The Atlantic | December 2002 | Innocent Bystander | Murphy | The Rogues of Academe: The repertoire of methods employed to rid nations of their undemocratic or loathsome rulers is at once familiar and limited. There is assassination, coup d'état, and war. There are economic sanctions. On the rare occasions when elections come into the picture, there is sometimes an international effort to ensure that the elections are fair. Now Boston University is experimenting with a new approach, the Lloyd G. Balfour African Presidents in Residence Program. The idea, simply put, is that democratically elected African leaders might not be so prone to overstay their welcome as chief executives (or to keep meddling in local politics after leaving office) if they had a well-endowed university sinecure in the United States to look forward to.
Well, that's certainly a different incentive.
Apparently, the only requirement is that their initial election was democratic, more or less. There seems to be no specific requirement that they retained their hold on power through the use of legitimate democratic means. How odd.
Just think: if this incentive actually works, yes, it will pull a few tyrants out of power. Maybe. And it will make us a haven for ex-dictators (more than we actually are, I mean), so that other countries will think that they have even more reason to hate us! Our universities are enabling their leaders to escape justice!
Really, the results of this program could be quite interesting. In the sense of a Chinese curse, I mean.
Posted by iain at 06:16 PM
USS Clueless - When should you fight a war?..... There is, for instance, a basic (and incorrect) presumption that if the goal of a war is occupation of the other nation (sometimes called "conquest") that it is impossible to achieve this without causing vast numbers of civilian casualties. It is, for example, something of an article of faith among those who have been opposing an American attack on Iraq that such a war would necessarily cause upwards of a hundred thousand Iraqi civilian casualties. (I've had seen that presumption appear in mail, and it often appears in antiwar postings online.) We can't know for certain if that's true until it's over, of course, but it is not at all clear to someone familiar with the capabilities we now have that this must necessarily be the case, and it is entirely possible that we may end up occupying Iraq without firing a shot.
That scenario is unlikely but not impossible and involved a quick coup by certain forces in Iraq itself, after which they invite the US in. I don't think anyone in our top command is relying on this, but I believe that they are actively working to try to make this happen, for it would in many ways be the best possible outcome. [...] But even if we do resort to real violence, it is no longer the case that we need to target cities, and it is not certain that conquest of Iraq will necessarily result in a mountain of civilian dead. If one is certain that this is unavoidable, it becomes more clear why one would oppose such a war. But it's not clear whether all of those using this rhetoric really believe it, or whether they're saying it in hopes of making the prospect of war less attractive to others.
Setting to one side the issue of civilian dead, and assuming that an actual shooting war occurs, how do we not target cities in this? Assuming no quick conquest (if I were them, I would immediately surrender and then resort to guerilla warfare, but that's neither here nor there), the US will still have to take and hold cities, essentially unaided. (Even if they support the fight, I somehow doubt that either Britain or Australia will want to be involved in the occupation. Technically, I suppose, it would be a UN operation, assuming that the UN approves the attack. That said, I would be willing to bet that the position of every other security council member except Britain would be that the current resolution absolutely positively does not authorize an attack, no matter what the currently applicable resolution actually says -- a masterpiece of fluff, that. So an occupation would be a UN operation, but I can't imagine the administration even conceiving of allowing anything but a proforma UN presence, if that.)
And from the comment on Mr. Willis' site: We need to occupy Iraq, and to control Iraq's oil fields, so that we can quit pretending that the Sauds are our friends, and so that we can force reforms in Saudi Arabia, and force them to stop financing the terrorists.
Well, that's blunt, if appalling. Although it assumes that we actually would force reforms in Saudi Arabia, and I suspect that once the occupation of Iraq actually begins, and the administration has to deal with that plus whatever they finally decide to do with the Korea mess, plus dealing with a second and stronger dip to the national recession, the administration will be nicely overextended, thanks. (And leave us not forget that they'll almost certainly have to commit more resources to Afghanistan, unless they want it to slide back into the morass that made it such a friendly host to Al Qaida. Not that it's far from a morass at the moment, but we can at least pretend.)
If we stand up to the Sauds now, without controlling Iraq's oil fields, then the price of oil in the world will skyrocket and our economy will go into the toilet.
It's going to do that anyway. Our economy is in no fit state to sustain a war. I'm not saying that is a reason for not going to war; I'm saying that controlling Iraq's oil fields, unless it happens overnight without a shot being fired (and it won't) will not prevent our economy from going into the toilet.
Therefore the road to peace and safety goes through Baghdad, for reasons having nothing to do with Saddam or his WMDs.
And taking that to its logical conclusion, means that the administration has been lying to us (when it talks to us at all) and the rest of the world, and the ostensible reasons for the war have nothing to do with the real reasons. Which is an utterly immoral position for them to take.
The position of the US has always been, in essence, a country can crap on its own citizens and we won't generally do anything but shake a stern finger, maybe cut off financial aid and trade, etc. And, to be sure, Saddam has crapped on the people of Iraq with vim, vigor, and rampant enthusiasm. Heaven knows, if we'd wanted to deal with Iraq for humanitarian reasons, there has been cause and more than cause (and that's fairly minor, as these things go, really).
And although we don't like proliferation of weapons, we've typically not done much beyond trade and talks to stop it -- the bribery of North Korea being a fairly typical example, and fairly typically ineffective. (The possibly mistaken attack in Sudan on the chemical factory/baby formula factory by the Clinton administration being one of the rare military exceptions.) "We're going to conquer you so we have a stable source of oil" will be, if nothing else, somewhat unusual for US policy. It's also probably not going to work very well without some sort of long term -- 10-20 years, I mean -- occupation. According to various articles I've read by people who have been in Iraq, the only thing the Iraqi people hate more than Saddam -- whom most Iraqis seem to loathe and despise for what he's done to their country -- would be the United States, for insisting on trade sanctions when the rest of the world would have let them lapse, and bombing defense installations daily, and partitioning their country. They've also been weaned, for more than a generation, on unremitting "we hate the US" propaganda; it will take at least that long to undo some of it. (And we're not talking about whether allowing unlimited trade would have been wise or not, thanks.)
To be sure, the trade goods issue is complicated. Yes, Saddam has misused the trade that comes into the country. Yes, he has misused the revenue that the UN allowed from their oil, and the people of Iraq do seem to know that. They also feel that had there been normal relations with the rest of the world, trade and otherwise, Saddam could have had his graft, and the rest of them would have had enough from the leftovers, as they did before. In their point of view, there's quite enough blame to go around. Without a fairly draconian occupation -- and the US possesses neither the means nor the will to impose such -- it's likely to be, to put it mildly, a fairly difficult experience for all concerned. I'm not certain that the administration will be willing to justify keeping 250,000 people over there indefinitely.
(Entirely a side note: to some extent, the current situation is, in a different location and on a different scale, analogous to the situation with Germany after WWI. Iraq surrendered, to the extent that it did, after the Gulf war while its armies were still near the Kuwait border, well out of sight of most Iraqis. The utter ignominy of that defeat was pretty well kept from them. The reparations, such as they were, and the resulting sanctions have battered the Iraq economy for a decade. Most of the analogy ends there, however; Saddam isn't a popular demagogue arising from the people, and apparently some part of the world isn't prepared to see his country become strong enough to be that type of threat. Mind, post-war Iraq has never been rebuilt enough to be that kind of general military threat. In theory, the coming war would be to prevent that, but in reality, you seem to say, it has nothing to do with that.)
Posted by iain at 05:52 PM
You know, it's always interesting to run across the sort of story that gave this weblog its name...
CBS News | Cig Settlement Funds: Up In Smoke | December 31, 2002 00:51:30: Mike Moore, Mississippi's attorney general, is one of the angriest men in America. Angry, because he says most states are wasting the $250 billion settlement he helped win from Big Tobacco. [...] North Carolina has spent more than $40 million in tobacco settlement funds -- so far -- buying state-of-the-art equipment for tobacco farmers. Farmers like Robert Boyette got direct grants to upgrade the furnaces in their curing barns. "The industry was basically mandating this," he says. [...] Officials in North Carolina, like House majority leader Phil Baddour, disagree, calling the grants to farmers a necessity. Without them, he says, the economy in the poorest areas of the state would have collapsed. Baddour doesn't see any irony in using funds from a lawsuit that had to do with health care costs, on helping farmers get better at growing tobacco. "The health of the community is dependent on our agricultural economy," he says. "So to the extent that we are spending money to aid those communities economically, we are doing a good thing."
Ah, irony. Big anvil, there.
So, let me get this straight: North Carolina is using money that it received from the tobacco industry for past misdeeds to support the tobacco industry in its state to prevent the current collapse of the agricultural economy. Right. And while it's understandable that North Carolina would wish to do so, one wonders why they don't look longer term. The tobacco industry is likely to collapse in any event, and it would be better to shift those people away from that crop. (Granted, during a recession would have been a particularly bad time in most ways.) Additionally, those 6700 farmers are producing a crop which will be sold, at least in part, to other North Carolina people, who will smoke and become ill and for whom the state may well need to pay significant medical costs. (Leaving aside the social costs, for now.) Surely this use is somewhat ... short-sighted.
While it is true that North Carolina's use of its settlement money could be considered the most egregious misuse, they're certainly not alone. States across the country are using their tobacco money for purposes for which it was never originally intended:
..... The cold realities of budget deficits make the settlement money an attractive option for cash-strapped states. And earlier this week, a federal appeals court here reaffirmed states' right to spend settlement funds at their discretion. But that doesn't make it sound policy, according Mike Moore, Mississippi's attorney general, who spearheaded the settlement. "They think that the money just fell out of heaven, and, 'OK, I have a deficit,' or 'I have a political whim,' or 'I need to build a highway,"' Moore said Thursday in an interview at a national anti-smoking conference here. "I call it moral treason. I call it stupid. It's so shortsighted."
Well, no, they don't really think the money fell from heaven, and calling it "moral treason" is a bit ridiculous. What the state governors think is that they have massive budget deficits and they are already cutting services to the bone. (For example, in 2003, states are facing a cumulative deficit of $60 billion and more, although more than half of that is California's deficit alone. The outgoing governor of Illinois was kind enough to his successor to attempt to make a few budget cuts before he left, so the man wouldn't come into office faced with a budget disaster to be solved immediately, but even doing that, the state will need to cut an additional $2 billion before the end of this fiscal year in July. The money will likely come from services to the poor and from higher education, in significant part.) They're trying desperately to fill the gap with whatever they've got. States are even turning to raising taxes as an option (although generally not the income tax -- like Washington, states have a curious reluctance to tax those most able to pay, perhaps because they have the best paid lobbyists). States are cutting services to the poor just as the need for those services increases sharply. To be sure, some people do recognize the needs at hand: Los Angeles actually voted itself a property tax increase, for the first time in ages, to cope with the public healthcare funding crisis it's having. However, most states and cities are not likely to ask their citizens to do so. We've become addicted to low taxes, as if they were a drug, and we've elected a generation of political cowards that are extremely reluctant to say, "Look, we cut income and other taxes too far in the 90s. We simply cannot sustain minimal services without increasing taxes." (The cowardice being most marked in the previous Congress, of course, where the Democrats could have done what an opposition party is supposed to do and oppose unwise policies, such as the last tax cut, but did not because they were "popular".) Everyone is noting that the federal government will need to help the states, but because of the aforementioned cowardice, the federal government has nothing to help the states with. The projected federal budget over the next 10 years is at least $1.5 trillion.
So really, the issue isn't moral treason; it's just acute cowardice from their side, and shortsightedness from their side and ours that are making things the way they are.
Posted by iain at 02:34 PM
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | US puts its faith in Dad's Army Britain: The British military has long had a Colonel Blimp image - typified by the TV show Dad's Army - according to a frank assessment by the US government of its staunchest ally.
It has also been a quick route to becoming a toff or escaping the "desolation of a grim council flat" and the dole queue, according to the confidential document, circulated to American top brass. [...]
The assessment, written just before the the Gulf war, aimed to give senior US officials an insight into the standing and customs of the British military. The analysis, obtained by the Guardian as George Bush and Tony Blair prepare for another war against Iraq, predicted that the British would continue to produce "high-quality" military leaders to work alongside American commanders "for some time to come".
You know ... this is the sort of thing that just makes you scratch your head about the Guardian.
It's not that the US doesn't have a good opinion of the British Army, of course. Indeed, I should think the official opinion was that it was very good indeed; otherwise, we would be ignoring them just as we're effectively ignoring the rest of NATO. (Granted, that has much to do with varying political opinions on the conduct of the war on terrorism, such as it is, and the apparently looming attack on Iraq, as well as military capabilities. That said, if we really thought that anyone in NATO would be of major utility in either, we would probably be devoting quite a lot of time and effort into persuading them to come to our side. The only other NATO military really worth noting would be France -- and Russia as a NATO observer, I suppose, although their military is both deteriorating and rather busy in Chechnya, so they couldn't commit any significant resources in any event -- and France and the US have been politically at odds for decades, really. But I digress.) THAT said ... why on earth would a ten-year old document be news? Surely before our government decided to place such heavy reliance on British political and military support, that report was updated with more recent information. (They probably went and read Janes Defence Weekly. But again, I digress.) Relying on a 10-year-old document for information about a current situation would be foolish in the extreme, and whatever you might say about them, I sincerely doubt an administration this hawkish would allow themselves to be taken by surprise by misestimating an ally's capacity. (If nothing else, the section reading "The US analyst believed that the "long and unbroken connection" between the royal family and the military also helped to foster the public's high regard for the services," would need some severe updating, since the British public's regard for its monarchy is about as low as it can get at the moment.
That said, it's probably the kindest thing the Guardian has said about the US in years. And at that, they seem to take great joy in being mildly snooty about their own military.
Posted by iain at 12:15 PM
(NY Times, Registration required)
Glass Panes and Software: Windows Name Is Challenged
..... An upstart company, Lindows.com, is trying to persuade the Federal District Court in Seattle to invalidate Microsoft's trademark on Windows. At issue is the level of legal protection that should, or should not, be accorded to an ordinary word that Microsoft adopted as its own: windows. The litigation so far -- a mounting pile of evidence and briefs -- provides a detailed narrative of the origins and rise of a mega-brand, and a primer on trademark law. And an order by Judge John C. Coughenour, refusing Microsoft's plea for a temporary injunction against Lindows.com, suggests that Microsoft has a fight on its hands against a feisty start-up with fewer than 50 employees.
In January, Judge Coughenour is expected to decide on Lindows.com's motion for a summary judgment -- a ruling from the bench -- that the Windows trademark should be revoked. But that is a long shot. Both sides are preparing for a trial that is scheduled to begin in Seattle on April 7, when a jury is expected to begin weighing whether Lindows is an illegal copycat brand and whether Microsoft's trademark on Windows should be taken away.
Lindows.com is defending a broad principle, its lawyer says. "No company, no matter how powerful, no matter how much money it has spent, should be able to gain a commercial monopoly on words in the English language," said the lawyer, Daniel Harris, a partner at Clifford Chance.
Well, well, well.
This ought to be entertaining, if nothing else.
As a practical issue, it does seem that Lindows ought to prevail. "Windows" is a purely generic term, in and of itself. Not only that, but Microsoft's Windows product wasn't the first one developed, even though it was the most strongly marketed and came to dominate so completely. Even if Microsoft is correct in that the windowing feature of Windows has "secondary meaning", surely the fact that Microsoft didn't develop the feature would invalidate the trademark claim.
It will be interesting to see if the court and the lawyers can lay their hands on anyone or any documentation from the Patent and Trademark Office from 1995 to see why the office decided, apparently without analysis or discussion, to reverse their previous decision to reject Microsoft's initial trademark application. The original rejection would seem to have been the correct decision, really.
One wonders how much of his $372 million Mr Robertson will need to sink into this lawsuit. Regardless of which way the decision goes, it's likely to make it to the Supreme Court, and to take forever to get there. The initial case alone is likely to drag on forever. Pity the poor juror who has to sit through all this technical jargon and endless reams of expert testimony.
Posted by iain at 06:23 PM
(LA Times, Registration required) The Old South, Up North: The jeers and taunts, the hate hit them as they reached the bridge. Bricks flew. They kept walking, crossing "the line between Africa and Poland," marching though the white neighborhoods on the other side of the Menomonee River. The black men and women of Milwaukee marched again the next evening, and the next, vowing that they would not remain cooped up in the "Negro district." They marched for 200 days before the city and its suburbs finally passed laws granting blacks the right to live where they wanted.
Thirty-five years later, the region remains divided, the races separate and the housing the most segregated in America.
The furor over GOP Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's praise for a former segregationist candidate for president has focused attention on the long history of racial division in the South. These days, however, the gulf between white and black is widest in the North. In Milwaukee, where 37% of the city's 600,000 residents are African American, the disparities between the races are among the greatest in the nation. The inequities are glaring in nearly every social index: income, child poverty, education, even access to home mortgage loans. [...] The latest statistic comes from a new Census Bureau report that names the Milwaukee metropolitan region the most segregated in the nation, based on an analysis of where blacks and whites live and how isolated each race is from the other. [...] This city on the glittering shore of Lake Michigan ranks high in every measure of housing segregation, at or near the top of lists dominated by Northern cities: Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, N.J.
Well .... on the one hand, people in Chicago and Detroit are scratching their heads and saying, "Milwaukee?" On the other hand, both cities are also saying, "Hey! We're NOT number one!"
Not that it means much when you've only slid to second and sixth. And in both cities, the segregation persists across income levels -- that is, middle and upper class blacks tend to live with and around each other, and not so much in mixed neighborhoods. That said, there are relatively well off neighborhoods in this city, at least, that are relentlessly mixed (although it may not pay to examine the Census Bureau's neighborhood boundaries too closely).
Posted by iain at 06:04 PM
Scotland on Sunday - Top Stories - Trade Center steel to be used for a warship: THE wreckage of the worst-ever terrorist attack on America could be used as part of the US's revenge against its unseen enemies. Recycled steel from the World Trade Center is to form part of a new US warship, named the New York in honour of the almost 2,800 people who died when it was destroyed. If the 684ft vessel is used in a theatre of war such as the Gulf, parts of the collapsed buildings could physically go into action in the war on terrorism.
You know, the uses that they've found for the wreckage are continually surprising. Art, buildings, memorial mediallions, war. It would never have occurred to me that any of the metal would be used in this way.
Mind, if they're just assembling the materials for the USS New York, it will be several years before it sees action. It takes years to build a warship. It will be interesting to see what class of ship it is. Cruisers are typically named after cities, towns, or other geographic sites of historical or other interest. Modern destroyers seem to be named after people ... although that seems to vary somewhat. Air craft carriers seem to be named both after people and after other historical ships and events. State names have traditionally been used for the battleship class, but the battleship class has been discontinued. The original USS New York met a particularly ignominous end. It looks as if the newest USS New York will probably be a ballistic missile submarine, or possibly an attack submarine ... in which case it's unlikely to be used directly in the war on terrorism.
Posted by iain at 12:52 AM
Wired News: A Peek at History, Piracy-Free In a move that started as a project to save money on film storage, British Pathe has put more than 3,500 hours of its old newsreels online, creating what it says is the largest online digital news archive. The move adds fresh perspective to the debate over online digital copyright management. [...] "We're not too worried about the files being abused," [Peter Fydler, the commercial director for British Pathe] said. "If anyone wants to rip off British Pathe, it's much easier, cheaper (and) higher quality to buy an historical VHS or DVD."
Amazing. A media company willing to trust its customers not to rip it off, and not caring overmuch if they do. What is the world coming to these days? To be sure, British Pathe would probably be a tad less sanguine about putting new commercial and remunerative content up on the web, free or not.
That said, there is at least one aspect of this which seems a bit odd. They were apparently doing this to save on the costs of film storage. However, from a purely archival preservation viewpoint, they'll need to keep the masters around anyway. For that matter, they'll probably need to convert the stock from the first 30-40 years off of nitrate film onto some other film master. Restoration costs for the process would be phenomenal. In other words, something that they went into as a method of saving money probably cost them a lot more than they expected. They may well be looking at making the archives available as a way to partially reduce their costs.
Posted by iain at 08:25 PM
U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations (washingtonpost.com): Deep inside the forbidden zone at the U.S.-occupied Bagram air base in Afghanistan, around the corner from the detention center and beyond the segregated clandestine military units, sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism -- captured al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders. Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights -- subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques. Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts, interrogators whose methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over -- "rendered," in official parlance -- to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations.
So apparently, human rights are dispensable luxuries. Well, nice to know how our government thinks.
While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view.
Unfortunately, I suspect they're quite right in thinking that the American public would back this view.
This, of course, merely means that the American public is so desperate for security that it doesn't care how that security comes about or who has to pay ... as long as it's not them. Torturing a few (hundred) foreigners? Sure, why not? And, after all, it's not as if the CIA or other US agencies were doing the torture themselves. They're just handing these people over to other governments. They can't help it if those governments decide to use more forceful methods. (The fact that this is the only reason that the people are being handed over is, of course, tactfully omitted.)
The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment. "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."
The problem with the CIA was that they actually obeyed the laws of this land. Well. Yes. Quite.
..... According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep.
But we don't engage in torture ourselves! Of course we don't! Because we are the shining beacon of human rights for the world to see!
I do love that the Bush administration official notes drily that they are no longer spending much time on the State Department's human rights annual report now. I suppose that the accusations of hypocrisy would have been a tad much to bear.
Posted by iain at 01:59 AM
ctnow.com: BUSINESS..... "I was just in Toys `R' Us in Manchester," the distressed woman said. "And they have a pregnant Barbie doll! Barbie's pregnant!"
For a flash, I saw it all: the tabloid headlines, the uncomfortable press conference with Ken, the tell-all book from Skipper detailing her big sister's promiscuous ways.
But rest a little easier: Things are not quite as scandalous as they seem for one of the reigning babes in Toyland. A more careful inspection reveals that it is actually Barbie's best friend, Midge, who is preggers this holiday season, courtesy of a magnetically attached belly that pops off to deliver the plastic baby girl scrunched inside. But the packaging is Barbie pink and includes the familiar Barbie logo. And freckle-faced Midge, with her spaghetti-thin ankles and freakishly long neck, is easily - and frequently - mistaken for her more famous pal.
..... The pregnant version of Midge, which pops out a curled-up baby when her belly is opened -- has been pulled from Wal-Mart shelves across the country following complaints from customers, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday. "It was just that customers had a concern about having a pregnant doll," Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Cynthia Illick said. She said the entire "Happy Family" set, which included pregnant Midge, husband Alan and 3-year-old son Ryan, was pulled from shelves of the world's largest retailer earlier this month.
Part of the problem, it seems, is that the Happy Family, for all that Mattel calls it a "set" is sold separately. Thus, despite that wedding ring on her finger (yes, she does have one), Midge appears to be unmarried and pregnant. Another, larger, part of the problem is that Barbie, for all her many and varied careers, is supposed to be 18-20, and Midge is meant to be younger, and looks it. Thus, Mattel appears to be promoting teenage pregnancy as some sort of commercial ideal and, needless to say, parents are a tad perturbed over that concept. You do wonder that Mattel seems to have missed that potential downside altogether in their marketing research; given their consciousness of Barbie's image and frantic lawsuits to stop its use in unapproved manners, you'd think they'd be aware that perhaps they should be more careful with Barbie's family as well.
A very odd part of the reaction, however, seems to be some parents' desire to protect their children from "realism". In fact, some have even said, "Barbie can be a doctor - she just can't be pregnant," said Worley, who likes the Barbie collectible dolls best. "It's just getting too real. The next thing you know, they're going to have a Barbie divorce lawyer. There are so many other things Barbie can do." Leaving aside the issue that it's Midge and not Barbie ... most kids will see a pregnant woman in their young lifetimes. In fact, given that we are, after all, the most robustly reproductive Western nation, it's quite likely that their own mother will be pregnant with a sibling while they're still young. So what's the beef? It's not as if they'd given Midge a little vagina, and to deliver the baby you had to push on the belly and watch the baby come out. Now THAT might have been just a shade too much realism.
(For what it's worth, I still think that Barbie is a Doll of the Evening, and all those outfits are just costumes for ... but I digress.)
Posted by iain at 12:23 AM
A New Dimension in Snapshot of Gay Teenagers.... Dr. Savin-Williams does not dispute that some gay youth engage in harmful behavior. But a major drawback of much research, he said, is that the studies include only those willing to identify themselves as gay or at least acknowledge same-sex attraction. That sample, he argued, is significantly smaller than the total number who will eventually turn out to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Many teenagers in the larger group may be adjusting very well but simply prefer to keep their sexual orientations to themselves even on anonymous surveys, he added. Dr. Savin-Williams said that although researchers often discussed these limits, they generally highlighted only the alarming statistics when presenting the results. "That's great for headlines, but I'm saying let's look at the kids who are doing extraordinarily well and see how they got that way," he said.
Others share Dr. Savin-Williams's concerns. "The studies are starting to become very two-dimensional," said Dr. John D'Emilio, a gay historian and the director of gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Very often people who confront social hostility develop incredible strength and resilience. If you emphasize where the strengths are instead of what's bad, it helps you figure out, for example, what kind of environment you want to create in schools."
On the one hand, it's nice to know that things may not be as dire as they've have appeared heretofore.
On the other hand ... when "doing extraordinarily well" essentially equates to "being gay and shutting up about it so that nobody knows because it's just easier that way".... isn't that, perhaps, just a bit odd? Wouldn't most people consider that feeling that you have to keep quiet about a major aspect of yourself is, perhaps, just a bit repressed?
Of course, the sample bias problem is likely to be with us for a very long time on all surveys of gay men and lesbians. Basically, they will continue to identify only those who are comfortable coming out on even anonymous surveys, and will be vulnerable to what could be called "collection point bias". That is, a great many surveys of adult gays and lesbians tend to take place in bars, as a major community access point. While it's true that they are such, that means that surveys completely miss people who don't go to the bars. Similarly, surveys of teenagers will get only those who, for whatever reason, aren't afraid to identify themselves, if only to the surveyor. Surveys of teens on issues of sexuality are also vulnerable to a different type of issue: many people simply don't know or aren't sure yet.
Posted by iain at 09:31 PM
Santa may have begun as woman: According to folklorists and neo-pagan enthusiasts, the Santa Claus character of popular American Christmastide actually is predated several thousand years by Holda, the pagan Teutonic goddess of good fortune. Frau Holda, as she is more popularly known, has been sliding down chimneys, delivering gifts to children, and traveling via an airborne cart, according to German mythology and folklore, since at least several hundred years before the birth of Christ.
Apparently, Santa Claus, as we know him, may be a composite of several figures, including St Nicholas (minus the six to eight black men who beat naughty children with tree branches, of course) and Frau Holda, or Holde.
Apparently, Holda may not wear red, which might make her unique among the various holiday beneficent figures. And she may also be a patron goddess of women.
Posted by iain at 12:40 AM
MDN: WaiWai | Sex Volunteer Corps needs YOU!: Volunteerism underwent something of a boom in Japan in the years following the Great Hanshin Earthquake, subsided as times grew tougher toward the end of the century, but has now returned with a boom boom. Sex Volunteer Corps members actively give their time and money to pursue relationships with women in sexless marriages so they can repair their damaged self-esteem.
My goodness. Just imagine how many volunteers AmeriCorps might have if this were part of its brief.
Of course, given the sex-hostility of the current administration -- abstinence, toujours abstinence, forever and always, even if 99% of all people ignore the concept completely -- they'd never have allowed any such thing. And even Clinton might have found it politically rather difficult to justify.
Still, if they'd had sex volunteer corps, imagine how he could have prevented the mess of his last two years in office. Instead of going for interns, he could have just called up for an AmeriSexCorps volunteer! Right out there in the open! (Well, OK, not out in the open, we don't need an exhibitionist-in-chief, after all, but you know what I mean.) All aboveboard and everything. And what civic minded young person wouldn't mind servicing the Presidential Organ? especially if that's what they were supposed to be doing, generally speaking, in the first place.
Posted by iain at 09:18 PM
GOP Pins Its Future On Wooing Minorities (washingtonpost.com): Starting with Sen. Barry Goldwater's anti-civil rights presidential campaign of 1964 and continuing with Richard M. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of 1968 and the 1980s' appeal to white working-class "Reagan Democrats," they say, Republican strategies have proven extremely effective in attracting millions of white voters into the party fold. So efficient, in fact, that the party has extracted every possible benefit and now must steer a more racially sensitive course to avoid alienating the growing numbers of minority voters and moderate white women who will be crucial in future elections. "We have just about maxed out with white men," a key Republican strategist said. "When you look into the future, all you see is smaller numbers and more and more Hispanics. Look at Texas. Unless we do something, in a decade or so it's going to go the way of California," a former Republican stronghold that now tilts decisively Democratic. "We have to adapt to survive."
Which would explain why Lott's comments, which were fairly innocuous in context compared to what he's said before, drew such heavy Republican fire. They're trying to make nice.
Right.
And speaking of Our Mr Lott:
Asked in an interview with the Associated Press whether he was disappointed in a lack of support from President Bush, Lott said: "I don't think there's any use in trying to say I'm disappointed in anybody or anything. An inappropriate remark brought this down on my head." He added: "A lot of people in Washington have been trying to nail me for a long time. When you're from Mississippi and you're a conservative and you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame." He wouldn't name those political enemies.
Ah. I see. These would, of course, be the same enemies that, whenever he made similar or even far more pointed comments, gave him a pass for whatever reason.
Mind, I suppose it must be a terribly bitter experience to be thrown to the wolves by your own party, no matter what it is you said. And given that the Republicans are trying to appeal to minorities, it's probably going to be true for the near future that whenever any Republican makes a "racially insensitive" comment, the internal feeding frenzy shall commence anew. Because apparently, we're all thrilled and delighted by watching these political sharks go after chum when we're generally perfectly well aware that they don't mean a word of it. Not that I'm accusing anyone of being racists, or even racially insensitive; it's just that if it's not to their political advantage, they could care less what anyone says.
But hey! if they keep trying to seduce us with blood in the water and see that it doesn't work (which I hope it doesn't), maybe they'll try more substantive deeds. Although how they manage that without alienating the core Republican constituency is anyone's guess.
Now that they have deposed one party leader and are to elect another today, Senate Republicans are working to limit the damage that Trent Lott's words had on GOP efforts to court minority voters. "I think this will present no handicap whatsoever in our ongoing effort to convince the nonwhite citizens of our country that the Republican Party is the place to be," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, the incoming No. 2 Republican leader.
Good grief, not if they're going to say things like THAT. Haven't the Senate Republicans got even ONE person in the chamber with the gift of gab? Or, if not that, then the good sense god gave a goose not to say things that are pretty much designed to alienate everybody?
OK, guys, here's a clue, free of charge, just because it looks like you need one: the way to have said that would be, "We hope to convince all of the citizens of our great country, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion, that the Republican Party has the best interests of everyone in mind." See? Nice, simple, all-inclusive political puffery. Not that hard.
Not that anyone would believe it for a second. But it's the attempt that counts.
And just when the Republican Party was thinking that finally, FINALLY, they had emerged from the racial morass that Lott had led them into, and that they could continue recasting themselves as the kinder, gentler, compassionately conservative party ... they get to think again.
Charlotte Observer | 12/21/2002 | Ballenger apologizes for `stupid' remarks: Caught up in a national swirl over racially sensitive politics, U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger apologized Friday for what he called "pretty stupid" comments about an African American colleague. Even as he did, an aide was painting over what some see as a symbol of racial insensitivity -- a black lawn jockey in Ballenger's front yard.
Ballenger, commenting this week about Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's troubles, told The Observer he had occasional "segregationist feelings" about Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a black Georgia Democrat known for her abrasiveness. He also called McKinney "a bitch."
I should imagine that Republican Party leaders took Ballenger into a room after that and yelled at him for a very long time indeed. It takes a very special sort of mental density to make a remark like that in the midst of someone else's problems caused by a considerably less direct comment of the same sort. To be sure, his remarks were particular, a commentary about one person and one person only. And to be sure, I should think a great many people have thought a great many impolite words about former Rep. McKinney. But most of them had better sense than to say them in an interview, for heaven's sake.
And we're not even getting into the idiocy of the lawn jockey thing.
Weirdly, this is the same sort of thing that happened the last time the Republican Party felt that it was on top of the world. During Bush I's second campaign for president, they unveiled themselves in all their intolerance and bigotry at their national convention, and they've never entirely recovered their reputation from that display. You'd think that the fact that it mobilized part of the Democrat's minority base, the fact that many people still think of them as a white elitist party would, at the least, make them considerably more careful in their public pronouncements and actions.
Apparently, judging from recent events, you'd be very wrong indeed.
I wonder if Ballenger gets to take up the remnants of the Apology Tour now, since Lott won't be needing to do it any more. Thankfully for Carolina, Ballenger doesn't actually have much position to lose.
(Purely a side note, a coda if you will, to l'affaire Lott: it seems that the man put himself into an impossible position. The Black Republicans were furious at him -- why? surely they knew what he was when they got in bed with him -- the Republican leadership was sincerely unhappy with him for ruining their facade of tolerance, and ... oh, yes ... it seems that many of the constituents who put him in office were furious that he was apologizing in the first place. To be sure, I do believe that Mr Pierce, as quoted in the article, is quite correct: Lott sold out his principles to try to keep his job. Mind, they were utterly reprehensible principles, and it didn't work, but that was what he did. And now he gets to be held in contempt by pretty much everyone. Basically, the perfect example of a lose-lose situation. [Intriguingly, so very many of the people who wanted to keep Lott in his position as long as they could then seemed to support Nickles. Makes one wonder just exactly what sort of person Nickles is.])
Posted by iain at 02:00 AM
And a small amount of sanity returns to Britain.
Posted by iain at 02:33 AM
(NY Times, registration required) Internet Week Report: Bush Administration Plans Mandatory Government Internet Monitoring > December 20, 2002: The Bush administration is planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users. The proposal is part of a final version of a report, "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," set for release early next year, according to several people who have been briefed on the report. It is a component of the effort to increase national security after the Sept. 11 attacks. [...] Tiffany Olson, the deputy chief of staff for the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said yesterday that the proposal, which includes a national network operations center, was still in flux. She said the proposed methods did not necessarily require gathering data that would allow monitoring at an individual user level. But the need for a large-scale operations center is real, Ms. Olson said, because Internet service providers and security companies and other online companies only have a view of the part of the Internet that is under their control. "We don't have anybody that is able to look at the entire picture," she said. "When something is happening, we don't know it's happening until it's too late." [...] An official with a major data services company who has been briefed on several aspects of the government's plans said it was hard to see how such capabilities could be provided to government without the potential for real-time monitoring, even of individuals. "Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is to be able to track incidents while they are occurring," the official said. The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet."
Well.
I should imagine, given this administration's bent, that the only reason that they haven't formally included the monitoring of individuals on the internet in this plan is that it would be beyond even the capacity of the proposed Big Brother database to collate and deal with all that information. (Note: "formally". With FISA and the incredibly broad latitude it's been given, they can pretty much monitor almost anyone they want for no real reason at all.)
That said ... how on earth could you possibly plan a centralized security point to monitor a completely decentralized system? Quite apart from anything else, it would be a single point of failure if you could get it to work. And since you don't have centralized sources of attack -- or even well coordinated attacks -- there's nothing for it to track back.
Frankly, I think it's a partial red herring. If they can get some sort of system up and running, and make it look like it's doing what they say it does, it will be a lightning rod for attack.
For really dumb cyberterrorists, of course. But then, I'm sure there are more than a few really dumb cyberterrorists out there. Or enough young and stupid hackers and crackers to want to take up the challenge. They'll get caught, they'll get thrown in jail for epic amounts of time (the government will no doubt fight for the death penalty for those crimes for which they feel it appropriate, even when it is manifestly inappropriate) and they'll be a Salutary Lesson For Us All.
Or something like that, anyway.
Intriguingly enough, the original Big Brother plan, the Total Information Awareness site, is quietly fading away. Someone in the administration likely noticed that collecting total information would be just a shade easier for them if we weren't actually aware of what they were doing. Thus, in keeping with their withdrawal of actual useful information that conflicted with their political plans from the government's scientific websites, TIA goes into the shadows because it's drawing too much attention to itself. (You know the truly sad thing? These people are planning to collect every piece of nonrelevant information about everyone in the country that they can get their hands on ... and yet they didn't know how to keep Google from caching their site. For heaven's sake, Google tells you, right there, and yet they didn't do it. Yeesh.)
Posted by iain at 01:33 AM
Been doing a wee bit of redesigning -- this is mostly a test entry, really. No big whoop. Different logo (I'm thinking that needs to move back to the left, though; the right side looks a little overweighted), new header styles, whatnot. Also, work and life have been kicking my ass a bit lately.
Back later today.
Posted by iain at 01:01 PM
Ho ho ho! ... Ick.
England's clearly gone mad this holiday season.
BBC NEWS | England | New Santa clauses introduced: Santa Claus must have a minder to watch over him when he meets children, under the latest guidelines issued by Rotary clubs. Father Christmas must be accompanied when meeting children, even if parents are present. If there is no "minder" then he is being told he must go "off duty". The guidelines also say Father Christmas should no longer have a grotto and he should only shake hands with children, avoiding other physical contact. The Rotary Club has introduced the interim measure while a new code of practice is drawn up and follows child protection legislation earlier this year.
BBC News | Nativity video ban: A school in Bedfordshire has banned video cameras from its nativity play, because it's worried that the images may get into the hands of paedophiles Head teacher at Sundon Lower School, Sue Stokes, has told parents in a letter that she is worried that photographs might get into the wrong hands.
You know ... there's protection of children, and then there's complete and utter idiocy.
I understand the Santa regulations. I think they're perhaps a shade extreme, but I understand them. (And they're actually for the legal protection of the Santa suppliers, and not at all for the protection of children, but we'll just leave that to the side, shall we? Let's shall.) The video ban, however, is utterly and absolutely nonsensical.
Even if it were true that the pictures taken by parents of their own fully dressed children (and considering most nativity plays, quite voluminously dressed, at that) ... so what? (Those of you who may be about to have keyboard frenzied fits should just settle down.) In general, letting pedophiles have pictures of real children is probably a very bad idea, yes. But they can obtain pictures of fully dressed children anywhere. You can pull them off videotapes. You can get them out of catalogs. The only thing banning pictures of a nativity play will get you is thoroughly pissed off parents.
And if the parents themselves put images of their children up on a personal web site and a pedophile passes by and thinks, "Hey, cute kid"... how is that the teacher's or school's fault in any way whatsoever? For that matter, how is that the parent's fault? How much do you want to hold parents and children responsible for the ill will of some independent third person?
This is just DUMB.
Posted by iain at 05:57 PM
The Rainbow's gonna tour
Dressed up, somewhere to go
We'll put on a show!
--"The Rainbow Tour", Evita
You know, on the one hand, I firmly believe that most of this is spectacularly silly. Is Trent Lott, in all likelihood and in many ways, an unregenerate segregationist? Well, it would seem so, now wouldn't it? Is this in the slightest newsworthy, in and of itself? Good heavens, no. Not if you've been paying attention to his comments and record over the time he's been in Congress. Do I believe that he thinks that the country would probably have been better off if segregation had been the rule back in 1948 and was still the rule now? Well ... probably.
Do I believe that anything of the sort was on his mind when he made that toast to Thurmond? Frankly, not in the least. I honestly believe that he was thinking of nothing more than a nice way to make the guy feel good about his years of service. A tribute, if you will. That it was a manifestly inappropriate tribute goes without saying -- as it should have done in the first place. But does it warrant all this hoopla? So far, to use DVD terminology, we've had, Apology Original Version, Apology Revised Edit, Apology Expanded Version, Apology Special BET Edition and now apparently we're getting the three-week long Apology Tour. So, yes, perhaps things are just a bit excessive. But they have been most informative and illustrative.
BET Interview With Sen. Trent Lott (washingtonpost.com)
GORDON: What about affirmative action?
LOTT: I'm for that. I think you should reach out to people...
GORDON: Across the board?
LOTT: Absolutely, across the board. That's why I'm so proud of my own alma mater now, University of Mississippi, that obviously had a difficult time in the 60s and 70s, now led by an outstanding chancellor, Robert Khayat, that has gotten rid of the Confederate flag, that has now has an institute of reconciliation, that has a leadership...
GORDON: Yet your votes in the past have not suggested that you are for affirmative action.
LOTT: I am for affirmative action. And I practice it. I have had African-Americans on my staff, and other minorities, but particularly African-Americans, since the mid-1970s. I have had a particular program...
GORDON: But to have one on one's staff--you understand the difference, though, to have a black on your staff and to push legislation that would help African-Americans, minorities across the board, are completely different.
LOTT: You know, again, you cam get into arguments about timetables and quotas. Here's what I think, though. I think you've got to have an aggressive effort in America to make everybody have a chance.
And, you know, that would be wonderfully inspirational, and evidence of the fact that he really has changed his opinions ... if it weren't for the fact that evidence suggests that he's lying through his teeth.
From Lott, Denials of Racism -- and Explanations (washingtonpost.com): ..... Lott's assertion that he supports a broad range of affirmative action programs may represent an even more recent change of heart. In 1990, Lott voted against a law to restore affirmative action programs struck down by the Supreme Court.
In 1997, Senate Republicans -- with Lott as their leader -- blocked the nomination of Bill Lann Lee to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice, citing Lee's advocacy of affirmative action.
The following year, Lott voted for an amendment that would have eliminated one of the largest federal affirmative action programs. The program, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, directs a percentage of federal construction contracts to minority-owned firms.
"You can get into arguments about timetables and quotas," Lott said in last night's interview -- an apparent allusion to Republican arguments of recent years that "affirmative access" to opportunities is preferable to "affirmative action" programs that set specific targets for minority participation in higher education and on the job. But Lott offered no specific objection to traditional affirmative action programs, and after the interview was screened for Washington reporters, a spokesman for Lott declined to go into detail on Lott's remarks. "One has to be careful to recognize that affirmative action is not quotas," said Dave Hoppe.
I should think his spokesman would have declined to go into detail, yes. I should imagine that his spokesman was deeply shocked that his senator had said any such thing.
[Lott] avoided only one question: Gordon asked why Lott had never, until now, discussed in detail his changed opinions on racial matters. Even Thurmond, whose 100th birthday celebration was the scene of Lott's troublesome remarks, long ago repudiated his earlier segregationist views, Gordon noted. Lott fumbled briefly for an answer, then chose instead to explain his 1992 opposition to the extension of the Voting Rights Act. His current support for election reform, he said, is proof of his commitment to voting rights.
Um ... right. Whatever.
And now the internal Republican politics are getting spectacularly nasty.
Lott Losing Bush's Support, Advisers Say: ..... White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that Bush would not try to save Lott's job. Bush's political advisers say they are highly disappointed with Lott's explanations, but say they had been ordered by the president not to take any overt or covert action against the Mississippi Republican. The White House faces a dilemma: Lott is hurting both Bush and his party, but any effort to take down Lott will hurt Bush with his Southern base, say senior Republicans close to the White House. Bush also feels some loyalty toward Lott, White House officials said. Thus, the president's political team is forced into what one White House official called a "strategy of silence," hoping events themselves lead to Lott's removal or much less likely somehow end the controversy.
Well, if Lott doesn't end the Apology Tour and just SHUT THE HELL UP for the next three weeks, it's not likely that the controversy will end. Each apology just digs him in deeper and deeper. (Not that this will prevent his re-election out of Mississippi, of course. But then, he's got a few years before he needs to worry about that, I think.
And, aside from the previously noted idiocy of the Black Caucus, now the Democrats are wading in with things like this, from the abovelinked ABC News article: "Democrats are discussing a rare censure motion against Lott, and several have said he should consider stepping down." Excuse me? Censure? For what? For speaking out of turn? For an acute lack of moral turpitude as defined by Senate rules? For essentially repeating remarks he's made before which somehow were not worthy of censure at the time? For making remarks at a time and place which somehow allowed the public to actually notice that he seemed to be an unregenerate segregationist? What? In all seriousness, I'm not seeing something worth censuring here. Surely the right to free speech means that you have the right to make an absolute and utter public idiot of yourself, however damaging to yourself and your party it may be. His remarks don't bear on the Senate as a whole; even the veriest fool realizes that. (Except the Democrats in the Senate, apparently. Which says something about the distance between fools and Senators, unfortunately.) Apparently, the First Amendment doesn't apply to Congress itself. Who knew? Aside from the issue of censuring someone for behavior that, by the Senate rules, is neither illegal -- is in fact specifically legal, for heaven's sake -- and not unethical according to those same rules, surely politics ought to dictate that the Democrats should also SHUT THE HELL UP. Lott and the Republicans are doing just fine hanging themselves all by themselves. They don't need help. In fact, helping the thing along only makes the Democrats appear excessively opportunistic and cynical. (Yes, I know. They are excessively opportunistic and cynical, as are the Republicans. Nonetheless, piling on like this is simply not good politics.)
Some Republican aides speculated about an effort to coax Lott from his leadership with the prospect of a committee chairmanship. They worry that a humiliated Lott could resign his Senate seat, allowing Mississippi's Democratic governor to name a Democratic replacement and leaving the Senate at a 50-50 tie.
Oh, please. Bush may not be willing to save Lott's job as majority leader, but I should think he's entirely capable of leaning heavily on him to prevent his resignation. Besides, a 50-50 split isn't really relevant. All that means is that Cheney would then exercise his tie-breaking vote as president pro tempore of the Senate, so it doesn't make much difference whether Lott stays or goes ... unless, of course, a few other Republicans bolt the GOP. And given that Vermont is apparently now on the fast track to receive a nuclear dump that it does not in the least want, I should think that Jeffords will provide a most salutory lesson in that regard.
MITCH ALBOM: A ridiculous response to Lott's remarks: ..... And here is where it stands: Lott is apologizing. Democrats are digging for more dirt. Republicans are trying to make sure the president seems strong on civil rights, while not losing a Senate leader who can appease the "good ol' boy" voting faction. The media jumps all over it because a fight is always good for ratings.
And in the middle of all this noise, here is the only question that matters: Do blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minorities really feel that anyone is looking out for their interests in this, or just covering their own behinds?
Good grief, what on earth have we got to do with this mess? This has nothing whatsoever to do with actual minorities or services for us, or even general attitude towards us. This is politics, pure and simple. Leave us out of it, thanks kindly.
In any event, since Mr Lott seems predisposed to continue the Magickal Apology Tour, Carl Hiaasen has kindly written them for him.
Posted by iain at 01:03 PM
With a few comments about lovely Colombia.
Ha'aretz - Foreign workers, and gay, too. It isn't easy: An out-of-the-ordinary beauty pageant took place at the David Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv last month. Eight Filipino men competed before an audience of about 200 for the title of "Miss Gay" in English, or "Miss Feminine Man" in Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines. [.....] A. and M. heard about the Filipinos' beauty pageant and speak of it with open envy. In Colombia, such an event would be impossible. In South America, there are places where until recently anti-homosexual laws stood on the books, and even where such laws did not exist, it is a great deal safer to stay in the closet. "Colombia was a varied country. There are places where there is more openness, or where they at least leave homosexuals alone," says M., trying to defend his homeland.
A. reminds him of a woman whom both men knew, an openly avowed lesbian, who was murdered because of her sexual preference. "It's true," M. sadly admits. "Since there is such chaos in Colombia, and there isn't really any public order, every so often groups form and decide to enforce their own order. The call themselves "clean-up crews," because their object is to purify society from social phenomena they consider negative. For instance, they may decide to put an end to the phenomenon of panhandlers in the street. And then the beggars really do vanish - out of fear, of course - and anyone who doesn't vanish fast enough, pays for it with his life. Or else he simply gets a severe beating. The homosexuals are on the black list of these groups, which at times finger them as a target for purification."
Wired 11.01: Testing the First AIDS Vaccine: Sometime in the next several weeks, in an anonymous office building south of San Francisco, medical science will reach a milestone in the long and terrible history of the AIDS epidemic. Researchers at a small biotech firm called VaxGen are testing blood samples from thousands of volunteers inoculated with AIDSVax, the first AIDS vaccine to make it to phase 3 trials. It's the final, full-scale test before FDA approval, and the company is expected to announce preliminary results early in the year. If it works, AIDSVax could mark a turning point in the worst plague in modern history. [...] Even if AIDSVax doesn't work, though, the trial itself amounts to a breakthrough. Before Francis blazed the trail, researchers held little hope that an AIDS vaccine would make it into clinical trials, much less complete phase 3. Now there are several in the FDA pipeline. Though almost comic in its modesty, Francis' achievement is nonetheless substantial: He proved that an AIDS vaccine could clear all the bureaucratic, political, and financial hurdles. Sooner or later, someone will make an effective AIDS vaccine. When that happens, it will be Don Francis' victory as well.
I hope it works. To be honest, I really can't imagine how you'll really determine that, though. As was noted earlier here, the problem with AIDS vaccines is that to determine effectiveness, you need to have clinical field trials. That is, you need to vaccinate a person and then, somehow, you need to say, "Go ye and have unsafe sex!" Needless to say, an ethically dubious position to take, but without someone having unsafe sex with a certain regularity, and being tested regularly, you simply can't know if the vaccine works outside the lab. You also won't know how frequently the vaccine needs to be updated without waiting for it to fail to protect, which is even more ethically dubious than the original test in the first place.
The sort of thing that, although I'm glad we have medical researchers, makes me glad I'm not one of them.
Posted by iain at 03:54 PM
Kissinger resigns
as head of 9/11 panel
Well, that was ... abrupt.
Independently of his corporate ties, this is the sort of thing that makes you wonder if the administration really thinks through the consequences of their actions. Appointing Kissinger to any sort of government office was likely to be fraught with controversy, independent of the actual merits. (And never mind appointing Poindexter to any position whatsoever in any government, ever -- that they seem to have gotten away with it constantly amazes me). There are times when, even if someone might truly be the best person to carry out the job, you wouldn't appoint them because they simply wouldn't be allowed to do the job in peace. Never mind when it's as sensitive a job as dealing with September 11 dissection.
Posted by iain at 05:43 PM
OK, I confess: I am confused.
Feds Launch Science.gov: Fourteen scientific and technical information organizations from ten major science agencies have collaborated to create science.gov, a free Web portal providing access to science-related reports, databases and other information. Dubbed "FirstGov for Science," the site's resources include technical reports, journal citations, databases, federal web sites, and fact sheets.
And yes, it sounds like it will be a very useful resource. (Allowing, of course, for Shrubya's administration removing scientific data sources that don't agree with their political positions. But I digress.) But ... what, precisely, is the difference between science.gov and the late, lamented PubScience, directly targeted by publishers as a competitor not allowed by law, and the soon to be lamented AGRICOLA? I don't get it.
And isn't NTIS Fedworld supposed to be the search engine for all government web sites? Why reinvent the wheel? And what's the difference between science.gov and SciTechResources.gov, which is "in association with FirstGov for Science" (aka science.gov)?
Yes, I am definitely confused.
Posted by iain at 12:19 AM
Virginia Burning - Are cross-burnings speech or violence? By Dahlia Lithwick: Once in a while, a case comes along that makes a Supreme Court reporter proud to be involved, even tangentially, in the life of the high court. [....] Out of nowhere booms the great, surprising "Luke-I-am-your-father" voice of He Who Never Speaks. Justice Clarence Thomas suddenly asks a question and everyone's head pops up and starts looking madly around, like the Muppets on Veterinarian Hospital. "Aren't you understating the effects ... of 100 years of lynching?" he booms. "This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a sign of that. ... It is unlike any symbol in our society. It was intended to cause fear, terrorize."
Dreeben, who fears he has somehow been insensitive, tries to recover. "It was used to intimidate minorities ..." he begins. "More than minorities," booms back The Voice. "Certain groups." It's not clear what, precisely, has set Thomas off about Dreeben's presentation or why he's attacking the deputy SG rather than the guy defending the Klansman. But as quickly as he wound up, he winds down, and resumes his standard posture of staring fixedly at the ceiling.
You know ... for those of us of a more liberal bent, it's severely tempting to wonder just where this historically cognizant Justice Thomas has been during his entire term, when various racial issues have come before the court. This would be, of course, an entirely unfair question to ask, so one shall not ask it.
But one is severely tempted.
Justice David Souter replies that burning crosses have become as potent a symbol as guns, engendering a "Pavlovian" response. Smolla replies that lots of symbols are potent—the flag, the Star of David. Replies Souter: "But they don't make you scared." (Unless you're a Klansman, I suppose.)
"I daresay," cuts in Scalia, "if you were a black man you'd rather see a man with a rifle on your lawn than a man with a burning cross."
Speaking as one who has actually experienced the rifle part of the equation, and who has relatives who have experienced the burning cross part (in Albuquerque, no less -- they were as much amazed that such a thing would happen in the city at all, especially in the relatively affluent 'burbs as they were frightened, really) ... it's something of a wash. On the one hand, the rifle promises more immediate harm; burning crosses tend to be "get out while you can or we will harm you." (Unless, of course, the burning cross is done by men with rifles, in which case you get a lovely two-fer!)
It's going to be interesting to see what happens with this. Technically, if they go with normal First Amendment jurisprudence, the result may be that while the justices will find the speech reprehensible, nonetheless, it may still be protected speech. (And if that is the result, no matter what the vote -- I'm thinking possibly 6-2, or 5-3, since Rehnquist isn't there to participate -- then the opinions issued will be bitter indeed.) On the other hand, they may find that the immediate or deferred threat component of the speech -- and there clearly is one -- is significant enough that it overrides the protected aspect of the speech and makes it prohibited. After all, there exists no constitutional right to threaten bodily harm and get away with it.
Posted by iain at 12:42 PM
(LA Times, registration required.) CSX Paid No Income Tax in 2 of Last 4 Years: CSX Corp., the big railroad company headed by Treasury secretary-designate John W. Snow, paid no federal income taxes during at least two of the last four years despite recording more than $1 billion in pretax profits. Over the same four-year period, the company gave Snow $36 million in salary, bonuses, stock and options, and forgave a $24-million loan so he wouldn't lose money along with other shareholders as the company's stock price declined. Although CSX's tax and compensation practices appear to be legal, these and other aspects of Snow's career suggest the man President Bush has chosen to head his revamped economic team may have a lot of explaining to do before he takes the oath of office. [...] Yet even if Snow successfully defends CSX's tax returns and his own take-home pay, other issues are sure to be raised on Capitol Hill. Among them: the cancellation of loans he received to buy company stock, and his sale of CSX shares shortly before the disclosure of financial setbacks.
Good grief.
No wonder Shrubya's nominated this guy. Not only does he clearly believe that the responsibility of the wealthy to contribute to the support of the country that made them wealthy is absolutely zero, but he did the same ethically dubious things with CSX that Shrubya did at Harken. Brothers under the skin and inside the wallet.
The company has made clear its desire to pay the government as little as possible. "CSX will pursue all available opportunities to pay the lowest federal, state and foreign taxes, consistent with applicable laws and regulations and the company's obligation to carry a fair share of the cost of government," the management team said in its 2001 report to shareholders. "CSX also works through the legislative process for lower tax rates." ... According to an analysis of corporate disclosure documents by McIntyre's advocacy group, which posted the results on its Internet site, CSX paid no federal income taxes in 1998, 2000 and 2001. Instead, it received federal rebates of more than $150 million by claiming a number of tax breaks, including accelerated depreciation of equipment purchases.
Apparently, their fair share of the cost of government is zero. In fact, apparently by paying zero, they overpaid their fair share and needed to get money back out of that money they never paid. Who knew?
Posted by iain at 03:55 PM
Linking ... can be hazardous to your health. Financially, anyway.
FindLaw's Writ - Hilden: Should Linking Be Immune From Lawsuits?..... What are the theories under which linkers can be liable? Linkers should be wary when it comes to any area of law that allows for contributory, vicarious, or "aiding and abetting" liability; imposes liability on republishers or disseminators of information, as well as original publishers; or simply is vague about who the "publisher" is in the first place. And unfortunately, that describes many areas of law. For instance, in the libel context, the general rule is that "Republication of a libel does not diminish liability." That means that, for libel purposes, linking and posting are effectively very similar. The rule is counterintuitive - by comparison, most people feel that repeating gossip is less blameworthy than initiating it - but it is the law. [....] Congress has only acted to expand liability for linking. Through the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (as I discussed in a previous column), links can potentially trigger liability if they lead the user to computer code that allows copyright infringement. Meanwhile, all the other potential state-law and federal-law sources of liability for linking remain.
Dow Jones to defend the action - smh.com.au: In a unanimous landmark decision that could have worldwide implications for internet publishers, the High Court dismissed an appeal related to Mr Gutnick's defamation case against Dow Jones. Dow Jones had appealed against a Victorian Supreme Court decision which allowed Mr Gutnick to sue Dow Jones in his home state, with the news group saying the place the material was put on the internet was the place to sue - in this case, the United States. But the court said a defamation action could be brought wherever the information was viewed. Other factors would limit the number of cases which could be brought.
So in other words, Mr Gutnick could, if he had the time and money, take planes to every nation in the world with internet access, find a computer, connect, and view the piece, and then charge defamation.
That doesn't even make sense.
I can understand Dow Jones' position that the actual information was placed online by a US company on a US-sited server, so therefore, the suit would need to be handled in the US. I can even understand, if not precisely agree with, the contention that because Mr Gutnick viewed the information in Australia, and was resident in Australia, that the defamation therefore took place in Australia and that's where the suit should be sited. That makes a certain amount of sense.
But anyone, anywhere? How on earth will you be able to say anything, ever? And if the person is not resident in the country, and doesn't have business or other interests that can be confiscated, in the jurisdiction where the suit is brought, how will you enforce judgement?
It will be interesting to see what happens during the actual defamation case itself. As I understand it, Australian libel laws are considerably more strict than those in the US.
Posted by iain at 05:59 PM
Black Caucus denounces Lott: Members of the Congressional Black Caucus rejected Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's apology for saying that America would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, when he ran as a segregationist and won four states. [....] “HIS REMARKS require minimally a much larger apology ... a meeting with the Black Caucus ... and whatever else the caucus may decide,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, said Tuesday.
You know ... don't get me wrong. I fully believe that Lott is a spectacularly racist ass. But frankly, he owes the Black Caucus nothing whatoever, and they should have no voice -- as a caucus -- in deciding anything. Frankly, the man is fully and legally entitled to be the Leading Racist Ass in Congress. And from a political point of view, I want to keep him there, being the racist ass that he is, and being the leader of the Republican caucus, and letting that be the face of the Republican party. Maybe that'll get people to stir their stumps and vote next election -- either to punt the Republicans altogether, or to vote into office those who may actually believe in compassionate conservatism. (At the moment, it seems to consist of a "rob from poor to give to the rich" philosophy. But I digress.)
Lott's faux-pas has even sent some of the conservatives into a tizzy:
Vacant Lott: The GOP and the Ghosts of Mississippi.: Can George W. Bush and the Republican party really afford to have Trent Lott (R., Miss.) be its face in the United States Senate? The question has to be pondered as the wannabe Majority Leader tries to dig himself out of his latest mess. [...] From the Mississippi State Democratic party's official sample ballot for the 1948 election, here's some of the "problems" that Mississippians feared: "A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious…anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever."
Perhaps Sen. Lott should ask Alabama-born Condoleezza Rice — whose childhood friends were killed in a church bombing — if she believes her life would have been better if Strom Thurmond had become president.
An interestingly savage piece, for the National Review. (I can't imagine Rice allowing herself to be cornered into making any statement whatsoever about Lott, all things considered.) The article also details Lott's past "misstatements" on similar topics.
Maxine Waters even took on Daschle, whose response to the whole thing, while more or less in the spirit of compromise (or something) was not one of his politically more bright moments of the recent past. (Really, why couldn't the man have just shut the hell up? Why would he have said anything at all to Lott about it? The man is the OPPOSITION, for heaven's sake! DON'T HELP.)
While most of those who spoke at the news conference directed their fire at Lott, Rep. Maxine Waters expanded the issue beyond Lott's words to the reaction of Sen. Tom Daschle and other Democratic leaders. On Monday, Daschle seemed to give Lott a measure of absolution when he told reporters that, "Senator Lott, in my conversation with him this morning, explained that that wasn't how he meant them to be interpreted. I accept that. There are a lot of times when he and I go to the microphone, would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I'm sure this is one of those cases for him, as well."
"I think that Mr. Daschle moved too quickly to explain Mr. Lott," Waters said today. "I consider that this is a Democratic party issue, and to the degree that the Democratic party understands that it must relate to the concerns of African Americans, they will pause and take into consideration what message this and other kinds of statements like this are sending into the African American community. It is not enough to simply defend or to explain these kinds of statements and then at election time talk about why black Americans should turn out in large numbers. So we've got some work to do."
Well, if Daschle had kept his mouth shut, it wouldn't have been any sort of Democratic party issue, and wouldn't have needed to be.
Tragically, grievously, and most unfortunately ... NR has a certain point when it talks about the pass that Clinton got for doing pretty much the same thing:
back on May 5, 1993, in what the Washington Post characterized as a "... moving 88th birthday ceremony for former senator William Fulbright, President Clinton last night bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the man he described as a visionary humanitarian, a steadfast supporter of the values of education, and 'my mentor.'" Clinton added, "It doesn't take long to live a life. He made the best of his, and helped us to have a better chance to make the best of ours.…The American political system produced this remarkable man, and my state did, and I'm real proud of it."
Of course, the man Clinton was praising, who he called his "mentor," who supposedly embraced utopian values and made the world a better place for everyone, was also a rabid segregationist.
In 1956, Fulbright was one of 19 senators who issued a statement entitled the "Southern Manifesto." This document condemned the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Its signers stated, among other things, that "We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means." They stated further, "We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation."
I hadn't known that about Fulbright. (I didn't actually know much of anything about him.) I wonder if Clinton did?
Posted by iain at 05:04 PM
The rebellion, such as it is, has officially arrived.
Letter from priests to Cardinal Law: The following is the text of the letter signed by 58 Boston-area priests and sent to Cardinal Bernard F. Law on December 9, 2002:
Dear Cardinal Law:
It is with a heavy heart that we write to request your resignation as Archbishop of Boston. We have valued the good work you have done here in Boston, including, but not limited to: your advocacy for the homeless, your outreach to the Jewish community, your opposition to capital punishment, and your leadership in welcoming immigrant peoples. However, the events of recent months and, in particular, of these last few days, make it clear to us that your position as our bishop is so compromised that it is no longer possible for you to exercise the spiritual leadership required for the church of Boston.
Less than 10% of the diocesan clergy signed the letter, and an even smaller proportion of religious order clergy. It's a wee, symbolic rebellion -- but exquisitely timed, what with him being in Rome, and the Vatican considering a co-adjutor for Boston. (The timing is an accident of circumstance, since nobody knew he was going to Rome until suddenly, there he was!) It will be interesting to see if this makes Rome more receptive to the idea, or if it makes them more determined not to be forced by those vile "democrats" to deal on any terms but their own. (After all, who are those priests? Mere nobodies! In open revolt! How dare Our Priests consider that they might have a voice in the running of Our Church?)
''This wasn't an easy decision, because the day I was ordained, I knelt at Cardinal Law's feet and promised him obedience,'' said the Rev. Emile R. Boutin Jr., parochial vicar at Immaculate Conception Parish in Stoughton. ''But this institution is limping miserably.
''Our ability to be effective has practically ceased,'' he said. ''It's impossible to fund-raise. And any of us who work with young people are enormously compromised. It's a really dark day.'' Boutin said he believes that his promise of obedience is less important than his duty to obey his own conscience, and he said that he views the clergy sexual abuse crisis as a turning point in church history. ''It feels to me like one of those pivotal moments in the history of the church, like the edict of Constantine, the Orthodox-Catholic split, the Protestant Reformation, or the Second Vatican Council,'' he said. ''Now there is the clergy scandal, whose epicenter is Boston. It seems to me so evident that this is not about Cardinal Law at all, and even if his hands were totally clean, he needs for the well-being of the church to recognize that he has become the lightning rod, and he needs to step away, so we can bring in leadership from the outside.''
You know ... on the one hand, I do think that ultimately, the crisis itself may wind up being an important point in the history of the Church's relationship to people in the modern world. I'm not sure that people realized how wilfully medieval it had remained until they watched it failing to deal with this mess in any reasonable way -- or failing to prevent it from becoming a mess in the first place.
On the other hand, the letter itself? I just want to say to Rev. Boutin, "Yo! Guy! Get a grip! Whatever else this letter may represent, it is NOT as big as the Orthodox-Catholic split or the Protestant Reformation."
(Mind, I do think that there will be schizm between Rome and the US Catholic Church, and I have a feeling that if I live another 30, 40 years, it will happen in my lifetime, and that this mess will be a major contributing factor. But the letter? Pfeh. A mere bagatelle -- aside from in Boston, of course.)
Posted by iain at 10:20 AM
Ho, ho .... ho?
CNN.com - Fed-up priest starts 'Santa-free zone' - Dec. 5, 2002: Eckhard Bieger, a Roman Catholic priest in Frankfurt, said he is all for the holiday season, gift exchanges and family celebrations. But he believes the twinkly-eyed old man in a red costume is a commercial fraud. "Santa Claus is a creation of the advertising industry and Coca-Cola to further commercial interests," Bieger told Reuters. "I don't have anything against Christmas presents and don't want to disappoint children," he said. "My aim is to put St. Nicholas back at the center of attention rather than this Santa Claus figure, which is just an empty shell."
St Nicholas. He wants to put St Nicholas back at the center of things. Well. Quite.
Six to Eight Black Men: A heartwarming tale of Christmas in a foreign land where, if you've been naughty, Saint Nick and his friends give you an ass-whuppin'
..... In France and Germany, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve, while in Holland the children receive presents on December 5, in celebration of Saint Nicholas Day. It sounded sort of quaint until I spoke to a man named Oscar, who filled me in on a few of the details as we walked from my hotel to the Amsterdam train station. Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I was told, is a carryover from his former career, when he served as a bishop in Turkey.
..... The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as "six to eight black men." I asked several Dutch people to narrow it down, but none of them could give me an exact number. It was always "six to eight," which seems strange, seeing as they've had hundreds of years to get a decent count.
The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-fifties, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends. I think history has proven that something usually comes between slavery and friendship, a period of time marked not by cookies and quiet times beside the fire but by bloodshed and mutual hostility. They have such violence in Holland, but rather than duking it out among themselves, Santa and his former slaves decided to take it out on the public. In the early years, if a child was naughty, Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men would beat him with what Oscar described as "the small branch of a tree."
"A switch?"
"Yes," he said. "That's it. They'd kick him and beat him with a switch. Then, if the youngster was really bad, they'd put him in a sack and take him back to Spain."
"Saint Nicholas would kick you?"
"Well, not anymore," Oscar said. "Now he just pretends to kick you."
"And the six to eight black men?"
"Them, too."
Um ... I'm thinking that I'd just as soon keep our commercial fat guy who miraculously manages to make it down surprisingly narrow chimneys, drinks your milk, eats your cookies, scatters presents while he may, while his reindeer plotz on your roof.
I'm just sayin'.....
..... The political climate regarding "six to eight black slaves" didn't change in the Netherlands until the 1950s? In a country that never had race-based slavery?
Good heavens.
Posted by iain at 07:44 PM
Media Relations: truth and the rawhide kid/ December 9, 2002
Posted by iain at 07:04 PM
... Well, DUH.
Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Our Lord High Minister of Injustice speaks! (Or rather, writes.) And richly earns our title of disdain:
At Justice, Freedom Not to Release Information (washingtonpost.com) Today, at the Justice Department, some laws are more equal than others. One 36-year-old U.S. law can be broken, it seems. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who is sworn to enforce all laws, has told federal employees that they can bend -- perhaps even break -- one law, and he will even defend their actions in court. That law is known as the Freedom of Information Act. Last October, the Justice Department cited the Sept. 11 attacks in a memo to federal FOIA officers that stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions."
It's just so much fun to watch our nation's official Defender of the Constitution take it out, play with it a little, set parts of the dependant legal code on fire here and there ....
Some of TRAC's most frequent users include networks and newspapers, such as The Washington Post, public interest groups -- from Common Cause to the National Rifle Association -- and Congress, particularly the Senate Judiciary Committee. "TRAC data is important and useful information for Congress to conduct its constitutional responsibility of oversight," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told Hearsay last week.
Which would be one reason why Ashcroft has decided that the law should be ignored when possible and fought tooth and nail at all other times. First, it's clearly a policy of the administration that information to the press and to Congress should be controlled and limited at all times. (What, you think Ashcroft would institute a policy like this without clearing it with Our Shrub first? Not if he even pretends to value his job. Plausible deniability only goes so far ... and deniability here isn't plausible anyway.)
Fast forward to 2001. After the Sept. 11 attacks, TRAC data revealed that U.S. attorneys around the country had declined to prosecute a large proportion of terrorism cases referred by the FBI and other agencies. The Philadelphia Inquirer took the data, went to the courthouse and found the terrorism indictments brought really weren't terrorism cases at all. Such embarrassments apparently have continued to upset Justice Department bureaucrats. In March, Teresa Davis of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys wrote that monthly FOIA requests for data would be delayed to make sure releasing data did not "jeopardize the department's counter-terrorism efforts or threaten national security."
So apparently, learning that Justice is misapplying the terrorism laws causes embarrassment to the department.
Well, yes, I suppose it would, now wouldn't it?
Court Sets Deadline for DoJ FOIA Compliance: The Justice Department (DoJ) will respond by Jan. 15 to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information on the government's use of new surveillance powers, including how many times the DoJ has authorized the use of devices to trace the telephone calls or e-mails of people who are not suspected of any crime. The FOIA request also seeks data on how many times the government has ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to release information under the USA Patriot Act.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requested the records concerning the government's implementation of the Patriot Act, legislation that was passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. By amending laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the ACLU said that the act "vastly" expands the government's authority to obtain personal information about those living in the United States, including U.S. citizens.
And, in accordance with current policy, I should imagine that the government's response will be a denial of the request, followed by a court case, followed by a court of appeals case, and three years or so along the line, the Supreme Court will (one hopes) slap the administration hard.
Posted by iain at 06:24 PM
ABCNEWS.com : Court Revives Debate on Gun Ownership: An appeals court ruling that the Second Amendment does not grant Americans a personal right to own firearms contradicts Attorney General John Ashcroft and may put the Supreme Court at the center of an impassioned debate as old as the nation. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, written by one of the judges who declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in June, seems to go against two centuries of popular thinking and contrary to assertions from the National Rifle Association, scholars, politicians and others that individuals do have the right to bear arms. [...] Ashcroft's memo on the individual right to bear arms was issued Nov. 9, 2001, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans decided in another case that such an individual right existed.
Well, this is going to be fun. Conflicting decisions out of the circuits pretty much means that the Court has little choice but to take up the cases. Logically, with what little exists on the record, stare decisis would indicate that the Court would go with previous precedent, uphold the 5th Circuit (although probably with many qualifications) and overturn the 9th Circuit. AGAIN. (Really, one wonders if they ever get tired of being at the end of the Supreme Court's whipping stick.)
Posted by iain at 05:50 PM
New Scientist | AIDS dead could be buried in disused mines: Disused mineshafts in Johannesburg could be turned into catacomb-style cemeteries, in a bid by the City Parks agency to accommodate the increasing number of people dying from AIDS. Officials are also considering alternative disposal methods, such as powdering bodies using liquid nitrogen, as well as mass graves.
Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and about 750,000 of its three million citizens are currently infected with HIV. The city's official death rate has increased by 35 percent in the last five years. It reached 19 per 1000 in 2002, largely due to an increase in AIDS-related deaths in young adults. "This year we will bury about 20,000 people. In 2010, unless someone develops a cure for AIDS, we expect that figure to be 70,000," says Alan Buff, who is responsible for cemeteries at City Parks.
Esquire | The DiIulio Letter : On October 24, John DiIulio, a former high-level official in the Bush administration, sent the letter below to Esquire Washington correspondent Ron Suskind. The letter was a key source of Suskind's story about Karl Rove, politics and policymaking in the Bush administration, "Why Are These Men Laughing," which appears in the January 2003 issue of Esquire. Today, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said that the charges contained in the story were "groundless and baseless." After initially standing by his assertions, DiIulio himself later issued an "apology." Esquire stands strongly behind Suskind and his important story.
[....] Besides the tax cut, which was cut-and-dried during the campaign, and the education bill, which was really a Ted Kennedy bill, the administration has not done much, either in absolute terms or in comparison to previous administrations at this stage, on domestic policy. There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism. [...] In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, non-stop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. [...] Likewise, every administration at some point comes to think of the White House as its own private tree house, to define itself as "us" versus "them" on Capitol Hill, or in the media, or what have you, and, before 100 days are out, to vest ever more organizational and operational authority with the White House's political, press, and communications people, both senior and junior. I think, however, that the Bush administration—maybe because they were coming off Florida and the election controversy, maybe because they were so unusually tight-knit and "Texas," maybe because the chief of staff, Andy Card, was more a pure staff process than a staff leader or policy person, or maybe for other reasons I can't recognize—was far more inclined in that direction, and became progressively more so as the months pre-9/11 wore on.
This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis—staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible. These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations (left and right, Democrat and Republican), but, in the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.
You know, the sad thing is, it's not remotely surprising to anyone who has paid the least attention to this administration. They've never seemed particularly interested in good policy as opposed to good politics ... and never seem to see where the two join together.
Not that it will matter, really. Barring a war-induced recession (and if there is a war, there will be a follow-on recession, since our economy is in no fit state to handle a war), Shrubya and the Mayberry Machiavellis will be back for another round in 2004. And that is, no doubt, one of their paramount concerns. To revenge Daddy's loss of the White House by showing that his administration leftovers can triumph this time.
Former aide tones down criticism of Bush: ..... DiIulio issued two statements, the first generally standing by his criticism, the second -- similar to Fleischer's comment -- calling his own allegations "groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples." [...] DiIulio did not back down in the first statement he released Monday through the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches. [...] After DiIulio's first statement, Fleischer said DiIulio had "issued an apology." Shortly after the press secretary's criticism, DiIulio issued a second statement that was strikingly similar to Fleischer's comments. "John DiIulio agrees that his criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. He sincerely apologizes and is deeply remorseful," a university spokeswoman said. DiIulio declined to elaborate.
One does wonder what on earth the administration did to force di Iulio to apologize. After all, not only is he a Democrat, but he's no longer a member of the administration.
One wonders just how relevant it is that the statement was issued through the University of Pennsylvania. It would, perhaps, not be reading too much into things to wonder whether or not the administration threatened to cut off some significant portion of Penn's federal funds. Oh, not in any traceably punitive way. Of course not. Di Iulio's department would just suddenly have found that their grants were mysteriously cancelled due to budgetary reasons, or something like. (That said, it's entirely possible that Shrubya's people said nothing at all, and that di Iulio's department yelled at him all on their own. After all, the people at Penn have been around for a while. They should certainly know how the federal retribution game is played.)
Just a guess, of course.
Posted by iain at 12:12 PM
Wired News: Mac Loyalists: Don't Tread on Us: What makes Mac users so loyal? The answer, of course, depends on who is asked: Marketers say it's the brand, psychologists say it's a social relationship, and Apple loyalists say it's the merits of the machine, its friendliness, its simplicity. [...] "With Apple you're a captive, and to some extent they abuse that privilege," Lackey said. "I would have thought Apple would be all folksy, like a Ben & Jerry's kind of company. But in my experience, PC companies are much more responsive." The loyalty to Apple has led some to describe the Mac community as masochistic, the "punish me harder" brigade in the words of the Register. "They eat it up," said Matthew Rothenberg, an editor at Ziff Davis and a longtime Apple watcher. "It's like a B&D (bondage and dominance) relationship. There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community."
You know, I'd wondered about that.
Posted by iain at 02:02 PM
Daily Nation (Nairobi) | Aids: Have we lost the war?: During the United Nations World Aids Day marked yesterday, it was learnt that only 10 per cent of Kenyans are HIV positive, translating into 2.2 million, while 1.5 million people have already died. These are not small figures by any reckoning, and although the Government attributes the minuscule decline to an "aggressive anti-Aids campaign undertaken by the Government and non-governmental organisations", just how aggressive this campaign has been remains to be seen.
A clear pointer that Kenyans should take these figures with a grain of salt are reports from the provinces. One example should suffice. In Nyeri alone, at least 40 per cent of those who go for HIV tests - voluntary or not - are testing positive. And yet Nyeri District is not the most heavily hit by this epidemic. Districts like Thika, and many areas of Nyanza are a lot more affected. and even then, a lot more people all over the country are dying of HIV complications than are officially reported.
AIDS worsens food crisis: THE HIV/AIDS pandemic, described as the most devastating disease humanity has ever faced, has had drastic effects on food security in Africa, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot said in a message to mark World AIDS Day. [.....] In a recent report by UNAIDS, the food crisis in Africa, more than 14 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe face starvation. Zimbabwe accounts for almost half of the number, with more than 6.7 million people urgently requiring food assistance. The crisis in the six African countries has been exacerbated by the fact that they have predominantly agro-based economies, the report said. With more than 5 million adults and about 600 000 children living with HIV/Aids, experts say, the capacity to produce food has been extremely diminished since most of the time is spent in bed, hospital or attending funerals. [...] More than 7 million agricultural workers in 25 African countries have died of AIDS since 1985. The prevalence of HIV/Aids is higher in women than in men yet women are traditionally the main producers of food on farms. Women also play a crucial role in complementing family incomes and the more they are affected by the disease, experts say, the worse the food situation in any given community since they cannot spend enough time in their supplementary income generating activities.
Asia to have 20 mln HIV positive people by 2007: report : India, China and other Asian countries will together account for 20 million people infected with the deadly HIV virus by 2007, as against the present UNAIDS and World Health Organisation (WHO) figure of 7.2 million, according to an AIDS research organisation.
First AIDS vaccine in final testing stages: Many experts say they believe the best way to stop the spread of AIDS is with a vaccine, but so far there is none. However, that may change soon. Dr. Don Francis with the California-based company VaxGen is leading the way in developing a vaccine. After seven years of testing, Francis plans to finish the final stage of human testing for Food and Drug Administration approval in January.
Postings from the past year:
