Nelson Mandela calls Bush shortsighted and arrogant on Iraq; implies racism: Former President Nelson Mandela called President Bush arrogant and shortsighted and implied that he was racist for ignoring the United Nations in his zeal to attack Iraq.
... What on EARTH?
[...] He accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of undermining the United Nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is from Ghana. "Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white," he said.
No, they just refused to pay UN dues or to support UN missions. The US, anyway; Britain was generally rather better behaved. And, one might just point out, Bush and Annan's terms of office are roughly contemporaneous; Bush has never had the chance to pay disrespect to a white UN leader.
Then there's this odd passage: "Mandela also criticized Iraq for not cooperating fully with the weapons inspectors and said South Africa would support any action against Iraq that was supported by the United Nations." First, Mandela can no longer speak for South Africa; at least as of June 28, 2002, Mandela held no official government position, aside from being the honorable former president. (I dare say Mbeki was rather surprised to hear South Africa's theoretically official position coming out of someone else.) Second ... what if, against all the odds at the moment, the UN Security Council looks at the evidence presented by the US on February 5 and by the weapons inspectors on February 14, and then decides that going to war is the most logical option? Does that mean that "South Africa" suddenly withdraws its support from the UN position?
I can understand that he is opposed to war in Iraq. Many people are. But the statements he's made, as contained in this article, are just bizarre.
Posted by iain at 06:52 PM
A Patron Saint for Hopeless Clickers (washingtonpost.com) (Washington Post, January 28, 2003): The Archangel Gabriel is one of Christianity's great communicators -- it was he who brought word to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, the Bible says. So it was only natural that when a search began for a patron saint for the Internet, Gabriel's name arose. [...] The web site, www.santiebeati.it, is soliciting votes with the aim of having an Internet patron saint named by Easter. "We had lots of requests for a patron, so we decided the Internet was the best tool for finding one," said Roberto Diani, an Internet adviser for Italy's Conference of Bishops. The official choice will be made by the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Cult and Discipline of Sacrament.
The question does arise: whatever FOR? Hasn't the Vatican got anything better to do? Does the Internet really need an entity overseeing its wires and fibers and computers and electrons ... well, OK, scratch that last question. It can always use a little bit of help, really. Nonetheless, the question remains: why on earth are they bothering?
The pope evidently regards the making of saints as a teaching aid.
... You know, that would seem to be an improper use of beatification, somehow. But then, I'm probably quite unclear on what the making of saints is actually for
Posted by iain at 12:57 PM
Good heavens.
It really is what it says it is, too.
Pardon me while I wax sardonic and just a teensy bit irritated withall. (Hey, nobody can accuse me of false advertising.)
Text: Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address
We achieved historic education reform...
We did? When? How did I miss that? I thought all we did was to restyle our education system so that teachers can now focus on making students memorize what they need to pass certification tests. And since when is education a federal responsibility in any event?
To insist on integrity in American business, we passed tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account.
... You know, I'm surprised that he wasn't smited where he stood for letting those words escape his mouth. Between Harvey Pitt, Haliburton, revelations of somewhat improper conduct in the president's own past ... I'm astonished that someone in his administration didn't say to him, "Mr President, you absolutely cannot say that. They will shred you for it tomorrow. Please just don't say a word about that stuff." But he did. No doubt the shredding has commenced.
I am proposing that all the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006 be made permanent and effective this year.
And the concept of massive tax relief when your budget office is projecting deficits as far as the eye can see is desperately irresponsible. He's not proposing to shrink government, as past Republican administrations did, which means that he wants more government, but doesn't want to pay for it. (And we'll just ignore the fact that the tax breaks are shaded to primarily affect upper tax brackets.)
As we continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable, we must offer younger workers a chance to invest in retirement accounts that they will control and they will own.
OK, that was a surprise. It's not that I expected that he's changed his views on the privatization of Social Security; I just thought he knew better than to throw it out there when the economy was this insecure. It's not a sensible political tack to take: Hey, the stock market has fallen off a cliff these past two years, but we're going to allow you to invest your retirement funds in it! Because losing your 401k and pension moneys wasn't enough!
My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties have talked for years about strengthening Medicare. I urge the members of this new Congress to act this year.
... Wait. He wants Congress to cut taxes, he's spending funds to establish the Department of Homeland Security ... where the hell does he propose to get an additional $400 billion to put into Medicare?
I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America one heart and one soul at a time.
We'll just ignore the fact that most of the various faith based initiatives he proposes violate the Constitutional separation of church and state, shall we? Let's shall.
I propose a $450 million initiative to bring mentors to more than a million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners. Government will support the training and recruiting of mentors, yet it is the men and women of America who will fill the need. One mentor, one person, can change a life forever, and I urge you to be that one person.
And again: where is the $450 million coming from if Congress cuts taxes as he requests? It's a noble goal, sort of. (Why only junior high students? Intervention earlier is generally more effective, isn't it? And how on earth did this law-and-order administration decide that children of prisoners needed anything -- or rather, that they needed anything that this administration was willing to give them?)
Too many Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new $600 million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years.
And again: where does that money come from?
Oddly, although it sounds like a lot, drug treatment tends to be fairly resource-intensive. $2,000 per addict actually isn't very much. However, it is a significant amount. I hope at least some part of it goes through, depending on the details of the proposal. However, in a year in which they are likely to have to finance a war, as well as a new cabinet department, Congress is likely to be reluctant to spend money on addicts.
Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many. We have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own country. And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS and for children orphaned by AIDS. I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.
Now that, I confess, was a total surprise. I wouldn't have thought this administration was in the least concerned. I would like to know the details of how they plan to prevent new AIDS infections, however; I strongly suspect it will be a variation of what they want to use here -- Just Say No To Sex. Which doesn't work. But depending on the details, it does appear to be an actually compassionate program.
All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
... What a very odd way to put that. Mind, I'm not sure how you can say, "We've assassinated or murdered alleged terrorists wherever we could find them." Saying it that baldly would produce an uproar, to put it mildly. But even in context, assassination seems a terribly odd thing to boast of.
..... On the Korean Peninsula, an oppressive regime rules a people living in fear and starvation. Throughout the 1990s, the United States relied on a negotiated framework to keep North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons. We now know that that regime was deceiving the world and developing those weapons all along. And today the North Korean regime is using its nuclear program to incite fear and seek concessions.
America and the world will not be blackmailed. America is working with the countries of the region--South Korea, Japan, China and Russia--to find a peaceful solution and to show the North Korean government that nuclear weapons will bring only isolation, economic stagnation and continued hardship. The North Korean regime will find respect in the world and revival for its people only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions.
... But, you know, that means that by making the nuclear threat, North Korea is getting what it wants. Or, in other words, North Korea has successfully blackmailed the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia into acceding in some significant way to its demands. It isn't reasonably possible to say anything but that North Korea has won this round. And as long as they have some sort of nuclear program, and we're afraid that they'll turn Seoul into a glowing pit, they'll continue to win, at least the lower level encounters. (And nobody thinks that they'll really disarm, do they?)
The section on Iraq in the speech is very interesting. It keeps very carefully to the things that the weapons inspectors have confirmed, or that were already public knowledge. At least ... right up until the point where he talks about Iraq aiding Al Qaida. Which runs hard into the fact that his own CIA has said, repeatedly, that Iraq has been doing no such thing, that Iraq, in fact, killed Al Qaida agents that crossed over from Afghanistan, because they don't like secular dictators any more than they like us. That he aids and abets terrorists is quite likely; he just doesn't aid and abet those terrorists.
There were some interesting and unexpected sections of the speech. But by and large, it really seems to indicate a very strong external focus, of a sort that may not serve him well politically.
And his math is appalling.
Posted by iain at 12:40 AM
(NY Times, registration required) Service Academies Defend Use of Race in Their Admissions Policies: Even as the Bush administration sides with opponents of affirmative action at the University of Michigan, officials of the nation's service academies say their own minority admissions programs are necessary to maintain both integrated student bodies and officer corps. By defending policies that are not "race neutral," the admissions officers appear to contradict their commander in chief. [...] While the academy officials would not discuss the Michigan case, several outside legal experts argue that the administration's legal theories in briefs it filed with the Supreme Court in the case raise serious questions about the procedures at the elite training grounds for future military leaders at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs.
... woops.
To be sure, the main defense that the service academies can offer is that they are redressing extensive, historical, and well documented discriminatory practices at the academies.
The Army, Navy and Air Force academies make strenuous efforts to achieve freshman classes with significant minority representation, though only West Point says it has specific percentage goals. Each recruits extensively, gives minorities an edge on admissions and bolsters their ranks by sending promising candidates who fall just short of their standards to one-year preparatory schools. Some enlisted personnel and athletes also attend those schools.
However.
The program at West Point would appear to be in direct and flagrant conflict with the Bakke ruling, let alone current administration policy, let alone other recent Court decisions ... never mind what comes out of the Michigan cases. Even affirmative action as a direct remedy for past misconduct probably wouldn't allow a quota program to stand.
I wonder how the administration will handle this. For one thing, the service academies' twin arguments of (1) we want our officer corps to look more like the United States than it used to, and (2) we want our officer corps to look more like our current enlisted ranks, so that we can maintain morale, while they might be persuasive in an entirely nonlegal sense, are not likely to be allowed to trump whatever principles the court uses to strike down the Michigan rules. Additionally, the administration and the Republican Party conservative hierarchy are trying desperately to pretend that they like minorities! they really really like them! It becomes increasingly difficult to make that argument when you attack affirmative action programs at not only the nation's leading universities, but the only national universities we have. (It's also worth remembering that part of the problem is that minorities and whites seem to view affirmative action programs in drastically different ways. Minorities tend to view affirmative action programs as reparative but taking merit into account, and whites tend to view them as purely preferential without regard to merit.)
That said, I have a feeling that the administration will serenely ignore the service academies as long as possible, and that the Court will tailor its ruling very specifically to the merits of this particular case. I don't think either the executive or legislative wants to deal with touching the military at this point.
Posted by iain at 04:48 PM
Media Relations: queens remade in hollywood's preferred image/ January 27, 2003
Posted by iain at 05:46 PM
365Gay.com | Court Refuses To Block New Trial Against Cops In Teen's Suicide: The family of a teenager who killed himself after two police officers threatened to tell his parents he was gay will be allowed to launch a second wrongful death suit. A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal from the Minersville, Pennsylvania Police Department and several officers who sought to block the suit by the family of 18-year-old Marcus Wayman. Wayman, a high school football player, shot himself in the head in his home in 1997, hours after officers who arrested him on an underage drinking charge threatened to go to his family and tell them he was gay.
Well ... granted that different juries decide things differently. The family wants the police to be declared culpable, and frankly, from what I've heard, that would not be an unreasonable position. However, it does sound as though responsibility might be personal, rather than departmental. Surely it can't be departmental policy to say, "Hey, I've arrested you for underage drinking, and it looks like you and your boyfriend were fooling around. So now I'll just tell your parents that you're gay." Then again, it does seem that several officers were involved, so maybe department culpability does exist. I don't know.
However .... I think they're going to have a hard time finding a jury that will convict. For one thing, if they get a fair number of parents on the jury, they will almost certainly feel that they would want to know. Parents always think they want to know what's happening with their kids. The other issue is that, although the police may have exceeded their authority, they certainly couldn't have foreseen the results. (Not that they would have cared, given their behavior.)
This is already the second or third time around for this case. The first time, the family was simply arguing for the right to sue.
There is also a Marcus Wayman Memorial Campaign website, collecting information and requesting donations to continue the court battle.
Posted by iain at 01:40 PM
An interesting side effect of the various state and municipal budget crises:
ABCNEWS.com : Libraries Can't Afford New Potter Books: When "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" comes out this summer, many young readers will rush to their local public libraries to get copies. But for this and other books they likely will receive a lesson in patience. Because of budget cuts, libraries are struggling to have enough Potter books. In New York City, for example, the number of ordered copies has dropped from 956 for the last release, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," to 560 for the new one.
Of course, the thing is, although Potter is rampageously popular, libraries are doing with less of everything these days. Fewer books overall. Less or no equipment replacement. Fewer online resources. It's more likely that children (and their parents) will actually notice with the Potter book, simply because it's guaranteed to be so popular that the waiting lists will go on forever. But it's not going to be remotely unusual.
Tracy: When you can do a thing like that book, how can you possibly do anything else?
Mike: Well, you may not believe this, but there are people in this world that must earn their living.
Tracy: Of course, but people buy books, don't they?
Mike: Not as long as there's a library around.
---"The Philadelphia Story"
I dare say a few more copies of the book may actually be sold to individuals, since libraries won't have them ... but then, a great many individuals are a bit poorer this year, too. Combined with the drop in library sales, the latest Harry Potter may underperform expectations by a surprising amount.
Posted by iain at 10:05 PM
AIDS Vaccine Developed at Emory University and the National Institutes of Health Moves to Clinical Trials: A vaccine aimed against AIDS, developed at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, the Emory Vaccine Center, and the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will begin a Phase I clinical trial this week. A total of 30 human volunteers will be enrolled at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The trial is funded by NIAID and is conducted by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, located at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash. Posted by iain at 09:53 PM
Media Relations: springer: tv show, opera ... senator?/ January 23, 2003
Posted by iain at 04:12 PM
Wired News: Porn Strategy: Share and Snare: The porn industry is learning a lesson the music industry refuses to hear: Piracy doesn't have to be a dirty word. As recording industry officials sing dirges over a 2002 music-business sales slump and press ahead with lawsuits against file-sharing network platforms such as Kazaa, pornographers see an opening. "You can't beat them, so you ought to join them," said Exploit Systems CEO Scott Hunter. "These are your most valued customers, the people who come specifically into your arena and say they want X, Y and Z. This is the most inquisitive, most important community possibly in the history of business." Hunter's company has developed software that helps content providers put their legitimate versions of material being pirated onto the file-share networks in such a way that it overwhelms the pirated versions of the same material.
Hmm.
Well, leaving aside the technical issues for the moment, the plain fact is that there's comparatively little porn stuff out there that would be appropriate for using Kazaa and the like. It's not that there's none, you understand, but digitizing porn videos isn't as simple a process as sticking in a CD and telling the software to let 'er rip. As for still pictures, I can't imagine how that technology would actually work. Additionally most people don't use Kazaa and the like to find still images; it's simply not an effective way to use the technology.
(I do love the RIAA representative's response, though. Basically, it boils down to, "When people want to jerk off, they want to jerk off NOW, dammit!")
I think that "devotees of singers and bands" might pay ... although if you pay attention to what a lot of serial downloaders are saying, it really is the whole "free" concept that appeals to a lot of them. It might be instructive to find out how many mp3.com artists ever received payments through their sites. Certainly, some make quite a lot (or did under the old mp3.com payment terms), but I'd wager that relatively few artists ever got much in the way of donations per number of people downloading.
Posted by iain at 01:43 PM
The Wage Slave Journal: George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil
You know .... it's not that I disagree with the viewpoint on any of the things contained herein. Really, I don't. I'm still very very liberal! And I do, in fact, think this is one of the more impressively venal administrations in recent history, which is really saying quite something.
But I look at that scale of Bush acts evaluated from "evil" to "very, very, very, very evil", and all I can think of is Simon and ManServant Hecubus from "The Kids in the Hall".
Good evening and welcome to the pit of penultimate darkness. Apparently, someone's opened a pit slightly darker than this one. I'm, of course, MC Simon Milligan master of funk and evil. Today, we will look at the evil you kids can have on a rainy day. Did you know you could summon up the powers of darkness in the comfort of your own home? It's true! All you need is common household baking soda, white vinegar and goat's blood. You might want to get your mom to help with the slaughter of the goat.
And then I bounce from that to things like this:
AIDS Panel Choice Wrote of a 'Gay Plague' (Washington Post, January 22, 2003): The Bush administration has chosen Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the "gay plague," to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS. [...] In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" rather than a lifestyle and asserted that "Christ can rescue the homosexual." After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. Earlier versions located by The Washington Post that referred to the "gay plague," for instance, were changed as of yesterday to "plague."
And suddenly, "evil" seems an entirely appropriate word to describe this administration.
Thanks to Google, we can actually see the original text of Mr Thacker's web site. As the Post notes, the text no longer appears on his current site at http://www.scepter.org/founder.asp (Cut and paste if you like; I have absolutely no intention of appearing in the referrer stats of that site.) Apparently, Scepter promotes abstinence, and that's why, I would assume, that Mr Thacker is on the new board.
Administration health officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed Thacker's appointment. They said he was part of a diverse group that includes a member of the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian advocacy group; an AIDS adviser to the World Bank; and a state public health officer. [...] Thacker's beliefs on homosexuality are known as "reparative therapy," a philosophy that considers homosexuality aberrant behavior that can be modified through religious faith. Professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association say that approach has no medical or scientific basis.
Reparative therapy. Right. Yes. Quite.
... Well, the commission itself is certainly a mixed bag. While I should imagine they would all be mostly civil, Mr Thacker is certainly going to have a difficult time making his views heard, given a committee with that makeup. Surely the administration could have fulfilled its quota of pandering to the bigots ... er, pardon me. Surely the administration could have appealed to its arch-conservative base by putting either Thacker or someone else in a position where they're more likely to have influence. (Although, that said, perhaps this is a masterpiece of politicking. After all, given the makeup of that committee, Thacker really isn't likely to have much influence. I dare say most of the people on the committee will cordially detest and despise his views. Maybe it really is the place of least damage, for all that it looks like an extraordinarily hostile move. Maybe....)
There are six other new appointments to PACHA [the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS] which are proving less controversial. Including Dan Seed, an HIV-positive gay man, who is executive director of an HIV support group in Dallas which provides services to black gay men.
A black, gay man on a commission with a heterosexual Bob Jones University graduate who believes in abstinence AND reparative therapy. Along with the head of the largest gay political organization in the country.
Well, those meetings ought to be interesting. In your traditional Chinese curse sense of "interesting".
UPDATE, 1:15pm: As noted by Mike in the comments, Thacker plans to withdraw his name from consideration today.
My, that was fast.
The part I find fascinating is the comment by Ari Fleischer:
On Thursday, however, Thacker was sending a letter signaling that he would not accept the appointment, administration officials said. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, while neither confirming nor denying the withdrawal, issued a stern rebuke of Thacker's statements. "The views that he holds are far, far removed from what the president believes," Fleischer said. "The president has a total opposite view. ... The president's view is that people with AIDS need to be treated with care, compassion."
Surely the White House is not expecting us to believe that they didn't know about his beliefs? Surely they expected his position to draw fire. So what, one wonders, were they expecting to accomplish with his nomination?
Posted by iain at 12:14 AM
FindLaw Legal News - Mexico Seeks End to U.S. Executions of Mexicans: Mexico called Tuesday for urgent stays of execution for 51 Mexicans on U.S. death row as it opened a World Court case arguing the United States had violated their "life or death" rights to consular help. Mexico says U.S. state and municipal officials breached an international treaty by failing to inform the Mexicans of their right to consular assistance after their arrests.
One wonders exactly what Mexico hopes to gain with this case, in real terms. Historically, the US has seldom paid attention to World Court judgements against it -- Mexico must certainly be aware of THAT, if nothing else -- and since there is no disputing that the US breached the terms of the treaty, there is little doubt about the ultimate judgement of the case. Although the issue of the system being problematic may find some traction with Americans, the issue of being executed without proper consultation will not, simply because most Americans don't travel overseas. It's not an issue they'll really see as important at all.
World court cases like this assume that the US has a unitary judicial system, which simply isn't the case. The US has 51 separate (and sometimes equal) jurisdictions. The federal government lacks the political will (and possibly the authority, although that is arguable) to intervene in such cases and say to the states, "Because you did not notify the appropriate Mexican consular authorities, nor did you notify the individual of his right to do so, you may not proceed with this case." Technically, the federal courts could do so -- the states violate federal law when they fail to carry out such notification, since signed and ratified treaties carry the force of federal law with them -- but for whatever reason, federal courts don't consider the lack of notification to be a fatal defect in such cases.
It is also a very real possibility that, assuming a judgement against the US, the administration's position will be, "Fine. We will not execute any Mexican nationals on federal death row while this injunction is in place, or while the case is being argued. However, we do not have the authority to requre the states to abide by a World Court decision; these jurisdictions are not covered, since individual states are not signatories." It's terribly sophistical and disingenuous, of course, but it's entirely likely.
Posted by iain at 03:14 PM
(LA Times, registration required.) Salon clings to dot-com swagger: ..... Now in what may be a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Salon is about to dramatically change its business model. The company is expected to announce this week that it will require all readers to either buy a subscription for full access to stories or agree to click through several screens of advertising to gain limited access. (Salon instituted a limited-subscription option a couple years ago that made some content available to subscribers only.) "There's no free lunch on the Web anymore," Talbot says. "There's no viable media without developing a base of revenue."
And that change will probably complete the job of killing off Salon. They haven't been successful at drawing enough subscribers and advertisers to pay their costs. Now they're going to change their model to, "Buy a subscription, or we're going to annoy the hell out of you AND not give you the full content, either!" The people who haven't bought subscriptions thus far, who may or may not have been teetering on the edge, are highly unlikely to do so with an appeal to nuisance.
Posted by iain at 11:59 AM
CBS News | Powell Defends Affirmative Action | January 20, 2003 15:15:20: Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he disagrees with President Bush's position on an affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, as the White House called for more money for historically black colleges. Powell, one of two black members of Mr. Bush's Cabinet, said he supports methods the University of Michigan uses to bolster minority enrollments in its undergraduate and law school programs. The policies offer points to minority applicants and set goals for minority admissions. "Whereas I have expressed my support for the policies used by the University of Michigan, the president, in looking at it, came to the conclusion that it was constitutionally flawed based on the legal advice he received," Powell said on the CBS program Face the Nation. [...] In a speech to the Republican National Convention in 2000, Powell sharply criticized GOP attacks on affirmative action. "We must understand the cynicism that exists in the black community," he said. "The kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education, but you hardly heard a whimper from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."
Good heavens. Powell is sticking to his guns and disagreeing with the president. That's a first.
Of course ... it has nothing whatsoever to do with any policy within his area to affect, so the fact that he disagrees doesn't matter in the slightest.
And in a separate issue ... one wonders at the White House's marvellous inconstancy. Stating that affirmative action in collegiate admissions is bad bad bad bad BAD and then turning and saying, "But let's give some extra money to these essentially self-segregating institutions over here," is not logically consistent. (Well ... it is in a certain way, but I'd just as soon not go there right now, thanks.)
Poor Rod Paige. People pretty much forget he exists, don't they? I suspect the administration forgets he's there, for all that he's technically a cabinet member, and Rice is not. (She is, functionally speaking, however.) Between the Justice and Defense departments -- Justice's attack on affirmative action and both Justice's and Defense's involvement with the disaster that is the "No Child Left Behind Act" -- they've pretty much managed to make the public forget that there actually is a secretary of education.
Posted by iain at 04:12 PM
Court: Network Associates can't gag users - Tech News - CNET.com: In a victory for free-speech advocates and product reviewers, a New York state judge has ruled that Network Associates can't prevent people from talking about its products. New York state Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Shafer issued a ruling, made public this week, prohibiting the security software specialist from trying to use its end-user license agreements to ban product reviews or benchmark tests. [...] Network Associates said it plans to appeal the ruling. "I just don't see how we've deceived anyone," said Kent Roberts, executive vice president and general counsel for Network Associates. "Our goal here was to actually increase the amount of information available to customers."
OK, that's a novel approach to "increase the amount of information available to customers." Tell them they can't talk about the product without your permission and then demand retraction when they do. Apparently, there is some meaning to the word "increase" that is not immediately apparent to most human beings, since apparently it is also a synonym for "decrease and/or silence." Who knew?
Posted by iain at 10:34 PM
Wired News: Bills: Down With Citizen Database: Bills, not words, define the latest criticism of the U.S. government's controversial Total Information Awareness program.
But bills are words ... oh, never mind.
..... lawmakers have introduced three separate bills banning or suspending the program. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) proposed an amendment on Wednesday to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that would suspend the program's $112 million budget for 2003. On Thursday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced the Data Mining Moratorium Act of 2003, which "suspends data-mining programs until Congress finishes a complete and total review," according to Feingold spokesman Ari Geller. But the first lawmaker to take a shot at the program was Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who introduced his bill last week, though few on Capitol Hill noticed. The bill, the Equal Rights and Equal Dignity for Americans Act of 2003, was one of 12 Daschle introduced and currently has 26 co-sponsors. The act prohibits the Pentagon from "research, development, test or evaluation on any technology whose primary purpose is the collection of information on United States citizens ... for intelligence or law enforcement purposes."
High falutin' name aside, at least two of these approaches have significant problems. The problem with Daschle's bill is that all the administration has to do to circumvent it is to transfer TIA/IAO to the Homeland Security department once it's been approved and is up and running. The problem with Wyden's amendment is that all the president has to do to get around it is to submit a letter. That's it, nothing more. Feingold's would be a rather better approach.
Posted by iain at 05:28 PM
My goodness. The Republican Party is just having a horrible time with this issue these days, isn't it? First, there was l'affaire Lott, in which much ado about nothing -- and the remarks for which he was punished were as nothing to those he had made previously -- managed to cost him a position and caused the whole party to squirm uncomfortably. The press, deciding that where there was smoke, there must be fires under other peoples' chairs, then assiduously went to work, ferreting out comments here, questions there.
In the meanwhile, the California Republican Party decided to start itself a nasty little internecine squabble.
LA Times, registration reaquired - January 5, 2003: State GOP Official Apologizes for Letter: An article distributed in 1999 by a California Republican Party official suggesting that the country would be better had the South won the Civil War has created controversy within the party and led to accusations of bigotry on Saturday. The article, "What if the South had Won the Civil War?" was included in an online newsletter sent by Bill Back, now vice chairman of the state party. Written by conservative commentator William S. Lind, the article stated, "Given how bad things have gotten in the old U.S.A., it's not hard to believe that history might have taken a better turn." It also says that race relations in the South were damaged not by slavery but by reconstruction and migration of blacks to the north.
Granted, the newsletter was published in 1999, and the press only deigned to notice, apparently, now that everyone is mining the Republicans' recent past for such remarks. (Of which there seem to be a startling number. But I get ahead of myself.) But ... 1999. Let's just consider that, shall we? Thirty-odd years after the major developments of the Civil Rights movement. A full 134 years after the complete abolition of slavery. You'd think that even in 1999, someone might have pointed out to Mr Back that publicising a newsletter that expressed that point of view might be, shall we say, just the teensiest bit impolitic. That perhaps they might have squelched any such attempt altogether. But apparently not.
As a partial result of the fireworks over that little newly-rediscovered gem, the highest ranking black Republican in the California Republican Party expressed his sentiments:
Oakland's Reeves rips GOP racism: (Contra Costa Times, January 8, 2003) The highest ranking African-American in the California Republican Party on Tuesday condemned the racism he has endured working for the GOP. "Black Republicans are expected to provide window dressing and cover to prove that this is not a racist party, yet our own leadership continues to act otherwise," party Secretary Shannon Reeves wrote in an e-mail to party board members. His comments were sparked by news last week that Vice Chairman Bill Back had circulated an electronic newsletter in 1999 containing an article by someone else suggesting that the nation would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War. [...] [Reeves] said "the time has come" for Republican leaders to understand what he has had to endure. "When I travel to speak at Republican conferences and events around the country, wandering through hotels, convention centers and social clubs, as I approach the rooms where I'm scheduled to speak, I am often told by Republicans that I must be in the wrong place," he wrote. "As a Bush delegate at the 2000 convention in Philadelphia, I proudly wore my delegate's badge and (Republican National Committee) lapel pin as I worked the convention. Regardless of the fact that I was obviously a delegate prominently displaying my credentials, no less than six times did white delegates dismissively tell me (to) fetch them a taxi or carry their luggage."
Hmm. Just ... hmm.
Granted, this surely isn't the attitude of most white Republicans. It does make you wonder what on earth is going on, however, that they would simply ignore a "delegate" badge in that way. That, even now, they were simply not expecting to see a black Republican at the convention.
Not content to let Mr Reeves' comments die down -- as surely the national Republican organization ardently wishes they would -- a member of the state party's board of directors decided to contribute his opinions:
Racially Charged GOP Feud Escalates (LA Times, January 17, 2003, registration required): A California Republican Party leader has called on the highest-ranking African American in the state GOP to stop "parading" his race by complaining about "how awful it is to be a black Republican." In an angry letter distributed to GOP activists statewide, Randy Ridgel, a member of the party's Board of Directors, responded to an accusation by fellow board member Shannon Reeves, who is black, that Republicans have treated African Americans as "window dressing." Ridgel, a retired white rancher from rural Lake County, also endorsed an essay suggesting that there would have been an upside to a Confederate victory in the Civil War. Regarding blacks freed from slavery at the end of the war, Ridgel wrote: "Most of the poor devils had no experience fending for themselves, so they fared worse than before the war and during the war."
You know ... about ten seconds after that piece hit the news, probably every single official in the California Republican Party was calling Ridgel, yelling, "What the HELL were you thinking? WERE you thinking? Do you know how much more damage you've just done?"
Reached by phone at his office, Back said he would "rather not give an opinion" on Ridgel's letter. "I will consult with my wizards and we'll get back with you," he said.
One can appreciate a sense of humor that dark and acid. And Back is almost certainly correct when he notes later in the article that public discussion of this issue is not exactly helpful to the Republican cause. Although it might be useful in ferreting out people dumb enough to say these things in public and shunting them over to places where they can do less damage. (Which, as he was more or less one of them, he couldn't precisely say, now could he?)
Reeves notes that he was disappointed that there wasn't a mass outcry from within the party at Reeves' letter. However, given the way in which Republicans have historically used racial issues, there could scarcely be a public outcry without a resulting response from the press, besd characterized as, "Oh, yeah? Well, what about this, then? What about the various speeches at the national conventions from 1980-1996 inclusive?"
Before anyone gets all huffy, I'm not saying that the Democrats are much better in how they use racial issues. The Democrats generally make their own variously coded appeals to minorities and women which essentially translate as, "Look at what those evil rich white men are doing to you." That said ... the Republicans make that sort of appeal laughably easy for the Dems. Just when it seems that some sort of progress is being made -- and whatever one thinks about this president, I can't imagine that either Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice are in their positions purely as window dressing (although given the regularity with which they publicly undermine Powell, one does wonder what they think he's supposed to be doing) -- the party decides to self-destruct in a spasm of public racism.
And then, on top of watching the largest Republican state organization shred itself publicly, there comes the University of Michigan cases. Reportedly, the president didn't want the administration to take a position on this case, but was persuaded by his policy apparatus that he needed to do so to prop up his wavering appeal to the party's conservative wing. (Which makes one wonder exactly in which century the conservative wing thinks they are living.) At the same time, the White House is aware that when California adopted the policies they're advocating (or rather, trying very hard not to advocate; their briefs essentially say, "We think this is wrong" without going all the way to "... and we think these rules should be overturned"), admission rates for Hispanics and Blacks crashed through the floor. They don't particularly care about the blacks, but they're trying very hard to court Hispanics. They failed to do so in California, with the result that the nation's most populous state is trending Democratic (if an odd, conservative sort of Democratic), and they don't want the same things to happen in Texas and Florida. (That said, Texas seemed to find a reasonable location-based solution to the admissions issue for the University of Texas and Texas A&M University; one wonders why it wouldn't work as well in Michigan at the undergraduate level. It wouldn't work for a graduate school, however.) Unfortunately, trying to unify the party's most conservative elements and a significant number of racial minorities under the same umbrella may be an effort doomed to failure. Basically, they just don't like each other, and aren't willing to pretend that they do. (Well, clearly.)
Posted by iain at 03:36 PM
Ant this, too, we knew was coming.
CNN.com - Illinois lawmaker acts to head off future commutations - Jan. 17, 2003: An Illinois legislator said Thursday he is pushing a bill that would stop future governors from following George Ryan's lead and emptying the state's death row. House Republican leader Tom Cross' proposal, filed Wednesday, would prevent the governor from granting clemency without a full hearing and a report from the Illinois Prisoner Review board. It also would require victims or their families to be notified before any hearing.
(Note: the writer of the AP feed appears to misunderstand or be unclear about one of the provisions of the bill; it doesn't require the governor to wait for the Prisoner Review Board's report, but to wait for the report to be made public. Said provision may be in conflict with the Illinois State Constitution, according to the Chicago Tribune. (Registration required.))
The proposed bill would have required Ryan to start earlier, although it would not necessarily have stopped the process. He did hold hearings -- the law would need to define "full hearing" with unusual precision -- and he did get a report from the Prisoner Review Board, although it was not made public. Families were also notified before the hearings, and he heard their testimony. This is political grandstanding, nothing more, and nothing less. In any event, no governor with a brain in their head would sign any such bill limiting the one absolute power that they actually have.
It's going to be interesting to see if prosecutors really do try to revive older charges. Depending on how exactly they approach this, it's quite likely that many of the inmates will wind up having additional claims of actual innocence making it into the record. In any event, again, this is political grandstanding. The inmates were, leave us not forget, sentenced to death. There was no reason at the time for prosecutors to have foregone going for any and all available death sentences. How exactly could that bargain work? "Well, we can charge you with two or three capital crimes, but if you plead guilty and let us sentence you to death, we'll only go for one." Of the people whose sentences were commuted and who remain in prison, only one -- ONE -- had a sentence commuted to less than natural life, and that was because the person who had been charged with him for the exact same crime lucked out in getting a judge who apparently opposed the death penalty and sentenced his coconspirator to 40 years. What is the point of spending the public's funds to pursue people who will never leave prison? The prosecutors are acting as if these people are going out and walking the street any day now, despite being found guilty of committing these crimes. They're trying to take advantage of any sentiment against this result, trying to scare the public, and being thoroughly irresponsible in doing so.
The other part of the counter-reaction also seems to be underway:
House bill would end executions (Chicago Sun Times, January 16, 2003): A move to abolish the death penalty picked up steam in the General Assembly on Thursday with a top House Democrat announcing legislation to end executions and Senate President Emil Jones embracing the concept. Rep. Arthur Turner (D-Chicago), the third-ranking House Democrat, said he has introduced a bill that would prohibit the death penalty, launching what could become one of the spring session's most contentious debates. (NOTE: Sun Times articles are on their site for only a week.)
Given the political grandstanding so far, it's unlikely that this bill would go anywhere. But assuming that it passes both houses on a party-line vote (and I don't expect that it would), it would be interesting to see if the governor would sign it. Doing so would likely be political suicide, and the man has shown little sign of political courage thus far. (A governor with any courage and a state that's $5 billion in the hole would not have taken tax increases off the agenda, as this one has done.)
Posted by iain at 01:41 PM
Stewartville adult store offers 'clergy discount': An adult entertainment store's sign offering a "clergy discount'' has drawn the wrath of its churchgoing neighbors. The double-sided sign stands outside Pure Pleasure so those who attend Midwest Baptist Church next door see the ads going into, and leaving, the church. To people driving toward the church, the sign reads: "And God said go out into the world and have great sex. God's gift to women. Amen and amen.'' People leaving the church see: "No need to mail order. Gay videos in stock. Clergy discount. Have good sex. Hallelujah!'' "This sign shows me that he's not only thumbing his nose at the laws of the township, he's thumbing his nose at the laws of God,'' said the Rev. Joseph Grimaldi, who heads the church and is a vocal opponent of the business. "I just hope I'm not too close when the lightning strikes.''
As long as the lightning doesn't actually strike the advertisement itself, he should be safe enough. If it hits a sign so close to the church, though, all bets are off.
I must admit, I'm a mite surprised that Pure Pleasure actually could advertise so close to a church. Most areas' zoning laws forbid that sort of thing within a fairly wide area near schools or churches or government property. (Which would, I expect, explain the whole "laws of the township" issue. We'll just leave the "laws of God" thing alone, shall we? Let's shall.) You'd think that the township would be positively gleeful about imposing fine after fine after ever escalating fine for every time they tell him to take down the sign and it gets left in place. Sooner or later, it must lead to jail time, and given that it's a zoning issue -- the Court has always held that zoning allows some lattitude in restricting commercial speech rights -- the owner may not have a legal leg to stand on.
Posted by iain at 12:46 PM
It's going to be fascinating to see if this model for scientific publishing works. It's going to have some fearsome obstacles to overcome, though. First, authors won't want to pay to be published -- scientific publishing already works unlike almost all other commercial publishing in that authors get paid nothing at all directly. The benefit to the author is purely in prestige and the ability to cite said prestige when tenure time comes up, or when time comes to negotiate higher pay from your institution, or something like that. Second, the plan to charge research sponsors may run into difficulty in that first, most of them have already paid to have the research done in the first place, and second, they'll want the results published in the highest prestige journal that the authors can get into. PLOS journals stand a significant risk of becoming the publication place of last resort. This is not to say that they'll be publishing bad science, only that people will be trying more established journals first.
PLOS is based, in part on the Open Content License. The idea is that people can then take the content and freely adapt it for their purposes -- always giving credit to the original writer, of course. Scientific literature would seem to be peculiarly ill-suited to that sort of license, although that's the way much scientific research works.
The New York Times (registration required) has an article entitled, "Steal this Book", in which they discuss Prentice-Hall's use of the license to publish computer science books. Apparently, they feel that the risk is relatively minimal: "If you want to take one these books, put it on a photocopy machine and make copies, that's cool," said [Bruce Perens], a leading open-source advocate. [...] There is nothing to prevent programmers from waiting a couple of months to download copies of the books free rather than buying them. But Mr. Perens, a member of the digital avant-garde, predicts that serious programmers will buy the books for $50 each. Why? "People like paper," he said.
And, yes, they do like paper. They also have relatively inexpensive printers, and people at many institutions even have access to printers that produce doublesided output. (Although the joy of binding done by Somebody Else cannot be underestimated.) The risks may be slightly greater than Prentice-Hall thinks it will be.
Elsewhere, the people at Paid must just be wondering what the hell those open source nuts are up to, thinking that content wants to be free, or should be free. This week, they're appalled that Google is free. Frankly, I can't imagine how you could make search engines a paid resource. Not usefully, anyway. It would only work if all of the search engines moved to a paid model all at once, or if there was some ultra-premium service that they could offer for a fee. Northern Light has been floundering about trying to come up with some sort of functioning fee model for years, but doesn't seem to have been outrageously successful at it. (And apparently morphed into a business-sources only search engine while I wasn't looking. Pity. It was a rather nice search engine, if not comprehensive enough these days.) Paid also seems to make the assumption that users are willing to pay for what Google has to offer ... but if Google itself can't figure out how to position premium services, then it doesn't seem likely, now does it? And since Google actually does license its technology via strategic partnerships (although Inktomi was better at that), I'm not entirely sure what Paid is grousing about.
Posted by iain at 12:28 AM
Suit Against Winn-Dixie Dropped: A man fired because he sometimes dressed in women's clothing on his own time, in his own home has dropped his lawsuit against the company, saying he did not think he could win in the nation's conservative political environment. Peter Oiler, a trucker driver for supermarket giant Winn-Dixie was told that if word "leaked out" that he was a cross-dresser, it could hurt the company's reputation and result in a loss of business. The 23 year employee of the company has been battling Winn-Dixie for more than two years. A federal judge ruled against Peter Oiler last September and refused to reconsider the case in November. Oiler said further defeats might have set back anti-discrimination efforts for gays and the transgendered. "I'm afraid I would have done more harm to the cause than good," he told The AP in an interview. [....] Congress has refused 31 times to amend the law to ban discrimination because of gender or sexual identity, and it is not the federal court's job to dictate policy, Africk ruled.
And so it ends.
I feel sorry for Mr Oiler, I really do. Nobody should lose their job because they have engaged in entirely legal activities in their off-work hours.
That said, as I may have mentioned once or twice or even maybe even three times in the past two years, Oiler seemed to have been badly served by the ACLU. Not only that, but the laws he was using not only did not reach his case; as noted above in the article text, Congress has repeatedly and emphatically refused to extend those laws to this type of case. (31 times would count as "goddammit, we said NO!" in just about any terms, I shoud think.) I don't understand why this wasn't a simple civil suit for breach of privacy or damages or something like that. ANYTHING but an employment discrimination case could probably have gone forward and resulted in some sort of win for Mr Oiler -- even though it was, indisputably and undisputedly, employment discrimination.
Posted by iain at 04:39 PM
And this, too, we knew was coming.
Prosecutors, survivors rip RyanThey wept--again. And they were angry--again. For the many relatives of victims of some of Illinois' most brutal murders, Sunday was the day to let the world know how they felt about Gov. Ryan's decision to commute the sentences of 167 Death Row inmates. "The governor has walked out of office and walked on our hearts," said Ron Gierlowski, whose sister Darlene Dudek was killed in a 1986 Aurora murder. "That's a terrible thing."
Various prosecutors are promising to try to undo the clemency, but by the Illinois state constitution, there is absolutely nothing that they can do. The governor's power of clemency is absolute; it is practically the only absolute power the governor has, because it is used so very rarely.
What is likely to happen now is that various groups will lobby the General Assembly to place restrictions on the governor's power of clemency so that such a thing can never happen again. I'm not sure that it can be done without an amendment to the state constitution, but people will try.
Prosecutors are now stating that there should be debate on the death penalty in this state ... so that victims' familes do not have to endure clemency hearings again. So nice to see that they are so terribly concerned that the system as it is has led them to prosecute innocent men. So nice to see that they're so happy that some innocent men were released through this process.
Posted by iain at 11:17 PM
media relations / January 13, 2003: ptbs
Posted by iain at 02:15 PM
Chicago Sun Times: Gov. Ryan empties Death Row of all 167: Gov. Ryan ignited national and even international debate Saturday by taking all 167 prisoners off Illinois' Death Row, blowing away the modern record of eight commutations set by former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste.
The Sun Times approach, for some reason, was to combine the article of what was done along with articles about the reaction of various families concerned, attach the full text of the governor's hour-long speech to the bottom, and then combine it into One Long Page.
On the other hand, while the Chicago Tribune's approach, using separate articles and pages, provides somewhat more comprehensive analysis, for some reason, they didn't include the full text of the governor's speech.
Interestingly, for all that the governor's decision affects directly only the people of this one state, it did actually make international news.
Especially peculiar are the comments from the director of Amnesty International USA, who says, "Governor Ryan has set an important precedent for elected officials who question the fairness of the death penalty but fear political repercussions." And that precedent would be: when you are at the end of your political career, dogged by scandals that will almost certainly result in a federal indictment against you for corruption within the next six months and which in fact provided the end to your career, then you can do whatever the hell you want, leaving the people who succeed you to reap the whirlwind that you have sown.
Understand: I do not disagree with the governor's decision, but people are making it out to be far more than it is. They speak of how it will provide an example, yet the incoming governor of Maryland campaigned explicitly on a pledge to overturn the death penalty moratorium then in effect -- and that promise is not likely to change despite the fact that a recent study showed both geographical and racial bias in the selection and administration of the death penalty in that state. Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia, which account for the vast majority of executions in this country over the past few years, and which currently have far fewer protections in place than Illinois ever had, are unlikely to examine what they do and how they do it. A federal government which recently explicitly selected a state to try a capital murder case because it was the affected jurisdiction in which a juvenile was most likely to be put to death is unlikely to have anything approaching a second thought about the death penalty. Even the incoming governor of Illinois is upset, because he feels that there should be no such thing as a blanket commutation ... but he plans to continue the death penalty moratorium and would not have signed death warrants for anyone who had remained on death row and he will not sign warrants for those who will be newly sentenced to death row.
So while this is locally important ... that is all that it is. No more, no less.
Posted by iain at 05:23 PM
The Seven Deadly Sins of Free Content: Spears & Daggers
In which the case is made that free content will kill ... well, something. Either the web or offline paid content or online free content itself, or companies that provide either of the above.
Actually, the latter position makes a certain amount of sense. Or rather, it would ... if it weren't available in a free online publication. A free online publication that seems to be evangelizing here and there on the topic of how content doesn't really want to be free.
Er ... yes. Well. Quite.
It also seems to be a weblog with an alarmingly well developed subject breakdown.
Posted by iain at 01:40 AM
Family of four taken off eBay - Jan. 10, 2003: Those looking for some additional company at home will have to find someone other than the Youngs after eBay removed the offer by the family of four to sell itself for a minimum bid of $5 million. While it was still posted, the auction page read, "if you are the highest bidder, you will receive the adoration from two congenial children with an affinity for heart-warming, homemade birthday cards and copiousness, candy-coated smiles for both family and legal benefactors. All that, plus my wife!" wrote Steve Young, a television writer who put his family on the block. Spokesman Kevin Pursglove confirmed Friday that eBay removed the Youngs' offer, saying it did not meet the firm's user guidelines, and the family would have to make a pretty strong case to have it reposted.
So apparently, making barely veiled offers to sell yourself into slavery (making a particular point of mentioning one's wife, even) is against eBay's guidelines.
Well, isn't that good to know!
For those looking for just parts of the family, members were not offered separately, and children were included only until the age of 18. Regarding his wife, "can you say 'platonic'?" Young wrote.
Well, I'm so relieved that only servitude, writer's credit and minor children were included in the deal. After all, what would one have done otherwise?
You wonder what would have happened, assuming that eBay was in the slavery business, had the auction been allowed to continue. After all, the Youngs would have had, to put it mildly, a strong disincentive to follow through on the terms of the deal, and eBay is known to have something of a fraud issue.
Posted by iain at 11:15 PM
Apparently, the Boy Scouts in Thailand are just a wee bit different than the Scouts over here.....
iafrica.com | loveandsex | news Jamboree planners ready for scout sex: The Thai organisers of the upcoming 20th World Scout Jamboree have said they are ready to provide condoms to scouts who asked for them, lending a fresh slant to the famed scout motto, "Be Prepared". "Condoms will be prepared to provide to scouts who think they will have sex, to prevent diseases and pregnancies," a doctor at the Jamboree's health office Kasem Songchinrat told AFP. "But we don't support the scouts having sex and we will not tell them we've prepared the condoms unless someone asks," Kasem added.
They're not telling the scouts about the condoms. They're just announcing it in the newspapers. (Oh, all right, I know perfectly well that kids don't really read newspapers.) That said, if they're not going to tell them about the condoms, then what on earth is the point?
And they're apparently assuming that it will all be heterosexual sex, even though they're keeping the boys and the girls separated. Well. Yes. Quite. Whatever.
Posted by iain at 05:16 PM
Santa Fe New Mexican | 2002: A Year in the Life of the Drug War: Welcome to America, 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free where President George Bush insists that casual drug users are financing terrorism, while his niece is caught with crack cocaine in drug rehab. Where one person is arrested approximately every 44 seconds on a marijuana charge. Where 77% of Texas drug convictions are found to involve less than one gram of a drug. U.S. fighter pilots in Afghanistan are given amphetamines to stay awake on bombing runs, leading some to question the drugs contribution to multiple "friendly fire" deaths. Despite a campaign promise to allow states to "choose as they so choose" regarding medical marijuana, the Bush Administrations Justice Department and DEA stay busy throughout the year raiding compassion clubs in California, and one in Oregon......
It's really quite an impressive year in official lunacy. Basically, the domestic trend is to more and more prohibition and high-profile punishment, despite its demonstrated ineffectiveness, and internationally, the trend is to more and more leniency. Curiously, the Supreme Court utterly fails to cite the international trend to leniency when upholding the results of harsh laws, despite the fact that they did exactly that when overturning the death penalty for retarded people. Apparently, international (and a good deal of domestic) opinion only matters when it's going the way they want in the first place.
Posted by iain at 05:03 PM
So I was reading a friend's online journal, and she was talking about having a "'tater launch". Apparently, quite the popular thing in the South so she says. And I thought, "Oh, now really. You just have to be kidding."
But no!
The Spudgun Technology Center - Your Source for Spudgun Parts, information, and more!
Or, if you prefer your spuds with a bit more geek chic and fewer broken images:
The SpudGun HomePage: Ever want to make potato salad from 150 yards away? A spudgun is the coolest way to send a potato flying over 150 yards at speeds up to 140 miles per hour. They're easy to make, fairly inexpensive, and easy to maintain. Also, they're not classified as a firearm by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Who knew that the lack of ATF classification could be a selling point? I'm so relieved!
That's the thing I love about the net. Those lovely, "I couldn't possibly make this stuff up," moments.
Posted by iain at 12:10 AM
The Scotsman - Top Stories - New doubt over clone claims: AN alien-worshipping scientist who claims to have created the world’s first cloned babies was plotting her publicity campaign before the alleged pregnancies could even have begun, it has emerged. The revelation, along with news that a television reporter with whom she is working has been touting their exclusive story to the US networks for at least £62,500, cast further doubt on Dr Brigitte Boisselier’s assertions. Dr Michael Guillen, ABC’s former science editor and one-time Harvard University physics lecturer, was represented as an independent party who would oversee DNA testing of cloned baby ’Eve’, a child allegedly born to American parents on Boxing Day. But his independence from Dr Boisselier’s company CLONAID, founded by the Raelian cult, is now being questioned. At least six television networks and cable channels reveal that he attempted to sell a documentary on Dr Boisselier’s work months ago. In one proposal to Fox Entertainment, he outlined his vision for a reality-based show which he would produce and host himself, documenting the cloning process. Fox turned it down. An executive at the network said: "The project seemed loaded with ethical questions."
You know, a project has to be really stinky before Fox, of all companies, will twitch about the ethical questions. I am surprised that Guillen seems to have fallen so far, though. When he was the ABC science commentator, he seemed perfectly respectable.
Posted by iain at 12:31 PM
Oh. Dear.
Fighting Whites inspire imitators -- The Washington Times: ..... The pride of the University of Northern Colorado, the Whites won only two games in their intramural basketball league last year, but their idea of turning the tables on schools with American Indian mascot names has spread like wildfire. Students at a handful of colleges across the rural West and Indian country are considering forming their own Fighting Whites-style intramural teams this season, inspired by the success of the team, first planned as "the Fightin' Whities," in drawing national media attention to the mascot issue. [....] Inspired by the Whites, North Dakota students created a stir in October with an art exhibit at the university's International Center. The show displayed dozens of jerseys from hockey, football and other sports, some real and some with mock names such as the "North American Stealers," "Wounded Knee Crusaders" and "Cleveland Honkies." A few were more incendiary, such as one showing a hooded Klansman under the name "Atlanta White Devils" and the "Vatican City Popes 'n' Pedophiles." [...] The Whites concede that some T-shirt buyers missed the point and saw them as a statement of white pride. Likewise, when a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, ran a story about the North Dakota art exhibit, it was flooded with responses from readers asking where to buy the jerseys.
I wondered how long it would take before the original concept of the Fighting Whites got buried by people who missed the point.
The problem is that it was never a particularly good way to make the point they wanted to make. "Whites" is not generally used as a particularly derogatory term in the way that, for example, "Redskins" is normally considered to be. (Except, for some curious reason, in the case of the Washington Redskins, which somehow manages to draw a giant shrug from a great many Native Americans. Heaven only knows why, when collegiate and high school team names draw such fire. Perhaps because the Redskins organization is comparatively impervious to any such pressure. And the name is one of those that's been declared "historic" and site-specific by the NFL, after all; if the organization moves to another city, the Washington Redskins team name stays behind.)
Perhaps if the Fighting Whites had instead called themselves, say, the Howlin' Honkies, the point would have been a shade more obvious.
"Cleveland Honkies! Where do I buy it? I think I'd pay $100 for a jersey so emblazoned. I'm completely serious," said one e-mailer.
Then again, perhaps not.
Posted by iain at 12:17 PM
Well, here's an interesting bit of lunacy:
Trans-Afghan gas pipeline deal signed: ASHGABAT: The leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan on Friday reached a long-awaited agreement for a pipeline to carry Turkmenistan's natural gas to the Indian Ocean via Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and Turkmen President Suparmurat Nayazov signed the ambitious accord to build a 1,500-km two billion dollars trans-Afghan gas pipeline. "We are glad that this important agreement has been signed, as this is a significant step towards the realization of the project," Turkmenistan's Nayazov said.
Now, for those who will jumping up and down and saying, "See! We told you so!" I point out that there is absolutely no evidence that any American company has anything to do with this. In fact, the only American company that has ever expressed interest in any such project has officially declined to participate in this one:
The 900-mile pipeline will cross through Afghanistan, connecting the Davletabad gas field in southern Turkmenistan to the city of Multan in central Pakistan. Construction costs are pegged to exceed $2 billion, and 477 miles of the pipeline will be laid across Afghanistan. The pipeline will run across Herat in western Afghanistan and Kandahar in the southeastern part of the country. The project will create 12,000 jobs in Afghanistan, potentially earning vast sums of money for the war-torn country. [...] The Asian Development Bank is funding a feasibility study of the project. The study will be completed within next six months. According to Niyazov, the consortium for the pipeline construction will be formed during a trilateral summit in September 2003. The consortium will include large oil-and-gas companies and financial institutes. [...] In 1996, U.S. energy giant Unocal Corp., Delta Oil Company of Saudi Arabia, Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's Turkmenrusgaz formed a consortium to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. The pipeline proposed by the defunct consortium would stretch nearly 900 miles from Turkmenistan's Davletabad field, across Afghanistan, to central Pakistan. Unocal Corp. has said it has no plans to participate in the revived project. In the meantime Japanese conglomerate Itochu has expressed interest in participating in the project.
Now, to be sure, I don't doubt that there may be American interest. However, we do not appear to be the driving force behind this project; Turkmenistan does.
That said, Afghanistan is still notably unpacified and disunited. If the situation is not, perhaps, as severe as previously (which can be disputed), it's still not very good. It's quite probable that the project will be delayed and disrupted by various warlords and their demands and attacks on personnel. (Americans would be utter and absolute fools to send personnel to participate in any such project any time soon. Then again, when it comes to money, we can be impressively foolish, can't we? But I digress.) Pakistan is not precisely the friendliest place to be, either, to say nothing of the situation with India. Should that heat up, the pipeline terminus would make an attractive target.
I understand the various desires that led to this agreement. I just don't think it'll come to anything any time soon.
Posted by iain at 05:55 PM
Oh, why not?
So.
After a very busy year of posting (946 entries, down over 50% from the previous year, for whatever that's worth), what were the most popular entries, judging from a combination of comments, email, and page hits? (Mostly page hits and email, actually; this site doesn't tend to get a lot of comments posted, oddly enough. Ah, well. But I digress.) Were they deep philosophical entries? .... Wait, I didn't have any deep philosophical entries. Strike that.
Were they biting political commentaries, such as the recent Fighting the Oncoming War?"
Well ... no.
Were they trenchant social commentaries, such as the pieces on Augusta National's ongoing rather stupidly handled campaign to exclude women until such time as they decree it appropriate? Or perhaps one of the many gay rights pieces? Or even one of the many pieces on racial issues?
Nope. Not one.
So what, then, you might be asking, were the most popular pieces on this site? Curiously, both of them came from this past December. And those pieces were .....
(1) Midge knocked up! News at eleven! and
(2) Here comes Santa Claus ... or you know, maybe not
Yep. A pregnant doll and Santa.
Makes you wonder sometimes, don't it?
(That said, the Augusta National pieces pulled the most consistently weird comments, both in email and on the site.)
Posted by iain at 04:32 PM
Willamette Week Online | Cover Story | RUBBISH!..... Technically, this is a journalistic exercise--at least, that's what we keep telling ourselves. We're upholding our sacred trust as representatives of the Fourth Estate. Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. Pushing the reportorial envelope--by liberating the trash of Portland's top brass. We didn't dream up this idea on our own. We got our inspiration from the Portland police. Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her (see "Gross Violation," below). The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment? The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so. Prosecutor Mark McDonnell says that once you set your garbage out on the curb, it becomes public property.
More importantly, the US Supreme Court doesn't think so, either: Since respondents voluntarily left their trash for collection in an area particularly suited for public inspection, their claimed expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items they discarded was not objectively reasonable. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left along a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through it or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. The police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public.
But to continue back in Oregon: [....] After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy. We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.
The mayor was notably unamused by this particular stunt:
More than a week after WW reporters Chris Lydgate and Nick Budnick informed the city's top elected official that they had heisted her recycling for a story about privacy (see "Rubbish!," WW, Dec. 24, 2002), Mayor Vera Katz refuses to say whether she plans to follow up on her threat to pursue legal action against the newspaper. "The mayor does not wish to comment at this time," said deputy chief of staff Judy Tuttle last week.
On Dec. 18, Katz angrily reclaimed her recycling from the two reporters in a meeting at City Hall and dismissed them without a word. Later that day, she issued a statement that read in part: "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible. I will consider all my legal options in response to their actions."
Of course, the problem is that, thanks in part to the positions taken by her own district attorney and police commissioner, Mayor Katz has pretty much no legal options whatsoever available. At one point, they seem to have been floating the concept that Oregon's constitution affords considerably more privacy rights than the US constitution when it comes to state cases; however, since this position puts them in direct conflict with the position they're defending in the police officer's case (it is in fact HER defense and would fatally undermine the prosecution), it's somewhat untenable, to put it mildly. (The article does, eventually, hook into a discussion of the Patriot Act, oddly enough.)
Posted by iain at 03:12 PM
The Scotsman - Top Stories - Change in UN may hit Bush's plans: A RESHUFFLE of the United Nations security council has thrown into doubt hopes that the US president, George Bush, would continue to use the UN as the primary means of disarming Saddam Hussein. In a major shift of power within the UN hierarchy, Germany - one of the leading opponents of military action against Iraq - was handed one of the ten non-permanent seats on the Security Council.
Frankly, I'm not at all sure what difference that's supposed to make. Why would having Germany on the council make a difference to US plans? It's not as if the Security Council has generally been terribly happy about the idea in any event.
The problem with that story is that it lacks quite a lot of context. I'm not sure if the Scotsman assumes that all Scots will automatically know what country Germany is replacing, or if they're assuming that Germany is striding purposefully into the leadership of the council and will derail all consideration.
Slightly more context -- very slightly more -- can be gleanded from the Washington Post:
For Germany, New U.N. Role Means Muting Anti-War Tone: As Germany takes a U.N. Security Council seat that will give it a major voice in any decision to sanction war against Iraq, the government has begun a nuanced effort to bring the country more in line with its allies' views by blunting the edges of the anti-war policy that got it reelected in September. Political analysts here say Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his ministers are preparing the public for the possibility that Germany could endorse military action at the United Nations and assist participating allies, though no German troops would join in battle. The tabloid Bild has dubbed the evolving policy Jein, a combination of ja and nein, the German words for yes and no.
Germany began a two-year term on the Security Council yesterday and will chair it in February, a month when critical issues regarding Iraq may be brought before the council. In a New Year's Eve address to the nation, Schroeder suggested that Germany would not automatically vote against war. "We Germans know from our own experience that dictators sometimes can only be stopped with force," Schroeder said. "We also know what bombing, destruction and the loss of one's home mean for people." [...] The German softening of its position, analysts here suggest, may also be motivated by ambition to become a permanent member of the Security Council. That goal would be seriously undermined if Germany balked at an otherwise collective decision of the U.N. body.
That makes slightly more sense; if a Germany strongly opposed to war is chairing the council when the vote for war arises (if there is one -- I don't actually expect one before the event if at all, but that has nothing to do with Germany), then it may be more likely to do what it can to derail the proecess. That said, depending on what result the US wants from the council, I would expects its diplomats to negotiate around Germany, rather than through it. (They will be terribly insulted by the slight, I expect.)
I do wonder on what planet Germany exists if they're expecting a permanent seat on the council. Certainly, they're not likely to get one anytime soon. There's no sign that either the UN or the security council itself is prepared to reconstitute the council. (I wonder if the security council's approval is needed to reconfigure the security council itself. That would be vastly entertaining.)
And for just that final bit of necessary context, let's have a look at -- of all things -- a Reuters story via New Zealand, shall we? Let's shall:
U.N. Security Council takes on five new members: With the start of 2003, the powerful and prestigious U.N. Security Council took on five new members yesterday and bids adieu to another five who wrapped up two-year terms on the 15-nation body. With disarmament of Iraq at the top of the council's agenda, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, Chile and Angola take rotating two-year seats on the council. They join the council's five permanent members -- the United States, France, Russia, Britain and China -- and five other nations with one year remaining of their two-year terms -- Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Syria. The five newest members were elected by a vote of the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly in September. They fill seats vacated by Colombia, Ireland, Mauritius, Norway and Singapore.
Judging from the makeup, the security council is losing two countries allied with the US via defense treaties (whatever that's worth), and three unaligned, and gaining four allied with the US via defense and other treaties, and one unalligned. Technically, in any event. In theory, at least, the reconstitution of the council ought to be a political gain. In practice ... well, we'll see, won't we?
In any event, at this stage of the game, the constitution of the security council almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever the administration is planning.
Posted by iain at 01:41 AM
