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Saturday, February 08, 2003
Social Informatics (apolitical explorations)
Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 PM
 Part of the reason for advanced schooling is to learn lessons you can apply in everyday life. That's especially true with the Computers in Society class I took last semester. Two recent articles have inspired me to further analysis. The first is this piece on Google from the Boston Globe Magazine. The second article comes from Wired magazine, about alt.suicide.holiday. I'm an avid searcher; that's partly why I got into Library and Information Science. I love Google and I'm an avid Googler. American Libraries Magazine had a recent article titled Librarianship after Google, which noted "Isn't it remarkable how quickly Google got adopted and became seemingly indispensable to many librarians? It seems like only yesterday that we all had a different favorite search engine every few months." It is worrisome that one company has so much power, even one whose corporate code of conduct is simply Don't be evil. I remember the general dread when DejaNews closed up shop, and the worry over what would become of the Usenet archive. As it turned out, Google bought it, and undertook great expense to improve access to the existing archive, continue archiving new posts, and even acquire older posts to make it the most complete archive available. They've done an amazing job, but no matter how much we like Google, the Usenet archive is still in private hands, and if anything should happen to Google... Well, the archive is just as fragile as it was under Deja's management, and is just as valuable a resource. I would like to see the Library of Congress get a copy of the archive for permanent keeping. The question of monopoly also raises its head in the recent SearchKing lawsuit, where Google purposely reduced another company's PageRank. Yes, SearchKing was trying to abuse the PageRank system, but Google's popularity is partly based upon a positive reputation. If it continues to manipulate search results to disfavor competitors, they could become just as untrustworthy as other sites which sell top results to advertisers. [More on Google's business challenges in this BusinessWeek article.] But these concerns are tangential to those expressed in the article, which focuses more on the issue of Googling about other people. A key quote in the middle of the article: "It's the collapse of inconvenience," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. "It turns out inconvenience was a really important part of our lives, and we didn't realize it." I'll confess that one thing blocking me from a career in politics is my concern about what one can find by Googling me. I've been on Usenet since I was 18 years old (I know, that's trivial now, but that was 1988). All the usual bullshitting college conversations one has with friends, I had online, and many of them are still accessible. I'm sure I expressed lots of outrageous and idiotic opinions that I don't hold now or don't hold as strongly (for two dramatic examples, my opinions on gun control and censorship of pornography are just about the opposite of the ones I held when I was a freshman) and it would be trivially easy for someone to pull those forth and either try to pin them on me now or accuse me of flip-flopping. I believe too strongly in the historical importance of archives to actually ask Google to pull my posts from their archives. [Besides, I know how easy it is to just find other people's responses which quote my words, so it'd only add an extra step of distortion to the process.] I idly wonder when we'll get the first suicide tied to such a Google investigation of somebody's past. Speaking of the convenience factor, I do worry that Google is so convenient that we look to it in place of other, better tools. For example, many newspapers recently have discovered their letter columns have been astroturfed by form letters written by the RNC, but attributed to local letter-writers. The Globe ombudsman writes "The Internet may be part of the problem, but it can also be part of the solution; I'd suggest adding regular online searches of key phrases in any suspect letter, to quickly identify already-published duplicates." Right idea, wrong tool. They want to be searching Lexis-Nexis, a paid service with dedicated news archives, where one can search newspaper letter columns. I should add that the Boston Globe both archives into LN and has a I would suspect Slashdot of such ignorance of news tools, but am disappointed to find similar unfamiliarity among professional journalists, editors and ombudsmen. The article also asks another question: Because we know Google will be able to meet whatever our informational need may be at whatever moment we need it, it has, in many ways, made us all a little lighter. "Rather than having to carry the factual baggage around in your head, you have this electronic prosthesis," says Sven Birkerts, a noted author who has written about the intersection of technology and society. "You can get it anytime, and the doors don't lock." Honestly, I suspect so, though I don't yet know how. James Burke has talked about how before the printing press (and still in pre-literate societies) people had the ability to memorize what we'd now consider incredible amounts of information. But once people could look information up in a book, the need for such storage was diminished. People stopped teaching or practicing the skills and they've been mostly lost the ability. [See Engines of our Ingenuity, episodes 892 & 1226.] I've also read studies that people who use wearable computers or have ubiquitous handheld computers have undergone memory loss because they've delegated certain facts to their digital memory, rather than remembering these themselves. I've had similar questions since I saw some memory aids for the elderly at the Conference for Universal Usability. I've also read articles and research about how daily behavior changes once one gets an always-on broadband connection to the Internet. Seems to map to my experiences. After Ian and I had grown accustomed to having an always-on cable modem, we were dramatically affected when it went offline for a couple weeks last year. And a Seattle journalist wrote an article about surviving a week unplugged. The story of what happened to cyborg Steve Mann when airport security forcibly disconnected him ( NYT story here, Slashdot commentary here) may serve as a useful example of what may come. In some respects, I wonder if anyone has studied how math knowedge has changed since calculators became prevalent in the classroom. Although we were allowed calculators in our most advanced math classes, they were still relatively primitive compared to some of the programmable ones commonplace nowadays. And we were still required to use the tables in the back of books for logs and trigonometric functions. I still remember by heart that log 2 base 10 is .30103, and am thus able to derive the logs of powers of 2 pretty much in my head. Do kids today still do that? I don't know, but I do wonder what we're losing in terms of in-your-head calculation ability. Google just carries this a few steps further. As a child, I had oodles of fun just browsing through dictionaries. While the ability to find ready reference directly is highly useful, a lot of good learning comes from browsing. I know that I read many more articles when I buy a newspaper than when I read one online, because I miss the serendipidous discoveries. And, some may deride the idea of memorizing facts that can be more easily looked up, what about other lessons that are more easily found than derived? Are they now worthless? I recall a unit in science class on the weather. For a week or so, we were to avoid hearing the weather forecasts and instead try to make our own predictions based upon current conditions. I remember calling the weather-phone to get the current temperature and pressure, then quickly hanging up before the recording got to tomorrow. Do they still teach that? With "weather every ten minutes" on the radio, I wonder if it's still possible to nurture that temporary sense of ignorance in the name of learning. Suicide 101: Lessons Before Dying I've always felt that one of the strengths of the Internet is its ability to host communities of interest. +People who are isolated geographically can find other like-minded individuals to communicate with, thus reducing loneliness and improving information-flow and self-esteem. For hobbies, alternative sexualities, ailments, or activism -- the Internet seems ideal for forming support groups. Not all of these are for the best. Some communities tend to become echo chambers for destructive opinions. [I've previously posted my opinions of childfree advocacy.] However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've read articles on pro-anorexia groups which seem to call that into question. LJDrama (a generally funny site, mocking some of the excesses seen on LiveJournals) links to one such group. However, pro-suicide seems even more... questionable. What redeeming value can there be in such "support" groups? And, yet, I don't condone censorship. I didn't when Final Exit came out with its potential for misuse, and I don't want to go down that slippery slope now. Once in college, when I was feeling down on myself, I said to a friend "I hate myself." He didn't yell at me, but said in no uncertain terms how horribly wrong that was and that I should never say such things. So I didn't. I didn't stop thinking that, but I no longer expressed those sentiments to others, which may have prevented me from getting further help. My husband has worked for the Samaritans, which "provides unconditional and non-judgemental support to those who are alone, depressed or in crisis." In plain language, it's a suicide hotline. And yet, their training emphasizes that they're not supposed to try to talk callers out of suicide, but merely to "befriend" them and just be there for the callers. There's concern that suicidal people might not seek out help if they knew they were going to be judged by those they were contacting. So, maybe there is a place for these kinds of support groups, places to "talk openly about suicide in a culture that regards suicide as a taboo." Since I started writing this post, Wired has posted the rest of the series: No One Asked Why He Wanted to Die and A Teen Dies: Who Is Responsible? In the second part, the parent of a suicide victim acknowledges "If it wasn't this group, it would be another group. Sooner or later, people with this tendency are going to find each other. I think there is a real positive in that you can find someone who understands where you come from." This gives the assumption that such groups will always exist, even if they're forced underground. The final article partly involves a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a poster of ASH. I worry that this kind of action could penalize suicide hotlines like Samaritans, where sometimes phone workers do keep someone company during their final moments without calling the authorities. But, while friends and phone line workers may be comforting, does that comfort really merit whole communities to support and even promote such self-destructive beliefs? And what does it mean for society at large if we condone such groups? In the name of diversity, people have become far more accepting. Creeds like "an it harm none, do what ye will" or "safe, sane and consensual" imply an almost 'anything goes' attitude. Some point to these nonjudgmental stances as signs of moral decline, calling it an abdication of authority and absense of leadership. Isn't part of adulthood about providing guidance, especially to the young and in need? I have no answers to any of these questions, but they are questions worth pondering. 
Posted by Lis Riba at 8:01 PM
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has created a Vote To Impeach website, on which he's drafted articles of impeachment for the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. As little as I like the current administration or its policies, these charges somehow don't seem to rise up to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. However, two posts this afternoon on Interesting Times really disturb me. I'm going to excerpt liberally:
I'm chilled by the implications. I'm not entirely certain it rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeaners, but it's much much closer than getting a blowjob. Especially when you combine these actions with the administrations many attempts to subvert Constitutional balance of power and the Bill of Rights. I really don't want to go overboard about this, but the more news I've been blogging the last several weeks, the more worried I've gotten. Anyone care to reassure me that this isn't as bad as it sounds?
More on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act
Posted by Lis Riba at 3:15 PM
I finally managed to download the full text of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (what's being euphemistically called Patriot Act II) from PBS. And I found a few more provisions that haven't been widely reported on yet:
And, of course, one of the most dramatic changes is Section 501: Expatriation of Terrorists: [A]n American could be expatriated if, with the intent to relinquish nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated as a "terrorist organization" ... This provision also would make explicit that the intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct. ... Specifically, this proposal would make service in a hostile army or terrorist group prima facie evidence of an intent to renounce citizenship. And how does the U.S. government decide what is a terrorist organization? That's the big question, isn't it? The State Department's Section-by-section analysis of the (original) USA PATRIOT Act defines domestic terrorism as those criminal acts dangerous to human life, committed primarily within the United States, that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or to influence a governmental policy by intimidation or coercion" which would include Operation Rescue and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or any protestors who engage in civil disobedience or minor violence. With section 410 of this new bill eliminating the statute of limitations, I guess anyone who protested the Vietnam War in the Sixties better beware! Section 411 of the original USA PATRIOT Act also "recasts the definition of engaging in terrorist activities to include solicitation on behalf of such organizations, or recruiting on their behalf, or providing them with material support," meaning that anyone who's ever donated to such organizations, even if clearly earmarked for humanitarian purposes, is also a terrorist by the current definitions. Scary, isn't it? By the way, the ACLU has a nifty How Free Are We? Quiz. It needs a cutesy graphic like some of the LiveJournal quizzes, but:
How well do you do?
Orange you feeling safer already?
Posted by Lis Riba at 12:45 PM
That's right, in case anyone was unconvinced about the need for war against Of course, the big news in the blogosphere is the Patriot Act II. I've started reading more details courtesy of the Center for Public Integrity. It is positively diabolical! It's almost impressive how Ashcroft has managed to sneak in so many unrelated Bush administration interests in the name of security. Take this for example: Section 202, "Distribution of 'Worst Case Scenario' Information" This sounds like it has much more to protect polluters and damage the environment than preventing terrorists. But there's much, much more:
If you're as outraged as I am over these actions, DailyKos has some suggestions for Fighting back. I just want to remind everyone that the Congressional toll free switchboard at 1-800-839-5276. I called my Congressman yesterday about the DeFazio-Paul bill to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution, and the staffer I spoke to was incredibly polite. I'll also add one more suggestion for easy action. Tell others about these stories. I shouldn't dis the national media too much, because I would enjoy working as a news librarian, but many people are not that well informed about what's really going on. Jeanne D'Arc reports on how Oprah's audience reacted to something I considered old news: The latter part of the show consisted of an interview with Tom Friedman, and the interesting thing there was not Oprah's fawning, but seeing what happens to Friedman's suggestion that war with Iraq will have to be followed by a twenty year occupation when it hits the real world. People who follow news religiously ? and for the most part, that's not Oprah's audience ? have heard the call to imperialism so many times we've become numb to the idea. But when the camera turned to the audience after Friedman's suggestion, you could see the shock on their faces. Mouths open. Shaking their heads. Friedman looked increasingly ridiculous saying that this twenty-year occupation is what Americans have to be prepared for, while (mostly) women looked at him as if he were out of his mind. One man in the audience, in fact, rose to tell him exactly that. Watching the show was worthwhile if only to see Friedman get taken down. So, spread the word. Talk to people about the stories I'm describing here. Make sure they know no Iraqis were directly involved in Sept. 11th. Ask if they heard that the British intelligence report was plagiarized from a decade-old student paper. Tell them about Shock and Awe. Ask them what they think will happen when/if we win a military battle against Iraq... Make them think about the consequences of our actions. To conclude, I'll just remind you: It has now been 509 days since President Bush said all we want is Osama brought to justice, dead or alive, and 308 days since American citizen Jose Padilla was placed in a military prison for an indefinite period of time without charge, trial or due process of law. Where are they now?
Friday, February 07, 2003
(Aw) Crumbs
Posted by Lis Riba at 4:55 PM
Maybe it was all the reminiscing over the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978, but it's snowing something fierce out there. Unfortunately, I'm not having that good a Friday afternoon. Don't want to say much about it, but this Wired story should provide a few clues regarding my current mood slump. Good wishes and support would be most welcome right about now. By the way, continuing from my previous post, if government officials are looking for information in the papers of grad students, then I've got a few they can use! I hope they pay particular attention to my report on USA PATRIOT Act A few other tidbits from the afternoon's blogs:
By the way, the BBC has posted its winners in the caption Powell's photo contest. They're cute, but I still like best the one from Atrios, that went "This is the vial of crack we've been smoking at the White House." I also discovered that the BBC has a weekly pun competition. Ooh. Did I ever mention I won audience favorite at a Boskone Punday contest several years back? Huge elimination round on politicians, and I managed a couple of doozies. [My favorite was when the contestant before me said, "Architects have been hired to redesign the UN building. They're adding flying Boutroses." And I replied completely off-the-cuff with a Gomer Pyle "Well Gha-a-ali!" that brought the house down.] Anyway, due to the snow, the pot-luck dinner we were supposed to go to tonight has been cancelled. Ian made two chocolate pies, so that means there's one for each of us. But that means we're suddenly without plans for tonight. Ah well...
Morning
Posted by Lis Riba at 10:21 AM
In the past several days, I've mentioned several issues worth calling your Congresscritters about: filibustering Miguel Estrada's judicial confirmation, supporting the DeFazio-Paul bill to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution, just to name two. Well, it's now easier than ever to do so. I just discovered the Congressional toll free switchboard at 1-800-839-5276. Call Congress and tell them how you want to be represented! Interesting Times makes a good point. Isn't Shock and Awe just a modern synonym for blitzkrieg? From the OED:
Blitzkrieg: [G., f. blitz lightning + krieg war.] (See BLITZ n.)
Blitz: An attack or offensive launched suddenly with great violence with the object of reducing the defences immediately; spec. an air-raid or a series of them conducted in this way, esp. the series of air-raids made on London in 1940. Ian wishes to add that KGB is an abbreviation for Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, which means Committee of State Security. Sound like a Department of Homeland Security, anyone? You know, I realize that conservativism is supposed to be about resistance to change and reusing the best ideas of the past, but don't you think the Bush administration should do better than Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? Oliver Willis has a great quote from Clinton on being the only superpower: "You don't do everything in life you can just because you can. Nobody does." Atrios has two gems this morning. He links to an interview with Josh Marshall More importantly, he reports on another Republican attempt to block Democratic get out the vote efforts. This wasn't the first Republican dirty trick I've heard about in recent elections designed to discourage voter turnout. Remember those flyers in the poor neighborhoods of Baltimore? Or the less publicized phone calls in Florida, "reminding [voters] to get their absentee ballots in by Nov. 10" several days after the actual deadline? Attempts to prevent American citizens from voting disgust me. If there isn't already, there oughta be a law. After all, blocking one opponent from voting has a similar effect to casting one illegal supporting ballot -- only with broader and worse ramifications for the future since many disaffected voters stop voting altogether. TalkLeft writes about an interview with the jurors of the medical marijuana case. One juror said the real culprit was "The system, the federal government, the DEA." Meanwhile, Texas is refusing to comply with the World Court, which recently ordered the U.S. to stay a few executions of foreign citizens. As Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said, "It would be ironic for the United States to ignore the order of a World Tribunal at the same time we threaten war on another nation on the ground that it flaunts the directives of a world body." Although it's all over the blogosphere, Ian asked me to mention this story since he hasn't heard it in the press he follows. At the UN, Colin Powell recommended a British intelligence report on Iraq, calling it a "fine paper" with "exquisite detail." The paper is actually plagiarized from a graduate student's paper and two other works of journalism -- unattributed of course. Avedon notes: "Even [the student's] typos and grammatical errors found their way into the Downing Street dossier." Road to Surfdom notes several disturbing facts about this, which are too long to quote here but really must be read. So what was that I said yesterday about lies, damn lies... Oh, I almost forgot: It has now been 508 days since President Bush said all we want is Osama brought to justice, dead or alive, and 307 days since American citizen Jose Padilla was placed in a military prison for an indefinite period of time without charge, trial or due process of law. Where are they now?
Thursday, February 06, 2003
Do you not know that I am a woman? when I think, I must speak!
Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM
Shakespeare wrote those lines about 400 years ago for his comedy As You Like It. I know I said my last post would be it for the day. At least, that's what I intended. Yet how can I stay silent when the blogs are filled with atrocities that the mainstream news isn't covering? I must speak, because how else will people find out about these: Oliver Willis reports that during the Gulf War, Cheney frequently said "we have no way of knowing precisely how many casualties occurred ... and may never know," a government demographer and doctoral student calculated much higher Iraqi casualties than any of the official reports. She was then fired, and the department rewrote her report, eliminating her research and making it seem as if casualty figures were impossible to derive. Needless to say, this probably means the likelihood of accurate casualty counts in upcoming conflicts will be slim. Link that to this Interesting Times story, which reports that "The Pentagon is considering cremating the remains of soldiers who may die in an Iraqi chemical or biological attack in the Persian Gulf" and points out the PR advantage in having no more "bad visuals of flag-draped coffins coming off airplanes." Of course, cremating all the war dead also means no way for anyone to conduct independent autopsies or possibly even calculate accurate counts. Even more horrifying is Oliver Willis' second story, that Rumsfeld has called the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention a "straitjacket" and wants to use so-called nonlethal chemical agents such as the ones Russians used to end their recent hostage crisis, accidentally killing a hundred people in the process. As Oliver Willis says: I'm afraid of what these people are doing to the legacy of the United States, and what we stand for. We have over two hundred years of history coming up to this point, and I really can't believe one group of people can truly derail us from our glorious path. Ruminate This reports that " a bi-partisan bill was introduced in Congress ... to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution passed by Congress in October." However, apparently, their press conference wasn't covered by any of the major media outlets. Searching the Lexis-Nexis News Group File for the bill's sponsors turns up 6 articles, half of which are merely formulaic lists of the day's events in Washington. A Google News search on the bill's sponsors performed at 10:15 PM shows only six relevant links:
These aren't big fish -- they're small fry. The largest of these media outlets, the Washington Times gives it three sentences in the final paragraph of a much longer story. Where are CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the other major markets? They decided not to run it!? As Ruminate This says: Major bipartisan legislation opposing a war nobody wants, and what do we hear? The sound of media silence. It's really sad when the latest dismal figures from "Bush's War on the Economy" has to be considered the lighter news.
On blogging -- a narcissistic self-evaluation
Posted by Lis Riba at 4:10 PM
Well, it's now been two weeks since I created my RSS feed and syndicated my journal. Since Blogger Pro has a 30 day trial period, during which I can back out free of charge, I thought it worth asking myself what's changed and whether it's been worth it. Since this gets rather long, I've moved the bulk of the post behind this link. I invite you to read it and share your opinions regarding this journal. By the way, if you have access to Searcher Magazine (which I really should subscribe to one of these days), the February issue has an excellent article on "RSS News Blogging" which "provides an overview of the software, tools, editors, aggregators, and search engines." Very well done, though unfortunately it's not available online. Finally: Unless something else really big happens this evening, that's probably all I'll post for today. I think I've written more than enough.
Calling George Santayana!
Posted by Lis Riba at 3:45 PM
Another peek behind the curtain on the Osama->Saddam switcheroo: Road to Surfdom discovered this Washington Post story from October: Bush has not made an unprompted mention of bin Laden's name since March 8. That day, at a GOP gathering in Florida, the president spoke of "this bin Laden fellow," and vowed: "We're going to find him." The last time Bush spoke the hated name in any public forum was a July 8 press conference, in which he was specifically asked if he would find bin Laden. The article also notes one of the motives for this switcheroo: polls. "Last year, nearly two-thirds of Americans said the war on terrorism could not be called a success without bin Laden's death or capture. That number fell to 44 percent in the March Washington Post/ABC News poll, and the question has since been dropped." I wonder how much light needs to be shed to expose this story.
In other news
Posted by Lis Riba at 2:40 PM
I actually wrote most of these comments before my lengthy screed on Osama and Iraq, but realized that topic was important enough that it needed to stand alone and shouldn't be buried amid other news, no matter how equally worthwhile those stories are. Patently false As you may have heard, SBC acquired patents "that on the surface would seem to cover menus, frames, and any sort of link in a computerized document or data representation where one end is static and the other end changes based on context" and has been trying to enforce them. This has been widely covered in the tech press, so I haven't written too much about it here. Many people have been trying to find prior art, and this week Robert X. Cringely provides a boatload. There certainly do seem to be problems with the American patent system, particularly where it comes to patents on processes. To forestall such problems in the future (and hopefully to get the Patent Office some more money for investigators) I propose that the Patent Office ought to be able to fine the owners of successful patents if it's discovered that they have not done sufficient research on prior art before submitting. If someone gets a patent, and it's later discovered they misled the Patent Office by hiding prior art, they should not only lose the patent but be further penalized for the time and trouble they've put others through. Patent applications are supposed to do this anyway, so let's just put some teeth behind this requirement. Action alert Democratic Senators are still trying to decide whether they'll filibuster Bush's judicial nominee Miguel Estrada. Maybe they don't yet know this, but Joshua Micah Marshall has uncovered that he lied to the Senate in his hearings last fall. Let's call our Senators and tell them about this! We shouldn't promote people who lie during their nomination hearings! On the lighter side: Atrios reports that the BBC is holding a contest to caption that picture of Powell holding the vial. Sequential Tart, a very witty monthly webzine about comics, has a fascinating article this month about Wonder Woman's virginity. A fascinating look at the history of the character and to fans' reaction to the character. If you're feeling down, take a look at this site, forwarded to us by my sister-in-law (my husband's sister, not my brother's wife)
Improper-ganda
Posted by Lis Riba at 1:20 PM
It seems that we may have to update the old adage. There are lies, damn lies, and statements from the Bush administration. Interesting Times notes that Powell yesterday was trying to make two related cases before the Security Council: (1) that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction (how I hate that vague nebulous term) and (2) linking Iraq with Al Qaeda. Convincing evidence on (1) should be sufficient, so why does the Bush administration keep pressing the much weaker argument for (2)? Today's Salon points out how easily the Bush administration has taken advantage of Americans' ignorance: A recent poll showed 50% of Americans believed that at least one of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi. Only 17% knew the truth that none of them were (the other third said they didn't know). Salon reports that 65% believed that Iraq & al-Qaeda are close allies, a notion that is as yet unproven, and denounced both by Saddam and by "those with a scholarly knowledge of al-Qaida." I looked up the full poll results, and apparently "[t]wo-thirds of the respondents said they thought they had a good grasp of the issues." So, how much of Americans' support for war with Iraq is based upon incorrect information, and what does that mean? Salon asks: The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have received more news coverage than any other single event in history. How could it possibly be that in less than 18 months this event has become a victim of gross historical revisionism? The rest of the Salon article traces the history of this propaganda. Last month, I and many other bloggers linked to this primer on propaganda from a woman who lived in Castro's Cuba. Her archives seem to be down right now, but you can still read Google's cached copy. In her latest posts, she too points out how, magician-like, the administration has used sleight of hand to distract us from Osama. On September 17, 2001, President Bush said:
One of the things believed to have brought down Carter's presidency was that every night the news gave a countdown of how long the hostages had been held in Iran. Maybe we should do a similar countdown about bin Laden. Spread the meme: It has now been 507 days since President Bush said all we want is Osama brought to justice, dead or alive. Where is he? Whoops. After I wrote that, I just noticed that Warblogging.com is already maintaining such a count, as well as counting "the number of days since American citizen Jose Padilla was placed in a military prison for an indefinite period of time without charge, trial or due process of law" which happens to stand currently at 306. Still, this is a meme that deserves to be spread. At least Oliver Willis is maintaining an Afghan War Watch, since the mainstream media has been delinquent in reporting on events on that front. Back to Interesting Times: If [the Bush administration] will lie, obfuscate, and deceive on this matter then how are we to trust them on anything else?
Pithy titles are hard
Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 AM
Hee hee hee! More blurry satellite photos! Beware! Meanwhile, Terry Jones wants to apply Bush's logic to his neighborhood disputes. [Thanks, Oliver Willis!] Less amusingly, Interesting Times reports that North Korea has announced that, like the U.S., they too are entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against their enemies -- meaning us: "The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", said the deputy director Ri Pyong-gap, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US." Eric Alterman points out something worrisome from the H-Diplo list (midway thru the post). Retired Generals Zinni, Wesley Clark, Schwarzkopf, and retired Admiral Eugene Carroll all "have years of experience reading intelligence estimates [and] are collectively unimpressed by the Bush administration?s arguments about the peril posed by weapons of mass destruction." What's more, "as high-ranking military officials, these men are by nature reluctant to criticize authority in public in a time of crisis. For them to speak out, they must be deeply disturbed at the course of Washington?s policy." Today's Christian Science has an excellent article on the Bush administration's excessive insistence upon secrecy. Talk Left links to another New York Times article about Ashcroft's continuing pattern of overruling local prosecutors and ordering the death penalty. A Justice Department spokeswoman says, "What we are trying to avoid is one standard in Georgia and another in Vermont." So much for the GOP's so-called belief in states' rights, although we already knew that was a sham from medical marijuana and assisted suicide cases. In fact, Ashcroft is being specifically and intentionally disrespectful to states' rights here, as Kevin McNally, of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, says: "They are attempting to bring the federal death penalty to areas of the country like the Northeast that are less hospitable to the death penalty than the traditional death penalty states. This is not an accident or a statistical fluke. This is a deliberate decision to require not a few but many death penalty trials in the Northeast and in New York in particular." If you're feeling disempowered by the whole Iraq business, with our government seemingly ignoring the will of the American people, then respond with Clams for Peace! That's right, protest by mailing clams to the White House. REMEMBER: If you send no clams, you are all for children being shot in the knee caps and being left for dead!!!
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Lotsa nooz
Posted by Lis Riba at 10:55 PM
You know the world has changed, when the conservative Boston Herald prints an article about tonight's Star Trek Enterprise which says "But this shadow play is truly disgusting due to the long-standing refusal by producer Rick Berman (co-writer of the episode) to put a regular gay character into any 'Trek' product, despite fan petitions." Warblogging.com has confirmed what an Australian paper first reported: the United States has already selected who will lead Iraq after Saddam Hussein. [Weren't we supposed to be about bringing democracy to the region?] And what a doozy of a pick. He left Iraq when he was eleven years old and has spent most of his life (he's now 58) in the U.S. and Britain. He was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan in 1992, and tried to launch an uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan in the mid '90s, which proved a complete failure (it's called 'sort of an Iraqi Bay of Pigs'). So he's unpopular, unqualified, and more American/British than Iraqi. No wonder Bush loves this guy. Republican Congressman Howard Coble, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he agreed with FDR's rationale for imprisoning Japanese-Americans during World War II. Of course, the big news of the day involves Colin Powell's testimony before the UN. Be very afraid of the ominously-labelled blurry photos! I didn't get to actually see/hear the testimony live, but Neal Pollack thoughtfully kept a running blog of his reactions to the speech: 10:51 AM Tim Dunlap asks the pertinent question: "Why does [Powell] say that 'We don?t know precisely what Iraq was moving,' when he's just told us that they had a crane to move missiles, and, if we have a photo of the equipment at the site, why don't we have a photo of them moving the missiles with the crane or any of the other stuff?" Whoops! Looks like another of Powell's claims has just been proven false. "If the case is so damn solid, why do they have to lie so much?" And my husband noticed something very significant in the Pakistani foreign minister's comments. As usual, there's too much good stuff on Interesting Times to mention it all: Three |
