Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:25 AM

<Glee!> I just filled out the petition to graduate in May. I still have to pass my current class, but this tells the school I plan to attend the Commencement ceremony on May 18 and how I want my name spelled on my diploma.

Ian's Aunt Liz (mine by marriage) will also be getting her Master's up in Maine on the same day, and they're getting Yoko Ono as their graduation speaker. Simmons hasn't announced our commencement speaker yet, but I'm hoping they'll be as good. [Last year, Nina Totenberg got an honorary degree.]

[Somewhat] sorry I haven't been posting much news lately. I've got about a page worth of rapidly aging links of stories I want to share with folks. But the last couple days, I've really been cranking on my semester project -- so much so that I haven't even been reading other blogs as much as I usually do, much less having the time it takes me to write a proper post. Gotta "respect the streak," as they say.

BTW, I've written on and off about my love of the Boston Athenaeum library. For those in the Boston area who are interested in seeing the place, they'll be holding an April Fools' Reception for associate members (those under 40) on the night of April 1st. It looks like admission is free, and they are allowing members to bring a guest. I have no idea what precisely will be going on at the "reception," but if you're in the Boston area and are interested in attending, let me know soon (I do have to give names for reservations). No guarantees on who Ian and I will choose, but I love the Athenaeum and would love to show others around.

Honestly, that's about it for now. Maybe I'll post some of the newsy stuff later on. It's not all bad news, after all. Later!

Note, the preceding was written about 8 AM, but couldn't be posted because Blogger's servers are down.

There's something I've been noodling with. Many bloggers have tipjars -- links to Amazon or PayPal so readers who like the content can donate. The Agonist had long been working on a project researching the Silk Road. After he already booked his travel plans, the University cancelled his grant. He posted about this in his blog, and was bombarded with donations. Last year, other people have posted websites asking strangers to help pay their credit card debts, and the trend is such that journalists are writing about it and there are dedicated sites helping others set up such deals. Frankly, these make me uncomfortable. Still, the Agonist got money for a trip to China and Karyn could pay for her shopping sprees. I don't like hitting up friends for money, and I don't have anywhere near the readership of an Agonist or Andrew Sullivan. But I've been unemployed for nearly eleven months now. I've exhausted my severance package, run up some low interest credit cards for my education, and we're nearly out of savings. I'm getting worried. I hate to talk about this kind of thing (money is a bigger conversational taboo than sex) but I'm wondering what to do. Should I put up a tipjar? Should I actually solicit funds like the Agonist did? What do y'all think? I could really use your advice and comments.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:10 AM

This evening, Ian rented and we watched the classic Errol Flynn movie Captain Blood. Fun flick (I recommend it), but all the while, I found myself flipping through my half-read copy of The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain and marvelling at how the movie actually fits with historic events.

But that's not the geekiest bit.

Over the last year and a half, I've been reading a fair bit of Tudor & Stuart history. At this point, I think I've got a pretty decent knowledge of Edward VI (1547-) through Charles I (-1649), with the most depth in Elizabeth and James. But, Captain Blood, set near the end of the Stuart reign, whet my appetite. So, I found myself checking the bibliography of my Oxford Illustrated History for a good overview book regarding the rest of the Stuarts. And then I went and checked the five library networks I belong to. And, I did find a few.

The kicker for all this is I'm considering these books as vacation reading. Flying to and from Seattle will probably consume much of a day each way, so I'll need to bring along pleasure reading. And the pleasure reading I'm considering are ones that the editors from Oxford call "textbooks."

Oy.

Something tells me that they won't mix well with the free drink coupons I've got...
[Well, okay, it may suit the generally hedonistic Stuart courts, but wouldn't be terribly conducive to reading about them.]

FWIW, library books I've already started include:

• Ungrateful daughters : the Stuart princesses who stole their father's crown by Maureen Waller
• The politics of court scandal in early modern England : news culture and the Overbury affair, 1603-1666 by Alastair Bellany
• Unnatural murder by Anne Somerset (also about the Overbury case)

And the ones I'm considering are:

• Coward, B. The Stuart age: a history of England, 1603 - 1714
• Smith, A.G.R., The Emergence of a nation state, 1529-1660
• Worden A.B., Stuart England
  Alas, I'll have to interlibrary loan this one, since none of the five library networks I belong to has a copy. However, the Oxford folks call it "the best illustrated history to date," making me quite tempted

BTW, if anybody has any comments about these books or recommendations for (or against) others, I'd be most appreciative.

So, watching an Errol Flynn swashbuckler has the effect of making me want to read history textbooks on my vacation. Boy, I'm a geek!

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:55 AM

Well, I didn't go see Christopher Kimball last night. As it turned out, I was working on my Subject Analysis project in the afternoon, and just got into a good groove. As they said in Bull Durham, "A player on a streak has to respect the streak." So, I stayed home and got homework done. Sorry to disappoint those hoping for my feedback.

So, let's take a quick look at what's going on around the world:

• The US administration has decided not to put forth a plan for a peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians until after the crisis in Iraq is resolved. In other words, the Bush administration is jeopardizing years of work towards peace by holding it hostage to his unpopular Iraq plans. [Here's another blogger's take on the issue, along with the New York Times article on the subject.]
• If you haven't heard yet, when the Pakistanis captured Khaled Sheik Mohammad, they also took his sons, aged 7 and 9. They've since been taken into U.S. custody, and our government is holding them "where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities."
  Why in the hell has the US is questioning two boys under ten? No matter how notorious their father may be, does that justify holding 7 and 9 year olds captive, rather than giving custody to their mother or another relative? [As seen on Road to Surfdom here and here, TalkLeft and pixiedust.]
  As saddened as I am to hear Americans speak favorably about torture, I hope everyone can at least stand up and denounce such tactics. We're talking about a seven-year-old boy, for goodness sakes!
• Meanwhile, Patrick Nielsen Hayden has been hosting a debate (I can't believe such discussion actually has to occur) regarding the use of torture. The discussion (a very intelligent one) started here, continues here and here, and here's the latest.
  Jim Henley has also had some really good stuff, many of which Patrick links to in his first post. A couple worthwhile quotes:

  Torture is the canary in the coal mine. When your society starts seriously talking about torture, it means you've fucked up and become repressive.
             -- Leonard Dickens

  Why shouldn't we have people like Khaled Sheik Mohammad tortured, even though they are mass-murdering scum? There are various prudential reasons, which I went into last year. Twice. But there's a more important reason.
  Because we're the fucking United States of America!
             -- Jim Henley

• Back to the matter of Khalid's children, interrogators say they are using the boys' wellbeing as leverage to get information from their father. But since we're presumably isolating KSM from outside news anyway, couldn't questioners just lie to him about his sons' safety? Why do we need to actually be holding them?

And several items regarding freedom of the press:

• Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board which advises the Pentagon, has called an American journalist a terrorist merely because Perle didn't like what he wrote. Remember, Perle's one of the guys who defines terrorist organizations, and the USA PATRIOT gives the government wide latitude to act against such groups. Is this really what we want from our country? [Seen on Thinking it Through and Atrios. And if you distrust their accounts, here's the actual CNN transcript.]
• You know about that story on US spying and dirty tricks? You notice that you haven't heard about it from the mainstream US press? Three networks booked then cancelled interviews about it.
• Meanwhile, the Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq. I haven't seen independent correlation of these comments, but she seems to know what she's talking about. She also reports that "Pentagon is vetting journalists according to their stance on the war, and intends to take control of US journalists' satellite equipment --in order to control access to the airwaves." This is entirely unsurprising, given increasing evidence how carefully officials scripted Bush's "press conference" last week.

In my last post, I talked about debunking some of the urban legends in the rhetoric against Iraq. Here are a few issues and questions I wish to share:

• I'll start by pointing out this explanation why the story of surrendering Iraqi soldiers sent back by the Brits is bunk
• Tom Tomorrow has an excellent quote from Gary Kamiya of Salon:

  I propose the following axiom: Those who did not believe and publicly state before Sept. 11 that Saddam Hussein represented an unacceptable threat to the United States have no credibility when they now argue that he does.
  
  The reasoning behind this axiom is simple: The events of Sept. 11 have no relevance to the threat posed by Iraq, nor has any new information been unearthed since then about Iraqi threats. Therefore, all those who are only now calling for the U.S. to invade Iraq are basing their change of heart purely on an emotional reaction to Sept. 11, not a reasoned analysis of risk factors. This is an argument made in bad faith. For 10 years they were not afraid of Saddam Hussein. What changed their mind? The fiery spectacle of Sept. 11, they claim. Bush has invoked the date repeatedly as he has tried to scare Americans into supporting his war. But try as they might, none of these hawks in or out of the Bush government has been able to prove a connection between Osama bin Laden's spectacular assaults and the Baghdad regime.

  Mind you, Tom Tomorrow acknowledges that "most of the key players [in the administration] actually have been clamoring for a second gulf war since the mid nineties." So it's really not about 9/11 after all, and they're just shamelessly using the tragedy for their own political ends.
• Can somebody explain this to me? Many in the administration seem to be operating on the policy that "if Saddam has weapons, he must intend to use them to kill people maliciously and illegally." Isn't that the same kind of gun control argument that this administration vigorously rejects? How can this administration simultaneously make this argument against Saddam and reject similar controls on individual gun owners in America? Isn't that contradictory? [Please note, I am not advocating anything in regards to current gun laws, merely pointing out the hypocrisy.] It's a question worth asking hawkish gun owners. [As seen on the Sideshow]
• Finally, since my last post, I've decided to avoid calling this impending conflict a war. War implies a certain amount of bilateralism, and what we're seeing (and threatening) here is largely U.S. aggression. As Mark Twain once said, "This is not battle, for only one side is engaged -- it has another name. It is massacre."

A few pieces on the lighter side:

• Book Magazine has done a piece on America's Biggest Readers. At the end of the article, they asked for submissions for their next list, and I nominated myself based on last year's track record. [Seen on LISNews]
• This morning's Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating article on the history and practice of ice harvesting.
  The National Academy of Engineering considers air conditioning and refrigeration to be one of the ten greatest engineering achievements of the 20th Century. There's even been museum exhibits on how A/C changed America. As I said, fascinating.
• Finally, some enterprising folks have started a Weblog MetaData Initiative based partly on Dublin Core. This probably won't mean much to most readers, but the librarian in me finds this really cool. [I've been meaning to update my website for Dublin Core, but this got me to tag my journal, at least.]

Postscript (added slightly later): For folks in the Boston area, Eric Alterman, blogger and author of the new book What Liberal Media will be speaking at WordsWorth Books in Harvard Square tomorrow night (Wednesday) at 7 PM. I probably won't be going, but I know that some of you are interested in what he has to say. So, I thought I'd just let you all know.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 AM

In the comments to my previous post, a good friend wrote "we know where the administration wants to go. Now the question is, how will the people of America stop it?" So, here's my off-the-cuff advice:

• The first thing you can do is call your Senators and Representative and let them know how you feel. It doesn?t cost anything to call if you use the Congressional toll free switchboard at 1-800-839-5276.. [Working Assets offers some tips on communicating more effectively with Congress]
• It?s also a good idea to try to correct the misinformation that?s out there. Many people will gladly go out of their way to debunk urban legends and hoaxes that get propogated; do the same with the rumors regarding Iraq. [And if you?re having trouble, e-mail me and I?ll help find the evidence.] Point out some of the stories the foreign press has uncovered that aren?t getting play here in America (such as US spying and planning dirty tricks against the Security Council). Engage others in debate to correct their errors and the logical inconsistencies in their arguments. Or just point them towards sites showing the broader picture. Write letters to newspapers and other media outlets. Don?t stand by and let the lies take hold.
• As an aside, beware of falling for one of Rove's favorite rhetorical tricks: bait-and-switch leapfrogging to the next argument, thus implying that the current one has been won.

  Rather than continuing to argue for the merits of their position [whether to continue inspections or invade now] -- an argument they have concluded they cannot win -- they now want to shift the terms of the debate. They don?t want to talk anymore, in other words, about whether we should invade Iraq. We are supposed to accept the fiction that this has been already settled, and we are now in the "next phase" of discussing what to do in post-war Iraq. That way they can shift the discussion, aided by our feckless media, away from their losing hand and onto another topic?one that presumes the Bushies won the original debate.

  For more information on this, see Digby and Better Rhetor.

Next, keep in mind that this issue goes beyond the people of America, and we are getting help from the world community to stop it.

• Bush may be putting his fingers in his ears to public opinion, both world and in this country (remember: polls have shown that the majority of Americans oppose attacking Iraq without UN approval) but he can't ignore the United Nations completely. [Given that, did you sign MoveOn's petition to the UN?]
• Other nations are warning that if we attack Iraq against the will of the Security Council, then the United States would breach the UN Charter and violate international law. Professors of international law have confirmed "there is no justification under international law for the use of military force against Iraq." And both the Guardian and ABC News are reporting on this. Though I can't find the story right now, I heard over the weekend that if the U.S. wages an illegal invasion, then Russia may have the Security Council move against us.
• Right now, Tony Blair has the UK backing us, but he's got next to no support from voters at home. And just yesterday, his administration's international development secretary announced she would resign if Blair proceeds against Iraq without UN approval. In other words, supporting Bush could cost Tony Blair his job, and I always thought he was too smart to commit such political suicide. Especially since Bush isn't throwing any support to Blair in exchange (in the Thursday night thoroughly scripted "press conference?, Bush consistently undermined Tony Blair's attempt at diplomatic compromise)

Back to what you can do, ask people whether Iraq is worth all this. The cost in money, lives (ours and theirs) and, by going it alone, international emnity.

Finally, try to keep your spirits up. It?s not always easy, even for me, but nothing is inevitable, no matter how gung-ho the Bush administration gets. We can still withdraw our troops.

And if the worst does happen, Ziska has already outlined what those opposed to invasion should do should the US attack. Worthwhile reading, and I strongly recommend reading it in advance of any bombs dropping. If we want Bush out of office, we have to take care not to hurt that goal by our actions during any military action.

Anyway, these are just what I?ve come up with off the top of my head. Hope this helps. If you have other ideas, please post them in my comments.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:45 AM

Okay, I'm going to try to dash out a few quick news items of note before getting on with the morning's business.

• If you haven't heard, the British government has arrested someone for leaking the memo about the US campaign of spying and dirty tricks. That arrest pretty much confirms that the original memo is true.
• Lots of scary economic news this weekend. [Maybe that's partly behind the timing of Bush's press conference -- kept these stories off the front page!] Not only are the unemployment numbers worse than ever, Wampum has some evidence that the Department of Labor has been fudging the numbers a bit to make them look better than they actually are. Wampum also points out that the pending war in Iraq may actually camoflage worse numbers. See, over 177,000 reservists and National Guard troops have been called up. Their jobs are protected by law. However, unless most of these jobs are nonessential, it's highly likely that employers are filling many those positions with temporary workers, thus moving many people temporarily off the unemployment rolls and making the economy look even rosier.
• Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting on our spiralling deficit figures. "The Congressional Budget Office on Friday put out a new estimate for this fiscal year in which the projected deficit is 24 percent higher than the CBO had anticipated two months ago" And again, financial shenanigans may be disguising the worst news: "Remember the Social Security lockbox? It has been broken open. The deficit numbers above are cushioned by including $2.6 trillion from the Social Security trust fund." This is bad, people.
• I watched the first Clinton v. Dole/Dole v. Clinton debate on 60 Minutes. [If you have RealPlayer, you can watch it yourself.] Pretty flat. It was officially about whether we can afford an unprecedented tax cut and a war simultaneously. Dole seemed to be responding half-heartedly and it almost sounded like he was trying to change the subject. Then again, before he chose Kemp as his running-mate, Dole had a reputation as a deficit-hawk, so maybe even he didn't agree with the point he had to defend. According to AP, Clinton picked the topic of this debate (Dole chooses the next) and even Dole wasn't happy with the way this one turned out. I don't agree with him that "it needs to be a little tougher [and] have a little more edge to it" -- I'd rather hear a good solid debate on the issues than lots of oratorical tricks, but I'm willing to give it another shot.
• Recent polls have shown that more people would vote for an unnamed or generic democrat over President Bush. Some people wonder whether we can just keep the identity of the Democratic nominee a secret from the American public to keep this lead. I like Mark Kleiman's response better. A legal name change to "Generic Democrat" (call him Gene) and the race is wrapped up!

I think I'll conclude by sharing several thought-provoking essays: "Arrest me" by William Rivers Pitt, "Heading in the wrong direction" from The Economist, and "The suicide bombers" by Geov Parrish. They all share a similar theme -- the President and this administration are out of control.

• Pitt provides examples of civil liberties violations that seem utterly outrageous, such as the man arrested for comments in an Internet chat room, the member of British Parliament refused entry into the United States as a "potential or real threat." [Read this essay for more news of law-abiding foreigners denied entry at the airport.]
• The Economist story goes further, by pointing out that when South Africa in 1962 arrested "a suspected terrorist leader who had just returned from training in bomb-making and guerrilla warfare in Ethiopia" they still respected Nelson Mandela's civil liberties better than the U.S. has for Jose Padilla. "Nelson Mandela was given access to lawyers and his prosecutors had to follow rules of due process."
• Geov Parrish says the current push towards war makes him feel "like the unlucky passenger in a jet that has been hijacked, and piloted for over two years now, by religious maniacs who, I am gradually concluding, are on a path to kill us all -- along with a great many other innocents on the ground -- on the way to fulfillment of their obscure religious and political agenda."

And if you missed them, yesterday's papers included anti-war editorials (on different fronts) from former President Jimmy Carter and former Senator Gary Hart. Both focusing on different elements of the debate and both well worth reading. [Apparently, Hart is considering throwing his hat into the ring for 2004. He's got a lot of experience and headed a pre-9/11 bipartisan panel on protecting our nation from terrorism. We'll see.

That's about it for now. I've got many more stories to blog, but I've got to get hopping on job-hunting and schoolwork. This may officially be my spring break week, but I've got two assignments (one of which is major) due on Monday. And, tonight I think I'm going to attend the Boston Athenaeum's Culinary discussion group, where Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated will be speaking.

It has now been 539 days since President Bush said all we want is Osama brought to justice, dead or alive, and 338 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.
It has been 779 days since President Bush's inauguration, and we have 603 days until the next presidential election.