Earth to Kansas - Hello? Hello?, Geek Div.

Twice in this past week scientists have announced having uncovered fossils revealing so-called "missing links" - fossils of transitional forms, exactly the kind the creationists keep insisting don't exist.

The discovery you more likely heard about was in Utah, where

[a] "treasure trove" of fossils ... is helping paleontologists understand why some meat-eating dinosaurs evolved into vegetarians,[Scientific American reported on May 5]. ...

Scientists unearthed some 1,700 bones, which date to 125 million years ago, from the base of the Cedar Mountain rock formation in Utah.

The bones are of a new species, dubbed Falcarius utahensis, ("Utah sickle-maker," drawn from its sharp, curved 4-inch claws). What's significant about the find is that, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle,

[i]t was "evolution caught in the act," said Scott Sampson, chief curator of the University's Museum of Natural History as he described the birdlike creature, barely more than 3 feet tall at the hip as an adult and 12 feet long from snout to tail. ...

"With Falcarius, we have actual fossil evidence of a major dietary shift, certainly the best example documented among dinosaurs. This little beast is a missing link between small-bodied predatory dinosaurs and the highly specialized and bizarre plant-eating therizinosaurs."

The legs, teeth, body bulk, and gut size all stood somewhere between earlier faster, smaller predators and later bulkier, larger plant-eaters.

As to why the change occurred, Sampson speculated that it "may have been directly linked to the spread of flowering plants about 125 million years ago." That involved a change

from a landscape dominated by ferns and pines to the advent of flowering plants on a large scale, Sampson said.

"Here was a new edible resource to be exploited," he said, "an open ecological niche, perhaps, that may have made Falcarius become a devoted vegetarian."

That, was, again, as Samson admitted, speculation - but, unlike the creationists, it's speculation based on what's known and on the logic of evolution because it suggests species change in interaction with environment. And it is at least intriguing, isn't it, that this transition from meat-eater to plant-eater emerged just about the same time that an abundance of edible plants was appearing?

But as I said, there were two announcements. The other, which I expect you were less likely to have heard, came two days earlier, last Tuesday. It probably made less of a splash because instead of involving dinosaurs, it involved fish. The Beeb gives the word:

Fossils of an ancient fish - dating back 450 million years, when the creatures had neither bones nor teeth - have been found in South Africa.

The finds, which are 50 million years older than any other fossil fish in Africa, will help provide a "missing link" in the evolution of early fish.

The first such specimen was found in 1994 and quickly nicknamed "Nelson" in honor of newly-elected President Nelson Mandela. Then, after a gap of 11 years, seven more were found in quick succession, leading to Tuesday's announcement. Richard Aldridge of the University of Leicester said that even without bones, the animals could be identified as fish.

"[T]he exceptional preservation displayed in these rocks enables us to recognise the eyes, scales and even the livers of the animals. The impressions in the shale are faint, but they are also clear and diagnostic."

Although analysis is preliminary, the researchers suspect the animals were swimming scavengers, living in a shallow sea during an ice age and feeding on whatever waste matter they could find. What's really important for the present discussion is that

"[t]hese exciting fossils will help fill in the 'missing link' in the evolutionary history of very early fishes," Professor Aldridge explained. ...

"The fossil record confirms that the evolution of fish was a step-wise event," explained Professor Aldridge.

"The various characters that make up a fish, or a vertebrate, didn't all appear at once - they were added one by one through evolutionary time."

I'd say "Take that, Kathy Martin!" except I see her over in the corner, her eyes closed and her fingers in her ears, shouting "LA, LA, LA, LA, LA, LA!"

Sunday

Happy Mommy Day.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is coffee?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Pass Me A Mint for $2000

The three main types of this are the American, the Mexican, and the Italian; the elephant type isn't a true one.

Credit where credit is due

Updated The Los Angeles Times for May 6 (found through a link provided by Kevin Drum) reports on the kangaroo court on evolution now being conducted under the fiction of "public hearings" in Topeka, Kansas on the state's science curriculum for schools. The hearings,

scheduled to last several days, are focusing on two proposals. The first recommends that students continue to be taught the theory of evolution because it is key to understanding biology. The other proposes that Kansas alter the definition of science, not limiting it to theories based on natural explanations.

You read that right: alter the definition of science. Science doesn't give us the answers we want, it doesn't play to our prejudices, so we'll just change the word to include whatever trash is necessary to justify our willful ignorance.

And willful ignorance is exactly what it intends to promote:

"We're just getting to evolution now, and I have one student who puts his head down on his desk to show he's not paying attention," said Brad Williamson, a biology teacher at Olathe East High School in Olathe, Kan., about 20 miles southwest of downtown Kansas City, Mo. "Others say they're not comfortable."

So not only is their ignorance willful, they're making a point of announcing their willfulness, their refusal to listen, their determination to stick to their fantasies by shutting our whatever "uncomfortable" facts challenge it.

But as I said at the top, we should give credit where credit is due, and credit is due those participating in this bogus exercise for their honesty. They make no attempt to deny their real intent:

"We can't ignore that our nation is based on Christianity — not science. ... I don't see me changing my mind." - Kathy Martin, who is presiding over the hearings

"Part of our overall goal is to remove the bias against religion that is in our schools." - William Harris, the first witness

Nor to conceal their methods:

The churches also kept an eye on seats that could be politically helpful on the state board of education, said the Rev. Terry Fox, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kan.

"We encouraged people to elect a conservative school board" to revive the evolution debate, Fox said. "It was a piece of cake. It was such a low-flying election, no one was paying attention."

Interestingly, some creationist at the hearings said of actual scientists in relevant fields, who boycotted the whole absurd enterprise, "what are they afraid of?" What they were "afraid" of was lending legitimacy to this farce and its pre-determined decision.

On the other hand, when we ask the same question of the theocrats, we can conclude from the Rev. Fox that what they're afraid of is anyone paying attention.

Updated with this: Panda's Thumb, referring to an article in a Kansas City alternate weekly called "The Pitch," says that

[i]t turns out that one of the people being brought to Kansas to testify (on the taxpayers' dime) is Mustafa Akyol, an Islamic creationist from Turkey who belongs to a rather shady group known as the BAV,

which has harassed, threatened, and slandered teachers who taught evolution. The Pitch article refers to a seven year campaign in which evolution was presented as "a conspiracy of the Jewish and American imperialists to promote new world order and fascist motives," in the words of Istanbul University forensics professor Umit Sayin. As a result, BAV has gotten evolution out of, and creationism into, high school biology textbooks.

What makes this relevant here is this bit from the article:

[William] Harris says he hasn't heard of BAV. Told of the group's harassment of biologists in Turkey and evolution's defeat there, he replies, "Great! Congratulations! I mean, that is the point, once people start to see science more objectively."

Like I said, congratulations to them for their honesty.

By the way, it appears the hearings didn't go as well as the organizers hoped. Most of the witnesses were not only forced under cross-examination to admit they hadn't even read the standards they were critiquing, but that they rejected the most basic tenets of evolution, even common descent - which means they are arguing for special creation of individual species, better known simply as creationism.

Panda's Thumb also provided links to two Kansas bloggers giving something of a blow-by-blow report on the hearings: Red State Rabble and Thoughts from Kansas.

Finally, it was Pharyngula that directed me to the Panda's Thumb post.

Every dark cloud

Or no good deed goes unpunished.

The latest straw to be clutched at by global warming deniers is that in the early 1970s there was some concern expressed about "global cooling." It was based on the fact that there had been a cooling trend since about 1945, reversing a long warming trend. A handful suggested the possibility of a new ice age by projecting the result of the trend continuing for some time.

The source of this trend, which others said was likely just a blip in a longer-term warming trend (which is what it turned out to be), was thought to be the increasing concentration of particulates and aerosols in the atmosphere produced by industrialization, thus reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth. (A similar, more dramatic, effect was the "nuclear winter" hypothesized to result from even a relatively small-scale nuclear war because of all the dust and soot that would be thrown into the atmosphere.)

The argument, stripped to its essentials, is "well, you were all wrong then, so you're all wrong now." Even leaving aside the obvious logical fallacy, it is, of course, a foolish claim: There never was a consensus about global cooling, unlike the strong one that exists now about global warming. It's also deceptive in that draws on a confusion between a prediction ("this is what will happen") and a scenario ("this is what can happen if such-and-such a trend continues").

Global warming is a prediction (with various scenarios within it about how severe the effects will be); global cooling was never more than a scenario. And one of the real reasons those scenarios never developed is that the trend of increasing air pollution was reversed by the increased attention to the environment and the resulting laws such as the Clean Air Act.

But as Barry Commoner is fond of pointing out, "everything is related to everything else." So of course nothing is ever simple. New Scientist's website for Thursday had the story:

The efforts of industrialised nations to cut smog pollution has had a bizarre side-effect - accelerating global warming.

New data show that after years of getting smoggier, our skies have become clearer since about 1990. And one effect has been to allow more solar radiation to reach the surface of the Earth.

The phenomenon known as "global dimming" has gone into reverse, according to research by Martin Wild at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland, and been replaced by "global brightening."

The smog particles, by shading the planet, had masked some of the effects of the increased concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

And now the mask appears to be coming off. ...

The main cause of the global brightening, says Wild, is the clean-up of air pollution....

So should the world hurriedly reinstate smogs to stop global warming from accelerating? Probably not, as Wild points out that carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for a century or more, whereas aerosols typically hang around for only a few days. So as carbon dioxide accumulates in future decades, we would need ever-thicker smogs to counteract it.

And another Science paper reports that current smog levels kill half a million people worldwide each year from heart and lung diseases.

Need another example? I have one, again from New Scientist, this from the issue of May 7.

Wind farms could damage the populations of some bird species if they are not carefully sited. That is the conclusion of a review of all the impact studies done so far.

The review focused on the overall number of birds in and around wind farms, rather than just the number killed by collisions with turbines, and included all rigorous studies done worldwide, from Scandinavia to Wyoming. "Available evidence suggests that wind farms reduce the abundance of many bird species at the wind farm site," it concludes.

The broader focus was what made the review significant and it will doubtless be used by groups opposing creation of wind farms in their areas. However, one of the authors noted that the report is not opposed to wind farms, only to inadequate care in their siting. "Birds would suffer much more from climate change if we don't" pursue alternative energy sources said Andy Pullin of the Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation at the University of Birmingham (UK). However,

"[i]f Britain builds as many wind farms as the government is talking about, it could use up all the offshore habitat for ducks and waders," warns the lead author, Gavin Stewart, also at the Centre for Evidence-Based Conservation.

Pullin suggested building the wind farms in deeper water farther from shore might prove better for the birds.

"Compared with past assaults, such as organochlorine pesticides, loss of hedgerows, illegal persecution of birds of prey and intensive agriculture, wind farms should be low down the scale of threats," says Mark Avery, director of conservation at the RSPB [Royal Society for the Protection of Birds]. "However, if we put them in all the wrong places then that picture would be very different." Yet when it comes to offshore wind farms, we do not even know what the wrong places are, Avery says, because so few impact studies have been done.

However, as David Suzuki says in the April 16 issue of New Scientist,

[c]limate change ... cannot be solved through good intentions. It will take a radical change in the way we produce and consume energy - another industrial revolution, this time for clean energy, conservation and efficiency. ...

But first we must accept that all forms of energy have associated costs. Fossil fuels are limited in quantity and create vast amounts of pollution. Large-scale hydroelectric power floods valleys and destroys animal habitat. Nuclear power is terribly expensive and creates radioactive waste.

Wind power also has its downsides. It is highly visible and can kill birds. The fact is, though, that any man-made structure can kill birds - houses, radio towers, skyscrapers. In Toronto alone, it is estimated that 10,000 birds collide with the city's tallest buildings every year. Compared with this, the risk to birds from well-sited wind farms is very low.

Yes, but that argument is limited to birds hitting the turbines, which is exactly what the new study goes beyond. The discussion continues toward a solution.

But I have a point to all this: Who pointed out the dangers of air pollution? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who suggested answers to those dangers? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who pointed out the dangers of global warming? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who suggested answers to those dangers? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who uncovered the problems created by their own proposed solutions? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who is suggesting answers to those problems? Environmentalists and environmental scientists.

Who, that is, is prepared to question their own ideas and improve their approach as new information comes in? Those damned environmentalists and environmental scientists, that's who.

Compare that record with that of industry, even "environmentally friendly" industries like wind power.

The researchers are scathing about the poor quality of research into the impact of wind farms around the world. The findings of many studies are kept secret for commercial reasons, while supposedly public information produced for planning applications comes without raw information or is of poor quality, Stewart complains.

If you ever wonder which side - environmentalists or industry - you should trust in a dispute, that should answer the question.

Exception to the rule

I rarely do this - a post that consists almost entirely of a long quote from another source - but I think this is important enough to make an exception. Following is the full text of the secret memo about meetings in the spring of 2002 between US and UK officials about Iraq which I mentioned Monday. It's from The Times (UK) for May 1.

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

The Times described Rycroft as a Downing Street foreign policy aide.

So what we have here is demonstrable proof that no later than July 2002
- the White House had not only decided to invade Iraq, it was actively planning for it,
- indeed, Donald Rumsfeld said they "had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure" on Saddam,
- that they had even established a rough timetable for a run-up to the war, "beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections" and ending in January, 2003,
- that this was being done even though "the case [for war] was thin" and "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,"
- that "the NSC had no patience with the UN route," that is, they intended to attack regardless of any UN action pro or con,
- that the ultimatum ultimately delivered to Saddam about inspectors was the UK's idea for the purpose of creating a "political context" to justify an attack, and
- "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

So why in the flaming hell is there no resolution of impeachment? I don't give two shits - or even one, for that matter - about "it wouldn't do any good." I don't give a damn if it has no chance! Some things you just do because they are right. Because the point is not even "can we win" but "how can we not try?" Any member of Congress - and I mean any member of Congress - who at this point is not willing to stand up and be counted is a disgrace to their office, a disgrace to their Constitutional duties, and a disgrace to this country.

Happily, there are some who are willing to at least raise the questions.

Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter seeking signatures, Conyers also blasted the absence of any serious mainstream media attention to the damning document.

"Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a 'runaway bride' to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers," Conyers writes. "We must not let this fall down the memory hole...."

This is the text of the letter and an alphabetical list of signers to date:

May 5, 2005
Dear Mr. President:

We write because of troubling revelations in the Sunday London Times apparently confirming that the United States and Great Britain had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in the summer of 2002, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action. While various individuals have asserted this to be the case before, including Paul O'Neill, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Richard Clarke, a former National Security Council official, they have been previously dismissed by your Administration. However, when this story was divulged last weekend, Prime Minister Blair's representative claimed the document contained "nothing new." If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own Administration.

The Sunday Times obtained a leaked document with the minutes of a secret meeting from highly placed sources inside the British Government. Among other things, the document revealed:

* Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a July 2002 meeting, at which he discussed military options, having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq.

* British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."

* A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war.

* A British official "reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As a result of this recent disclosure, we would like to know the following:

1) Do you or anyone in your Administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?

2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?

3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?

4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?

5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

We have of course known for some time that subsequent to the invasion there have been a variety of varying reasons proffered to justify the invasion, particularly since the time it became evident that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. This leaked document - essentially acknowledged by the Blair government - is the first confirmation that the rationales were shifting well before the invasion as well.

Given the importance of this matter, we would ask that you respond to this inquiry as promptly as possible. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)

Brian Baird (D-WA)
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Sanford Bishop (D-NY)
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
G.K. Butterfield (D-NC)

Donna M. Christensen (D-VI, delegate)
William Lacy Clay (D-MO)
Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
James Clyburn (D-SC)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Jim Cooper (D-TN)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

Danny Davis (D-IL)
Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
Diana DeGette (D-CO)
Bill Delahunt (D-MA)
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)

Sam Farr (D-CA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN)
Barney Frank (D-MA)

Al Green (D-TX)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Louis Gutierrez (D-IL)

Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Rush Holt (D-NJ)

Jay Inslee (D-WA)

Jessie Jackson Jr. (D-IL)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH)

Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)
Dale Kildee (D-MI)
Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)

Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)

Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA)
Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
James McGovern (D-MA)
Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
Martin Meehan (D-MA)
Kendrick Meek (D-FL)
Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
Michael Michaud (D-ME)
George Miller (D-CA)
Gwen S. Moore (D-WI)
James Moran (D-VA)

Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)

James Oberstar (D-MN)
John Olver (D-MA)
Major Owens (D-NY)

Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)

Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)

Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Ike Skelton (D-MO)
Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
Hilda Solis (D-CA)
Pete Stark (D-CA)

Ellen Tauscher (D-CA)
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Diane Watson (D-CA)
Melvin Watt (D-NC)
Robert Wexler (D-FL)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
David Wu (D-OR)
Albert R. Wynn (D-MD)

The hard part comes when they don't get the answers, as they won't. Then we'll see who stands for basic honesty and decency and who would rather squat cravenly on their ass.

Voluntarism in government

In the wake of the revelations that the Department of Education had paid big bucks to columnists to promote administration policies in their columns (and that the White House had produced so-called "video press releases" in which actors posed as journalists to give favorable coverage to Bush plans for Medicare and drug control), Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and George Miller (D-CA) introduced legislation to ban the practice of "covert propaganda" by the Education Department.

In an almost straight party-line 224-197 vote on Wednesday, the House rejected the proposal.

Apparently the argument against it was the claim that

newly appointed Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has taken steps to ensure such contracts will not be awarded again.

And of course we know beyond doubt that the Shrub team can be trusted to keep its word. So there's no need to ban the lies, they'll tell the truth voluntarily. Just WMDs like environment they Social Security always education have Medicare.

Footnote: In arguing against the bill, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) said that

"[w]hat happened with Armstrong was stupid, but passing laws to outlaw stupidity is not Congress' job."

Fortunately for him.

The empire strikes back

Via Buzzflash, citing AP for Wednesday, we hear that

[t]he Labor Department cautioned organized labor in a letter made public Wednesday not to use money from pension funds to lobby against President Bush's proposal to overhaul Social Security.

"The department is very concerned about the potential use of plan assets to promote particular policy positions," Alan D. Lebowitz, a department official, wrote AFL-CIO's top lawyer.

In the letter to Jonathan P. Hiatt, AFL-CIO's general counsel, Lebowitz also wrote that officials charged with administering multistate pension funds must not hire or fire service providers primarily on the basis of their positions on Social Security legislation.

We can assume this letter arose from the fact that the AFL-CIO successfully pressured some investment companies that manage billions in union pension funds to withdraw from a business coalition advocating the bogus so-called "private accounts" scheme to "save" Social Security. That is, labor unions, following the practice of Big Business, have been using their economic clout to advance the interests of their members, in this case by opposing the reactionaries' surreptitious attempts to break down Social Security.

As a result, we can assume further that the letter is an attempt to intimidate unions, throwing out broad hints that they will be the subject of DOJ's baleful attention should they continue to be unhappy about doing business with outfits that are lobbying to undermine their members' retirement security.

When I first heard about this business around the end of March, I described the argument that unions were violating their "fiduciary duty" by leaning on the companies as "loony." It would seem the AFL-CIO agrees, because it blew off that bit, saying through Damon Silvers, an attorney for the group,

"we have no problem" with the letter. He said the AFL-CIO has considered a company's position on Social Security as a "collateral issue," and not as the sole or primary basis for a decision.

Silvers also said "we don't disagree" with the contention that pension funds should not be engaged in lobbying, but added pointedly that

"we believe, and we believe the department agrees, that the plans ought to be able to educate their participants on matters directly related to their retirement security,"

defending unions' legal activities by cleverly echoing language that businesses have used in the past to justify their own possibly illegal lobbying (i.e., by calling it "education").

It remains to be seen if the DOJ tries any follow-up; as I noted originally, this whole thing is not an exercise in law enforcement but in political intimidation, raising the possibility of a resource-draining, attention-diverting battle. Given that, the fact that such a case would require stretching the law well beyond the breaking point may prove irrelevant to the decision whether to pursue it or not. Personally, I persist in doubting the DOJ will do more than huff and puff because the political fallout among a number of those blue-collar-but-"red"-state union members could be quite unpleasant for the Bushites. But considering that the WHS* have been pretty adept at shooting themselves in the foot on Social Security, we'll still have to see.

In any event, as I noted in March,

keep it in mind: This is happening not because we're losing but because, at least on this, we're winning.

Footnote: Meanwhile, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is pushing the Government Accountability Office to find out how much public money the White House is spending on Bush's campaign of pre-selected "open meetings" on Social Security to which only supporters of administration's effort are to be admitted (and at which others can be arrested and strip-searched).

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

Noted in passing

The Transportation Security Administration plans to require airlines to ask for passengers' full names and birthdates when they buy their tickets.

Passengers do not have to provide it, though if they don't there's a better chance they'll have to undergo more stringent screening at the airport, Justin Oberman, the TSA official in charge of the program, said Wednesday.

Oberman said having passengers' full names and birth dates will make it less likely that they'll be confused with people who are known or suspected terrorists.

The purpose is yet another attempt to build a massive government database of personal information, this one called Secure Flight.

Secure Flight would allow the TSA to take over from the airlines the responsibility of checking passengers' names against the watch lists. ...

The program is supposed to work by transferring airline passengers' name records - which can include address, phone number and credit card information - to a government database. The government computer would flag names on the watch list and identify passengers who would be asked to go through additional screening.

Now, first, I wonder how common it will be to have airport shakedowns of people who don't willingly give the additional information just for the purpose of getting it into people's heads that they'd better do it just to avoid the hassle. Am I being paranoid? Perhaps, but "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

But what I really wanted to note was that if indeed the proposal can do what it says and sharply reduce the number of people "inconvenienced" at the airport, it indicates how much can be found out about you now just by means of a name and a birthdate. And that, my friends does not make me feel more secure.

Screwed-up schedule

My schedule is undergoing some odd changes. So instead of posting things late at night shortly before midnight (usually things I've written in the couple of hours before posting), it's more likely to be like this for a time: Things posted very early in the morning.

Just so you know. :-)

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What are onions?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Pass Me A Mint for $1200

Whether French, Viennese, or regular roast, this beverage has its own "breath."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Tiananmen Square?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Pass Me A Mint for $400

Cities known for their own varieties of these include Walla Walla and Vidalia.

Students are so apathetic today!

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, April 21

Nearly 100 students marched across the MTSU campus and staged a sit-in in at Cope Administration Building Wednesday in support of a professor who was denied tenure.

Wearing blue T-shirts proclaiming "Save Dr. Kramer," the students said they were seeking answers from the university administration on why their favorite psychology professor's contract was not renewed.

Washington University, St. Louis, MO, April 22

The protest and sit in at Washington University has ended. The Student Worker Alliance spent 19 days in the admissions office.

The group fought for better pay, benefits and working condition for campus workers.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton today announced the agreement. Starting this July, the university will spend half a million dollars towards improving wages and benefits.

Another $500,000 will be spent in the 2006-2007 fiscal year.

The university also agreed to let workers to be represented by a union. Chancellor Wrighton says there is no determination yet if students face consequences for the sit in and hunger strike.

Governor Dummer Academy, Byfield, MA, May 2

Nearly 200 high school students at Governor Dummer Academy near Boston staged a sit-in last week to protest dorm-room searches for alcohol and drugs. ...

The search, held Tuesday night, was conducted on all of the 10 dormitories on Dummer's campus, which is located about 30 miles north of Boston. Alcohol or marijuana was found in 10 of the rooms.

Students staged a sit-in at the school's performing arts center the next morning, remaining there from 7:45 a.m. through the end of the school day. Afterward, school officials agreed to meet with the students to give them an opportunity to voice their concerns on the matter.

University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, May 4

A group of about 60 students and faculty members left the office of the University of Hawaii's president Wednesday after occupying the facility for nearly a week in protest.

The group left claiming victory. The protesters demanded interim President David McClain end talks with the U.S. Navy about establishing a University Affiliate Research Center at UH.

"Today we return the president's office to Dr. McClain, but we will return and reclaim this space in the future if the administration ever again fails to fulfill the duties of this office," UH student Christine Noyes said.

McClain announced that the school will not make any decisions regarding plans for a Navy research center until October. The protesters demanded McClain rescind the proposal from the regents, but McClain said he cannot do that because the board has already given its provisional approval.

McClain said if and when he brings the proposal back to the Board of Regents, he will make sure both sides of the issue will have an opportunity to express their views.

The protesters said although they are disappointed that McClain didn't stop the talks, they are satisfied that there is a process in place for public input.

University of Wisconsin, Madison, May 5

The Air Force Reverse Officer Training Corps (ROTC) annual information day on April 30 was cancelled. ... According to Air Force ROTC representatives on campus, the event was cancelled due to the threat of a protest called by the University of Wisconsin-Madison group Stop the War.

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, May 5

About ten students were arrested Wednesday after refusing to leave a University of Minnesota building where they were protesting a proposal to eliminate the university's General College.

A crowd of more than 100 rallied outside Morrill Hall as speakers supported the role of the college to help low-income and minority students get into the university.

Seven people began sitting in or near President Robert Bruininks' outer office in Morrill Hall about 10:15 yesterday morning and another ten to 12 reportedly sat or stood in the hall outside. Bruininks was not in his office.

Six of the seven in the president's office were arrested shortly after six p-m on trespassing charges, as were three or four others.

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, May 5

After they coordinated a sit-in at the President's office last week, the Redbud Woods Working Group orchestrated yet another demonstration starting at 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon. To best display their demands to the administration, the protesters dumped several dozen pounds of soil and plants at the entrance to the Day Hall parking lot, in addition to parking three cars on the sidewalk in front of the building.

The roof and trunk door of one of the cars were torn off to make room for the garden they had planted in the back seat and trunk, and was named "The Jeffrey S. Lehman Urban Garden." This particular car was parked directly in front of the parking lot, while containing a wooden coffin with a tree branch from the Redbud Woods. The protesters had removed the wheels from the car and placed them on the driveway as barriers.

(Redbud Woods is the name given to a wooded area near the edge of the campus which the administration wants to pave over for the sake of a parking lot.)

Let's see. In this quick scan (obtained by looking at the first few pages of a Google News search on "student sit-in"), we have protests
- in favor of a popular professor,
- supporting workers' rights,
- against invasions of privacy,
- against establishing a military research center on campus,
- against ROTC,
- in favor of a program aiding low income and minority students, and
- in favor of protecting a wooded area on campus.

Now if only the rest of us could catch up with those apathetic students.

Footnote: The students at Princeton are entering their 10th day. In addition to lots of local coverage, they've made WNBC-TV in New York, the AP wire, the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, the Washington Post, The Hill, "Hardball," CNN's "Inside Politics," the Philadelphia Inquirer, and now the New York Times. See what some energy and creativity can do?

What exactly was that First Amendment bit about religion?

The third post I put up here at Lotus, the very first "news" one after the necessary introductions, was on November 13, 2003. It included a reference to a case decided that day in which

a federal judge in Richmond, VA ruled that the Chesterfield County board unconstitutionally discriminated against Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan, when it prohibited her from joining a list of clergy who deliver pre-meeting invocations. County Attorney Steven L. Micas had written to Simpson in September 2002 that "Chesterfield's nonsectarian invocations are traditionally made to a divinity that is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition."

But good news, it seems, has a habit of being temporary these days. The ABA Journal E-Report for April 29 has the bring-down, saying that a three judge panel of

[t]he 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a Virginia county can refuse to let a witch give the invocation at its meetings by limiting the privilege to clergy representing Judeo-Christian monotheism. ...

The 4th Circuit ruled Chesterfield County's Board of Supervisors did not show impermissible motive in refusing to permit a pantheistic invocation by a Wiccan because its list of clergy who registered to conduct invocations covers a wide spectrum of Judeo-Christian denominations. ...

"The Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, not a single faith but an umbrella covering many faiths," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in the opinion.

"The customer can have any color he wants, so long as it's black." - Henry Ford

"You can pray to any God you want, so long as it's ours." - J. Harvie Wilkinson III

Simpson's lawyers plan to ask for a review by the full court, but

[a] law professor who has been involved in establishment clause litigation says the full 4th Circuit is not likely to change the ruling. And if it does, Douglas Laycock says, the Supreme Court probably would not take up a case with questions about limiting legislative prayer to Judeo-Christian faiths.

"The court has only so many chips to spend on this issue," says Laycock, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who believes there should be greater separation of church and state. "They haven't touched legislative prayer since the Marsh case more than 20 years ago. And it would be immensely unpopular in many parts of the country to let a Wiccan give a prayer. The courts aren't supposed to follow election returns, though they sometimes seem to do so, and they're even getting death threats now."

And so we take another step toward theo-mobocracy.

Thanks, I suppose, go to Pandagon for bringing the bad news.

RIP for a soldier

Former Army Col. David Hackworth has died at 74.

He was no pacifist, no peacenik; he was a soldier, a combat veteran of three wars. More importantly, however, he was an honorable man who recognized military stupidity and bureaucratic indifference to the common soldier and wasn't afraid to make a big stink about it.

And he believed that wars should only be fought for good and necessary cause, which lead him to be one of the first senior military officers to publicly oppose the Vietnam War as well as to oppose the invasion of Iraq.

"Most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout," Hackworth wrote in February. "That's not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield."

His public opposition to Vietnam nearly got him court-martialed before he retired in 1971 and gave up his medals in protest of the war. (They were later reissued.)

Even in death, he managed to throw a punch on behalf of grunts: His website said that his

cause of death was a form of cancer now appearing with increasing frequency among Vietnam veterans exposed to the defoliants called Agents Orange and Blue.

Besides, anyone who considered Donald Rumsfeld an "asshole" couldn't have been all bad.

Opportunity knocks us out

The Shrub team, jumping on an opportunity provided by a 2003 decision in a federal district court in Wyoming,

moved Thursday to open up nearly a third of all remote national forest lands to road building, logging and other commercial ventures[, AP said on Thursday].

The 58.5 million acres involved, mainly in Alaska and in western states, had been put off limits to development by former President Clinton, eight days before he left office in January 2001.

The Clinton-era rule was overturned in that 2003 decision. That, the Forest Service claims, is what prompted the new rule, which it says "helps us to move forward with a policy that is not clouded by legal uncertainty." A single district court ruling, now under appeal to the 10th Circuit Court, hardly constitutes a "cloud of legal uncertainty," particularly since an earlier challenge in Idaho was shot down by the 9th Circuit Court. Moreover, it's unlikely to be coincidence that the proposed new rule was announced the day after the 10th Circuit Court heard arguments on the case.

"[T]his is an effort to rush this rule through before the 10th Circuit can reverse that Wyoming judge, just like the 9th Circuit did before," [Jim Angell, an attorney with the Denver-based Earthjustice law firm,] said. "It's incredibly cynical of them to use that judge's ruling as an excuse."

Cynicism, of course, is one quality that has never been in short supply among the Bushites. I'll leave the last word to Robert Vandermark, director of the Heritage Forests Campaign.

"Yesterday, nearly 60 million acres of national forests were protected and today as a result of deliberate action by the administration they are not. ... The Bush administration plan is a 'leave no tree behind' policy that paves the way for increased logging, drilling and mining in some of our last wild areas."

"I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly" over "green, dark forest too silent to be real."

Postmodernism in daily life

Maybe there's no such thing as objective truth, after all. AP for May 4 brings the news:

A Marine corporal who was videotaped shooting an apparently injured and unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque last year will not face a court-martial, the Marine Corps announced Wednesday.

A review of the evidence showed the Marine's actions were "consistent with the established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict," Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, said in a statement. ...

In the video, as the cameraman moved into the mosque, a Marine in the background could be heard shouting obscenities and yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead. The Marine then raised his rifle toward an Iraqi lying on the floor of the mosque and shot him.

"Although the Marines said it was unclear from the video whether the Iraqi made any overtly threatening gestures," the corporal successfully claimed self-defense.

The thing that really got to me about this was the "rules of engagement."

Before the opening of the Nov. 8 assault on rebel-held Fallujah, Marine commanders told infantrymen that the rules of engagement allowed the use of deadly force against men of military age deemed holding hostile intent, even if the enemy didn't fire on the Marines first.

Now, in one sense I suppose I can understand soldiers being told that in combat you don't have to wait to actually be shot at. But consider what they're actually being told, especially in the light of the acquittal. It means that any Iraqi male, except for the very young and the elderly, who any US soldier thinks is "holding hostile intent" - even if they make no "threatening gestures" - can be shot down with impunity.

I wonder if this is part of what Dean had in mind when he hoped Bush would be "incredibly successful."

Just a reminder

According to open letters to him from Dennis Kucinich and Tom Hayden, on April 20, while speaking to an ACLU group in Minnesota, Howard Dean, the firebrand who was going to send the GOPpers packing, said "Now that we're there [in Iraq], we're there and we can't get out.... I hope the President is incredibly successful with his policy now."

Never forget: We are on our own.

If we're going to stop the Bushite mean machine, we have to cease looking for a Democrat that we can all mass behind and follow. Instead, we have to be looking for ways to say to the Democrats (and the Republicans, albeit the Dems will likely be easier to move) "You will do this" on the war, on health care, on the environment, on civil justice and civil rights, on anything else we deem important. In finding and using those ways, we are, again and never forget it, on our own.

Thanks to Democratic Left Infoasis for the tip.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is farming? (Acceptable: agriculture)

JEOPARDY!
Movements for $1000

The May 4 movement was a Chinese student demonstration that took place in this square May 4, 1919: Yes, 1919!

And the beat goes on

Irbil, Iraq (AP, May 4) - A suicide attacker slipped into line at a police recruitment center in this usually tranquil northern Kurdish city and blew himself up Wednesday, leaving the streets slick with blood in the deadliest insurgent attack in more than two months, police said. Sixty Iraqis were killed and 150 wounded. 

Cripes! It's the law!

There's an old saying that "the press is free for those with the means to own one." An updated version of that would have to include the amendment that "speech is free for those with the cash to pay for it." More and more, the ability of institutions to maintain policies at odds with government policies depends on their ability to do without the aid bestowed on those prepared to toe the line or at least shut up.

The May 3 Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger reported on the latest example:

The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to decide whether colleges and universities can block military recruiters from coming on campus because of the Pentagon's discrimination against gays in the armed forces.

The justices said they will hear an appeal brought by the Bush administration, which wants to enforce a 1994 law that permits the federal government to withhold millions of dollars in funding from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

The law, known as the Solomon Amendment, was struck down 2-1 last year by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The majority ruled that the law infringed on the free speech rights of schools by requiring them to "express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives."

Before we go any further, though, I want something to be noted clearly and explicitly: It's a 1994 law. Passed in 1994. A time when there was a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president. So I don't want to hear anything about "oh, those right wingers." This was done by the people we're supposed to have happy dreams of getting back in power.

But getting back to the suit, the law's opponents insist that colleges and universities have the right to limit access to any employers that discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation. The Bushites' response is revealing:

The Bush administration maintains that access to campuses for recruiting is necessary to "sustain an all-volunteer military, particularly in a time of war."

Translation of Argument 1: Wars are declared by presidential fiat; Congress's participation is unnecessary and unwarranted. In fact, it's none of their damn business.

"The Solomon Amendment reflects Congress' judgment that a crucial component of an effective military recruitment program is equal access to college and university campuses," acting Solicitor General Paul Clement said in a legal brief.

Translation of Argument 2: Military demands trump constitutional rights. The Pentagon rules!

The government maintains that the law neither interferes with free speech nor compels any type of speech.

"If institutions do not wish to associate with military recruiters or their speech, they may decline to associate with the federal funding," said Clement.

Translation of Argument 3: He who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Or, expressed at somewhat greater length, the government can legitimately demand surrender of Constitutional rights as a condition of providing aid even if that results in "viewpoint discrimination" in its distribution - and even if the aid is wholly unrelated to the activities affected by the demand.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Pentagon began strictly enforcing the law. The Defense Department adopted regulations subjecting entire academic institutions, not just their law schools[, which have been the source of most of the opposition,] to a loss of federal dollars. It then sent letters to more than 20 laws schools threatening to cut off federal funding to them and their parent universities if they banned or restricted military recruiting.

In summer 2003, Congress backed up the Pentagon by amending the law to require that military recruiters be given equal access with other employers.

Interstingly, that last part, intended to support Pentagon policy, could potentially undermine the White House's case if it does indeed refer to "equal" access: If the schools are banning or restricting military recruiters on the grounds that the military discriminates in "hiring" - i.e., enlistment - on the grounds of sexual orientation, and if they equally ban or restrict all such discriminating employers, wouldn't that mean they actually are in line with the Congressional mandate?

I actually doubt that point was missed and I expect the law actually says that recruiters must be given the same access as "any" employer, not any "equal" (i.e., affected by the same institutional policy) employer. Which would only serve to repeat, regurgitate, the tenet that everything, everything, law, principle, the Constitution, that all things are to genuflect to the power of that magic incantation "National Security! National Security!" Bow down before its might!

The "Coalition of the Failing"

Or the failing of the "coalition." Pressure is building on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to immediately withdraw the 3,000 Italian troops in Iraq, rather than waiting until September to begin a pullout, as he has previously announced. The immediate driving force is public anger in the wake of the killing of Italian agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of Giuliana Sgrena by US troops.

"Berlusconi was trumpeting his special relationship with President George Bush and the United States, and gets a slap in the face," said Jason Walston, director of international relations at the American University of Rome.

That "slap" arose from the fact that the US, to the surprise of no one but to the dismay of Italians, exonerated the troops in an inquiry that relied solely on their statements and which could not reconstruct the events because US forces had removed forensic evidence, including the car itself, from the site. Italy, however, refused to sign off on the conclusion and instead has issued its own findings. While concluding that the shooting was not deliberate, Reuters reported, the report

criticized the U.S. military on Monday for failing to establish rules for checkpoints in Iraq, saying nervous U.S. troops manning a haphazard road block were to blame for the killing of an Italian agent near Baghdad. ...

[I]t accused U.S. troops of failing to set up "the most elementary precautions" to warn drivers of the approaching checkpoint.

The US report tried to blame Italy for the incident, saying that its agents hadn't told US officials about taking Sgrena to the airport. But the Italians snapped back that US officials were "indisputably" aware that Calipari and a second agent were in Baghdad, that they were under no obligation to tell the US of their travel plans, and that

evidence given by Sgrena and the Italian driver, who have both said they were given virtually no warning before coming under attack, was "coherent and plausible."

The Italian investigation also concluded that a panicky US machine gunner went from shining a spotlight on the car to firing warning shots to firing fatal shots with the space of a few seconds - which, it seems at least to me, would hardly have given the driver a chance to stop. (I imagine myself driving at night and being surprised by a spotlight. By the time I could think "What the hell? I'd better stop" and step on the brake pedal, two or three seconds could easily have passed, perhaps enough time to go from being hit by a light to being hit by machine gun fire.)

Berlusconi, who is one of President Bush's most fervent allies in Europe, was due to address parliament on Thursday about the incident, but is highly unlikely to heed demands for an immediate pullout of the Italian contingent.

However, Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli called the US report "clearly a lie" and Italian prosecutor Antonio Intelisano complained

"[i]t's not just that these people will not be tried, but there will not even be a disciplinary procedure against them," Intelisano said. "This is the reason why this decision, all things considered, has not been accepted or shared in this country."

In the light of that sort of rising anger even from within his own cabinet, Berlusconi, already overseeing an electorate overwhelmingly opposed to his Iraq adventure, may yet have to re-think his plans for a slow withdrawal and the value of his "special relationship" with Shrub.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is cubism?

JEOPARDY!
Movements for $600

Begun after the Civil War, the Granger movement tried to improve conditions for people in this job.

Posted just for the heck of it

I think I played "Wheels of Fire" so many times that the needle (yes, the album was vinyl - actual records) had worn through so far that I could listen to both sides at the same time. The Independent (UK) for Tuesday reported that

[y]esterday, 36 years after a bitter split, Cream, the influential but short-lived '60s band, was reunited in apparent harmony for a sell-out performance.

The guitarist Eric Clapton joined forces with the drummer Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, bass player, for the first of four performances at the Royal Albert Hall in central London. ...

Within two hours of the four performance dates being announced, all the tickets were sold out.

And had it been possible, one of them would have been mine.

Know them by the company they keep

This turned my stomach in a way few things have of late. Scum-licking slugs doesn't begin to describe these people. And no, I won't tell you which side I'm referring to - or even if I only mean one side.

Khartoum, Sudan (PANA, May 2) - Sudanese authorities affirmed here Sunday that Khartoum and Washington have of late been discussing exchange of intelligence.

In a statement, Sudan's National Security and Intelligence Agency said its head, Gen. Salah Abdullah held "successful talks recently with his counterparts at the Central Intelligence Agency." ...

The local media has lately been awash with comments about American and Sudanese intelligence officials becoming "trusted allies in the war against terror," holding regular and secret meetings to exchange information. ...

In exchange for its collaboration, Khartoum wants to be removed from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism. It also wants America to lift economic sanctions, the paper said.

Is this why Darfur seems to have quietly slipped to the back burner of late?

Footnote to the preceding, What Luck! Div.

Despite all the sunny assurances, things aren't going well in Iraq, as we all know. Violent attacks continue, the government is still in disarray, the Iraqi security forces are brutal where they're not incompetent, corruption is rife. What we need is a good pick-me-up. And damn! if wishes don't come true, as AP let us know on Tuesday.

U.S.-led forces have recovered a letter that appeared to be addressed to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi complaining about low morale among his followers and the incompetence of leaders in his terror network, the military said Tuesday. ...

The military said it was written by Abu Asim al-Qusaymi al-Yemeni, whom they identified as a member of Al-Qaida in the Land Between the Two Rivers, one of the former names used by al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaida in Iraq terror group. The letter's authenticity could not be independently confirmed. ...

The letter advocates jihad, or holy war, and praises "the sheik" for being "a thorn in the mouth of the Americans," the military said. But it also described low morale, weakening support for the insurgency and the incompetence of many militant leaders, the statement said. The author also reportedly admonishes "the sheik" for abandoning his followers since Fallujah - an insurgent stronghold that was the subject of a major U.S.-led assault in November.

Now, who else here remembers another fortunate discovery of a letter at a moment when things were looking dismal for the home team? It was in early February a year ago, and in that case the letter was supposedly one from Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden, asking for help in the resistance to the occupation. After praising US resolve and bemoaning his lack of support among the Iraqi people, Zarqawi supposedly declared

We can pack up and leave and look for another land, just like what has happened in so many lands of jihad. Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By God, this is suffocation!

"By God, what this is, is a bloody Coalition Provisional Authority press release," I said at the time. I also said, and I say again here about this purported letter, I don't know if it's genuine or not but I do know that it's damned convenient.

Footnote to the preceding, Meet the New Boss Div.

Same as the old boss. From the Christian Science Monitor for May 4:

[W]ith Iraqis taking a greater role in battling the insurgency and patrolling their own streets as the new government begins work, accusations of human rights abuses are shifting away from the Americans and onto Iraqi police officers and soldiers.

The accusations of abuse range from reports of prisoner torture and death of detainees to the arbitrary arrest and abuse at the hands of inexperienced and untrained police officers. ...

[I]n a report issued in January, Human Rights Watch said that torture and abuse by Iraqi authorities had become "routine and commonplace."

The report detailed methods of interrogation in which prisoners were beaten with cables and pipes, shocked, or suspended from their wrists for prolonged periods of time - tactics that are more associated with Saddam Hussein's dictatorship than the democracy that is beginning to take root in that country. ...

"In the long run, with the assistance of the US military unfortunately ... [we are creating] a security force which is very much like the old Saddam security forces," says [Robert] Perito[, an expert on post conflict security at the US Institute of Peace]. "That's not what we set out to do."

Personally, I'd like to know, with all the evidence from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, how he can be so sure of that.

A manner of choosing

With much fanfare about "the first democratically elected government in the history of Iraq," the administration of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was sworn in on Tuesday. And everything about the event was unintentionally revealing.

- It took three months of wrangling, arguing, negotiating, pleading, and power plays to come up with an administration and even then several positions, including the defense and oil ministries and two deputy prime minister slots, were still vacant, occupied by "temporary" ministers.

- When it came time for the National Assembly to elect the government, only 185 of the 275 deputies were present. And five of them voted "no."

- The government of the "new, unified Iraq" was a desperate attempt at a careful and delicate balance among competing ethnic groups, each with their own interests and jealous of their position. And it failed.

Ghazi al-Yawer, Iraq's deputy president, himself a Sunni, said he was disappointed by the new Cabinet. "The number of ministries given to the Sunnis is not enough," he told reporters.

Others, including Jaafari, a Shiite, agree - and the importance of the point only emphasizes that

disputes between and within the parties representing the Shia, Kurdish and Sunni communities are unresolved. Mr Jaafari claimed that permanent ministers would be chosen in three or four days.

- Despite that assurance, at the swearing in it was seen that nothing had changed.

[F]ive ministries and two deputy prime minister posts were left unfilled, highlighting the severe difficulties faced in forming a united leadership. ...

[N]o permanent ministers were named to the oil, defense, electricity, industry or human rights portfolios.

Jaafari said the matter would be resolved in two or three days - five days after he said it would be resolved in three or four. Part of the conflict is that the Sunnis want the defense ministry but

Jaafari has so far rejected the candidates Sunni leaders have put forward, saying they all have ties that are too close to Saddam Hussein's old Sunni-dominated Baath party.

- Fittingly and revealingly, the ceremony took place inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone, the risk of such a ceremony being too great outside of it.

- Even at that, "many lawmakers skipped the ceremony," including Vice-President Yawer, evidence of the continuing friction.

"If al-Yawer attended the ceremony, it would have been the end of him politically," said Mishaan al-Jubouri, head of a disgruntled Sunni coalition that had hoped for more seats in Cabinet. "I entered the hall and went out again on purpose, just to show them that I am not agreeing with what is happening."

Parliament was described as "half empty."

Even at the moment of what was supposed to be the triumph of American intentions to "liberate" Iraq, there is as much evidence of continued ethnic strife as of progress toward a functioning democratic government. And it comes at a time when rising violence is sparking regional concern. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has

warned the violence was "not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours as well." ...

Erdogan opened a meeting Saturday of foreign ministers from Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, expressing concern about Iraq's new government and fear that Iraq's violence could spread to the region.

"Iraq cannot be a place where one entity prevails over the others, nor can it be a place divided up as desired," Erdogan said in Istanbul. "Such attempts will meet the reaction of the countries of the region and the international community."

A particularly ominous reading of that statement is as a threat against too much autonomy for Kurds, a development Turkey fears could provoke resistance among its own repressed Kurdish population.

And it also comes at a time when

[s]enior [US] military strategists, speaking privately, also said they worry that insurgents are making inroads toward sparking a full-blown sectarian war and offered cautions about recent predictions that the United States could significantly reduce its forces from the current 142,000 within a year.

"One of the insurgency's strengths is its capacity to regenerate," said retired Army General John Keane, who returned recently from a fact-finding mission in Iraq. "We have killed thousands of them and detained even more, but they are still able to regenerate. They are still coming at us."

Remember when the insurgents were just "Baathist dead-enders?" Now it appears we are at a dead end - and the only end we can offer is death. We are not preventing sectarian violence, we are - at best - forestalling it after having by our invasion unleashed it. The blood is on our hands. "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up." (Hosea 8:7)

STDD/GTHO.

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What is Bridget Jones's Diary?

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Movements for $200

Picasso and Braque seemed to lose all perspective when they began this art movement after 1906.

Then again, reality ain't all it's cracked up to be

I need a little help here. Because either my grip on reality, tenuous at the best of times, is slipping more than usual - or someone else's has. This is from the New York Times for April 29:

For the 150,000 American troops in Iraq, the new government brings reassurance in the statements by Dr. Jaafari and other Shiite leaders about the Americans' role. The Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, were fiercely anti-American during their exile years under Mr. Hussein, and Dawa was implicated by American intelligence in terrorist acts across the Middle East, including a 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Kuwait.

But Dr. Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Sciri leader, have said Iraq will need American forces until its new army and paramilitary police can take over the war. Many in the new government admit that this could take until well into the mandate of the permanent government due to take office early next year, even longer.

Okay - so the reality is they're suggesting that they may want US troops to stay for quite some time, maybe years, an assessment privately echoed by US military planners, who

offered cautions about recent predictions that the United States could significantly reduce its forces from the current 142,000 within a year,

the Boston Globe reported a week earlier.

But will someone please explain to me just what the hell those troops are supposed to find "reassuring" about that?

Meanwhile, back in the real world

Thursday, April 28

(AP) - In new attacks Thursday, insurgents fired at least six mortar rounds toward a U.S. military base Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, but hit a nearby bus station instead, killing four Iraqis and wounding 21, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The attack took place during the city's busy morning commute. ...

A suicide car bomb also exploded near an Iraqi army checkpoint, wounding four Iraqi soldiers, three U.S. soldiers and seven Iraqi civilians, the U.S. military said. The attack occurred outside Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad....

Friday, April 29

(BBC) - At least 29 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a wave of car bomb attacks targeting Iraqi security forces in and around Baghdad.

The apparently co-ordinated blasts come just a day after Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari unveiled his new cabinet. ...

The attacks - on the Muslim day of worship - are the latest in an increased spate of insurgent violence in recent weeks.

Saturday, April 30

(AP) - Insurgents launched fresh attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 40 in a second day of violence aimed at shaking the country's newly formed government.

Sunday, May 1

(AP) - Insurgents began a third straight day of attacks in Iraq on Sunday, including ambushes, car bombs and a drive-by shooting, killing nine Iraqis and wounding 21, police said.

That raised the death toll from the latest wave of insurgent attacks that began on Friday to at least 74. ...

The strikes have been increasingly well coordinated, and that was the case in an ambush Sunday on a small road near Diala Bridge in eastern Baghdad, said police Lt. Col. Sabah Hamid al-Firtosi. ...

At least five car bombs rocked Baghdad on Saturday, U.S. military spokesman Greg Kaufman said. Six more exploded in the northern city of Mosul, which also has seen frequent attacks.

Monday, May 2

(PBS) - Three car bombs exploded in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least eight people in the latest surge in violence since a new Iraqi government was named last week. ...

Since Thursday, when the Iraqi National Assembly approved a partial Cabinet after three months of internal negotiating, at least 130 people, including 11 Americans and one British soldier, have been killed in a slew of bombings, ambushes and other attacks....

The worst toll in the recent attacks occurred Sunday when a suicide bomber detonated an ambulance loaded with explosives at a funeral for a Kurdish Democratic Party official. Twenty-five people were killed and more than 50 wounded in Tel Afar, 90 miles east of the Syrian border.

Mission Nothing Accomplished.

An important anniversary missed

May 1, 2003: "Mission Accomplished."

Over there, over there....

Take a moment to pity poor, poor Tony Blair. Here he went and tried so hard to be the strongest, surest, most faithful lapdog in the Coalition of the Killing, and look at the thanks he gets. His own citizens, his own people! badgering him over trivialities like did he lie through his flaming teeth about the Iraq War. The ingrates!

One of the issues has been the advice given him by Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, about the war's legality. Blair insisted that Goldsmith had confirmed that the attack on Iraq was legal but rumors and stories persisted that he had actually expressed doubts. What to do with such doubters, especially in an election campaign? Aha! Confound them, that's the ticket! Or at least that's what we can conclude from what The Independent (UK) reported on the 29th:

An attempt by Tony Blair to defuse Iraq as a general election issue by disclosing the Attorney General's private doubts about the legality of war has left a series of questions unanswered.

In a spectacular U-turn, Downing Street published a 13-page memo from Lord Goldsmith on 7 March 2003, including crucial caveats about military action omitted from his final legal advice backing the war 10 days later. ...

Last night, there was little sign Mr Blair's attempt to "clear the decks" had calmed the storm. Anti-war MPs claimed that the Commons, and even the Cabinet, might not have backed the conflict if they had been told of Lord Goldsmith's doubts.

Those doubts included warnings that going to war without an additional UN Security Council resolution specifically authorizing it, British soldiers and ministers could face prosecution in international courts, a declaration that Blair's campaign to accuse France of an "unreasonable" veto in the Security Council had "no basis in law," and shot down the claim justifying Saddam Hussein's removal on "humanitarian" grounds: "Regime change cannot be the objective of military action."

Two key questions still hanging in the air are what caused Lord Goldsmith to so dramatically change his position in the period between March 7 and March 17, by which time his advice was stripped of all caveats, and what transpired during the Cabinet meeting that latter day. Two current members of Blair's government, while defending him, admitted they never saw the March 7 version of the advice and former Secretary for International Development Clare Short has insisted for some time that neither questions nor discussion were allowed when the Goldsmith report was presented.

One senior Labour figure said: "If a lie is an intent to deceive, there is no doubt there was an intent to fool and mislead people and deceive them into thinking the Attorney General had given his unequivocal legal authority. All caveats were kept from ministers and they were given a dubious account of the facts."

And if that wasn't enough to give Tony the blues, on Sunday The Times (UK) dropped what should be a bombshell.

A secret document from the heart of government reveals today that Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification. ...

[The meeting] was chaired by the prime minister and attended by his inner circle. The document reveals Blair backed "regime change" by force from the outset, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, that such action could be illegal.

The meeting took place on July 19, 2002, The Guardian (UK) reports, at a time when Blair (and Bush) were publicly insisting that "no decision" had been made about Iraq. Despite that, at this meeting Blair told his military and intelligence chiefs that in April he had told Shrub that "the UK would support US military action to bring about regime change" in Iraq - something he had not even told his own MPs. As The Times makes clear, all the later talk about WMDs and "humanitarianism" were just the excuses to justify the pre-determined end.

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," said Blair. He added that the key issues were "whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work".

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran".

Straw suggested they should "work up" an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would "help with the legal justification'. Blair is recorded as saying that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors".

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war. ...

Downing Street claimed the document contained "nothing new".

Well, yeah, that's true, Tony. We've known for a long time. After all, as The Guardian notes, it was learned last year that Sir David Manning, your foreign policy adviser, had written to you about a March 14, 2002, meeting he'd had with with Condoleezza Rice: "I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a parliament and a public opinion."

Another document leaked last year records Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to the US at the time, as telling Sir David on March 18 2003, the eve of the invasion, about a meeting with the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. He said: "I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."

So we've known for some time that it was all lies, that it was all bull, that it had nothing to do with WMDs or "defense" or "threat" or "humanitarianism." We've known for a long time that you sacrificed truth, honor, decency, humanity, and tens of thousands of lives (so far) to your twisted schemes for dominance, your toadying servitude to dreams of power. You were going to prove yourself the faithful minion of the sleazy plotters in the White House and so to share in the supremacy. And you didn't care what it cost so long as it was someone else footing the bill of blood.

You're right, Tony. Nothing new here. But y'know, it's always nice to have it in black and white.
PBU18

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What is a rose hip?

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'90s Best-Sellers

This novel grew out of a series of personal columns that first ran in the Independent of London.

Speaking of ominous

Another find in the April 30 New Scientist is the news that

climate change is set to do much worse damage to global food production than even the gloomiest forecasts have so far predicted, according to studies presented on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Royal Society in London.

Until now, the idea was that the higher temperatures and more frequent droughts caused by global warming would be offset by faster photosynthesis from the increased levels of CO₂. Labs tests had suggested the latter effect might often outweigh the first.

No such luck, says Stephen Long, a crop scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In open-field experiments with maize, rice, soybean and wheat he found that adding extra CO2 led to a beneficial effect only half as great as indicated by the lab experiments. Worse, when he added doses of ozone to the fields, to simulate the expected rise in ozone smogs due to higher temperatures, yields fell further.

So even one of the few claimed benefits of global warming - that it might increase crop yields in some regions - has probably fallen by the wayside.

It's for your own good - really

The militarization of local police forces continues apace. As reported in the April 30 issue of New Scientist magazine,

the research arm of the US justice department, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is funding research into three ... devices, all of which are intended to be used by the nation's police forces to bring down suspects and control crowds.

One is a radio-frequency weapon apparently similar to one made for the Marines, designed to cause severe pain at a range of about 2000 feet (600 meters) by heating skin with a 95-gigahertz microwave beam. (Presumably, the police one, designed to be portable, would have a more limited range.)

Another is described by NIJ as a semiconductor laser "man-portable heat compliance weapon" for "force protection, crowd control, and access denial." Little is known of this one because, the magazine says, "there is no known weapon, military or otherwise, that appears to work this way."

Further clues to the nature of these two devices can be gleaned from a November 2004 report produced by the NIJ's research division. In it, Joe Cecconi of the NIJ described a possible directed-energy prototype weapon as being shotgun-sized, producing an area of intense heat 15 centimetres in diameter at a range of 16 metres, with a magazine capable of delivering 12 shots each of less than a second.

Finally, there's a laser which stuns the victim by producing what's being called a "plasma flash bang" at the point of impact; again, it's a weapon similar to one designed for the Marines, this one called the Pulsed Energy Projectile system.

New Scientist notes that NIJ has provided so little information about these weapons that it's impossible to judge their effects or their safety. But additional concerns have already been raised about them: Neil Davison of the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project at the University of Bradford, UK, notes that it's quite possible that such weapons, despite the intense pain they may cause,

may not leave any identifiable traces, [so] allegations of abuse will be hard to prove.

He also notes there has long been a demand for a capability to turn the power output of these weapons up or down. "Some of these weapons may have a 'lethal' setting," he warns.

Set your phasers to kill.

One of my biggest and oft-expressed concerns about such "less lethal" weapons (the preferred term now that the description "non-lethal" has proven bogus), one that is still rarely addressed but is beginning to gain traction, is that they will become weapons of convenience rather than of necessity - as tasers already have. That is, they will be used not only in situations where potentially lethal force otherwise would have been used but in situations where no force otherwise would have been used. They will simply become a quick and easy way to "enforce compliance" - that is, to obtain meek submission to authority. And the potential for control not only of "suspects" but of others, particularly of demonstrators and other dissidents behaving in ways disapproved by authority, is both obvious and ominous.

The Monster of Pelageek

There are something over 150 known "extrasolar" planets, that is, planets orbiting stars other than our sun. They've been found, by and large, not by detecting them directly but by detecting their gravitational effect on the stars they orbit. Since the first confirmed discovery in 1995, discovery of planets has become something of a cottage industry in astronomy.

In fact, it's become so routine that the deal is no longer to find extrasolar planets but to actually see them. And now, a team of astronomers lead by Gael Chauvin at the European Southern Observatory has renewed its claim to be the first to do so.

New images taken of an object five times the mass of Jupiter confirm that it is a giant planet closely orbiting a distant star, an international team of astronomers reported. The team of European and American astronomers said this is the first time a planet outside of our solar system has been directly observed - a claim other scientists have also made,

reported AP on Saturday. The team first made the claim in September, identifying it as a planet circling a so-called "failed star" known as a brown dwarf about 200 light years from Earth. (Note that contrary to the first reference at the link and as explained in the others, Jupiter is not a "small brown dwarf." It is not nearly massive enough.)

But questions were raised by others who said it may have been a background star and the team admitted more observations were needed.

Meanwhile, earlier this month[, notes Space.com,] Ralph Neuhaeuser of the Astrophysical Institute & University Observatory said his team had made the first confirmed picture of a planet around another star called GQ Lupi, some 400 light-years away.

In that case, the object photographed was clearly gravitationally bound to the star - but there was still suspicion it was a brown dwarf, not a planet.

But now, the ESO team is back again

"Our new images show convincingly that this really is a planet, the first planet that has ever been imaged outside of our solar system," Chauvin said in a statement.

Added Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was part of the team: "I'm more than 99 percent confident." ...

[However,] Lynne Hillenbrand, an assistant professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, said the findings were intriguing, but cautioned against calling the object a planet.

"The claim of an object being a planet is subject to one's definition of planet and there are different camps on what that definition is," Hillenbrand said.

Another question is what constitutes being first. Suppose both these pictures are confirmed to be of planets but Neuhaeuser's team's is confirmed first. Are they first because it was the first confirmed - or is Chauvin's team's first because it was observed first? Lots - reputations, yes, but even more importantly who gets the grants for further research - will hang on that answer.