Amazing. Hilarious and informative. Like watching Roger and Me--you think, damn, we'll be hearing more from this guy. Opens May 7th--I'm at SXSW, thus the preview.
So much for not making this a war of religion. American soldiers are, apparently, referring to Iraqis as "Hajis," the term for pilgrims on their way to Mecca. What's messed up about this is that it's the US Soldiers who are making this a religious thing. It seems to me that you could easily ascribe the resistance to nationalism, or, at least, anti-Americanism. Instead, we're treating it religiously and using religious terms to Iraqis, which is going to make things even worse. (It's not like the Iraqis don't notice the term "bad haji".) I'm glad we're providing people with that framework. Then Gen. Boykin can step in and say "I told you so."
I spent the next several hours believing I was actually going to jail. I knew this nation's draconian drug laws, and worse yet, the jocular, simian photo of George W. Bush was hanging on the wall of the customs lobby, lurching over me with his moron eyes. I looked at him and thought, 'you have done more blow than I will ever see in my lifetime, yet I am going to jail because I have kidney stones.'
Is Halliburton guilty of Iraqi gas gouging?: "According to a study released on Wednesday by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and John Dingell, each gallon of gas sold in Iraq has cost American taxpayers $1.59, and possibly as much as $1.70. In the rest of the Middle East, gas costs about half that amount; even in Toledo, Ohio, gasoline's cheaper than it is in Baghdad.
Why is getting gasoline to oil-rich Iraq costing Americans so much money? The congressmen have a one-word, obvious answer: Halliburton."
Duude. Check it out here--around minute 36:30. He walks out on Terry Gross!
OK, so that's limited bright news on the day the Terminator became governor, but, still--it'll tide me over until the next recall 6 months from now. Can't wait to find out why the next recall will be bad--kinda like how sexual harrassment stopped being bad when Arnis did it...
Yet another chilling interview with Bev Harris about Diebold. Read all about it at Salon: An open invitation to election fraud
"according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse -- much worse -- than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris' research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.Harris has discovered that Diebold's voting software is so flawed that anyone with access to the system's computer can change the votes without leaving any record. On top of that, she's uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic -- Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company's intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.
| Electronic Voting
Clay Shirky has a really interesting article up, the conclusion of which is this: A Group is its Own Worst Enemy. His thesis is that completely unmoderated environments become unwieldy, and that rules limiting individual behaviour allow the group to function more efficiently. Basically, it's a variation of the social contract--the negative corollary of which, according to Colin, is "it takes an idiot to raze a village." Here are some quotes:
Geoff Cohen has a great observation about this. He said "The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases." As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from themselves, gets very, very high.Many other interesting things in here. Will look forward to your comments.
| Social Software | Stigmergy
Stunning article about a man in Atlanta visited by the FBI because someone saw him reading an article in a coffee shop and reported it as subversive. If you're really feeling like expressing what liberty remains, this is the article he was reading. This completely freaks me out--not least because the Caribou Coffee mentioned is right around the corner from my parents' house in Atlanta. So I wonder--if someone sees you reading this article about being busted for reading, will you then get busted?
| Civil Liberties | George W. Bush
Sometimes I'm not so into atrios--mostly since he started selling ads and his page stopped loading well in Mozilla--but today, he (actually guest-poster Lambert) is sublime. He cuts right through the BS on Tenet and points out why his taking the fall--and yes, Virginia, that's what it is--is just another lie. Consider this article on MSNBC (from this atrios post):
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other officials asserted this week that the president's statement was justified at the time because the CIA cleared the address in its entirety, including the uranium claim. They said the CIA never told the White House that the claim was suspicious.That's THREE MONTHS before the State of the Union. Are they lying or incompetent? Well, both, probably, but certainly lying their heads off. The article goes on to point out this story in the Washington Post that states
But U.S. officials told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that Tenet himself advised Rice's top deputy, Steven Hadley, to remove a reference to the uranium report from a speech Bush delivered Oct. 7 in Cincinnati, establishing that the nation's top intelligence officials suspected that the allegation was false more than three months before they approved Bush's repeating it in his nationally televised address on Jan. 28.
The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday.So, excuse me, that's FOUR MONTHS with a month-later follow up. This raises some important questions: this atrios entry points to a Newsweek article where those very questions are raised:
Claiming that Iraq tried to buy uranium from the African country of Niger wasn't a judgment call. By the White House's own admission, it was a fraud, a lie. The envoy sent to investigate the intelligence in February 2002, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, sought out the information and informed the administration. The only question is how high up the food chain his report got. Did it stop at low-level officials as the White House claims, or did it go all the way to the president and vice president?For more on this story, check out TPM
Wilson is not some wild-eyed lefty. He had experience in Iraq and North Africa, and completely understood his mission. He only revealed his identity a week ago in the face of continued insistence by the White House that it had no idea the documents were forged. CIA director George Tenet sent Wilson to Niger after Vice President Cheney asked for an investigation. Wilson asks why Cheney's office would demand this inquiry and not want to know the result. If Bush really was misled, wouldn't he want to know who embarrassed him? Who made him a liar? In a White House as obsessed with loyalty as this one, the fact that no heads rolled strongly indicates this could go all the way to Cheney, if not to Bush himself. Who knows how much Cheney tells the boss. Bush is not a detail guy. He may not have wanted to know.
| Iraq | Lies | War
This story should be getting much more press than its getting. Turns out that many electronic voting machines will be put into place as a result of the "Help America Vote" legislation, requiring states to update their machines by 2006. Bev Harris has done an analysis of how a Diebold voting machine counts votes--there are 3 databases of vote totals, only one of which counts the votes as they were cast. And the entire database is in Microsoft Access, software that is notoriously vulnerable to security attacks. Here's an exerpt--they couldn't have made a more diabolical system if they tried. Or did they try?
For both optical scans and touch screens operating using Diebold election systems, the voting system works like this:. A quick read of news stories on the subject shows that most coverage is about how "modern" these systems are and how quickly they return results. But is the point of a voting machine to give results quickly, or accurately? And when did we start caring about waiting a little longer when so much is at stake?Voters vote at the precinct, running their ballot through an optical scan, or entering their vote on a touch screen.
After the polls close, poll workers transmit the votes that have been accumulated to the county office. They do this by modem.
At the county office, there is a "host computer" with a program on it called GEMS.
GEMS receives the incoming votes and stores them in a vote ledger. But then, we found, it makes another set of books with a copy of what is in vote ledger 1. And at the same time, it makes yet a third vote ledger with another copy.
The Elections Supervisor never sees these three sets of books. All she sees is the reports she can run: Election summary (totals, county wide) or a detail report (totals for each precinct). She has no way of knowing that her GEMS program is using multiple sets of books, because the GEMS interface draws its data from an Access database, which is hidden.
And here is what is quite odd: On the programs we tested, the Election summary (totals, county wide) come from the vote ledger 2 instead of vote ledger 1.
Now, think of it like this: You want the report to add up ONLY the ACTUAL votes. But, unbeknownst to the election supervisor, votes can be added and subtracted from vote ledger 2, so that it may or may not match vote ledger 1. Her official report comes from vote ledger 2, which has been disengaged from vote ledger 1.
If she asks for a detailed report for some precincts, though, her report comes from vote ledger 1. Therefore, if you keep the correct votes in vote ledger 1, a spot check of detailed precincts (even if you compare voter-verified paper ballots) will always be correct.
For more information on this, check out slashdot's string of comments. And thanks to atrios for the link.
| Electronic Voting
Here's a video of Bush on 9/11 doing NOTHING for five minutes after finding out the US has been attacked. Sure is a far cry from Bush saying "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!". For more on this, check out an interesting day. Via This Modern World.
| George W. Bush | War
It was, in fact, about the oil.
Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.As the article points out, this follows on the heels of admitting that WMD were just a "bureaucratic excuse." Good thing the liberal media's on the case...The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
| Iraq | Oil | Paul Wolfowitz | War
Colin and I were having a discussion about comment strings on Ish (unrelated), when he called to my attention this article about the agenda of right-wing journalism. It excerpts from an interview with Matt Labash, a senior writer with The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch, and in it, Labash talks about how the point of certain conservative commentators is not to enlighten, but to feed the rage and degrade the discourse.
Labash recently gave an interview to a Web site called Journalismjobs.com, which regularly talks to journalists about their craft. The interviewer asked, "Why have conservative media outlets like The Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel become more popular in the past few years?"Chilling reading, and get used to more of it, now that Powell's disregarded popular opinion and allowed big media to get bigger--and isn't that the most common complaint you hear about the media, that it's not large enough?You might expect the answer to come back something about the popularity of President Bush or the rise of nationalism after 9/11. But Labash was honest enough not to spin.
Conservative news organizations are popular, he admitted, "because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat.... While these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective.... It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."
| Media | Media Criticism
Because the response to my earlier post about taxes has been, in the words of Faux News, so fair and balanced, here's a great flash animation from the Democratic Party about taxes. Enjoy the laughter, because we'll all be sharing the tears.
While you're at it, ask yourself this simple question: would you rather make sure the rich paid less and run the risk that the poor didn't get enough, or would you rather make sure the poor got enough and run the risk that the rich paid too much?
| Tax Policy
Just so I don't go insane, here's a good roundup of how Bush's new tax bill gives all its money to the rich and screws the poor. Or, in more moderate terms, New benefits bypass many taxpayers / Study finds low-income groups ignored.
A new study by groups critical of the tax law that President Bush signed on Wednesday has found that 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will not receive any benefit from the law.This is the second time since Bush signed the bill, which Republicans have said was intended to benefit all who pay income taxes, that critics have pointed out that some of its provisions will not help millions of people in the lowest tax brackets.
...
The new analysis says that the taxpayers who get nothing from the tax law are primarily low-income single people who do not have children and lack income from dividends or capital gains. A large number of low- and moderate- income single parents with children over 16 will also get no benefit from the law.
The study was conducted by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.
Last week, the two groups, along with Citizens for Tax Justice, found that 6.5 million minimum-wage families -- with nearly 12 million children -- would not receive the $400-per-child increase in the child tax credit contained in the new law. The families were left out of the tax law in last-minute congressional negotiations to keep the bill under the Senate limit of $350 billion.
In combination with the children who were cut from the bill's benefits by the congressional negotiators, the study says, there are 50 million households -- 36 percent of all households in the nation -- who will receive no benefit from the tax law. The figure includes people who do not earn enough to owe income tax.
...
A description of the law on the Republican National Committee Web site makes the point that it should benefit "everyone who pays taxes" as it makes effective immediately reductions passed in 2001.
...
But the new study found 5 million taxpayers in the lowest tax bracket who get no benefit from the law, and 2.5 million single parents who also pay taxes but get no breaks.
...
"It's another illustration that the real purpose of this tax bill was not to give a boost to the economy now," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"The bill really consists of new provisions, like dividend tax cuts, that administration officials and their supporters in Congress have long wanted for other reasons," Greenstein said. "If they were really serious about boosting the economy, they would not have excluded these people, because they're the ones who spend rather than save."
...
... the study's authors noted that there are 40 times as many people who get no benefit from the cuts as there are millionaires who will get 44 percent of the law's tax benefits in 2005.
| Tax Policy
Found in today's SF Chronicle: "I desire what is good. Therefore, anyone who does not agree with me is a traitor." King George III
| Civil Liberties | George W. Bush | Patriotism
Those of you who remember the chilling story of Chuck Hagel and the business of electronic voting machines will be pleased to note that his company is releasing a new voting machine that leaves a paper trail.
In response to concerns raised by election officials and security-minded techies, one of the largest makers of touch-screen voting machines has introduced a prototype capable of producing paper ballots.These machines will only be installed if people get on their local governments to demand them. So please contact your representative (find numbers here) or your local county board of elections and do so. Read the chilling story (linked to earlier, but whatever: it's here) for reasons why you should get right on this.Developed by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Nebraska, the machine is currently in beta testing, with plans to make it commercially available by July.
| Electronic Voting
The things you learn buying shwarma. At my local mediterranean sandwich shop, I picked up a flyer for an upcoming event this Saturday. On the back was the Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I looked up her name and learned something. According to the women's history site at about.com
n 1870, Julia Ward Howe took on a new issue and a new cause. Distressed by her experience of the realities of war, determined that peace was one of the two most important causes of the world (the other being equality in its many forms) and seeing war arise again in the world in the Franco-Prussian War, she called in 1870 for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts. She issued a Declaration, hoping to gather together women in a congress of action.Yes, that's right, folks: Mother's Day started as a peace movement. So I'll leave you with the text, more relevant today than ever before. And happy Mother's Day, to my own Mom, to the Mother of my child, and to all mothers out there.
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
| Holidays | Peace | War
Yep, actual culture this time. I'm curious whether people have suggestions for alt-lullabies. I tend to sing things from the C&W genre, but I'm looking for some new tunes. So anyone with an idea for a slow song that might be good for putting little ones to sleep, please hit me with your comments. As a public service to the other Ish-parents, here are the lullabies currently in heavy rotation.
Those of you who take polls to be the word of God should check out this article on this modern world.
Only 40% of Americans can name the three branches of government, while 37% can't even name one.40% of Americans think there's strong evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11, while only 36% know there is little to none. Support for the Iraq war continues to be strongly associated with the belief that Saddam was involved in 9-11. (An earlier Retropoll had found that among people who know there is little or no evidence linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda, opposition to the war was over 75%.)
Americans of all stripes overwhelmingly reject individual Patriot Act provisions -- secret searches, electronic surveillance, arrests without detention, etc. -- but seem blissfully unaware that they are part of the War on Terrorism.
On some level, American do seem to understand the depth of their manipulation, with "media hype" named as a leading cause of fear.
Disturbingly, however, belief that the US must prove charges against other countries before attacking them is declining significantly.
| Polling | Terrorism
