From the BBC
The 72-year-old Bristol grandfather was arrested at gunpoint during a holiday to South Africa, and held in prison for three weeks, in a case of mistaken identity.
He repeated his furious criticism of the FBI for their lack of action during his time in prison, saying his opinion of the US authorities was "pretty low, I can tell you."
"A lot of the time I spent in South Africa was because they were vacillating and would not move to do anything," he said.
"My file went in the in-tray and nothing happened for a very long time...
"It was only when the media were alerted to this that something started to happen."
| South Africa | United Kingdom | War on Terror |
| Saddam Hussein |
Patrick writes:
It appears that chickens will be leading our troops into battle against The Republican Guards. They will not soon forget the "cluck, cluck, cluck" that precedes the largest, most advanced fighting force ever assembled.
| Iraq | Chickens | Birds | Military | Guest: Patrick |
Bombing for Democracy?
Debbie sent this over:
Are You Qualified to Stand for Peace? This test is for your consideration. If you can pass it you are eligible to join the peace movement. This test consists of one (1) multiple-choice question (so you better get it right!) Here's a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed since the end of World War II, compiled by historian William Blum:
China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
In how many of these instances did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result?
Choose one of the following:
(a) 0
(b) zero
(c) none
(d) not a one
(e) a whole number between -1 and +1
This quiz is compliments of Vietnam Veterans Against the War .
| Guest: Debbie | Quiz |
I broke my arm yesterday.
I was running to catch a bus on 5th Avenue and 78th Street. I slipped on some ice. I put out my right arm to break my fall -- break being the operative word here. Suddenly I'm looking up at the sky, clutching my arm in pain. An MTA poster warning me not to run for the conveyance passed before my eyes.* The bus leans towards me slightly as the passengers crowd toward the window for a better look. Not wanting to lie in pain, in the cold, and have to wait for another bus, I got up, fished out my Metrocard, and boarded.
I think it was around 74th Street that I fainted.
Not the classic backward swoon, more of a I-need-to-sit-down-right-NOW thing. There was a bit of a hubbub. Someone actually gave me her seat. I assured the driver that I was fine, and on we went. Since I could move my fingers, I was pretty sure nothing really serious had happened. I attribute my initial misdiagnosis to my delirium, as well as my complete lack of medical training. By 45th Street, however, I was convinced that something was definitely wrong, as my arm just did not want to move in certain ways. I got to the Roosevelt Hotel where I was meeting Christina, entered her room and announced that I thought my arm was broken. She and her friend Brian were very helpful, letting me use their cell phones so I could call Debbie, getting me ice, etc. Soon I was in a cab heading back uptown, having a very strange conversation with the driver in which I explained to him the differences between rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments.
Fortunately for me, my father-in-law is one of the city's top orthopedic surgeons. I got to his office, he prodded my arm, and pronounced that I had a fractured radial head. (Can we start a band -- The Fractured Radial Heads?*) A few x-rays confirmed it. Dr. Lane's staff wrapped my arm and fitted me with a sling. Joe got his car service to take me home. It's good to have family in the business.
I'll be in the sling for another 10 days or so. Until then, it's one-handed typing for me. And Ben will have to get used to being lifted on my left side for a while. But my big question is: will I be able to play the violin?
* Thanks to Trip and Colin for these jokes, respectively.
| Bus |
Meyerweb alerted me to the fact that Pioneer 10 has gone offline, as it were. Among the interesting facts for those of us who were or are interested in space travel (I still would love to be an astronaut if I didn't have to know so much dern science):
It’s kinda cool to know that we’re still putting ourselves out there, despite ourselves perhaps.
| NASA |
From the New York Times online: “Iraqi Cooperation Improves but Still Not Complete, Blix Says”
Then again, if you read the Scotsman, you might see that “US snubs Blix over weapons ‘progress’”
| Print | Scotland |
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From a White House press briefing in January
Q Ari, if Saddam Hussein indeed does have chemical and biological weapons, isn't it the case that we helped get him -- helped him get these weapons with the policies we had in supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran?
MR. FLEISCHER: I would differ with that; no. I think unless you have a specific allegation or a specific company that you'd like to bring to my attention, the answer is no. If you have a specific, I'd like to evaluate it.
Q Well, there was indeed a policy in which we supporting, militarily, Saddam Hussein. Assumedly, also there was a certain transfer of technologies to Saddam to fight the Iranians, and in that process, chemical and biological weapons, or the ability to produce them, could well have been gotten --
MR. FLEISCHER: I think you need to back up from the rather generic charge and provide specifics when it comes to chemical and biological. I think if you have that, offer that, I'll do my best to get an evaluation of that. But I don't think you're going to be able to do that in the case of Americans.
[Next question about Israel, and then back to US assistance to Iraq]
Q Two things. Actually, a follow-up to the Iraq-U.S. alliance. The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a number of major American corporations -- including Hewlett-Packard and Bechtel -- helped Saddam Hussein beef up its military in the '80s. And also the Washington Post last month in a front-page article by Michael Dobbs said the United States during the '80s supplied Iraq with cluster bombs, intelligence and chemical and biological agents.
In that same article they reported that Donald Rumsfeld, now Secretary of Defense, went to Baghdad in December '83 and met with Saddam Hussein, and this was at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons almost on a daily basis in defiance of international conventions. So there are some specifics, and the question is, if Iraq is part of the axis of evil, why isn't the United States and these American corporations part of the axis of evil for helping him out during his time of need?
MR. FLEISCHER: Russell, as I indicated, I think that you have to make a distinction between chemical and biological. And, clearly, in a previous era, following the fall of the Sha of Iran, when there was a focus on the risks that were underway in the region as a result of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, different administrations, beginning with President Carter, reached different conclusions about the level of military cooperation vis-a-vis Iraq.
Obviously, Saddam Hussein since that time has used whatever material he had for the purpose therefore of attacking Kuwait, attacking Saudia Arabia, attacking Israel. And, obviously, as circumstances warrant, we have an approach that requires now the world to focus on the threat that Saddam Hussein presents and that he presents this threat because of his desire to continue to acquire weapons and his willingness to use those weapons against others.
Q So was it a mistake for the U.S. to support Saddam?
MR. FLEISCHER: Russell. Russell.
Q If I could follow-up on it. You and the President have repeatedly said one of the reasons Saddam is part of the axis of evil is because he's gassed his own people. Well, he gassed his own people with our help. You saw the Washington Post article, didn't you, by Michael Dobbs?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think that statement is not borne out by the facts. I think that he gassed his own people as a result of his decisions to use his weapons to gas his own people. And I think the suggestion that you blame America for Iraq's actions is way beyond the pale.
Q Who gave him the weapons?
MR. FLEISCHER: David. David.
| WMD |
Alex sent this over. Thought that some of you might be interested:
Please join me now in registering for a Virtual March on Washington for February 26th. We are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration's rush to war, and to Let the Inspections Work. Time is running out.With your help, on February 26th, every Senate office will receive a call EVERY MINUTE from a constituent, as they receive a
simultaneous crush of faxes and email. In New York and Washington D.C., "antiwar rooms" will highlight the progress of the day for
national media. Local media will visit the "antiwar room" online, to monitor this constituent march throughout the day.With your help, every Senate office switchboard will be lit up all day with our antiwar messages. This will be a powerful reminder
of the breadth and depth of opposition to a war in Iraq.Just go to: http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/
Please join me and sign up today. This has never been done before. Let's be part of it.
| Iraq | WMD | Distributed Culture |
M_____ writes:
I'm sure many of you saw this article in the New York Times about "Sami Al-Arian, the Florida professor indicted this week on charges of supporting terrorism." He's linked with a group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and among PIJ's activities was a Nov. 11, 1994 "suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip in which three people were killed and 11 were wounded." "That day, the indictment says, Mr. Al-Arian 'wrote a note to be sent via facsimile' that 'announced his pride' in the attack."
Additionally, the PIJ is "linked to more than 100 killings in Israel and the occupied territories, including the deaths of two young American women."
John Ashcroft "hailed the indictment as a triumph for the newly expanded powers granted his department under the 2001 Patriot Act to mingle intelligence and criminal operations in ways that were previously off limits." For the record, the piece notes that besides prior law, bureaucratic infighting and politics (fear of "profiling" charges?) also played a role in delaying the arrest.
Those who reflexively oppose new proposals for flushing out US-based terrorists and their supporters might be asking themselves the same question a terrorism expert asks in the article: "How many lives could have been saved if (the U.S.) had stopped watching and acted?" And of course, what if we weren't even watching?
| War on Terror | Israel | Guest: M_____ |
I mentioned this in a recent comment, but for those of you who don't read those obsessively, and who use this blog as a convenient way to keep up on my general whereabouts, here's the news: I have a job. About a month ago, I got laid off from Project Renewal. The city's fiscal crisis spelled budget cuts for the agency, and since I was paid out of overhead, they could no longer afford my services. (They also laid off our Director of Real Estate, in what I called the Great MBA Purge of 2003.) But the budget cuts also mean that PRI needs to step up the fundraising efforts, so they asked me to put my grantwriting hat back on and help out. I still had to attend an exciting Unemployment Orientation at the NYS Dept of Labor yesterday (actually, it was Mostly Painless) but for a while at least I'm off the dole.
Wednesday I celebrated the end of my Vast Free Time by going to a matinee of Stone Reader, a film about a book. I'd read a review and was intrigued: the documentarian had this book, The Stones of Summer, which he had bought in 1972 but not read for a good 25 years. He loves the book. He wants to read more by the author, Dow Mossman. But Mossman never wrote anything else, and apparently just disappeared. So he sets out to find him.
That's the general plot, but mostly it's a meditation on reading, and our relationship with books. Which sounds kind of deadly for a movie, I know, but Moskowitz makes you want to run, not walk, to your nearest bookstore (or library!) and read. And read. And read some more. He interviews lots of people along the way, many of whom are entirely tangential to finding Dow Mossman, but who like to talk about books, like Arthur Fiedler, author of Love and Death in the American Novel. There are some beautiful sequences, including a section where Moskowitz talks about discovering Catch-22 -- although I would gripe that there are just too many shots of falling leaves while the Windam Hillian soundtrack hums. ("What's the moon got to do with it?" is one of the first questions posed in the movie, by the cinematographer, although astute readers will note the Harold and the Purple Crayon reference.) I won't tell if Moskowitz finds the author, or what happened to Mossman (OK, OK -- he's a sled!), but I do wanna know: Xeni, is this required watching at Iowa?
The Stones of Summer is still out of print, although you can buy a copy of it on Ebay -- bidding now stands at $750.
Hey! I should get back to work.
| Literary Theory | Documentaries |
Listening to the radio as I was feeding Ben dinner: "WQXR is sponsored by Windham Hill records and George Winston's new album, "Night Divides the Day," featuring the music of The Doors."
For those who don't read the Times regularly, this article confirms what we Gothamites have been feeling for a while. Yes, things are worse off here. If New Yorkers seem particularly incredulous when we get word from the national news that the recession is ending/ended, there's a good reason.
As someone in a pure service business, I was...um, gratified to see the article confirm the timetable I've felt instinctively - that things didn't get really bad until after 9/11, that even that disaster's economic effects were long delayed, and that 2002 was a much worse year than 2001.
Yesterday (Tuesday) I had a meeting with someone visiting from Seattle, and she said she was surprised that New York didn't seem to be in more of a funk. (She was also still shocked by what her host's apartment cost.) I explained to her that we've been in a kind of suspended animation mode for a while, waiting for the inevitable malaise Bloomberg et al. keep talking about to hit us with gale force: services are just starting to get cut; real estate is just starting to devalue; the real-estate tax hike is just kicking in and the subway fare isn't hiked yet; etc. Amazingly, this article managed to make our prospects sound even worse.
Final sad thought I had reading this: I guess we can forget about the creator of this blog and his lovely family sticking around this declining 'hood for much longer.
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There are several rallies/assemblies/what-have-you this weekend to protest the possible war. Two of the more notable are the one sponsored by United for Peace and a post-UFP–rally rally in Times Square. This latter I only heard about a couple hours ago, through a forwarded email. I’m trying to find out more info and will post it here if I get it.
And for both sides of the debate, there's a good project begun by Truth Laid Bear and Stand Down. The idea is that each blog gathered a set of 5 questions for the other, and all bloggers are welcome to both link to the project and to answer the 5 questions in their own blogs. I’ll be answering the pro-war questions this weekend, and I hope to do it a bit more in a spirit of engagement with the material than did Little Green Footballs, which pretty much summarily dismissed the anti-war questions. See, that’s not debate, that’s elementary school playground bickering in adult vocabulary. At the same time, I wish that Stand Down would present things better. I can’t find from their home page, as I can from Truth Laid Bear, just who their supporters on this issue are.
Until the march, have a happy Feast of St. Valentine.
| Peace | Anti-War Movement |
Well, folks, I'm back. Sorry for the long hiatus -- I thought at first that being jobless would give me plenty of time to blog, but I forgot to factor in the sharing-one-computer factor. Now we've rectified that with a brand spankin' new laptop. And guess what? I got it with the WiFi and all, and as soon as I set it up here at the dining room table, BAM! I'm logged on to the net. High speed wireless access, and I don't even need to leave the house. I don't know whose network I'm piggybacking on, but thanks whoever you are. This is so cool. More later.
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Regardless of how you feel about the war, going to Iraq to volunteer for Human Shield detail is a bad idea, more likely to get you a Darwin Award than any other real praise or notice. Being a suicide bomber is an equally Darwin-worthy bad idea, but being a suicide bomber at the urging of other terrorists is a particularly bad idea. You can almost hear them saying, "no, you be the suicide bomber, and I'll be the guy who makes videotapes."
Trampling people to death while praying seems like a bad idea, and contrary to the philosophy of most religions. But then again, so does setting up a "special fund" to pay for (and I'm not making this up) asbestos exposure, trampoline accidents, and hush-money for sexual abuse by your priests. Especially when the New York Times later discovers that your "special fund" has spent $1.7 million dollars in the last ten years - and none of it on asbestos exposure or trampoline accidents.
Executing crazy ax murders doesn't strike me as a bad idea at all. But taking the time to make them sane, so that we can get around the law against executing crazy ax murderers strikes me as the kind of bad idea that only a crazy ax murderer could embrace.
And people wonder why we embrace "reality" television. Reality reality is too frightening.
| Suicide Bombers | Darwin Awards | Religion | Sexual Abuse | Christianity | Crime & Punishment | Mental Illness |
The Justice Department is preparing a draft of legislation that would build upon the Patriot Act. Amongst other things, according to the reading of this legislation by the Center for Public Integrity, the legislation enables :
You can read more about this on Bill Moyer's Webpage, including pointers to a draft of the legislation, who received it, and the response of the Justice Department (the last one is so scary it's funny). It was also written about in the Washington Post, but in a fairly circumspect way.
What amazes me are two things. Firstly, the extent to which this is an administration that ran on protecting people from government, until they became the government [They still care about rich people's privacy from the IRS and gun-owners' privacy from the BATF though] Secondly, the extent to which all of this is ahistorical. This threat is miniscule compared to what we faced during the cold war, yet no legislation of this sort was proposed back then, nor was it necessary. In fact, to the extent to which we did violate the constitution, we were usually less safe since the FBI was too busy monitoring meetings of nuns against nukes to keep an eye on Americans selling secrets to the USSR. Almost every major capture of a bad guy back then was done within the constitution.
I hate to say this, but legilslation of this sort really does make me feel like the bad guys won back in Sept-01. We're destroying the things that make America great, and that's really sad.
| Civil Liberties | Law |
From the New York Times article: "John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, said . . . 'Both plans would, in fact, create the tallest structure on earth.'"
OK, it's your city, not mine, but isn't anyone else worried that terrorists might see the tallest structure on earth, located on the site of the former World Trade Center, as an inviting target?
| New York City | Architecture | Terrorism |
While SUVs do better in collisions with small cars than do other small cars, the occupant death rate for passengers in SUVs is higher than that in passenger cars. And of course, in a collision, SUVs are a dangerous offensive weapon. To look tough, the bumpers are set high, which meakes them go right over the bumpers of most cars and straight at the people inside. Here's an extended quote on the matter, from this review of "High and Mightly", recent book on the history and design of SUVs.
But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing, a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars - 8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don't handle well, so drivers can't respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or "trips" by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed. On top of that, SUV roofs are not reinforced to protect the occupants against rollover; nor does the government require them to be.
Because of their vehicles' size and four-wheel drive, SUV drivers tend to overestimate their own security, which prompts many to drive like maniacs, particularly in inclement weather. And SUV drivers - ever image-conscious and overconfident - seem to hate seat belts as much as they love talking on their cell phones while driving. Bradsher reports that four-fifths of those killed in roll-overs were not belted in, even though 75 percent of the general driving population now buckles up regularly.
While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The "kill rate," as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.
Part of the reason for the high kill rate is that cars offer very little protection against an SUV hitting them from the side - not because of the weight, but because of the design. When a car is hit from the side by another car, the victim is 6.6 times as likely to die as the aggressor. But if the aggressor is an SUV, the car driver's relative chance of dying rises to 30 to 1, because the hood of an SUV is so high off the ground. Rather than hitting the reinforced doors of a car with its bumper, an SUV will slam into more vulnerable areas and strike a car driver in the head or chest, where injuries are more life-threatening.
But before you get an SUV just for defensive purposes, think again. Any safety gains that might accrue are cancelled out by the high risk of rollover deaths, which usually don't involve other cars.
[I have started this as a new thread b/c I'm not talking about environmental impact, or driving experience, just about the safety of SUVs for their passengers and for the passengers of other vehicles]
| SUVs |
When I was a boy in the late '70s and early '80s, I was fascinated by space and the space program. For my 4th grade science fair, my mom and dad helped me make papier mache models of Jupiter and Saturn. I read all about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. I subscribed to a kids' magazine about science, and the articles there predicted I would live to see colonies on the Moon, people on Mars, and routine passenger flights to outer space.
As I grew older, I moved on to other interests. And I began to question whether the space program was worth the cost.
But the Columbia tragedy Saturday definitely shook me up. I guess I'm glad that I'm not too numb or jaded (yet) to mourn the deaths of my fellow human beings, even if I didn't know them. But I think I mourn partly because the space program represents (or used to represent) hope for a better future. And because these men and women represented the best of our country's ideals: scientific discovery, courage, diversity, and international cooperation. I'm sorry they didn't live to see that future I imagined so often when I was young.
May they rest in peace.
| NASA | Space |
When that warning label was under consideration by the Ugandan government in the late 1980's, British American Tobacco told policy makers that it did not believe cigarette smoking was harmful. "We think it would only be fair to have a form of words which is not excessively strong," the company wrote in 1988 to the Ugandan government
From today's NYT. Of course, this was back when Jesse Helms was beating up on any country that dared try to tackle smoking.
| Tobacco |
This is making the rounds.
There is a grassroots campaign underway to protest war in Iraq in a simple, but potentially powerful way.Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written, "If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them."
Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or padded mailing envelope-both are the same cost to mail) and address them to:
President George Bush White House,
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37-cent stamps equal $1.11.) Drop this in the mail. It is important to act NOW - TODAY so that President Bush gets the letters ASAP, especially since the inspector's report comes out on the 27th.
In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House. We can do this if you each forward this message to your friends and family. There is a positive history of this protest! In the 1950s, Fellowship of Reconciliation began a similar protest, which is credited with influencing President Eisenhower against attacking China.
Read on: "In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a 'Feed Thine Enemy' campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quote in the Bible, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly, no rice was ever sent to China.
"What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear weapons against them."
Ok. The China story hasn't been confirmed. (Thanks, Dot, for the link to Snopes.com). But I persist in thinking that the questions of "Would Saddam Hussein really use WMD?" and "Does the US have a moral responsibility to oust a tyrant?" while compelling and important, do NOT force the choice of mass murder as the only possible alternative. We have not explored the options; we have not tried diplomacy; and we are abandoning our own moral high ground by threatening a massive human rights violation instead of pressing for peace.
Rice for peace? It's compassionate, it's creative, and it speaks to Bush in the biblical terms he likes to use. I'll give it a shot.
| War | Activism | Anti-War Movement |