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Saturday, August 23, 2003

Australia lied about Iraq threat

Via American Samizdat. Apparently Andrew Wilkie, a former intelligence analyst, has testified in an official inquiry that John Howard's ambiguous references paved the way for an Australian-supported attack on Iraq: “The government lied every time it skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated the Iraq story...The exaggeration was so great it was pure dishonesty,” Wilkie told the government.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when oil fields hang in the balance...

posted by Jenny at 3:37 PM |

New York City as Ecotopia: I never would have thought it...

posted by Jenny at 3:24 PM |

This post from Tom Tomorrow provides a nice follow-up to Bre's article about that "harmless" toxic dust emanating from the ruined World Trade Center...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog says White House officials pressured the agency to prematurely assure the public that the air was safe to breathe a week after the World Trade Center collapse.

The agency's initial statements in the days following the September 11, 2001 attacks were not supported by proper air quality monitoring data and analysis, EPA's inspector general, Nikki L. Tinsley, says in a 155-page report released late Thursday.

--snip--

For example, the report found, EPA was convinced to omit from its early public statements guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.

More here. No wonder even obituaries are soliciting donations to impeach AWOL!

Update: Unsurprisingly, Richard at Vegan Blog is all over this one...check it out!

posted by Jenny at 3:17 PM |

The ACLU has posted a list of things Americans can look forward to if John Ashcroft gets his Patriot Act wish:

- The new legislation would allow government to spy on First Amendment-protected activities. By applying an overly broad definition of terrorism, organizations using protest tactics such as those used by Operation Rescue or protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico would become victims of criminal wiretapping and other electronic surveillance. In addition, the act would terminate court-approved limits on police spying, which were initially put in place to prevent McCarthy-style law enforcement persecution based on political or religious affiliation.

- The new act would radically diminish personal privacy by removing checks on government power. It would permit, without any connection to anti-terrorism efforts, sensitive personal information about U.S. citizens to be shared with local and state law enforcement. In addition, the government could gain secret access to credit reports without consent and without judicial process.

- The new bill would increase government secrecy while diminishing public accountability. It would authorize secret arrests in immigration and other cases, such as those involving material witness warrants, where the detained person is not criminally charged. The act would allow for the sampling and cataloguing of innocent Americans' genetic information without court order and without consent. And, incredibly, the act would shelter federal agents engaged in illegal surveillance without a court order from criminal prosecution if they are following orders of high Executive Branch officials.

Um, eek! Lisa English, who excerpts this at her blog, also provides this link to take action against the Patriot Act with the help of the ACLU. Take a couple of minutes and give it a click!

posted by Jenny at 2:32 AM |

GOP Texans Slur Mexicans

One more reason to fight, fight, fight against DeLay's idiot redistricting plan...

posted by Jenny at 2:27 AM |

Cowboy Kahlil clues us in on this excellent post from Natasha, who attended a congressman's public panel in Washington on the subject of the possible mishandling of the intelligence information used to justify war on Iraq (or, as Karl Rove might say, the "Battle of Iraq"). Panelists chosen were Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Admiral Bill Center, and Professor Brewster Denny, one of whom publicly said that he wished to "see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." Don't miss this gem! (Expatriate friends will be relieved to see discussions like this taking place so openly around the US...now how can we go about getting MORE of them started?)

posted by Jenny at 2:24 AM |

Well, I'm currently buried beneath a mountain of grad school applications...and, more specifically, plagued by the need to write seven distinct statements of purpose. Which means that blogging has been nonexistent for the last couple of days, and I don't have much time at the moment, either. But the good news is that my fast internet connection is up again, so I can more easily procrastinate and send out little tidbits here and there. This article from Mother Jones, for example, is a pretty good read, speculating on revived transatlantic tensions stemming from disagreements on how the international community should become involved in peacekeeping and nation-building in Iraq...since the Bush administration has come crawling to them in the wake of the bombing in Baghdad, after basically spitting in the face of their offers to help after the war. They waited until the absolute eleventh hour on that one--pretty much impossible to save face...but then again, saving face was ruled out of this game months ago, no?

posted by Jenny at 2:16 AM |

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

I love it!

August 18 - The Editors of WLTIIM.com announce the launch of their newest "fan" site in honor of another very quotable man, WeLoveArnold.com. In protest, furloughed Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (M.S.S.) immediately announces that he is now too a candidate for California governor. "There is no Arnold!" M.S.S. declares. "This is a lie of the olooj editors of this infidel site. I am not afraid and neither should you be. I repeat, there are no Arnolds in Sacramento. Never!"

posted by Jenny at 1:54 PM |

This Day in History

Fifty years ago today, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh in Iran, installing the Shah in his place, setting into motion a chain of events which would eventually lead to the revolution in 1979 and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism in the region--and therefore arguably, at least in part, to the events of September 11, 2001.

It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences, and as any small town sherriff will be happy to tell you, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

From This Modern World.

posted by Jenny at 1:45 PM |

Historical revisionism much? Atrios has the skinny here and here on the White House's spinning of Bush's USS Lincoln speech. (You know, the one in which he masqueraded as Top Gun...) They've apparently even revised their webpage...thank goodness for the google archive files!

posted by Jenny at 1:40 PM |

This post illustrates why I love Counterspin Central.

posted by Jenny at 1:10 PM |

Gag-a-maggot, indeed.

The USA Patriot Act, as the sweeping legislation passed after 9/11 is known, has formed a cornerstone of the administration's antiterrorism policies in giving law enforcement agents expanded powers to identify, track and apprehend suspects.

But the legislation has also become almost a dirty word in some circles in recent months. The Republican-led House voted overwhelmingly last month to repeal a key provision on the use of surveillance, 152 communities have passed resolutions objecting to the legislation because of what some saw as its Big Brother overtones, and civil liberties groups are suing to have parts of the law struck down as unconstitutional.

The increasingly vitriolic concerns over the measure and its future have thrown the administration on the defensive, according to people close to the administration. Mr. Ashcroft, though often criticized by liberal and conservative policy-makers, is seeking to solidify support for the law.

"The administration realizes that Ashcroft is a bit of a lightning rod," said a prominent Republican consultant. "He has his down sides, but not in the realm of prosecuting terrorism and protecting national security. He works well in that area."

Over the next month the attorney general will promote the law as an effective tool against terrorism before law enforcement organizations, and conservative groups in such states as Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. Two of the cities where the talks will be held later this week, Philadelphia and Detroit, have passed resolutions opposing the act. But Justice Department officials said political calculations did not factor into the attorney general's itinerary.

"The majority of American people are clearly supportive of our counterterrorism efforts, including the use of the Patriot Act," said Mark Corallo, a department spokesman. "It's important that after months of misinformation being spread by a small but vocal minority inside the Beltway that we go out beyond Washington and talk to people in law enforcement and let them know that their efforts are appreciated."

Viet Dinh, a former Justice Department official who drafted the Patriot Act, said that Mr. Ashcroft's agenda would be "to correct the misperceptions that are out there and to disabuse the American public of the misinformation they've gotten."

Thanks, once again, to Ashleigh (who is, incidentally, also a Texan expatriate, did you guys know that?).

posted by Jenny at 1:07 PM |

The Obscenely Easy Exile of Idi Amin

Ash sends us this article, which asks the same thing I've been wondering myself about Idi Amin:

How was it possible that a man who had ordered the death of 300,000 of his countrymen was whiling away his time as a guest of the Saudi government?

Update: A nice supplement to this article lies in Mother Jones's archived Exile Files, where you can catch up on the lives of rich and infamous leaders deposed from dictatorial regimes around the world...

posted by Jenny at 1:00 PM |

Faithful reader (and fellow Eddie Izzard fan) Bre alerts us to this gem at Salon:

Aug. 15, 2003 | NEW YORK -- For more than a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 200 hazardous-waste workers reported to work every morning inside the Deutsche Bank building in downtown Manhattan. They pulled white Tyvek suits over their street clothes; stretched dual-filtered breathing masks over their faces, and systematically sealed themselves off from their surroundings. The interior was so toxic that they could not enter the building any other way.

Inside, the workers tromped through a fine, fluffy gray dust that had settled across a floor strewn with loose papers, discarded computers, and iron beams from the fallen World Trade Center towers next door. The dust, 3 feet deep in places, filled the hallways. A dangerous toxic mold spread from the two damp basement levels, shooting sticky black vines like alien fingertips through the elevator shafts to the upper floors. On the north side of the building a 24-story-tall gash exposed the dust and mold to the wind, sun and rain. Most of the windows were gone.

The building was directly downwind of the plume of toxic debris pumped through Manhattan and Brooklyn by the force of the Trade Center collapse, and it provides one of the best records of what made up the cloud. For months after the attacks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency insisted that the dust contained few contaminants and posed little health risk to anyone but those caught in the initial plume from the towers' collapse. "Everything we've tested for, which includes asbestos, lead, and volatile organic compounds, have been below any level of concern for the general public health," Christine Todd Whitman, then the Bush administration's EPA chief, told PBS "NewsHour" in April 2002. Even last December, assistant regional EPA administrator Kathleen Callahan reiterated that assessment before the New York City Council: "I think the results that we're getting back show that there isn't contamination everywhere."

But Deutsche Bank's owners, curious to know the extent of their liability and to properly evaluate the potential danger to their own employees, privately conducted their own extensive tests. The findings: Astronomical levels of asbestos and a long list of toxic ingredients that pose a significant risk of cancer, birth defects, nerve damage and other ominous health problems.

More than 2,000 buildings in lower Manhattan were exposed to the same wave of debris and dust, and many were filled with residents and office workers within days after the attacks. Today, the Deutsche Bank findings and an emerging body of studies by private agencies and the EPA itself sharply contradict the initial EPA assessment and suggest that the federal government overlooked a substantial threat that could ultimately harm more people than the terrorist attacks.

Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam. Our tax dollars at work, yet again...but doesn't that spiffy Homeland Security website for civilians look great?

posted by Jenny at 6:24 AM |

Sunday, August 17, 2003

Am signing off for the day, I think (you never know what irksome blurb on CNN can set you to blogging at three in the morning). Tomorrow I'm going to tackle that mountain of email in my inbox from the last three weeks...for those of you who have been more than patient in awaiting my belated replies, please accept my humble gratitude. And immediately thereafter I'll get to tweaking those archives, which got lost in the shuffle of today's blizzard of posts...am really happy to be back and blogging again!

posted by Jenny at 1:05 PM |

Texas Public Education...A Shining Beacon of Administrative Integrity

Many thanks to South Knox Bubba, who linked to this gem about Houston's Sharpstown High, formerly numbering among the feathers in the cap of AWOL's No Child Left Behind incentive...

ROBERT KIMBALL, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, sat smack in the middle of the "Texas miracle." His poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman class of 1,000 that dwindled to fewer than 300 students by senior year. And yet — and this is the miracle — not one dropout to report!

Nor was zero an unusual dropout rate in this school district that both President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige have held up as the national showcase for accountability and the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law. Westside High here had 2,308 students and no reported dropouts; Wheatley High 731 students, no dropouts. A dozen of the city's poorest schools reported dropout rates under 1 percent.

Now, Dr. Kimball has witnessed many amazing things in his 58 years. Before he was an educator, he spent 24 years in the Army, fighting in Vietnam, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and touring the world. But never had he seen an urban high school with no dropouts. "Impossible," he said. "Someone will get pregnant, go to jail, get killed."

Elsewhere in the nation, urban high schools report dropout rates of 20 percent to 40 percent.

A miracle? "A fantasy land," said Dr. Kimball. "They want the data to look wonderful and exciting. They don't tell you how to do it; they just say, 'Do it.' " In February, with the help of Dr. Kimball, the local television station KHOU broke the news that Sharpstown High had falsified its dropout data. That led to a state audit of 16 Houston schools, which found that of 5,500 teenagers surveyed who had left school, 3,000 should have been counted as dropouts but were not. Last week, the state appointed a monitor to oversee the district's data collection and downgraded 14 audited schools to the state's lowest rating.

...

As for those who fail to make their numbers, it is termination time, one of many innovations championed by Dr. Paige as superintendent here from 1994 to 2001. He got rid of tenure for principals and mandated that they sign one-year contracts that allowed dismissal "without cause" and without a hearing.

On the other hand, for principals who make their numbers, it is bonus time. Principals can earn a $5,000 bonus, district administrators up to $20,000. At Sharpstown High alone, Dr. Kimball said, $75,000 in bonus money was issued last year, before the fictitious numbers were exposed.

Shocking! I'm floored! How could this be?!!

(And in case it sounds like I'm being too hard on the Texas public education system, then you have to understand...I'm a product of it, and I had many capable, intelligent teachers during my tenure as a public student. BUT the lack of support such educators receive from administration is abominable, and frankly, overcrowding and an utter inattention to the needs and circumstances of students--which are given a backseat to power plays, cronyism, and, quite plainly, football--undermines much of the effort put in by "good guys" in all corners of the system. *sigh* Yes folks, it sucks, and whether we admit it or not, it seems we all know it.)

posted by Jenny at 1:00 PM |

I think Jake's title to this post about the persistent (and idiotic, and a great many other things) anti-French sentiment in the US just about sums it up.

Update: More on the idiotic editorial from the Washington Post (y'know, the one where they mocked the French despite the deaths of thousands during the heat wave) can be found at Tom Tomorrow's incredibly fair and balanced blog...

posted by Jenny at 12:40 PM |

Bring Them Home Now!

A particularly good idea, given the fact that the US stubbornly denies that UN assistance is needed in Iraq, and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are about to take a Pentagon-supported pay cut. (I thought the plan was to wait until they were retired, and then give them pension reductions as veterans? Hmm, I guess the boys at the big house don't want to give up their gilded toilet seats, especially now that their designers have taken a cue from Saddam's palace. Silly Congress, thinking they can limit defense spending like that!)

Links via Cursor and Tom Tomorrow, two other luminaries within blogtopia*.
* yes! skippy coined that phrase!

posted by Jenny at 12:26 PM |

There's a very worthwhile activist opportunity over at Vegan Blog. It seems that the San Diego and Lowry Zoos are set to uproot African elephants and bring them to the United States for their "protection". As Richard reminds us,

trade in these fantastic beings is wrong wrong wrong and the idea that it is being done to conserve or help them is ludicrous. The real deal is that zoos compete and bank on a relatively limited number of high profile species, like elephants, who will serve as "stars" and bring in revenue to the operation. Even if it could be argued that having more elephants means more visitors, hence more dollars, and hence better conditions and treatment for zoo animals and conservation programs, such logic is a catch-22. Zoos are akin to American war occupations like Vietnam and Iraq, where the logic is that more soldiers sent increases the likelihood of victory (and hence peace); whereas it also certainly increases more death, destruction, and continued warfare on the planet.

If the Swaziland elephants are in trouble and American zoos want to help them, let them invest directly in the region and expand their operations into meaningful international conservation endeavors. The reason this will not happen is b/c zoos are capitalist institutions and constrained by the commodity logic of capital. So here is another example of how animal rightists need to begin to get educated about political economy and how it destroys ecologies and constructs relations between species. (emphasis mine, and damn straight)

Kahn also provides us with some email addresses, passed along an animal rights list, to whom we can voice our opposition:

Douglas Myers, Executive Director
San Diego Zoo
P.O. Box 120551
San Diego, CA 92112
Tel.: 619-231-1515
Fax: 619-231-0249
E-Mail: DMyers@sandiegozoo.org

C. Lex Salisbury, President and CEO
Lowry Park Zoological Garden
7530 North Blvd.
Tampa, FL 33604
Tel.: 813-935-8552
Fax: 813-935-9486
E-Mail: Lex.Salisbury@lowryparkzoo.org

Please contact the Swaziland embassy to urge them not to allow the country's elephants to be exported to zoos. Let them know you will never visit Swaziland as long as they sell off threatened wildlife to the highest bidder.
Ambassador Mary M. Kanya
Embassy of the Kingdom of Swaziland
1712 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009
Tel.: 202-234-5002
Fax: 202-234-8254

Please, it only takes a couple of minutes to let these people know how you feel about their actions and their consequences, not only for these elephants, but for the entire ecosystems being threatened by such practices in Africa and beyond.

I've said it before, I'll say it again--doesn't matter if you're a carnivore, a fruitarian, anything--if you care about the planet, then read, read, read this blog! American women, for example, might be interested to know that the levels of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) contamination in our breast milk are 10-100 times higher than that of our European counterparts (and Texas woman, according to the article, have especially high levels of contamination, gee thanks, Alcoa and Formosa)...

posted by Jenny at 12:12 PM |

And speaking of that California recall election (can't let it go, the German press is, understandably, loving it), sounds like little AWOL is in a bit of a snit about being eclipsed by the Terminator...

posted by Jenny at 11:50 AM |

I have now freed my borrowed computer from the throes of blaster virus hell. And if you're a hapless PC user *Jenny pauses briefly to blow a kiss in the direction of her Apple Powerbook, sadly unable to connect to the internet due to a lightning-zapped modem* still embroiled in the misery of the Microsoft virus, go follow the directions posted by Symantec (and the directions and patch that they link to from Microsoft)--after several trials, that's what finally freed my machine after several failed attempts. I don't usually like to endorse certain corporate products over others (at least, not consciously)...but Symantec's anti-virus tool is the only one that's worked, so far...

Yes, I've returned to blogging, and I'm glad to be home--was really sorry I missed the chance to comment on, among other things, the killing of Uday and Qusay, developments in Liberia, Arnie's candicacy in California (frankly, following skippy's advice, I'd rather vote for Gollum), Berlusconi's days at the ranch, and the raging forest fires all around Europe (a mild sampling of which I experienced on the Adriatic). But while my blogging is often tinged with a bit of cynicism, I'd like to mark my return with this Grist article about the Zuni Pueblo's victory against a company that had sought for years to build an 18,000-acre coal mine on sacred Zuni lands in New Mexico. Featured is an interview with pueblo member Pablo Padilla, a leader in the fight against the mine. One of those reminders that it pays off to keep fighting the good fight, as some may put it...

posted by Jenny at 11:43 AM |

arrgh, everybody...I'm back from Croatia, but now MY computer has been felled by the Microsoft virus! Give me a couple of hours, and I'm going to (finally) get some posts up. Ash has been under the weather, and between that and the virus, we haven't been able to get anything up--but that's about to be remedied. Stay tuned!

posted by Jenny at 10:00 AM |