Entries from July 2003 ↓
July 29th, 2003 — the web-wide world
When I first heard about the “banning” of Julia Rose from performing at the Borders store in Fredericksburg, Virginia, I immediately switched into Full Outrage mode. “What kind of idiots are running that place?” I yelled. “Bookstores are the sanctuary of the First Amendment! Banning people for political criticismis further evidence of the rise of the American fascist state!”
Hesiod‘s been talking about this, as has The Voice Unheard, and plenty of other webloggers. It’s been picked up by The Washington Post, New York Newsday, and even The Anchorage Daily News. What an outrage! Organize a boycott! Must… do… something…
Then… I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and thought before I posted. Having worked in independent bookstores as well as chain bookstores over the years, it seemed highly unlikely that a bookstore would ban any kind of speech. I checked with people I know at the local Borders store to see what their spin on the story might be. From what they tell me, and from what Borders corporate HQ is telling customers who call to complain, this whole flap has nothing to do with banning political speech. (To read the full statement by Borders HQ, click on the “More…” link at the end of this story.)
See, Borders is in business to sell books. To make the bookselling environment more appealing, they have a café, comfy chairs, book signings, story hours and, occasionally, entertainment. But the focus is always on selling books. If the entertainment is not entertaining, if it makes customers get up and leave the store, if it’s bad enough to motivate customers to fill out comment cards with complaints…
Imagine you own a bar. You make money by selling drinks. You hire a band with a good reputation to bring people in, hoping that entertained customers will stay a while and buy drinks. Suppose the band you’ve booked not only doesn’t bring people in to your bar, but motivates people to leave. Would you book that band again?
I wouldn’t. And neither would Banzai! Terror, a weblogger who works at the Fredericksburg Borders and actually has some first-hand information on Ms. Rose’s performance. As he says:
…my store has been accused of ‘banning’ this singer from performing at our store based on a single stupid unfunny comment that she made comparing Bush43′s legs to chicken legs. This is not the case at all. She was asked not to return to torture our customers anymore with her non-lively banter and non-compelling music. People were standing up and leaving her performance! The asses in the seats are the reason we have music in our cafe in the first place! Dammit, I am a champion of Free Speech, I have the fucking First Amendment to the right there, permanently placed to thumb my nose at the degredation of our civil liberties put forth as national security by the aforementioned Bush43 and his evil band of merry, merry men…
Strange. We’re always going off on those “fair and balanced” news sources for their one-sided, non fact-based coverage of the issues. How many of the voices raised in anger at Borders took a second to ask for their side of the story?
(Credit where credit is due: Hesiod has posted Border’s response on his blog.)
Continue reading →
July 28th, 2003 — impolite company, the web-wide world
Over at Pax Nortona, Joel has some very good arguments against the Democratic candidates supporting intervention in the Liberian mess. His main objection is that the right-wingers will use a Democrat’s “If it was good enough to go to war in Iraq, why not intervene in (fill in the blank)” against them. Either they’ll echo it as a justification for whatever imperial campaign they want to engage in next, or they’ll claim that we are being bloodthirsty and without concern for our boys (and girls) in uniform.
Joel ends with a plea to the Dems, saying, “Think, Democrats. Think! Don’t wimp out on opposing war!”
Unfortunately, I think Joel is giving the Dems too much credit. Most of the Democrats don’t oppose war. Remember, only 21 of the 50 Democratic Senators voted against the Iraq War resolution while only 126 of the 208 Representatives opposed going to war. And, other than our adventures in Latin America and the Middle East, most of the wars we’ve been involved in during this century have been initiated by Democratic presidents: Wilson – WWI; Roosevelt – WWII; Truman – Korea; Kennedy/Johnson – Vietnam. So, counting on the Dems to be opposed to war is not necessarily a winning bet.
July 28th, 2003 — brain-candy, impolite company
In the tradition of Ambrose Bierce’s biting “Devil’s Dictionary“, Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis has a list of definitions for translating the Fleischer-isms (and now McClellan-isms) relating to Mideast news. My favorite is:
New Iraqi government – An august body that leaps to its feet when a U.S. soldier enters the room, and has total authority over garbage collection and sewers.
[via Mobythor's Unknown News]
July 25th, 2003 — the commons
Finally, some mainstream US attention to the story which Scoop.com, a New Zealand-based web news site and Bev Harris, author of the soon-to-be-published “Black Box Voting“, have been writing about for quite a long time.
The New York Times, Reuters, MSNBC, C|Net, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post are all running stories about the flaws discovered in the Diebold Election Systems electronic voting machines. The flaws were discussed in a paper released yesterday by three researchers at Johns Hopkins University.The report does not mince any words, stating in the paper’s abstract:
Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code.
But the morons just don’t get it. Hundreds of well-known computer science professors and researchers have voiced their concerns about paperless voting machines. The most basic issue is that there is no way to verify that the votes cast are the same as the votes recorded. To prove that the people who are responsible for implementing these systems don’t get it, we have this quote from David Heller, project manager for voting systems with the Maryland State Board of Elections:
Heller points to a recount in Allegany County, where electronic machines were used. “We printed out all ballot images to verify the unit did tally correctly. There were no variances,” he said. “That gives the system more credibility. The results of the recount speak for themselves.”
The most basic problem is that they recounted the voting computer’s record of the ballot images and compared it against the voting computer’s tally of the vote. Great verification! And, without a paper trail, how do they know that the ballot images recorded by the computer are the same as the ballots cast by the voters? Say I cast my vote for Howard Dean. The computer shows me a ballot image which shows a big checkmark next to Dean’s name. I press the “Record My Vote” button and walk out of the booth confident that my vote counts. But, suppose that the machine has been programmed by an evil Republican, and after I press the button, it switches my Dean vote to a Bush vote, records a copy of the ballot image and adds my vote to the tally. When Bush wins my heavily Democratic district by a landslide, Mr. Heller and his crew come in, press a couple of buttons, and inform us that the computer agrees with itself. Recount over. Thanks for participating in democracy! It’s great to live in Saddam’s Iraq Bush’s America.
Unfortunately, Mr. Heller is the point-man in the State of Maryland’s recent purchase of US$55 million worth of Diebold’s flawed voting machines. Come next March’s primary election, us Marylanders will be entrusting the most important part of our democracy to the same sort of folks who brought us Enron & Tyco.
Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco told the Baltimore Sun “This is no way to develop vending machines, let alone voting systems… This is our democracy we’re talking about. There is an extra onus to ensure people have confidence in their votes.”
But, perhaps Ms. Cohn is being too naive about the true goals and objectives of this money-soaked political arena: maybe voting machines are just vending machines.
July 24th, 2003 — brain-candy, impolite company
Hunter S. Thompson, in his gonzo manner, always speaks the truth. In his latest ESPN column, he says:
The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.
July 24th, 2003 — impolite company
Over at TomPaine.com, they’ve posted a letter written by Representatives Kucinich, Maloney and Sanders entitled Ten Questions For Cheney. They are seeking to expand the fact-finding about the Yellowcake Scandal to the Vice-President. My favorite part is this:
Further refutation of the authenticity of the forged Niger documents came from IAEA Director General ElBaradei, when he reported to the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003: “These documents, which formed the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded… we have found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.” Yet on March 16 — nine days afterwards — you again repeated the unfounded assertion on national television (Meet the Press, Sunday, March 16, 2003). You said:
“We think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong,” and “We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
10) What was the basis for this assertion made by you on national television? We hope you will take the opportunity to answer these questions about your role in the dissemination of false information about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war in Iraq. We look forward to a response.
Now, tell me: who lives in a socially constructed world?
July 23rd, 2003 — impolite company
The Detroit Free Press is maintaining a link to the AP’s database of the casualties in Iraq, searchable by name or home state (US)/region(UK). I opposed the war from the beginning because I did not believe it would make us any safer and because I knew it would bring us many stories like this:
Sgt. Michael E. Bitz was a father of four especially eager to see his youngest children, twins born a month after he was sent overseas. Bitz joined the Marines in 1995 at the urging of his mother, who said her son drifted from job to job after graduating from Hueneme High School. “He loved the service. He found direction and purpose in his life,” Donna Bellman said. His wife, Janina, gave birth to twins just weeks after her husband received his orders. He had two other children, ages 2 and 7. “I had this terrible feeling since he shipped out in January,” Bellman said. “I kept trying to picture a white bubble around him to keep him safe. But it didn’t work.”
July 23rd, 2003 — impolite company
Yes, we went to war. Yes, we “won” the war. Yes, a bad man has been removed from his seat of power. But, in true Machiavellian style, the Prince — George W. Bush — wants us to accept these ends as justification for the reason we went to war. He wants us to “move on”, to forget the lies he told which brought us to that war. To make us forget his lies, he has brought a parade of scapegoats before us. As Democratic National Committee spokesman Tony Welch says:
“First they blamed the Brits. Then, CIA Director George Tenet walked the plank. Now, the Bush White House is dragging former Cheney aide and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley forward to take the fall for the president’s bogus claim in this year’s State of the Union address.”
Hadley admitted yesterday that he had forgotten the contents of two memos and a phone call from CIA director Tenet back in October, which advised him to remove the claim of Iraqi uranium purchases from Africa from a Presidential speech. The memos, missing from his files* and from his memory “turned up” yesterday. According to the Washington Post, in those memos, the CIA warned the White House
…that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence, was not particularly significant and assumed Iraq was pursuing an acquisition that was arguably not possible and of questionable value because Iraq had its own supplies…
So, we are supposed to “move on” and accept that a request like that can be forgotten about by a person whose job it is not to forget information related to our national security. We are supposed to accept that George Tenet should take the blame for the inclusion of the uranium claim in the State of the Union address, even though he “told members of Congress in a closed-door session that he had never actually read [the speech.]” We are supposed to accept that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who, according to NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea, was also a listed as a recipient of the memos, also bears no blame for the “misstatement.” We’re also supposed to forget this whole flap, even though, according to the WaPo “Hadley said the issue is not necessarily resolved. ‘There is always the likelihood we will find additional information,’ he said.”
What information might that be? And what will it take for President Bush to accept the responsibility for the words that came out of his own mouth?
* Missing documents… turning up months later… hmmm… where have I heard that before? If I recall correctly the Republicans called for indictments…
July 12th, 2003 — impolite company
Thinking about my previous posting, I realized that there is something else — actually, many other things, but one in particular right now — which bothers me about this whole Lies-In-The-President’s-Speech situation: George W. Bush is taking no personal responsibility for the words which came out of his mouth.
Everyone around him is extemporizing furiously to explain how those 16 words regarding bogus uranium purchases got into the State of the Union Address. “It was the CIA’s fault.” “It was the fault of the Brits.” “The evidence of the falsity had not yet been discovered.” Everyone blaming, everyone pointing fingers.
Everyone, that is, except the person who spoke the words. He takes no responsibility for his statements.
What kind of person feels no ownership of the words coming out of his mouth? An actor? No, all the actors I know connect with their lines, feeling them, believing the words so that they can inhabit another soul. A liar, then? No, a liar creates the words, crafting them carefully to convince others of their veracity, taking pride when he succeeds. A salesman? No, the salesman who doesn’t believe in his product and the statements he makes to sell that product won’t be successful, and won’t be selling for very long.
How about a puppet? Only a puppet has no connection with the words he speaks. Only a puppet voices words that are put into his mouth without routing through its brain. Only a puppet like George W. Bush would demonstrate no anger at the people who made him look like a lying fool in front of the entire world.
So, George W. Bush is, as I have always believed, merely a puppet. But, who, exactly, is the puppeteer?
July 12th, 2003 — impolite company
Or does he?
As reported in the NY Times today [reg req'd], CIA Director George Tenet “accepted responsibility yesterday for letting President Bush use information that turned out to be unsubstantiated in his State of the Union address, accusing Iraq of trying to acquire uranium from Africa to make nuclear weapons.”
But the information didn’t “turn out to be unsubstantiated” as the Times reports: it was long known to be unsubstantiated. In the complete text of Tenet’s statement, posted on the CIA’s website, he presents the full history of the Niger “yellowcake” claim, going back as far as the fall of 2001. It seems, from Tenet’s history lesson, that this information has been dubious from the start: “[B]ecause we had questions about some of the reporting… the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and the Secretary of State’s United Nations presentation in early 2003.”
It was considered dubious enough to keep it out of speeches, testimony and the UN presentation, so how did it get into the State of the Union address? Tenet explains the process:
Portions of the State of the Union speech draft came to the CIA for comment shortly before the speech was given. Various parts were shared with cognizant elements of the Agency for review. Although the documents related to the alleged Niger-Iraqi uranium deal had not yet been determined to be forgeries, officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct – i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.
So, “factually”, it was true. (And, in the same way, it is factually true that several major circulation US periodicals have reported they have proof that Elvis is still alive.) But, I don’t think Tenet is letting the whole blame fall on his shoulders. As John, a commenter on the Daily Kos site says, :
[Tenet] …points out (1) the language was put into the President’s speech by the NSC; (2) CIA officials raised concerns about the language with the NSC; (3) the NSC modified the sentence by inserting the caveat that it was British intelligence that said the Iraqis were trying to get the uranium; so (4) it was only on that factual basis, i.e., that the British said that it was true, that the CIA cleared the speech.
So, it was the National Security Council staff who suggested the uranium claim and then edited the piece to overcome CIA’s objections in order to make the statement “factually” correct. This, even though the NSC — and, in particular, Dr. Rice, whose formal title is “Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs” — were almost certainly privy to the long and dubious history of the African claims.
Tenet: Well, yes, Ms. Rice, technically the statement is true: the British did report that.
Rice: Great! This will definitely help make the case to the public.
Tenet: But, Condi, you know it’s not good info.
Rice: Your objections are noted, George. Still, it’s my duty to advise the President.
Clinton-appointee Tenet may be out the door, but if there’s any justice in this administration, it probably won’t be long before Dr. Rice decides to “spend more time with her family.”
