U.S. Central Command in Qatar. "Our job is to restore order and assess conditions for humanitarian aid to come in. We're going about our business in a military fashion and a smart fashion and that's all we can do."

In other words, unexploded cluster bombs are not the military's problem once the bombs are dropped. If anyone wonders why there are protests in the street in Iraq, this is part of the reason why.

Now, dear reader, keep Lt. Cmdr. Owens' comments in mind while reading the excerpt from the second article. It's in today's Guardian, titled "Fighting is over but the deaths go on":

Unexploded ordnance and landmines littering northern Iraq have killed or maimed more people - many of them children - since the end of the war than during the fighting, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

In the two weeks after the cessation of hostilities on the northern frontline, which divided the Kurdish self-rule area from government-controlled territory, as many as 80 civilians have died and more than 500 have been injured.

"We are facing an emergency situation," said Sean Sutton of the UK-based Mines Advisory Group, which is coordinating an operation in the region to clear unexploded ordnance and mines.

"Across Iraq, the detritus of war is killing, maiming and scarring for life adults and, most tragically, children."
{...}
Some of the 1,500 cluster bombs the US dropped on Iraq have also killed and wounded people around Mosul, Kirkuk and Jalula. In Mosul and Kirkuk, Iraqi soldiers stockpiled ammunition and small arms in homes and schools. "They clearly believed that by withdrawing into the cities they could make the war last for six months," Mr Sutton said.

Reports from hospitals in Mosul suggest a rise in deaths and injuries since the end of hostilities, only some of it attributable to the unrest in the city after its fall.

But with more than 300 dead or injured so far, the population of Kirkuk appears to have suffered the most.

The Guardian was told of 44 deaths caused by landmines or unexploded ordnance in the five days after the collapse of the city on April 9. And, on April 15, 17 people were killed and three injured in one blast in the district of Dibs. They were reportedly trying to take scrap from unexploded shells.
{...}
Mr Sutton said the Mines Advisory Group had also found evidence of a new type of American cluster bomb dropped outside the city.

The BLU 108, he explained, is an anti-armour bomblet with a sensor. When the mother unit is dropped it spews out four smaller units with parachutes. Each of these then slings out four lethal circular discs. "These should be directed toward armour," Mr Sutton said. "But we found them in fields. And 75% of them were unexploded."

He said the group had cleared most of the cluster bombs from the city in cooperation with US forces. But more needed to be done.

"We need funds to clear up this mess now. For the price of two cruise missiles we could save many lives."

Thankfully, Sutton did say that his group received some support from US forces in clearing the unexploded ordinance. But the point remains that volunteer agencies are doing the dirty work, and not the forces responsible for the unexploded bombs being there in the first place. I guess the US and UK military don't understand that when you're a guest in someone else's country, it's common courtesy to clean up your life-threatening cluster bombs that you dropped.

2003-04-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

LA Times update

Apparently some readers of The Scope contacted the LA Times about the article issue. I received an email from the Readers' Rep, saying that the article that I read in the paper, and photocopied from the copy at UCLA, was the first version of the article. The article as it appeared on the website was also the version that ran in later editions of the paper. It's hard to tell stuff like this, since the LAT doesn't have a "Final Edition" note on the masthead of the paper.

The question remains, however, why the article was edited in that manner.

2003-04-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Bush and brand 9/11

The Republicans' ability to disgust me knows no bounds. From an article in today's Guardian:

The Republican party has scheduled its 2004 convention unusually late in the year, so that the climactic moment when President George Bush's re-election campaign begins will nearly coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11 attack, according to a report yesterday.
{...}
The guiding philosophy underlying the campaign is the avoidance of the mistakes made by the president's father, who won the 1991 Gulf war but was voted out of office largely because he was viewed as unconcerned with the plight of the economy.

The strategy this time will be to focus on domestic economics and to make sure the glow of victory, and awareness of continuing peril, do not fade.

In New York, Mr Bush will deliver his keynote address, accepting the Republican nomination, on September 2, just two months before the election and the latest acceptance in the party's 148-year history.

The choice of venues for his postwar appearances has also been loaded with symbolism. He celebrated the liberation of Iraq and defended his tax cuts at a Boeing jet fighter plant in Missouri last week. This week, he will speak at a factory in Ohio (another swing state) that builds the Abrams tank, which helped to win the Iraq war so rapidly, explicitly making the link between the war and jobs. The US economy has lost 2 million jobs since he took office.

Similarly, the president's conservative supporters have ques tioned the patriotism of moderate Republican senators who oppose the scale of his proposed $726bn tax cut. Television advertisements have compared the rebels to the French president, Jacques Chirac.

Let me repeat the standout line for me: The strategy this time will be to focus on domestic economics and to make sure the glow of victory, and awareness of continuing peril, do not fade.

Reminds me all to much of Cold War politics, especially civil defense. I recently read Laura McEnaney's terrific book, Civil Defense Begins at Home. It's about the civil defense programs in the US after World War II. We're all familiar with the backyard bombshelters, but there's a lot more than just comic paranoia. The book deals with changes in the federal programs, and the discourse that the government presented to the public on civil defense. Namely, the government is protecting you militarily, but you have to protect yourselves at home and are on you're own if a nuclear bomb drops on your hometown. The government had to encourage this volunteer spirit by warning people of imminent danger--people were scared while at the same time told that they could fight to survive in a nuclear holocaust.

Needless to say, the book raises a lot of issues that are still painfully relevant (I read it at the same time as the duct tape and plastic sheet panic). We're told that we face constant dangers, but our homeland defense team can save us. In other words, put all of your hopes for survival in Pres. Bush. He'll save us from Saddam and whatever bad guy we decide on, I mean, comes along next. Let's Roll...to the continuing exploitation of Sept. 11, that is!

2003-04-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Scope featured at The Memory Hole

As the post below explains, I tipped Russ Kick at The Memory Hole to the LA Times' interesting editing. He has a page on the differences between the two articles, highlighting the key deletions for the web version. An excellent job, as always.

2003-04-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

REPEAT: LA Times deletes part of friendly-fire article on web

I'm running this post again, since I've been in communication with Russ Kick of The Memory Hole about this article. The LA Times has a policy of moving articles older than one week into their paid archives, and my archives are in a constant state of disarray. Blogger is just not cooperating with me, and the Blogger Control feature gives me no help. So, as a means to have this post available via a permalink, I'm rerunning it.

Since this is more than three weeks old now, I should add that although the LA Times' Readers Rep got in touch with me, I still have not heard from the LA Times' website editor, who the Readers Rep asked to contact me...

A member of the British Royal Marines that was fired upon by a US plane has spoken out about the incident, in which the unnamed US pilot killed a British soldier. From an article in the LA Times:

The sight of the American A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft should have been a relief to the British soldiers who were sitting nervously in their two Scimitar light tanks Friday, watching as Iraqi villagers approached, waving white flags. According to the British soldier, the American pilot came in low, with a rattling noise that sounded like antitank gunfire from his plane's seven-barrel Gatling gun.

"I believe he was a cowboy," a furious Lance Cpl. Steven Gerrard told the Times of London two days later from his hospital bed aboard the British ship Argus. "There was a boy of about 12 years old. He was no more than 20 meters away when the Yank opened up. There were all these civilians around. He had absolutely no regard for human life."

Gerrard, Lt. Alex MacEwan, 25, and trooper Chris Finney, 18, suffered shrapnel wounds and burns. Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, 25, was killed.

The British troops were outraged, and their anger became public when their unit commander broke the ground rules of silence by reminding some observers of an incident in which an American pilot killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

For some reason, the web version of the article has several paragraphs deleted--the entire last column of the article is missing.

The second-to-last paragraph on the web reads:

The British troops were on a reconnaissance mission 25 miles north of Basra and did not know whether the Iraqis coming toward them intended to surrender. The American pilot, whose name has not been released, made two passes over the scene from what the British soldiers said was about 150 feet above the ground. He began firing from about 1,500 feet away, they said, turning the two Scimitars into flaming metal skeletons.

In the print edition, the above paragraph ends with the following sentence: Hull, who could not escape from his vehicle, was killed on the second pass.

The web version then cuts two paragraphs, and concludes with:

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that defense officials were saddened to hear that the British soldier's death may have been the result of friendly fire.

The print version has two paragraphs before that. They read quite powerfully in the print edition:

British soldiers said the pilot apparently missed seeing the 20-inch wide Union Jack emblem on their vehicles, as well as the frantic waves of the fleeing soldiers.

"This one had broken off and was on his own when he attacked us," said Gerrard, describing how the A-10 pulled away from a formation of "four or five" other American strike aircraft. "He's just gone about on a jolly....He's killed one of my friends, and he's killed him on the second run."

The print article then follows with the sentence on the Pentagon spokesman, a unique juxtaposition following the testimony of Gerrard. There's then a column on friendly fire and guided weapons, and statments from British military figures.

The Times' website has no mention of editing articles for length, so I'm a bit angry that this article was trimmed so heavily. There's also no appropriate people I can contact about this listed in their site feedback area. I've sent an email to the Readers' Representative, sort of an ombudsman, though I've had lenghty waits for responses from the representatives in the past.

2003-04-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

What do we want? Proportional representation! When do we want it? Now!

George Scialabba in the Boston Review:

...despite assuming office with a lower level of voter support than nearly any other in the nation's history, the Bush administration has been one of the most partisan and high-handed ever. Its judicial nominations, policy-level appointments, and legislative proposals have been extreme and one-sided; its openness to media scrutiny and citizen participation have been minimal; its public rhetoric has been deceptive and uncivil; its deference to Congress's war-making power has been grudging. Evidently democracy was not well-served by the presidential election of 2000.

Who's to blame? Almost unanimously, Democrats and liberals blame the third-party candidate, Ralph Nader. Nader, they say, ought to have recognized that his candidacy might well tilt the election to Bush and that such an outcome would be of far greater consequence than winning federal funds for the Green Party. Nader supporters reply that Gore cost Gore the election, and did so by not sounding more like Nader. Gore's voter support rose and fell, they point out, with his willingness to take strong populist, egalitarian, environmentalist, and good-government positions.

Both sides have a point. Though second to none in admiration for Nader, I accept the "lesser evil" argument. A Gore administration would have been a routine misfortune: tepid, unimaginative, deferential to corporate and financial elites. The Bush administration has been a catastrophe: destructive of fiscal stability, heedless of civic solidarity, indifferent to environmental health, hostile to workers' rights, contemptuous of international law, disdainful of world opinion, and (as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has demonstrated week in and week out for the last two years) brazenly and relentlessly dishonest. Nader ought to have foreseen this, acknowledged it, and either withdrawn late in the race or urged supporters in closely contested states to vote for Gore (or to trade their votes with Gore supporters in less closely contested states). On the other hand, Gore lost the election not only because of his robotic centrism, but also through his pusillanimous and unsporting refusal to debate Nader. A direct appeal to Nader voters on lesser-evil grounds might well have won over enough of them to have elected Gore.

What is surprising, though--amazing, in fact--is how few on either side have blamed our electoral system. The American electoral system is an affront to reason. To start at the top: the Electoral College has no function except to frustrate equal political representation, i.e., to prevent each vote cast in presidential elections from counting as much as every other vote. The framers of the Constitution may have envisioned the College as a deliberative body, but it has not deliberated once in 200 years and never will. Actually, the framers were ambivalent about the Electoral College and rejected it several times, finally approving it just before the Convention adjourned. That was a mistake. In no fewer than four presidential elections, the candidate with the greatest number of popular votes was not chosen as president. Overwhelming majorities of voters regularly tell pollsters that the Electoral College should be abolished. Seven hundred proposals to reform or abolish it have been introduced in the House, the most recent of which passed in 1989 with an 83 percent majority. As always, the Senate blocked any action.

Why? Because the Senate itself is a deeply undemocratic institution...

It's a very good essay on the need for proportional representation, an idea that he quotes the Center for Voting and Democracy on: "Currently there are 41 well-established democracies with at least two million inhabitants and high ratings from the human rights organization Freedom House, and of these 41 nations only two--the United States and Canada--do not use a form of proportional or semi-proportional voting systems to elect one of their national legislatures."

And though PR wouldn't work in presidential elections, there is the method of Instant Runoff Voting, in which voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Two benefits of IRV: "Two years ago this system would have prevented many lame jokes, not to mention awarding the presidency to a man whom the majority of voters did not want to have it." Think of it: people would still think 'chad' is a lame name for a guy, and maybe some smarties would know that it's a country in Africa.

2003-04-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

Cops Gone Wild

Unknown News has a section of links to news stories of police officers' shocking behavior. Grand theft, sex with a minor, leaving an underdressed man in a field in freezing weather, murder, tax fraud, and patronizing brothels--those wacky cops? What will they do next? You can be sure that they won't face any jail time, though! Whoops, I didn't mean to seem anti-police by stating some uncomfortable truths.

2003-04-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

Another activist killed by Israeli army

I had been meaning to post on this...Last Friday Thomas Hurndall was shot in the Gaza Strip by an IDF shooter. This follows the shooting of Brian Avery in the face two weeks ago, and the killing of Rachel Corrie last month. Hurndall was shot in the head and is now clinically dead. He and Corrie (and Avery, I assume) were both wearing the bright orange vests that members of the International Solidarity Movement wear while out in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.

I'm disappointed in how little coverage Hurndall's shooting has received here in the US. But I guess Corrie's story was more attractive to the US media. She was American, most importantly, while Hurndall is British. There's more interest in her story because of her biography--from a small town in Washington, the attractive young woman left to follow her convictions, just make sure to play up the small town angle, not the convictions part. I also remember the picture of her in Palestinian dress used more often than any other photo of her--an implication of her "going native", as if she had somehow lost touch with reality.

There's an article from the Star, a South African paper, on other ISM members' reactions to Hurndall's shooting:

Diale and other activists who witnessed the incident said Hurndall was trying to pull two children out of danger when shots were fired from an army watchtower 100m away.

"Thomas was wearing a bright orange reflective jacket, like we all do, and like Rachel had been wearing too. There is no way the army did not see them," he said.

Hit in the head by the bullet, Hurndall was critically wounded, and shortly after arriving at hospital, doctors pronounced him clinically dead.

The army had no comment but said it would look into the event. It is still investigating the cause of Rachel's death a month earlier.

Actually, that last part is a bit out of date, as the Israeli army has cleared itself of any wrongdoing in Corrie's death:

An Israeli army investigation into the death of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, has concluded that its forces were not to blame for her death.
It accused Corrie and other members of the International Solidarity Movement of "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous" behaviour.

Corrie, 23, was crushed to death by an army bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, as she protested against house demolitions.

The investigation, led by the chief of the general staff of the Israeli Defence Force, found that Israeli forces were not guilty of any misconduct.
{...}
The army report obtained by the Guardian says Corrie: "was struck as she stood behind a mound of earth that was created by an engineering vehicle operating in the area and she was hidden from the view of the vehicle's operator who continued with his work. Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete resulting in her death.

"The finding of the operational investigations shows that Rachel Corrie was not run over by an engineering vehicle but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete which was moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved."

However, Joe Smith, 21, from Missouri who witnessed Corrie's death said that the army's description bore little resemblance to what he saw. "Rachel was kneeling 20 metres in front of the bulldozer on flat ground. There was no way she could not have been seen. We only maintain positions that are clearly visible.

"She had been doing this all day but this time the driver did not stop. Once she had fallen under the bulldozer, the driver stopped when she was under its middle section and reversed," he said.

All this has brought Chris Hedges' "Gaza Diary" from Harper's Magazine in October 2001 back to my mind. Hedges has become somewhat well-known for his new book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. I haven't read the book, but his essay for Harper's is unforgettable. An excerpt:

Like most refugee camps, Khan Younis was at first a vast tent city, a temporary encampment, set up for 35,000 refugees until people could return to their homes. The tents were replaced in 1953 by boxy concrete structures. The Egyptians, who first controlled Gaza, would not allow the camp to expand, nor would the Israelis, who gained control of Gaza after the war in 1967. Although roughly the same size as it was in 1949, Khan Younis now houses almost twice the number of registered refugees—58,891—that it did five decades ago. The population growth rate for the Palestinians is one of the highest in the world—3.7 percent compared with 1.7 percent in Israel. This is, simply, one of the most heavily populated spots on the planet.

The Palestinians in Gaza, 1.1 million of them, most of whom lack the means to leave, live in a 147-square-mile area. Twenty percent of that territory belongs to the sixteen Jewish settlements, home to about 6,000 Jewish settlers. In other words, one fifth of Gaza is in the hands of .5 percent of the people who live there.
{...}
I sit in the shade of a palm-roofed hut on the edge of the dunes, momentarily defeated by the heat, the grit, the jostling crowds, the stench of the open sewers and rotting garbage. A friend of Azmi's brings me, on a tray, a cold glass of tart, red carcade juice.

Barefoot boys, clutching kites made out of scraps of paper and ragged soccer balls, squat a few feet away under scrub trees. Men in flowing white or gray galabias—homespun robes—smoke cigarettes in the shade of slim eaves. Two emaciated donkeys, their ribs protruding, are tethered to wooden carts with rubber wheels.

It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker.

"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"

I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"

The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.

A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.

Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport...

Thomas Hurndall was shot while attempting to protect Palestinian children from the Israeli sniper tower.

2003-04-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

South Los Angeles

Last week the LA City Council voted to change the name of South-Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles. All neighborhood signs (LA has official neighborhood signs up on traffic light posts for the myriad of separate communities that are within Los Angeles: Hollywood, Chinatown, Little Ethiopia, Thai Town, Westwood...I live in Crestview, though nobody knows what that is. It's much easier to refer to intersections). The LA Times did a story the day of the vote, and a follow-up once the name change was approved. But Duncan Campbell of the Guardian has the best article on the matter (I should add that a woman in the community proposed the change to Jan Perry, a fact that Campbell leaves out. So it wasn't just the council that decided to act):

In South-Central this wet Monday, it was hard to find anyone who thought that the name change would make much difference, although apparently some local businesses believe it will help allay clients' fears about the area.

But cast your minds back more than a decade to 1992 and the riot - or rebellion, or uprising as it was also called - which engulfed the area. It began after the acquittal of four white police officers for the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King.

The riot was often portrayed in the media as a black and white affair although all colours, sexes and ages were involved in what happened - and in the subsequent looting which spread across the city.

Mike Davis, in his book, The Ecology of Fear, reported how one middle-aged woman said to him at the time, "stealing is a sin but this is more like a television game show where everybody wins."

Davis added: "in contrast to the looters on Hollywood Boulevard who stole Madonna's underwear from Frederick's, the masses concentrated on the prosaic necessities of life like cockroach spray and Pampers."

The administration of the time was that of George Bush senior. They blamed the riots and looting on the social welfare programmes of the sixties and seventies and the looters were routinely demonised and vilified.

So it was interesting to see the relaxed attitude of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer to the looting in Baghdad last week. "Looting is the result of oppression and pent-up feelings," said Mr Rumsfeld. The general view from this Bush administration was: "It's untidy - freedom's untidy."

If Mr Rumsfeld had been around in 1992 to explain to the then president that "looting is the result of oppression and pent-up feelings", perhaps South-Central might not feel it had to change its name today.

2003-04-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

I've gotten some questions about my borderline obsession with football or, if us Yanks must insist, soccer. I'll admit that I've come relatively late to the sport; although I played as a kid in AYSO, I never played much further. I guess it's been the last two World Cups, and the discovery of Fox Sports World on cable (it takes a lot for me to be happy enoying something associated with Rupert Murdoch).

Even though the national team made it to the round of 16 in the last World Cup, and we're told at the beginning of every MLS season that this will be the year that football breaks out in the USA, most people here still don't see the game beyond something for their kids to play when they're under 10. It's so out of step with every other popular sport--though since this weekend is the Masters, I think most people would agree that watching football offers more excitement than golf.

The great author Eduardo Galeano wrote a book a while back that's translated as "Soccer in Sun and Shadow". It explains the history of the game, its importance for countires that have gotten the shaft from their former colonial masters, and some plain beautiful moments from games that many could still describe for you today. It's recently been updated, to include the 2002 WC and other entries not in the previous edition.

Although my Manchester United beautifully demolished Newcastle this morning, 6-2, they were the recipients of a thrashing earlier in the week, at the hands of Real Madrid. Although the match came out to 3-1 eventually, there was no contest for most of the game. Although if Man U can pull off a 2-0 win at home in two weeks, they move forward in the Champions League.

To get back to my point, there's a great article by John Carlin in the Observer about the earlier Real/Man U match, and how Real demonstrated the amazing things that are possible in the "beautiful game". The play between Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane that led to Figo's goal was incredible, as was the goal (Carlin says that Zidane is the world's greatest player--yeah, Ronaldo had an amazing World Cup and should be up there, but no matter what Zidane should always get a vote for the top player). For the skeptical, read Carlin with an open mind; football is rarely as perfect as it was last week:

And that is why Real Madrid's display the other night was so magically memorable. We had waited not weeks, not months, but years - decades - to see fantasy football like this. Everything came together. The biggest game between the two biggest teams in the world's best football competition provided the stage for the world's finest players to perform at the pinnacle of their ability. And the wonder of it all is that we have no idea ultimately how or why, on that particular night, it should have happened. Not even del Bosque, the first to dismiss the value of systems and to confess that football at its best is about one thing: the sheer God-given talent of the players. Del Bosque says: 'To those who say that there's no merit whatsoever in coaching this team, my reply is,"You're absolutely right!" There is nothing at all that I can say to contradict them.

2003-04-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

All's fair in love and PR

At first I couldn't believe that this article in the Washington Post was true. Obviously some tongue-in-cheek humor, but every joke contains some truth:

All over Washington, public relations professionals are distraught at the sudden disappearance from television screens of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf.

"Many of us turned to his daily briefings just as people in this town look forward to their morning Starbucks," said veteran Democratic operative Dale Leibach...In all my years in this business, I have never seen anyone handle himself with such 'skill' as he demonstrated during his press briefing yesterday -- with his Ministry of Information building literally on fire, causing him to move his news conference to the sidewalk, and with the flames visible behind him, saying with a straight face that they had 'the infidels' on the run, that the Iraqis are winning this war. They just don't teach you that in college. This is a PR guy who may give new meaning to 'knowing how to take a bullet' for a client. Literally."

Of course, the US is also quite adept at spinning lies into something that people believe. The difference is, our lies are accepted as "truth". Take the babies-removed-from-incubators story, for example. It's been widely reported, but little noticed, that the story about Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators was false. Here's one example from FAIR.

2003-04-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

An excellent article in Ha'aretz:

"Foxa Americana," by Roger Alper:

America's Fox News network has been demonstrating since the start of the war in Iraq an amazing lesson in media hypocrisy. The anchors, reporters and commentators unceasingly emphasize that the war's goal is to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The frequency, consistence and passion with which they use that lame excuse, and the fact that nearly no other reasons are mentioned shows that this is the network's editorial policy. The American flag lies in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, while the logo accompanying the programming is Operation Iraqi Freedom, the official name given by the Pentagon. Fox journalists display what appears to be genuine happiness, innocent and sincere, brainwashed in nature, in the expectation for the wonderful day when the American army leads the Iraqi people from slavery to freedom.

Read all of it, especially the last paragraph. That has some disturbing news that since Fox has been available on Israeli cable, BBC World has been removed, and CNN was almost taken off (no great loss, but everyone needs an alternative to Fox). I'd be really interested to know if Rupert Murdoch has any relationship with the Israeli cable service, knowing about his shenanigans with the BBC in China.

2003-04-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Note:

I'm more than a bit embarrassed by my post below. I only saw the scenes that were replayed on television after the fact; I did not see the original shots of the almost-empty square, populated only by men, and the image of the American soldiers draping the American flag over the statue of Hussein. Why didn't they piss on it, like those stickers of Calvin that you see on the back of pickup trucks? I was a bit carried away, and while I knew that the celebration was already being romanticized beyond its actual scope, I regret taking part of the myopic celebration.

2003-04-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

No matter your position on the war, I think it's impossible to be unmoved by the scenes of celebration in Baghdad. I don't think that anyone on the antiwar side will be shedding a tear for Hussein. I'm too much of a romantic to not enjoy the sight of spontaneous celebrations following the downfall of a tyrant--I can't wait for next November, myself. It's important to remember, however, that there are approximately one thousand Iraqis that won't be celebrating today because they were killed by US and British forces, and that this 'liberation' is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. There's a long road ahead with many unappealing prospects--an US military government in Iraq, humanitarian disasters, a corporate rush to control Iraq's infrastructure...

While they are celebrating in Baghdad, it's also important to remember that this is happening:

Hay Al Ansar, on the outskirts of Najaf in Iraq, was glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party government, when the city was seized by US forces last week.

But they appear to be just as terrified, if not more so, of their new rulers -a little-known Iraqi militia backed by the US special forces and headquartered in a compound nearby.

The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU), which appeared in the city last week riding on US special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and terrorising their neighbourhood with impunity, according to most residents.

"They steal and steal," said a man living near the Medresa al Tayif school, calling himself Abu Zeinab. "They threaten us, saying: 'We are with the Americans, you can do nothing to us'."

Sa'ida al Hamed, another resident, said she witnessed looting by the ICNU and other armed gangs in the city, which lost its police force when the government fled last week. One man told a US army translator on Monday that he was taken out of his house and beaten by ICNU forces when he refused to give them his car. They took it anyway.

2003-04-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Wea-pons of...mass...de-struc-tion?

A NY Times editorial raises that eternal question: where are the WMD? Or, as they like to call them, "horror weapons":

Almost every day brings new reports that advancing troops have found indications of chemical weapons, but the evidence has been mostly small-scale and circumstantial: gas masks, protective suits, nerve gas antidotes, training manuals, a few barrels of suspicious chemicals, a cache of shells that look as if they are designed to be filled with chemicals. No actual chemical weapons have been clearly identified yet, and there is no conclusive proof that any suspicious chemicals are warfare agents and not pesticides. That judgment could change in the blink of a laboratory technician's eye. Then the issue would become whether Iraq had significant quantities of lethal materials and the means to deliver them.

In making the case for the invasion, the administration suggested that Iraq's arsenal might be quite large: up to 500 tons of nerve and mustard agents, and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering them; materials to produce 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; and mobile or underground laboratories to make germ weapons. If so, it should be possible to find them with the help of Iraqi scientists and officers. But for any findings to be credible in the battle for global opinion, neutral analysts — from the United Nations or technically proficient nations like Finland or Switzerland — will be needed to verify the laboratory results and ensure a strict chain of custody to avoid charges of tampering with the evidence.

The question that they seem to be begging but avoiding, is what happens if there are no WMD found? A case could be made that the Bush Administration would have to be held accountable in some way if they launched what is not only an illegal war, but one that failed to meet their justifications for protecting America from a chem/bio/nuke attack originating from Iraq.

Then again, this war is being really fickle. First it was about the WMD. Then it was about Iraqi liberation. Way back before it was the WMD it was about getting Saddam because of 9/11 (it didn't matter that there was no connection--you can fool some of the people most of the time, and polls show that a majority of Americans have been fooled). Back before that it was about getting Saddam, period. And, of course, way back in the day it was about giving Saddam chemical weapons and other WMD. Wait...

2003-04-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks to John Ashcroft...

Librarians that destroy information are defending civil liberties. It's true. From Monday's NY Times, "Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to new FBI Powers":

...Actually, the shredder here is not new, but the rush to use it is. In the old days, staff members in the nine-branch Santa Cruz Public Library System would destroy discarded paperwork as time allowed, typically once a week.

But at a meeting of library officials last week, it was decided the materials should be shredded daily.

"The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible," said Anne M. Turner, director of the library system.

The move was part of a campaign by the Santa Cruz libraries to demonstrate their opposition to the Patriot Act, the law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that broadened the federal authorities' powers in fighting terrorism.

Among provisions that have angered librarians nationwide is one that allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to review certain business records of people under suspicion, which has been interpreted to include the borrowing or purchase of books and the use of the Internet at libraries, bookstores and cafes.

In a survey sent to 1,500 libraries last fall by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois, the staffs at 219 libraries said they had cooperated with law enforcement requests for information about patrons; staffs at 225 libraries said they had not.

2003-04-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

From the Coalition of the Willing

I'm blatantly stealing the first part of this post from Harry Shearer's radio program, "Le Show," where I heard about the story.

The AP reported this week that "Bulgaria signed an agreement Friday with the United States for deployment to the Gulf region of a 97-member military unit for protection against chemical and biological weapons." That's from the lead paragraph; the interesting info is in the final paragraphs:

Officials didn't say when the unit was to leave or where it was going. Local media have reported it is to be deployed in Jordan.

In February, parliament voted that the unit could join the U.S.-led coalition only if it was deployed in a country neighboring Iraq, and would not be engaged in combat operations.

See how willing this coalition is, and how much support the US has? Why, Bulgaria is sending troops to deal with chemical and biological weapons. Sure, they'll be staying out of Iraq, but...

In another show of strong support for the US, the Bulgarian unit has been reduced by two-thirds, and the expense of transporting and maintaining the unit will be paid by the United States! Don't underestimate the support of our coalition!

2003-04-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

Definition of irony?

From today's NY Times, an article about the soldiers in a tank batallion in Baghdad:

The four tanks of their platoon, part of Company A, bear the names of the four airliners that were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Sgt. First Class Eric R. Olson said the men had stenciled them on the cannons as a way to motivate themselves, even though he was not sure there was a direct connection between that attack and the one this morning.

"Not sure there was a direct connection..." He's more skeptical than 72 percent of the population, it seems.

2003-04-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

Six games left, and the Red Devils pull even with Arsenal. Finally, Man U at the top and for longer than one day.

There are some huge games coming up for Man U, with the first leg in the Champions League quarterfinals against Real Madrid on Tuesday, then Newcastle next Saturday, and Arsenal the Wednesday after that, in a game that could decide the Premiership. The double is still within reach for both Man U and Arsenal with the Gunners playing for the FA Cup.

2003-04-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

More proof that Wal-Mart is evil

In today's LA Times:

The California attorney general's office said Friday that Wal-Mart stores in the Central Valley committed nearly 500 violations of the state's gun laws, including selling weapons to felons and releasing firearms to buyers before the end of the required 10-day waiting period.

In each of six stores audited by investigators, "there were violations of such magnitude that we are convinced it is not an isolated problem but a systemic, statewide problem," a spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said the company agreed to temporarily halt firearms sales in California -- the first time the nation's largest retailer has stopped gun sales across an entire state -- because the company is committed to correcting the problem by retraining employees.
{...}
Lockyer said the investigation began after firearms inspectors, conducting routine checks at a Wal-Mart in rural Turlock on March 18, turned up so many violations of state law -- 94 -- that they moved the following week to other Wal-Mart stores in Merced and Los Banos.

In two weeks, the team found nearly 400 more violations in six stores in the Central Valley and the Sacramento area. The violations, state officials said, occurred during a period of six months to one year. None of the stores was fully in compliance with state gun laws.

Wal-Mart employees at the Los Banos store, Lockyer said, sold a shotgun to a man convicted of spousal abuse and a "long gun" to a customer who had been convicted of felony drug charges. State and federal laws prohibit selling guns to felons or to those convicted of domestic violence.

Those guns have since been seized by law enforcement officials, who confiscated four additional guns from the buyer with a drug conviction and a high-powered rifle from a man previously jailed for spousal abuse. Their names were not released, but authorities said both face new criminal charges for possessing the weapons.

The obvious question raised is how much of this is going on in their stores across the country. My guess would be that there's not much different there. 400 violations in six stores in one area. Wal-Mart has 2400 stores in the US.

Wal-Mart also has some lovely sexual discrimination practices--although 72 percent of their hourly employees are female, less than one-third of their store managers are women, and women are only 10 percent of their top managers. Rival chains have much higher representation of women in managerial positions. Read more here. Liza Featherstone had a great article at the end of last year in the Nation, but it's not available online.

2003-04-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Abu Aardvark:

Ken Jowitt, until recently of UC-Berkeley, has a bizarre and fascinating essay in Policy Review called "rage, hubris, and regime change." The essay is all over the place, and hard to summarize, but is shot through with eccentric but possibly brilliant insights.

Scroll down to read the Aardvark's post, and here's Jowitt's article. A taste:

Initially, if implicitly, the Bush administration subscribed to the “end of history” thesis that the “rest” of the world would more or less naturally become like the West in general and the United States in particular. September 11 changed that. In its aftermath, the Bush administration has concluded that Fukuyama’s historical timetable is too laissez-faire and not nearly attentive enough to the levers of historical change. History, the Bush administration has concluded, needs deliberate organization, leadership, and direction. In this irony of ironies, the Bush administration’s identification of regime change as critical to its anti-terrorist policy and integral to its desire for a democratic capitalist world has led to an active “Leninist” foreign policy in place of Fukuyama’s passive “Marxist” social teleology. Prior to 9-11, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice articulated the new administration’s “Marx-Fukuyama” policy quite clearly when she said Iraq was “living on borrowed time . . . [and] there need be no sense of panic.” Rather, “the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence.” The 9-11 attacks made it clear to the Bush administration that a belief in the inexorable unfolding of History favoring the West was both unfounded and dangerous. In a quite remarkable about-face, the Bush administration has devised a radically new American global posture.

The Aardvark wonders: "Um, okay - I have no doubt that Bush had worked through a Marx-Fukuyama dialectic, but how does Condi's rather mundane boilerplate demonstrate it?"

Marx's writings on communism reveal a belief that history was in some ways determined--that societies progress through various stages of development. Others believed that captialism was the highest level of development, and while Marx did not disagree that captialism brought incredible riches and greater productivity, he also argued that capitalism enslaved the workers and would be destroyed by the proletarians. The proletariat had gold, but their gold was made into chains that tied them to the source of their suffering. Captalism would be overthrown by the workers once they formed a class conscious, paving the way for communism.

Fukuyama used this teleological view of history (a doctrine of design and purpose in human history) and adapted it to please his conservative supporters; the fall of communist powers and triumph of the free market meant that history had reached its completion. Everyone could see that there was only one way for societies to prosper and thrive.

That's what Jowitt means when he says that Condi had a "Marx-Fukuyama" policy--that we would only have to wait for our enemy's demise and that we would use "deterrence" for our own defense. But Sept. 11 revealed that maybe the end of history hasn't arrived, and now the administration has taken on what Jowitt calls a "Leninist" foriegn policy--direct intervention to secure our goals and bring other countries onto the path of capitalist development and (in theory) democracy.

At least that's what I think. I haven't read the whole article, but that's what Jowitt seems to be saying in this one passage.

2003-04-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

Useful myths

A common criticism of antiwar protesters is that they do not respect the troops overseas, and harass them when they come home. For example, everyone knows that Vietnam vets were spat on by protesters when they came home, right? What everyone doesn't know, however, is that this never happened. Jerry Lembke, a sociology professor at Holy Cross and a Vietnam vet himself, wrote a cultural history of this myth called The Spitting Image. I was aware of this book before, but it came up in a seminar yesterday, and this morning Lembke was on KPFK's "The Morning Show," talking about his book and its relation to criticisms of protesters today.

He talked about several incidents, usually in small towns, in which soldiers were attacked physically or symbolically--attacks that seem so outrageous that someone would attack someone in the armed forces with such contempt for them and their sacrifice in going to war. These random incidents become widely reported and show the inhumanity and the borderline treason of some antiwar protesters--which becomes associated with all protesters. The problem is that these incidents are apocryphal, but the debunking of the incidents are never as widely reported as the myth.

You can read a paper that Lembke presented on his research--he goes into the cultural significance of the spitting myth, and the gender politics at play. Warning: this is an academic paper. Those who have a phobia of academic writing might wish to stay away.

2003-04-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

Robert Fisk on cluster bombs

Some can't stand Robert Fisk. They say his writing style is garish and that he romanticizes his role among civilians in war zones. I might concede the latter point, but for the importance that he gives to the humanity of those that suffer wars, I think he can't be matched. Here's an excerpt from his column in today's Independent:

The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hillah teaching hospital are proof that something illegal – something quite outside the Geneva Conventions – occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon.

The wailing children, the young women with breast and leg wounds, the 10 patients upon whom doctors had to perform brain surgery to remove metal from their heads, talk of the days and nights when the explosives fell "like grapes" from the sky. Cluster bombs, the doctors say – and the detritus of the air raids around the hamlets of Nadr and Djifil and Akramin and Mahawil and Mohandesin and Hail Askeri shows that they are right.
{...}
Some victims died at once, mostly women and children, some of whose blackened, decomposing remains lay in the tiny charnel house mortuary at the back of the Hillah hospital. The teaching college received more than 200 wounded since Saturday night – the 61 dead are only those who were brought to the hospital or who died during or after surgery, and many others are believed to have been buried in their home villages – and, of these, doctors say about 80 per cent were civilians.

Soldiers there certainly were, at least 40 if these statistics are to be believed, and amid the foul clothing of the dead outside the mortuary door I found a khaki military belt and a combat jacket. But village men can also be soldiers and both they and their wives and daughters insisted there were no military installations around their homes. True or false? Who is to know if a tank or a missile launcher was positioned in a nearby field – as they were along the highway north to Baghdad? But the Geneva Conventions demand protection for civilians even if they are intermingled with military personnel, and the use of cluster bombs in these villages – even if aimed at military targets – thus crosses the boundaries of international law.
{...}
Needless to say, it is not the first time cluster bombs have been used against civilians. During Israel's 1982 siege of west Beirut, its air force dropped cluster bomblets manufactured for the US Navy across several areas, especially in the Fakhani and Ouzai districts, causing civilians ferocious and deep wounds identical to those I saw in Hillah yesterday. Angry at the misuse of their weapons, which are designed for use against exclusively military targets, the Reagan administration withheld a shipment of fighter-bombers for Israel – then relented a few weeks later and sent the aircraft anyway.

It is not easy to listen to Iraqi officials condemning the use of illegal weapons when the Iraqi air force has itself dropped poison gas on the Iranian army and on pro-Iranian Kurdish villages during the 1980-88 war against Iran. Outraged claims from Iraqi officials at the abuse of human rights sound like a bell with a very hollow ring. But something terrible happened around Hillah this week, something unforgivable and something contrary to international law. One hesitates, as I say, to talk of human rights in this land of torture but if the Americans and British don't watch out, they are likely to find themselves condemned for what they have always – and rightly – accused Iraq of: war crimes.

I would add that cluster bombs are the gifts that keep on killing--the bomblets do not always explode upon contact, in effect becoming land mines. Up to 30% of the bomblets to not explode at first. And it's widely known that somtimes the bomblets resembe food packets--in Afganistan, they were both yellow and were the same shape.

2003-04-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

Does the free market apply to everyone?

What if I told you that a successful, capitalist-minded news organization that routinely angers fundamentalist Arabic leaders and their governments was being fought by a state-funded radio organization that is relying solely on US government appropriations to survive? Some misguided Democratic plan that doesn't understand the workings of the free market? Michael Powell's worst nightmare? No, Bush Administration policy.

You see, the capitalists here are Al-Jazeera. They show pictures of Iraqis killed by US bombs. Bush & Co., and conservative commentators don't like that. Don't like that they'll show the people we've killed--they're willing to accept that we kill innocent people. Al-Jazeera also shows US POWs. Bush & Co., and the rest also don't like that. Never mind that US networks and newspapers will show Iraqi POWs. There are supposed to be Iraqi POWs, but there aren't supposed to be US POWs. This war was supposed to last two weeks, maybe three weeks tops. When Americans see our POWs, they start wondering why things aren't going as smoothly as promised, and they might start to wonder if Bush & Co. might have been wrong about this whole war thing.

Normally, al-Jazeera would be a good thing. After all, it's independent and although it does still receive funding from the Qatari government, it is not state-run and has a growing customer base in satellite subscribers in the Middle East and Europe. It looks like a model capitalist media outfit.

Yet the US government is paying for a radio and television network for the Middle East. Not offering some support, as Qatar does for al-Jazeera, but keeping it alive by paying for the entire budget. That's not good free-market economics.

Radio Sawa was launched by the US government following Sept. 11, and now a TV network is waiting for funds. In the last two months, the administration has requested $60 million dollars for these media ventures. $60 million might seem like a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the amount that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the governing body of Radio Sawa and the proposed TV network, want:

Included in the Bush administration's recent $74.7 billion supplemental-appropriations request to fund the war in Iraq and homeland security is a $30.5 million request for an upstart broadcast network in the Middle East. It is the second such request for the project in as many months.

"The funding would support startup costs to initiate a Middle East Television Network which would broadcast news and information in Arabic via satellite directly to homes in the Middle East. This network would give people in the region, including Iraq, a means of hearing and understanding American policies and people," says an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) explanation.

In February, the president's fiscal year 2004 international-affairs budget included a similar $30 million request for the network under its controlling authority, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG oversees all nonmilitary U.S. international broadcasting.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, indicated at a March 6 hearing of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary that the BBG's total request was $563.5 million. Part of that funding, he explained, would advance international-broadcasting efforts to support the war on terrorism, including initiation of the Middle East Television Network.

That's over half-a-billion dollars of federal funding for government sponsored media. If this was proposed in the Clinton administration, conservatives and free-choice media commentators would be fuming at the idea of giving any federal funding to radio and TV networks. They hate that public televison receives federal funding, yet no objections are raised when it comes to Radio Sawa or the new TV network.

It seems that the principles of the free market do not apply to all parts of society. After all, if the conservative and free-market worshippers really applied a capitalist lens in considering problems, they'd understand that drug dealers meet a demand in the market, and that illegal immigrants are willing to work for less money and in jobs that other workers would not accept. When it comes to US-funded propaganda, they're willing to look the other way while condemning al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera's independence and capitalist savvy--they provide a service that millions of people are willing to pay for--would seem to be a perfect model for conservatives and capitalists. Yet even the New York Stock Exchange is willing to abandon it's free market principles by excluding al-Jazeera from the NYSE. In the end, ideology trumps economic reality.

2003-04-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

From the BBC:

Iraq maternity hospital 'bombed'

The US military is investigating reports that coalition aircraft have attacked a Red Crescent maternity hospital in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Hospital sources and witnesses quoted by Reuters news agency said their were a number of casualties and some damage at the hospital.

Meanwhile, doctors at a hospital in central Iraq have told the BBC they have dealt with more than 250 fatalities since the start of the US-led war.

Officials at the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Nasariya said all of the deaths were the result of American bombing - and most were civilians.

2003-04-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

LA Times update

I received a response from one of the readers' reps at the Times, saying that he asked the website editor about the editing policy, or if the website editor could reply to me directly. No real answer to my questions--is there an official policy of editing articles that appear on the website, if there is, where can I read it, etc.

I neglected to mention that the title of the original article was changed from "US Accused of Reckless Gunfire" to appear on the website as "US Fire Angers British". Again, I can't fathom why these changes were made. Passages critical of the war, and sympathizing with a British survivor who is angry with the American pilot, were deleted from the article. Also missing is a statistic on the rise of friendly fire in wars since World War I, calling the complete effectiveness of tactical weapons into question. The title change also strikes me as softening criticism of the US--an accusation of "reckless gunfire" from an unnamed source was changed to US fire making the British angry. As if the British would be the only ones angry--the criticism is now linked to a specific source, highlighting a particular party's anger, rather than the reckless gunfire of an American pilot.

These changes really make me, and others, I hope, suspicious.

2003-04-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

LA Times deletes part of friendly-fire article on web

A member of the British Royal Marines that was fired upon by a US plane has spoken out about the incident, in which the unnamed US pilot killed a British soldier. From an article in the LA Times:

The sight of the American A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft should have been a relief to the British soldiers who were sitting nervously in their two Scimitar light tanks Friday, watching as Iraqi villagers approached, waving white flags. According to the British soldier, the American pilot came in low, with a rattling noise that sounded like antitank gunfire from his plane's seven-barrel Gatling gun.

"I believe he was a cowboy," a furious Lance Cpl. Steven Gerrard told the Times of London two days later from his hospital bed aboard the British ship Argus. "There was a boy of about 12 years old. He was no more than 20 meters away when the Yank opened up. There were all these civilians around. He had absolutely no regard for human life."

Gerrard, Lt. Alex MacEwan, 25, and trooper Chris Finney, 18, suffered shrapnel wounds and burns. Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, 25, was killed.

The British troops were outraged, and their anger became public when their unit commander broke the ground rules of silence by reminding some observers of an incident in which an American pilot killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

For some reason, the web version of the article has several paragraphs deleted--the entire last column of the article is missing.

The second-to-last paragraph on the web reads:

The British troops were on a reconnaissance mission 25 miles north of Basra and did not know whether the Iraqis coming toward them intended to surrender. The American pilot, whose name has not been released, made two passes over the scene from what the British soldiers said was about 150 feet above the ground. He began firing from about 1,500 feet away, they said, turning the two Scimitars into flaming metal skeletons.

In the print edition, the above paragraph ends with the following sentence: Hull, who could not escape from his vehicle, was killed on the second pass.

The web version then cuts two paragraphs, and concludes with:

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that defense officials were saddened to hear that the British soldier's death may have been the result of friendly fire.

The print version has two paragraphs before that. They read quite powerfully in the print edition:

British soldiers said the pilot apparently missed seeing the 20-inch wide Union Jack emblem on their vehicles, as well as the frantic waves of the fleeing soldiers.

"This one had broken off and was on his own when he attacked us," said Gerrard, describing how the A-10 pulled away from a formation of "four or five" other American strike aircraft. "He's just gone about on a jolly....He's killed one of my friends, and he's killed him on the second run."

The print article then follows with the sentence on the Pentagon spokesman, a unique juxtaposition following the testimony of Gerrard. There's then a column on friendly fire and guided weapons, and statments from British military figures.

The Times' website has no mention of editing articles for length, so I'm a bit angry that this article was trimmed so heavily. There's also no appropriate people I can contact about this listed in their site feedback area. I've sent an email to the Readers' Representative, sort of an ombudsman, though I've had lenghty waits for responses from the representatives in the past.

2003-04-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

12 days, at least 493 civilians

I hope that everyone is familiar with the Iraq Body Count project. As of this morning, they list a minimum of 493, and a maximum of 652, civilian deaths as the result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. IBC counts, rightly so, deaths since the official "start" of the war, but since there were deaths before March 19 I would say that the war has been going on for quite a while (that's not even mentioning sanctions). For my purposes here, I'll limit numbers beginning March 19. There have been at least 478 civilian casualties since March 19--at 13 days' reports on the IBC website, that's an average of almost 37 innocent Iraqis killed since the official launch of the war. Taking the maximum number (637) since March 19, we get 49 killed a day.

And some wonder why US troops aren't greeted as liberators.

2003-04-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

Perle redux

KPFK had Erik P. Sorensen, the editor of republicons.org on the air this morning. He has a different take on Richard Perle's resignation as chief of the Defense Policy Board. He argues that Perle's pseudo-resignation was the result of his pre-war assertions of an easy fight in Iraq:

The unexpected resignation Richard Perle, one of the chief architects of the US led invasion of Iraq, was largely believed to have stemmed from recent allegations of conflict of interest between his governmental role and his business relationships. Of course, if this were the Bush administration's modus operandi Dick Cheney would have been already shown the door for Halliburton's immediate profiteering in Iraq. So, what else could bring the "Prince of Darkness" to his knees? Could it be his decade in the making war plan for Iraq is not working?

Consider this: The possibility exists that as the US inserts itself further into an increasingly more intractable war in Iraq that the prognostications by Perle and others were wrong. The fiction advanced in the Perle manifesto was based on the assumption that the Iraqi populace rising in full support of the invading troops and ushering Saddam and his minions out of power. It assumed that the Iraqi military would surrender en masse and even the Republican Guard would whither in response the "shock and awe" propagandizing; that the Saddam regime would implode rapidly and the US would be hailed internationally as the liberator of the enslaved Iraqis.

All these predictions and unreasonably Pollyannaish expectations of a brief and decisive conflict that would demonstrate American supremacy and moral rectitude have proven false. In other words, if Perle hadn't resigned, he should have been fired.

I don't completely agree with this, though it is interesting. I think that conflict of interest is not the complete reason--it's that the conflict of interest was becoming widely publicized, thanks to Perle's paranoid persecution fantasies, which he was quite happy to share with the media. I think Sy Hersh should send Perle a nice bottle of wine (probably not French--how about some nice Australian table wine? (any Monty Python fans out there?)) for all of the attention that Perle gave him, and David Remnick should also thank Perle for increasing sales of the New Yorker. Perle's antics became too embarrassing for the Board, which is normally happy working in complete obscurity, planning invasions of countries while Rumsfeld puts a public face to their plans. If faulty planning was the true reason for his resigning the chair, why has no one else been forced to resign--and resign completely, as Perle has not done?

Also, I think it's odd that in the article Sorensen seems to be saying that Perle fully resigned, while on the air this morning he used great care in making sure that no one thought that Perle was gone.

2003-03-31T09:28:00.000-08:00

Book recommendation

Last week I read Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser. I got an advance copy from some old bookstore friends, though it will be released soon (my copy says early May, but Powell's says April 3--odd, considering that new books are usually released on Tuesdays).

I highly recommend it to anyone who read his earlier Fast Food Nation. When I worked in a bookstore, it was always exciting to see customers discussing a book in the store, telling complete strangers about it. It didn't happen much, especially for a nonfiction book. But Fast Food Nation was a book that caught fire with the public, and was in part a catalyst for a national discussion on fast food and industrialized farming. I hope that Reefer Madness does the same for these topics.

The book discusses the importance of the underground economy, for both the incredible figures of illegal transactions in America and the rest of the world, and the influence this illicit activity has on society. The longest, and least effective section to me, discusses the proliferation of pornography since the 1960s. I thought it went too long in comparison with the other topics. Schlosser tells the story of the growing acceptance, and profitability, of porn through Reuben Sturman. We find out that this unknown man is one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century. The Meese Commission found out that Sturman dominated the production and distribution of porn in the US and throughout the world. Schlosser alternates between explaining the history of porn in America, and it's growing place in society and the legal troubles of Sturman. At times the section seemed kind of disjointed, and it seems that Schlosser could fill a book with this section alone--perhaps for the better of both this story, and the larger book at hand.

The two earlier sections deal with drug sentencing laws and immigrant labor. The drug section is the one that I think will most capture attention for the book. It's a strong argument for marijuana legalization and more humane drug sentencing. If this book takes off like Fast Food Nation did, expect these topics to be discussed more openly. He has several examples of the ridiculously cruel "mandatory minimums" in comparison to sentences for crimes like rape or murder. It's a lengthy first section, and one that I wish would have been longer.

The section on migrant labor seems like the odd man out, between pot and porn. It's short, almost like a longer magazine article. Schlosser discusses the importance of migrant labor for the agriculture industry, especially in California (where he focuses on). I also wish that this could have been longer. While in the pot section he argues against too much government control (in sentences that are imposed by legislation, rather than judges), in this section he points out that more enforcement is needed in labor regulations. Rather than the idiotic arguments that scapegoat illegal immigrants for all of society's ills, Schlosser argues that the workers are victims of a free market that's out of control; wages keep declining while profits increase for the owners of large operations. Even small-time growers cannot survive in this world. Illegal labor continues because the owners hire migrant workers, at decreasing wages, and the demand for work increases for men trying to earn enough money to send back to their families in Mexico. Schlosser concludes the section by visiting a modern-day shantytown in San Diego County, where migrant workers must live because of the dearth of affordable housing.

I strongly recommend this book. Schlosser discusses these familiar topics honestly, with an eye to effecting changes in American society.

2003-03-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

New media blog!

Avedon Carol of the Sideshow and Lisa English of Ruminate This have teamed up for a new blog, We Want the Airwaves!. Unlike the section of the Sideshow with the same title, this new site is in a blog format, with comments so we can all be a part of the media process. Check it out.

2003-03-31T08:53:00.000-08:00

What I'd been fearing

An article in today's Guardian claims that government leaks show that the US is planning to privatize Iraq's economy, particularly the national oil company:

Experts on its energy panel want to start with "downstream" assets like retail petrol stations. This would be a quick way to gouge money from Iraqi consumers. Later they would privatise exploration and development.

Even if majority ownership were restricted to Iraqis, Russia's grim experience of energy privatisation shows how a new class of oil magnates quickly send their profits to offshore banks. If the interests of all Iraqis are to be protected, it would be better to keep state control and modify the UN oil-for-food programme, which has been a relatively efficient and internationally supervised way of channelling revenues to the country's poor.

This is in the middle of the article, and the rest is about Arab perceptions of the war and what will come after. Jonathan Steele, the author, doesn't explain if he received the leaks, or if they were made public by someone else. It's the first time that I've heard about this.

While he's not claiming that the US will control the oil, with privitization US interests will surely be considered by whoever is in charge.

2003-03-30T13:14:00.000-08:00

A liberal columnist! In a major paper!

I had never paid much attention to Steve Lopez's column in the Times, and now I'm kicking myself. I'm usually weary of local columnists--most of the ones that I've read always fashion themselves as journalistic crusaders while always too self-involved. But some of his recent columns have been great. Here's some examples from today's column, "The War's Dirty Secret: It's About Changing United States, Not Iraq"...

Much to her surprise, the federal government is promising to do everything Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters has spent years fighting for.

Education for the neediest souls will be transformed, quality health care will be guaranteed, damaged roadways and bridges will be rebuilt, and millions of dollars will be spent to spur new business.

Waters just never figured the beneficiaries would be residents of Iraq.

A few weeks ago, when I spent several hours with her in Washington as the start of the war approached, Waters had begun to fear the worst.

"I'm very worried about the long-term impact," she said, predicting that as the cost of the war grows, states, counties and cities will get stiffed.

Waters wasn't talking about the weeks and months ahead, but the years and decades to come. The cost of the war and rebuilding Iraq, she said, could drastically limit what government can do.

The effort to turn Iraq into a democracy, in other words, is making the U.S. less of one. Our opposition party has disappeared, corporate interests dictate public policy, and the feds may be rummaging through your e-mail.

There's a dirty secret no one has told you, and here it is: This war is not about changing Iraq, it's about changing America.

Unless you're lucky enough to be an investor in one of the corporations that will win multimillion-dollar contracts to rebuild Iraq, you may be hurting when the cost of the war and a new era of deficit spending put even more of a drag on the economy.

If you don't earn enough to hit the jackpot on President Bush's proposed tax cuts, you're just going to have to fend for yourself. The whole idea is to train you to expect less and to feel patriotic about it.

If things get really bad, you can always move to Iraq.

...

We're asking 200,000 troops to risk life and limb in Iraq, and the White House and Congress are preparing a welcome-home party by slashing veterans' benefits.

Last week, I visited the Veterans Affairs dorms in West L.A., where I met a Vietnam vet who was wounded six times. He had a brace on his leg and shrapnel scars from head to toe, and he'd finally given up on his fight for enough disability pay to live on.

When I walked away, patients were calling out to me, saying there's no hot water for showers.

Things are not looking good for the future veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

By Waters' count, current budget proposals would trim $15 billion from veterans' programs -- something's got to cover those big tax cuts -- over the next 10 years.

And that's if there are no unforeseen costs in the rebuilding of Iraq.

Good stuff, even better considering that this runs on the front page of the local section, not in the Times' hidden op-ed page (back of the local section, rather than the front news page).

2003-03-30T13:03:00.000-08:00

Trade and postwar Iraq

The first article is by Warren Vieth, "Allied Victory Could Sow the Seeds of a Trade Fight". Since the LA Times' website requires registration (and a difficult registration process at that), and has way too many popups, I'll snip from the article. Basically, it describes a possible confrontation between American and Australian wheat farmers following the end of the war. Before Gulf War I, American farmers supplied almost half of Iraq's grain. Between the wars, Australia became the major importer, under the oil for food program.

The American growers have a big stake in this:

American wheat farmers could use the business. U.S. farm income fell 22% last year, according to the Agriculture Department. Wheat exports are expected to decline to about 25 million tons this year, the lowest level since 1972, in the face of new competition from Russia and other low-cost producers.

Prices have fallen too, from last September's drought-induced high of $4.89 a bushel for hard red winter wheat to Friday's close of $3.16. Government subsidies are designed to ensure that U.S. farmers receive the equivalent of $3.86 a bushel no matter the market price, but farmers say even higher prices are needed to operate a farm profitably through good years and bad.

...

Agricultural analysts say that if Iraq's market opens up, the United States should be able to recapture its pre-1990 market share of about 1 million tons a year. At current prices, that would generate $150 million in annual sales. But the impact on market prices would be disproportionately larger, economists say. A 4% increase in U.S. exports might boost prices by 8%, or about 25 cents a bushel.

"Any time you can remove some wheat from the market, you're going to strengthen the price. That's the big, big picture," said Bonnie Fernandez, executive director of the California Wheat Commission. "You're moving product out and creating demand."

While the article doesn't get into the issue of the size of the farms producing wheat--family-owned farms vs. large agribusiness operations--that stand to gain from selling to Iraq, it does raise the issue of other sectors that could profit from trade deals following the war:

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime could open Iraq's markets to a wide range of U.S. commercial transactions currently prohibited under an executive order signed in 1990 by President Bush's father. U.S. exports to Iraq in 1989 totaled $1 billion, including more than $900 million in agricultural goods, according to the U.S.-Iraq Business Council. But in recent years, there have been essentially none.

U.S. telecommunication firms, for example, including San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., are pressing the government to ensure that the reconstruction of Iraq's phone network incorporates a wireless technology they favor, instead of a rival system backed by European firms. Their cause has been taken up by Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista), whose district is near San Diego.

Administration officials insist that the potential to expand U.S. commercial trade has no bearing on the decisions they make about Iraq. "We're not even thinking about it at this point," said Alisa Harrison, spokeswoman for Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman. "The focus is purely on humanitarian assistance and having a successful outcome of the war."

But agricultural experts say the U.S. has used food aid in the past to introduce foreign markets -- such as Indonesia -- to American farm products.

"Through history we've seen examples of where food aid has helped turn a market into viable, cash-paying customers," said North Dakota Wheat Commission spokeswoman Ellen Huber. "If we see the oppression lifted and a freer economy in Iraq, we would hope they might one day become customers."

2003-03-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

It's not often that I find something to praise in the LA Times--the middle of the news section is usually taken up by six pages of Robinsons-May lingerie ads, and on Sunday it's even worse, with about three pages of Ralphs' coupons. I used to shop at Ralphs, but I don't anymore, so they're of even less value to me now. That said, I'll devote two posts to stories from the LAT today.

2003-03-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

The Village Voice has come up with a perfect name for Democrats who go along with the administration: Bush League Democrats. At least I think that they came up with it--I haven't seen that used anywhere else. Article here.

2003-03-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

War saps consumer confidence

Fears mounted last night that war in Iraq will bring global economic recovery skidding to a halt, after surveys showed consumers on both sides of the Atlantic more pessimistic than at any time since the mid-90s.

As stock markets resumed their decline yesterday, with wary investors waiting in vain for upbeat news from the battlefield, the closely watched Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed US confidence at its lowest level since September 1993. The index declined for a third successive month, to 77.6 from 79.9 in February.

In Britain, confidence was on the slide even before the tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border, according to the monthly Martin Hamblin GfK barometer, which showed its lowest reading since December 1995. In a survey carried out before full-blown conflict began last week, GfK found households less confident about both their own finances, and the future of the general economic situation than a month ago. Its general index of confidence registered minus 10, down from minus 9 in February.

Rampant consumer spending has propped up economic growth in both the US and Britain over the past year, despite weak corporate demand as firms worked off the excesses of the dotcom years. But analysts fear households will tighten their belts, threatening fragile growth, as they wait for military action to be over.

Just how much can our first MBA president ruin our economy and thin people's savings? We'll have to wait until January 2005 to see. If W. loses next November, I wouldn't be suprised if he f-ed things up even more before he left. The fiscal equivalent of burning oil wells.

2003-03-28T14:14:00.000-08:00

Short memories

Nicholas Lemann, in an article in this week's New Yorker (March 31, 2003 issue), parrots the myth that Saddam Hussein kicked out the weapons inspectors in 1998. I'm not done with the article yet, and he's already said it twice.

First paragraph: "...when Saddam Hussein forced to United Nations weapons inspectors to leave, in 1998."

Later on, third page: "The consensus after the expulsion of the weapons inspectors in 1998..."

FAIR has been all over this. They have a priceless list, comparing media outlets' statements in 1998 and 2002, and how they completely contradict their earlier coverage. What really happened: Richard Butler pulled out the IAEA inspectors after Hussein refused to cooperate. He withdrew the inspectors without Security Council authority at the behest of the Clinton Administration, who then launched military attacks on Iraq. Remember wag the dog?

2003-03-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

Who wants some of this?

Atrios has a post, with two links on Syria--one that notes that Saddam could be planning to flee to that country, where his family is now, and one on Donald Rumsfeld's warning to Syria in his press conference today. I hadn't heard about the exile speculation. It doesn't take a genius, though it's hopefully not inevitable, to see that one plus one equals more war.

2003-03-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

Talk about egg on the face...

From Hesiod:

War Money Accidentally Offered to Peaceful Slovenia

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - The United States mistakenly named Slovenia as a partner in its war against Iraq and even offered it a share of the money budgeted for the conflict, the tiny Alpine nation said on Thursday.

One day after hundreds of Slovenians hit the streets to protest the inclusion of their nation in Tuesday's U.S. war budget, Prime Minister Anton Rop said Washington goofed.

Original story here.

I wonder if we still tried to get them to join the rootenest, tootenest, most kick ass Coalition of the Willing in the whole damn world. "You sure you don't want $4.5 million? C'mon, just let us keep some troops in your country. It's so close to Iraq, so it'd really help us out. What? You're in the Alps? Well, you could spend the money on getting people to know where exactly Slovenia is..."

2003-03-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

Tony Judt in the NY Review of Books:

What is missing in recent American commentary is not so much an appreciation of history—there has been too much of that, with "Munich" invoked at every turn. What is lacking is a sense of the tragic. If the US has had such a long run of foreign policy successes in the modern age, it is in large measure because, as Dean Acheson once put it, "we were fortunate in our opponents." This may not last. We were also fortunate in our leaders. This has certainly not lasted. There is much confident talk of the coming American century; but one hundred years ago many thought it was Germany that held the keys to the new era—and they had good reasons for thinking it. As Raymond Aron once remarked, the twentieth century could have been the German century.

Things can go wrong very fast, even and perhaps especially for an over-reaching great power. Like the German planners of 1914, today's Washington strategists are obsessed with challenges, timetables, windows of opportunity—and the eschatological urge to tear down a frustrating international order and remake it in their image. They, too, have exaggerated the threats and underestimated the risks. That is as far as the analogy goes—Imperial Germany and Republican America have little else in common. But hubris is not a shortcoming peculiar to any one constitutional form; and the inability to envisage nemesis is modern America's distinctive failing.

To be sure, things can go right, too, and the twenty-first century may yet belong to America. But just now, as Zhou Enlai is reported to have replied when asked what he thought were the consequences of the French Revolution, it's too soon to tell. In the meantime, as they are about to go to war, our leaders are betting the farm on the dream of a world that will for the foreseeable future perform America's bidding on nonnegotiable American terms. When, at the dawn of the American age, George Kennan urged that the US contain the Soviet challenge, he added: "It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward 'toughness.'" Fifty-six years on, his advice goes unheeded. It is a bad sign.

He obviously wrote this before the war started. His review of Robert Kagan's book (part of this essay) is worth reading on its own.

2003-03-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

Result

The USGS map is up--a 2.8 quake, 1 mile south of Encino.

2003-03-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

The joys of Los Angeles

Had an earthquake right now. A little one, and it's been unusually windy since last night, so it was hard to tell if this was a quake at first, me being in a flimsy apartment building and all. But since my cat's been sleeping through the wind all night and suddenly woke up now, I'll say it was a minor quake, in the 2.5-4.0 range. I'll go with 3.2. Ho hum. I'm waiting for the USGS website to update to see if my prediction pans out.

2003-03-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

Tonight on FOX: American Idol's Special Treatment

I don't follow American Idol, so I had no idea that one of the contestants was a Marine. I also had no idea that unlike others in his unit from Camp Pendleton, Lance Corporal Josh Gracin is staying stateside. I read about this in Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood column in the new LA Weekly:

The hypocrisy of it all. This Gracin guy's presence on American Idol ignites cheers whereas that Moore guy's words at the Academy Awards incite jeers. Even days later, right-wing talk-radio hosts and callers were talking, talking and talking some Moore, offering to kick "that leftist bastard's traitorous, unpatriotic, commie ass" all the way to Paris, and Baghdad and hell. (Too bad we'll never know the reaction of the supposedly right-minded had Michael Moore stuck to his original plan: "If I win the Oscar, to say nothing. Just ask for a moment of silence and stand there for those 45 seconds.")

But not a word against Gracin from those microphone hogs Rush Limbaugh (best friends with Fox News chief Roger Ailes, who also produced the talker's short-lived TV show), or Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity (both Fox News anchors), or any other self-appointed arbiter of what constitutes proper patriotic American behavior and thinks of Fox News as the Mother Ship. Like him or not, Moore is too old for the military, while Gracin, the latest poster boy for the Marines, is on active duty in the middle of Hollywood.

Go figure. But when you do, add up how much that charter member of Big Media, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and its cavalcade of corporate sponsors have invested in the singing contest. On Wednesday night, just as the war was starting at about 6:40 p.m. PST, Fox Entertainment's TV network didn't dare dump the show. Instead, the suits showed the hourlong program in its entirety beginning at 8:15 p.m. in L.A. and beat coverage of the U.S. attack on Iraq to win the evening with an 8.6 rating and 12 share that rose to 10.4 and 14 in the last half-hour. (General Electric's NBC also stuck to its Thursday night lineup of sitcoms, and won the ratings war with repeats.)

...

Camp Pendleton spokeswoman, Captain Alison Salerno, even admitted to reporters back on January 27 that the Marines saw "the recruiting value in Gracin's appearances before a national audience as well as appreciated his talent and recognized the benefits of allowing him to continue competing." In other words, Gracin had become a military marionette. (Albeit a plump one. After Brit bully Simon Cowell pointed to the young man's protruding stomach, Gracin dropped to the ground and gave him straight-armed pushups.)

Finke finishes the column with a "God bless the real soldiers" conclusion, which I think misses the points that she argues earlier--that the military knows that Gracin is a good face for the Marines, one watched by many young people every week. Instead of spending money on more Jerry Bruckheimer-produced reality shows to attract new recruits, here's free publicity, a singer-soldier that can literally become "America's Idol". The lines between war and entertainment blur ever more.

The networks have three-dimensional animations to show targets in Baghdad, and fetishize the weapons dropped on Iraq through video-game graphics and simulations.

A commercial for a game for PlayStation and XBox showed kids in a suburban living room playing opponents over the internet, who just happen to be soldiers relaxing in a tent in the desert. Why not, when war is shown to be like a video game, and video games put you in the role of a sharpshooter in war (there was even a game that put you on a mission to assassinate Saddam Hussein).

Meanwhile, not a peep from the conservative talking heads who excoriate Hollywood liberals for "demoralizing the troops." Here's a soldier who has been given special treatment so he can compete in a Hollywood talent show--at the behest of Fox, that most rabid warmongering network!

The meanings of this story send my head spinning.

2003-03-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

While the article quoted below is obviously not meant to be taken seriously I think that it reveals larger truths in its absurdity, as good satire should do. We've all heard from the media that Hussein has a group of decoys and look-alikes (well, since they're Saddam's, they'd be a "cabal" or "gang"). It points to the paranoia and corruption of Hussein, while our leaders are strong and decent.

There are a lot of good points to be made on the use of language in talking about both leaders, and the Iraqi and American governments, by someone with more linguistic analysis capabilities than me. Geoffrey Nunberg does this on "Fresh Air" and sometimes in the Sunday NY Times' Week in Review section. One example--interesting that Hussein has "bunkers," while Dick Cheney has his "secure and undisclosed location." I would also guess that most of the time Hussein is described as "hiding" while that cowardly and passive verb would never be used to describe Cheney or any other officials. Not that I think this language use is limited to describing our current administration--it's part of the discourse surrounding our accepted self-identities.

Typing this, I've made sure to use "Hussein" and not "Saddam"--another example of the use of language (I wouldn't call Bush "George", unless it was "George, the Boy Prince," but hey, that's just me). I don't think the message conveyed by referring to a declared enemy by his first, rather than last, name.

To get back to the main point, I think it boils down to "Saddam bad, America good". I won't say "Bush good", because the media is not focusing on Bush alone, while all attention has been made to focus on Hussein, or those fighting on his behalf. The Republican Guard is always described as loyal to Saddam, and the Iraqi forces are never conceived as fighting for Iraq. How many times have you heard the 3rd Infantry described as Bush loyalists willing to give up their lives for their president?

On NPR yesterday morning, they were describing the American bombing of the civilian neighborhood in Baghdad. They're correspondent was describing the carnage on the scene, how people were showing her detachted limbs and even had collected the brains from one of the causalties in a can to show her the destruction of innocent lives. The NPR anchor's (it was on Morning Edition, but I didn't recognize the voice) reaction can be summarized as: "Is it certain that this is the result of a US bombing, or is there the possibility that Iraqi anti-aircraft fire caused this?" Granted, Hussein has a tremendously horrible record but here is someon on NPR--which many consider to be far more liberal than the mainstrem media, even to be an "alternative" source--attempted to ascribe civilain deaths to Iraqi efforts to strike US planes before even entertaining the thought that they could be the result of US efforts.

This argument is repeated in the articles on this incident, including this excerpt from the New York Times' article:

Asked if American bombs or missiles could have caused the explosions, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, at a Central Command briefing at the United States war headquarters in Qatar, said: "We don't know that they were ours. We can't say that we had anything to do with that." He acknowledged that "mistakes can occur," but said that it was too early to know whether an American strike had hit the wrong target. "Right now, we simply don't know," he said.

The counterpoint, General Brooks suggested, was also true — that nobody could be sure that the explosions had not been set off by Iraqis assigned by Mr. Hussein to plant a bomb in a public place and blame the United States for it.

That is a military officer using the argument, however. The NPR anchor made it on his own, without quoting any military officials.

2003-03-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

Subversive British humor

There is a satrical article in today's Guardian on decoys--George W. Bush's decoys, that is...

It has long been suspected that Mr Bush employs a string of lookalikes for difficult or dangerous speaking engagements, some of whom may have had their ears specially enlarged for the task.

Most of those who regularly monitor Mr Bush's speech patterns believe that it was the genuine article who spoke at Central Command HQ in Florida yesterday, pointing to a characteristic tendency toward quasi-biblical phrasing - "There will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime, and that day is drawing in near" - and an almost total absence of words of more than three syllables.

Other experts disagree, pointing out that these consistencies originate with speech writers rather then the president himself, and that Bush's main vocal technique - the bewildered pause - is only too easy to imitate.
...
For now, Bush-watchers are refusing to say publicly whether or not this is the real president of the United States or a clever, surgically-altered lookalike.

Privately, however, they have carefully observed this confused-looking man, with his stiff, empty gestures and false gravitas.

They have noted his peculiar phrasing, which gives little indication that he understands the content of what he is saying.

They have examined his every doomsday platitude, scrutinised his baffled expression and noted that he seems uncomfortable and completely lost whenever the teleprompter is switched off.

And they have concluded that it must really be him.

2003-03-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

Time on your hands?

Go read through the extensive links roundup at the Watch. This blog lives up to its name. It would be living up to its name even more if it was called "extensive links for your reading pleasure." *Thank you, please tip your waitress and drive safely.* I would endorse this, even if they didn't mention me in it. My ears are burning!

2003-03-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Don't ask--we have our reasons

The secrecy continues in the White House.

Millions of government documents will remain sealed under a new executive order that delays their automatic declassification for more than three years and makes it easier to reclassify some papers that might damage national security.

Amending a less restrictive order signed by President Clinton, President Bush's action Tuesday gives agencies until the end of 2006 to release the documents, which include military, diplomatic, and foreign policy papers expected to shed light on national security decision-making.

I have no idea why 2006 was chosen--I honestly would think that Bush would want to keep things secret permanently. But by no means is this a victory. A clause in the executive order is mentioned later in the article, from the AP:

...Aftergood said he was happy to see that Bush's order did not abolish the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), set up under Clinton's order in 1995. If an agency refuses to declassify a certain document, requesters can appeal to the panel, which has overruled agencies 76% of the time.

But Blanton noted a new provision in Bush's order that gives the CIA the authority to reject appeals panel decisions.

"Giving the CIA a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' at ISCAP means the current 76% rate at which it rules for requesters will soon drop -- maybe not all the way to Uzbekistan's levels, but to Langley's, which are close," he said.

So if you're one of the lucky 24% to have the ISCAP accept your appeal, the CIA--which, correct me if I am wrong, is supposed to have no part in domestic policing or security--can still deny it. "Can" in this case meaning "will".

This is part of a larger administration goal in keeping goverment documents completely declassified. Speaking as a historian, this is frightening. I don't think it's unreasonalbe to point out that some in the Bush administration have an interest in keeping their past activities secret--Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush to protect Poppy. Why keep Reagan and Bush administration dealings secret? Well, wouldn't you like to know.

From an article in the Nation, earlier this year:

After September 11 the Administration had virtual carte blanche to stall any and all document releases, and it did so boldly. In November Bush issued an executive order that declared that not only could a former President assert executive privilege over his papers against the will of the incumbent President (a measure Reagan instituted just before he left office) but that a sitting President could also block the papers of a predecessor, even if that predecessor had approved their release.
...
Whereas in the past the White House had to prove that it had a compelling reason to withhold information, Bush's executive order places the burden on researchers and others to prove that they have a compelling need for the information. This effectively eviscerates the Presidential Records Act.

The pièce de résistance, which scholars and legal experts find especially alarming, is a section that allows a former President to appoint a representative to manage the release of papers after his death (or, as in the case of Reagan, incapacitation). "The question we have to ask ourselves is, Do we want the children, grandchildren and fellow workers [of a former President] to make these decisions?" says Anna Nelson. "These are public records."

This really makes those bumper stickers that say "Bush/Orwell 2004" seem a little too real (even though Orwell, you know, was against that kind of stuff).

Information can be dangerous. The article on this in today's LA Times ran on page 24, four pages before the end of the news section. It's shocking how little attention is being paid to these efforts to keep information secret. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious--efforts to keep government documents secret given little publicity and almost no attention by the media. Strange days indeed.

2003-03-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

Al-Jazeera: Irresponsible Business Coverage?

Foundthis in today's Guardian:

The New York stock exchange has banned al-Jazeera from its trading floor, prompting accusations that it was retaliating against the Arabic-language TV network's stance on the war in Iraq.

A reporter for al-Jazeera, which has been criticised by the US military for its coverage of conflict, has been barred from entering the exchange while another has been ordered to return his press card.

A spokesman for the NYSE said it was limiting access to "responsible" broadcasters and insisted other broadcasters had also been affected.

But al-Jazeera, which has covered the New York stock market for several years, said it believed it was the only channel affected by the action and attributed the decision to its stance on the war.

"Al-Jazeera has received an official letter from the New York stock exchange informing it that the station's financial reporters can no longer present their reports from the exchange," the satellite channel reported today on its morning financial broadcast.

It claimed the decision had been taken "because of al-Jazeera's coverage of the war on Iraq".

A spokesman for the NYSE said it was limiting the number of broadcasters in the stock exchange building for security reasons, adding that it was retaining those broadcasters that focused "on responsible business coverage".

Of course, the NYSE spokesman's statements beg the question, what is responsible business coverage? I had no idea that al-Jazeera even covered the NYSE, and I guess that I wasn't alone.

The sad thing is, I can see this happening to an American network that steps on some toes. Of course, that would mean that an American network would have to cover the war critically, and I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

2003-03-25T08:26:00.000-08:00

Even Canadians?

Members of the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor were held for questioning after a gas station attendant looked at the nine-member band, thought that they might be terrorists, and called the police. I guess GYBE's brand of instrumental rock--quiet and delicate guitars changing to blistering soundscapes--doesn't play well in Oklahoma, where this happened. The full report is at Pitchforkmedia. An excerpt:

Before even having a chance to leave the station, the group was reportedly surrounded by police cars and FBI agents who, a representative for Chicago's Abbey Pub, where the band played this weekend, said had guns drawn. The band was held for questioning for roughly three hours before finally being released as innocents. "They get hassled by The Man regularly," said Bruce Adams, co-founder of the Chicago-based label Kranky. "Police pulling them over, anything you can imagine. It's just the feeling in the country right now."

"I just feel very lucky that we weren't Pakistani or Korean," Godspeed You! Black Emperor frontman Efrim Menuck told Pitchfork at the band's Chicago performance on Friday night. "They detained 1,000 people in California, no one knows what happened to them. We're just lucky we're nice white kids from Canada. That's what I feel lucky about."

Nice white kids from Canada? While they were released, maybe they're lucky that the FBI agents probably have no idea about their political beliefs. Their most recent album is titled Yanqui U.X.O. What does that mean, you ask? To quote a press release from their label, Constellation, "U.X.O.' is unexploded ordnance is landmines is cluster bombs...'Yanqui' is post-colonial imperialism is international police state is multinational corporate oligarchy. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is complicit is guilty is resisting. The new album is just music." The label's website offers a diagram made by bandmember Menuck, connecting media conglomerates and weapons manufactuers.

This story strikes me as important because, as Menuck said, they're "nice white kids from Canada." I don't want this to be taken as an endorsement of ethnic profiling, but it's striking that these white kids looked like terrorists to the gas station attendant. They probably looked out of place in Oklahoma, and I'm sure that fact contributed to his suspicion. Have we gone so far as to think that anyone that looks different--by their skin color, hair, or dress--could be a terrorist? It seems so ridiculous, like the scenes in Easy Rider, where Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper get dirty looks when going through the South. I didn't think that that would happen again in this country, but here we are. But instead of being shot by some rednecks in a pickup truck, today you'll end up detained without access to an attorney and no public record of your arrest.

2003-03-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

Contrasitng coverage

There's a good article in today's Ha'aretz on the coverage of the war. It explains the coverage here in the US to their readers, and reading the article you realize how ridiculous the prevailing tone is, if you haven't noticed before. I can't watch too much, so I usually don't see the whoppers from CNN or Faux News.

...CNN reporter Walter Rogers, who is attached to the U.S. Army's Seventh Cavalry, and reports from inside one of the tanks moving across the desert, supplied the clearest example of the tone of the coverage: In a conversation with his colleague, correspondent Christiane Amanpour, he reported excitedly, almost ecstatically, that he was moving inside "a huge wave of steel." He added that it was like "galloping inside the belly of a dragon," quoted with pride the commander of the brigade, who said, "If we meet Iraqis along the way, we'll simply kill them, we'll find the enemy and grab him by the nose," and even specifically added: "It's more than exciting, Christiane, to see this huge armored force rolling across the desert in the direction of Baghdad."

I would add that this is not limited to TV by any means. I searched yesterday's NY Times in vain for any mention of the attack in Basra that killed 50 people, although it was mentioned in the LA Times, and in this "interview" of Hafez Al-Miraz, Al-Jazeera's Washington correspondent, by Aaron Brown on CNN.

2003-03-24T12:31:00.000-08:00

Well...

Osama, ganged up with Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, Jacques Chirac and some casual pot smokers did not bomb the Academy Awards, as some were fearing. It seems that was the fear, judging by the police presence. And that's what terrorists would choose to target, right? It makes me think of this one driveway to a tower in Century City, here in LA. Every car is stopped and searched by a team of guards, who check your ID, make you open your trunk, and look underneath your car with a mirror. All that to go to a movie theater, or some entertainment offices in this building. Forget about Hollywood being "anti-American"--Hollywood's really conceited for thinking that they're the biggest targets for international terrorists! As if!

Anyways...Jake at Lying Media Bastards has a good post on his experiences walking around Hollywood (where the Oscars are now actually being held...most celebrities would normally not be caught dead in what is actually Hollywood. But thanks to the behemoth Hollywood and Highland shopping center, where the Kodak Theater is, some glamour can now be found on Hollywood Blvd, a street of tatoo parlors, souvenir stores, and Scientology buildings).

I would add that LA's Chief Bratton was criticizing the antiwar protests earlier for taking police officers away from other areas that they could be patrolling, but made no mention of the phalanx for the Academy Awards.

Haven't seen this large a police presence since the Democratic National Convention in 2000, when the city was an abosolute warzone, no joke.

I can attest that the number of police deployed (the only word to describe it) during the DNC was huge. But they needed that many to corral us demonstrators into a fenced-off area and then fire tear gas into the crowd and charge in on horses without warning.

2003-03-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

Back to reality

Out all day today enjoying the sunshine in Long Beach and the awards in Lakewood (Suburbia, USA--Levittown was built first, but Lakewood was the first planned suburb built around a shopping center, with other local shopping centers located within walking distance from each house in the original plan. And Lakewood also grew by young couples buying homes on the GI plan--homes in which they started the baby boom...for those reasons, I consider my hometown to be the first suburb). What can I say? Scorsese must be cursed. I can't fathom that nominations for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Gangs of New York (not that these are all his best films, though I think moments in Gangs can be considered some of the best scenes he's done) still haven't brought him an Oscar. Welles, Hitchcock, and Kubrick never won Best Director, so I guess he's in good company. No discredit to Polanski.

Randy Paul at Beautiful Horizons has a really powerful post. He's angry, as he, and we all, should be. He's responding to a post at a website called "Dixie Flatline," in which the writer was immediately sure that the soldier responsible for the attack in the camp was Muslim. He knows that he'll be called a racist and a religious bigot, but insists that those are the facts, and that Muslims should be suspected because they are more loyal to their religion than their country (I refuse to link to this. It's a sobering read, but since Randy already has a link I don't think it deserves any more. Follow the link there if you want to get the author's words). I would add that that substitute "Jews" for "Muslims" and "Israel" for "Islam", and you have the old claim of dual allegiance, a scapegoat for perpetrating anti-Semitism.

Randy responds to this, and many other arguments being thrown about by the (much more respectable) pro-war crowd:

One final thing to ask yourselves (and you know who you are): if you are so confident of the rightness of your beliefs, why, then, do you feel the need to exaggerate, to smear with guilt by the most tenuous of associations, to impugn the motives of others who may very well share some of your goals, but object strongly to your methods?

I urge you to disabuse yourselves of the belief that you and those who share your beliefs hold a monopoly on the moral high ground.

Go read all of it. I couldn't say it better myself.

2003-03-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

"Fuck Saddam"

So said our president. Via Atrios--the direct link to the post was sending me to a different one.

2003-03-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

This is a little frightening

Seth Goldberg opened his suitcase after a flight from San Diego to Seattle to find a note from airport security informing him that his bag had been searched. To his relief, his "No Iraq War" placards were undisturbed; however, the bag checker had left a snippy written message: "Don't appreciate your anti-American attitude!" Goldberg, 41, from New Jersey, told the Seattle Times: "I found it chilling and a little Orwellian."

I don't have anything to add to that.

2003-03-22T18:28:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen anyone write on this yet:

About 50 Iraqi civilians were killed in coalition bombing of the southern city of Basra, the independent Arab-language satellite station Al-Jazeera claimed last night.

In footage seen across the Arab world, the station aired grisly and explicit images of the dead and wounded, including a child with the back of its skull blown off and blood-stained people being treated on the floor of a hospital.

That's from an article in the Independent. I heard Aaron Brown mention that on CNN, I believe, and I went to Al-Jazeera's website via Cursor's page with the Arabic translation. The story on Basra was not translated, for some reason, but the main image on the page was the dead child. Horrifying.

No mention on CNN's website of the Al-Jazeera story, but Google News has several links to papers running the wire story.

2003-03-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

TalkLeft has brought to my attention an article in tomorrow's NY Times (available today), in the Styles section, on LA police chief William Bratton. Being in the Styles section, it's not what you would call a piece of hard-hitting journalism. I think writers for junior high papers and church bulletins would cringe at Monica Corcoran's fawning in the article:

On Tuesday night, Chief Bratton, the brassy 55-year-old former police commissioner of New York, was expected at a party at the Skybar at the Mondrian Hotel. The party was for Los Angeles Confidential magazine, which was celebrating its Oscars/spring fashion issue. Adrien Brody, a nominee for the Oscar for best actor, and Dennis Hopper were among the guests....

...At precisely 7 p.m., Chief Bratton arrived at the Skybar wearing a conservative dark suit. He eyed this red carpet, patted down his short silver hair and surged forward.

"Hey, I'm seeing you in all the right places," the chief said to Mr. Brody. "We have to get you out to my neighborhood for dinner. There's a great restaurant called Vermont where nobody will bother you." Mr. Brody nodded agreeably.

He's a busy man. The ACLU alleges that he's also busy violating the Fourth Amendment rights of the homeless in Downtown's Skid Row. The ACLU and the National Lawyer's Guild has filed suit against Chief Bratton and the LAPD for violating the civil liberties of some homeless.

In late November of 2002, the LAPD began a series of "probation sweeps" in the skid row area. The purpose of the sweeps was to arrest purported parole and probation violators said to be living among the residents of skid row. Over 250 LAPD officers took part in the sweeps, together with officers from the U.S. Marshals Service, the California Highway Patrol, County Probation and parole agents from the California Department of Corrections. Law enforcement officials swept through the area, raiding low-income hotels or SROs, and stopping people randomly on the streets and sidewalks of the neighborhood. In many cases, residents were subject to unlawful searches and seizures.

"I was in my room and the next thing I knew there were about fifteen police officers outside my door," said Donald Fitzgerald, resident of the Simone Hotel, an area SRO. "The police came in and just started searching my room, asking me what the conditions of my parole were."

Upon searching his room, officers found eating utensils including a fork and knife. Mr. Fitzgerald was informed that the possession of the knife was a violation of his parole. He was taken into custody on an alleged violation of his parole for possession of the eating utensil. He was held for a total of six days, though no charges were ever filed against him for any crime or violation of the terms and conditions of his parole. As a result of his detention and missing work, he was fired from his job as a grounds maintenance person.

On the issue of cheap housing and Single Room Occupancy hotels (SRO), the following article from the LA Weekly is also informative:

For a movement involving so many different interests, with such broad implications for the life of the city, the drive to clean up Skid Row can be attributed to a surprisingly finite source: developer Tom Gilmore and his audacious plans to revitalize L.A.’s downtown core.

A native of New York, Gilmore took a look at the dilapidated and sometimes boarded-up buildings of L.A.’s central city and became convinced that he could breathe life into a district that had become an economic ghost town.

In that, Gilmore has largely succeeded. Where city officials issued just 400 permits for construction of new residential units in 1999, the year Gilmore started, this year that figure grew to more than 4,000. In the meantime, the downtown corridor has added Staples sports arena, a new cathedral, and a new concert hall is nearly finished. The value of commercial property is surging....

...the service providers who work on Skid Row have become just as frustrated. They say they’ve been working for years to help poor people find shelter and patch their lives together, only to see the “revitalization” movement snapping up what little low-cost housing is available. “You tear down slum buildings, and all you do is put people on the street,” said Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest with Las Familias del Pueblo. “It’s the height of hypocrisy to bemoan the homeless when they’re forcing thousands of people out of the only housing they can afford.”...

...It became apparent that something had to be done to keep what was left of L.A.’s stock of housing for poor people, or there would be none left at all. Redevelopment officials came up with a “policy of containment” to preserve the several thousand remaining units of low-rent housing in the Skid Row district, and to focus the efforts of charities and government agencies serving the poor. In effect, what it meant over the years is that “The government created Skid Row. The plan was to make Skid Row attractive and the rest of the city unattractive to transients,” said Gene Boutillier, former director of LAHSA and now a director of the L.A. Coalition To End Hunger and Homelessness....

...The decision to concentrate social services has had more success, but has engendered problems of its own. With free meals, clothes and sometimes rooms routinely available, Skid Row has become a natural destination for homeless people on the move from almost any point west of the Mississippi. Law-enforcement agencies pitch in, releasing inmates from state prison and short-term lockup onto the street to mix with vagrants and the financially bereft. Even Sheriff Lee Baca, who has campaigned for new solutions to homelessness, admits to releasing 35 to 50 prisoners a day into the neighborhood east of downtown.

The CRA has moved to break the Skid Row stalemate with a scheme that calls for gutting most of the larger SRO hotels and installing new apartments, some of which would include rent subsidies for the poor. But homeless activists promptly filed suit to block the plan, contending that the renovations would remove thousands of bottom-dollar units from the market.

Don Spivak, deputy administrator for the CRA, said the plan includes $73 million in funds for low-income housing, but he concedes that the money will not be available for years. In the meantime, he said, the SRO hotels should be renovated because “they are not adequate or decent housing.”

So: all of the cheap housing in Downtown is concentrated in Skid Row, where the homeless are encouraged to go (through various measures keeping them out of the other areas in Downtown, such as lack of public restrooms, security patrols, and the control of space so to discourage loitering). Law enforcement agencies release recently freed criminals into Skid Row, leading to crime on the Row. Now, the housing that is available is in danger of being eliminated through "renovation" and lack of funding. And if you can find a place to stay, off the streets, the LAPD and other law enforcement officers (some from the US Marshalls and the California Highway Patrol!) might come into your room, take your eating utensils and detain you without charging you of any crime. As a result, you lose your job.

Meanwhile, Chief Bratton hangs with movie stars at Skybar. Isn't life grand?

2003-03-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

Anti-everything?

The media would have us believe that positions of being antiwar and patriotic are incompatible.

Atrios has a great post on this topic (not that he's the first to point out the media's inability to think clearly):

It's the people saying things like that [something implying the antiwar stance is also anti-American] who are anti-American, not me. And the fact that I even have to make this point - not to the drooling fascists over at Der FreiRepublik, but to the stars of the Fourth Estate - is scary indeed.

He also says that any criticism of Bush is now labelled "dissent," though I don't object to that as much. The choice of language is the interesting thing--"dissent" sounds threatening and unstable. But if someone called me a dissenter, I would thank them and say I hope they join me. That's off the topic, I know.

I think the most sickening discussion I've heard in the media is the claim that protests only demoralize the troops. First off, I hope the troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom would be more intelligent than the commentators making that claim and realize that protests are what they're fighting for, even if they don't agree with them. Second, I think soldiers in battle would have more important things to do than watch protests on TV. That is, if you can find a protest on TV.

On anti-Americanism, I abhor that term. I think Arundhati Roy said it most clearly, and most humorously:

What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.

I hope the media, when looking at the people in the streets and clucking their tongues at the sight of it, hears one of the chants that you sometimes hear: "This is what democracy looks like!" And isn't that what we want the Iraqis to have--the right to dissent and protest?

2003-03-21T18:30:00.000-08:00

Some good news

Christopher Allbritton has raised enough funds to get to Iraqi Kurdistan. He needs more, of course.

2003-03-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

Finally BBC America has gone to news--they were just showing Ground Force while I was forced to turn to the American Weapons of Mass Deception (CNN, NBC/MSNBC...never Fox. Never Fox).

While the other networks have been eager to put on retired military officers talking about the cool weapons we have, BBC had someone on reminding us that even precision weapons have a 10% "failure rate"--meaning that 10% of the time the weapon will go off course. Although that I would say that since weapons are designed to kill and destroy, they'll probably get the job done every time.

10% failure rate...Baghdad is a city of 5 million people. That's my thought for the day.

2003-03-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

Well, it certainly looks like "Shock and Awe" has begun. Not really suprising...I thought that this is what it would be like from the beginning, and I was hoping that it wasn't going to look like this.

I did find it really disturbing that the news channels seemed to be impatient for this stage. CNN seemed to be taking great pride in scooping that today was "A-day"--the launch of the air campaign. Wolf Blitzer kept repeating that "we will be seeing the beginning of shock and awe."

Huge explosions.

2003-03-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

Giving comfort?

Via Cursor:

Rep. Pete Stark (D - Fremont, CA) on the rumored strategy of "shock and awe": "I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war . . . to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism."

Add another name to the short list of congresspeople willing to speak their minds when it comes to our military adventures. Too bad that this quote will be the main focus of his next Republican opponent's advertising campaign.

2003-03-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

More un-American antiwar protesters. From Bob Morris/LA Indymedia.

Picture taken from march/demonstration in West Los Angeles. Wilshire Blvd was shut down between Barrington Ave. and Westwood Blvd. I'd estimate that to be at least 1/2 mile. Westwood and Wilshire is the busiest intersection in LA.

2003-03-19T22:17:00.000-08:00

On CNN...

...have you seen the oval map with the big plane and warship cutouts? Ridiculous. They even have an overhead camera view with John Madden-like color illustrations. Shouldn't we be having 3-D holographic imaging, like on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars? At least something that keeps the CNN cardboard cutouts from holding model stealth fighters, like they are now.

2003-03-19T15:58:00.000-08:00

I'm ready to throw a brick in my tv now

Now Abrams asks us "why can't protesters just support the troops for a couple of days..." Disses protests some more... "I'm not saying it's not their right to do it, I'm saying it's not the right thing to do." Cue soundbites from the soldiers...and we have 1h02m25sec left on the deadline countdown.

2003-03-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

March Madness (sorry, but that couldn't be avoided forever)

Watching MSNBC right now--"Abrams Report". Dan Abrams makes me want to curl up into a ball, knowing that this is what passes for news on television. I mean, I've always known this, but it's really shocking to actually watch and remember why I don't watch tv news.

I thought Abrams was going to start foaming at the mouth when William Arkin said that in the case of war, Iraqi children would not be in school. Abrams got the other two war experts to say that Saddam was evil and wanted to have little children killed to prove US destruction. Arkin wouldn't play along, and Abrams bugged his eyes out and said "I think that that is a very rosy and unrealistic view of Saddam Hussein." It just doesn't get any better than that, does it?

2003-03-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

Where's Major Kong?

MSNBC has a "Deadline" countdown. Yee-haw!

2003-03-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

I had been meaning to post on this since I read about this on Sunday, but I haven't had the time, what with being so excited about the liberation of Iraq and all, until now.

The Los Angeles Times published a very important article by Aaron Zitner, "Davis' Apology Sheds No Light on Sterilizations in California." Unfortunately, it was buried almost halfway through in the paper. The article is about California's forced sterilization program, which lasted close to fifty years. That's human sterilization.

Let me clip from the article, and then comment.

Some historians and advocates for the disabled had a mixed reaction to the apology issued Tuesday by Gov. Gray Davis for California's policy, the most aggressive in the nation, which sterilized an estimated 20,000 mentally disabled people and others from 1909 through the 1960s.

Davis offered his apology in a press release. No survivors or disability groups were on hand to accept it. There was no order to probe for more details of a history that, according to scholars, is still largely unexplored and not fully understood.

"It's like a preemptive apology.... We don't know yet who to apologize to," said Alexandra Stern, a University of Michigan historian who is writing a book about California's sterilization program.

"An apology with no attempt to find the people who deserve to receive it is meaningless," said Stephen Drake, research analyst with Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group. "If the governor is serious about wanting to understand this shameful chapter of California history, then you need an effort to study the records of just how this was done."

"I think it's premature," said Paul Lombardo, a University of Virginia historian who revived interest in the state policy when he lectured Tuesday to a California Senate committee. The lecture, which some officials said was the first time they had heard of the sterilization policy, triggered a statement within hours from Davis and a separate apology from state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer.

Lombardo and Drake said the apologies were welcome as acknowledgments of past abuse. "But if they don't try to understand the history, then I don't know what it's worth," Lombardo added.

While I'm glad that Davis did apologize, it really doesn't mean anything, as Drake points out. After all, it's like saying that I'm glad that an anvil didn't fall on my head today. You shouldn't have to be glad that a governor has apologized for something like this. An apology is the least someone can do, in the truest sense of that expression; Lombardo is right to say that the program still needs to be studied further. This is something that calls for an independent investigation, along the lines of truth-telling commissions that we have seen in the last decade.

I think it's great that Stern is writing a book about this. I wish the article would have explained further the documents that she is using and her methodology, but I guess that it is a general interest paper, and not a bulletin for historians. But the fact that she is writing a book, and the following clip...:

Russell Lopez, a spokesman for the governor, said he had called three state departments last week in an attempt to find survivors but was told no names could be released because of patient confidentiality rules.

...indicate that there are documents and case histories out there. There is no excuse for the state of California not to pursue an inquiry.

For my comments, and added historical background, I'll take more clips from the article:

The concept, known as eugenics, led to the sterilization of more than 63,000 people in the United States from about 1907 through the 1970s.

California accounted for one-third of all operations. Its sterilization law was the second in the nation, after Indiana's.

The state's enthusiasm for eugenics was so well known that it is mentioned in "The Great Gatsby." When Nazi Germany wrote its sterilization policy, it borrowed from California's law, historians say.

"Why California more than other states? That's a key question," Stern said. "I think it has to do with the need to civilize the frontier."

In better breeding practices, Californians saw a way to control the chaos of nature. And their use in human reproduction had the support of prominent citizens, including then-Stanford University President David Starr Jordan and Pasadena citrus magnate Ezra Gosney, who founded one of the most influential think tanks devoted to eugenics, the Human Betterment Foundation, in 1926.

Another cheerleader was The Times, whose publisher, Harry Chandler, was listed as a member of the Human Betterment Foundation in a 1938 pamphlet by the group.

"We have secured the ardent support of the Los Angeles Times," Gosney wrote in a 1937 dispatch to the Eugenical News, a monthly periodical. "They are running an article each week in their Sunday magazine edition which, while not as good as the editor-owner of the paper would like, keeps the subject before the people and does much to encourage us in carrying on."

That Sunday column, called "Social Eugenics," ran from 1935 to 1941 and argued for strong sterilization laws, said Lombardo of the University of Virginia. The paper ran at least 120 of them, he added.

I think that Stern really gets it right when she says that the frontier ideology contributed to such a active program in California. Mike Davis, in his book City of Quartz (Verso, 1990), writes:

[Charles Fletcher] Lummis's passions for Southwest archaeology, mission preservation, physical culture, and racial metaphysics were recapitulated by other Arroyans [the Arroyo Set was a group of intellectuals and artists that gathered in Pasadena. They were boosters for Southern California, romanticizing the colonial past and the beauty of the landscape]. Thus the retired tobacco manufacturer and essayist Abbot Kinney crusaded simultaneously for the Mission Indians, the conservation of Yosemite Valley, and Anglo-Saxon racial purity through eugenics...Joseph Widney was an early president of the University of Southern California, a fervent booster, and author of the epic Race Life of the Aryan Peoples, which argued that Los Angeles was destined to become the world capital of Aryan supremacy (Davis, 27-28)

These were the power and intellectual elite of Los Angeles, and in Harry Chandler's case, Southern California. Chandler became publisher of the Times after the death of his father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis. The two served as models for the corrupt real estate speculators in the film Chinatown, and they had a plan to personally annex part of Baja California from Mexico.

Besides the legacy of which forced sterilization was a part, there is also the issue of race. From the article:

The mentally ill and developmentally disabled were the initial focus of the policy, but some historians believe that it also targeted Mexican and Asian immigrants, criminals, juvenile delinquents and sexually active women.

Gender and race form the investigation of Rickie Solinger's book Wake Up Little Susie (Routledge, 2000 2nd ed [1992). She reveals the disparity in the treatment of white and black single mothers in the 1950s and 1960s. While white unwed mothers were treated with psychoanalysis (their pregnancies were viewed as the result of mental illness), black single mothers were castigated as uncontrollable breeders who were a strain on public funds (they were also totalized as a group as welfare recipients). Solinger writes:

In the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans were concerned that the extension of public monies to the undeserving poor constituted the expensive act of an inappropriately activist government. Often these were the same citizens who believed the state had the right and responsibility to take an activist role in managing black female fertility. They found their consistency in the fact that curtailing fertility would reduce the mass of undeserving poor and thus reduce the government's misguided welfare expenditures, maybe even deflect attention from the "Negro problem" if there were fewer blacks in the population.

Remember, this was the time of Johnson's Great Society and larger government programs, antagonism to which would help elect Reagan governor of California and, eventually, president. Of course, we're all familiar with the criticisms of "welfare queens" (always black women)--this is the extension of that argument.

I don't doubt that other women were targeted for forced sterilization; their single pregnancies were beyond the traditional definition of motherhood and were seen as threats to the social order. It's important to remember that all of this happened less than fifty years ago.

Historians will continue to investigate this issue. I only hope California chooses to listen to them.

2003-03-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

No, it's not a PETA thing.

Tomorrow is "Pig Lib" day! Yes, Stephen Malkmus, backed by the Jicks, is back droppin' science and beautifully perplexing lyrics. I'll be at Rhino Records in Westwood at 10am.

I am an unashamed hagiographer of all things Pavement. I really take issue with the characterization in the P-fork review of the typology of Pave fans. I'd fit both "romantic" and "dork" category, and though I think I like the songs in the "hipster" category the most, I am loathe to call myself a hipster in any form (but those who know me know that I'm really a hipster in denial, without chunky glasses).

I also really disagree about the criticisms of SM's solo debut. Perfect? No, but not "second guessed" either. Though I must admit that I consider the final Pavement, "Terror Twilight," to be their weakest (yet I'd put "Speak, See, Remember" with some of their best songs, just for the California-based lyrics alone. There's a whole submerged strand of California imagery in Pavement's oeuvre that doesn't get it's due).

Anyways, the point is I can't wait to spend my money and buy this CD. And April brings us the new Yo La Tengo and White Stripes. I'm saving up now.

2003-03-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

Ugh.

I must give credit to PBS for including Howard Zinn in their roundtable discussion of the address. He pointed out that this war to "save" Iraqi civilians will actually kill some who won't be able to enjoy their freedom.

Walter Russell Mead responded to this by saying that the US sanctions kill thousands of innocent civilians. He used that fact to argue that a war will stop the sanctions and will therefore save lives. I thought that was quite an astounding piece of logic, on the level of "we had to destroy the village in order to save it."

2003-03-17T13:28:00.000-08:00

Dirty war

From the Poisoning People in Order to Save Them Dept.: Christopher Allbritton reports on US plans to increase the radioactive potency of weapons for use in Iraq.

In addition to his post, I would refer readers to check out the wide availabilty on this issue. I found this article through John Pilger's website (he's written on the topic in his book The New Rulers of the World).

2003-03-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

What action to take?

Jim Henley supports Justin Raimondo's criticisms of direct action antiwar demonstrations.

While I think Raimondo raises some good points, I cannot criticize all forms of direct action. I do think that at this point any direct action taken here will not be effective in winning supporters to the antiwar movement. Any press coverage won will most likely be critical and will paint the actions of a few DA-ers as representative of the entire movement.

But direct action can work. It's a matter of choosing the right methods and targets. Naomi Klein has an article on AlterNet about international direct actions that I think anyone willing to completely criticize direct action should read.

I have some more comments in, appropriately enough, the comments section following Jim Henley's post on Stand Down.