Yes in the grand scheme of things it's almost irrelevant but dammit it's still a good thing

It took five years of work, lobbying, and overcoming of corporate stalling and obstruction, but, CNN reported on Saturday,

New Jersey now has a state law barring hospitals and nursing homes from forcing health care employees to work overtime except in emergencies. ...

With the law that went into effect Tuesday, New Jersey joins only Washington state in banning mandatory overtime at health facilities. West Virginia lawmakers passed a ban that awaits the governor's signature. At least six other states have debated such legislation, according to Mary MacDonald, director of the AFT Healthcare union.

For years, forced overtime has been a major issue for health care workers along with rotating shifts (where personnel work different shifts at different time). Studies have repeatedly shown that staff in either of those situations are more fatigued, burn out quicker, and make more mistakes, putting patient health and safety at risk. But both practices are also cost-cutters for management who have therefore resisted any change. Now, at least for some health care workers, that may change.

Both the New Jersey Hospital Association and the state Department of Health and Senior Services suggest that it may be difficult to comply with the law because of staff shortages, particularly of nurses. However, the NJHA also admits that the average vacancy rate for nurses has fallen from 14% three years ago to 9% now due to more aggressive recruiting and improved wages. With rising nursing school enrollment, the rate should fall even further.

The day is coming

I'll tell you one thing: He ain't his father.

Mayor Richard Daley said he would have "no problem" with Cook County issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in Chicago, the nation's third largest city.

Entering a national debate over gay marriage, Daley urged sympathy for same-sex couples because "they love each other just as much as anyone else."

Daley also dismissed a suggestion Wednesday that marriage between gay couples would undermine the institution.

"Marriage has been undermined by divorce, so don't tell me about marriage," he said. "Don't blame the gay and lesbian, transgender and transsexual community."

The same article quoted County Clerk David Orr as saying "I'm fed up with people being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. ... (But) whatever you do when it comes to challenging laws, you want it to be effective and not knee-jerk."

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued its decision that the state could not ban same-sex marriages, there was concern expressed that it would generate a backlash. Instead, it seems to have emboldened people to speak more openly of their support.

There have been some, fearful of its use as a wedge issue in the presidential campaign, who have said they support the rights of same-sex couples "but why did it have to come up now? It's not the right time." My reply, after noting my opinion as to why it won't be an effective wedge issue, is to ask "When would be the right time?"

Footnote: Some years ago, my then-wife and I talked about trying to start a group called something like "Straights for Gay Rights." It never got beyond talk - but happily there were others not so lazy and there are a number of such groups around now. PFLAG: Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is one such. Give them a look.

Good news for our side

Bush defends decision to go to war

Washington (AP, February 21) - President Bush on Saturday defended his decision to go to war in Iraq and his administration's postwar efforts to bring democracy to that country against Democratic criticism.

And why is this good news for our side? Because he's still having to defend the decision. He wants to use the war as a campaign issue but can't simply say "I fought the war." Instead he keeps having to say "I fought the war because...." And that's a significant difference.

I think someone needs a time out

Take Them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the G.O.P., Their Friends and a Few Others, 1994-2004, a new book by Bruce Miller and Diana Maio, is due to be published next month. I hope they're preparing an addendum.

Washington (CNN, February 23) - Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability.

In a written statement issued later, Paige called it "an inappropriate choice of words" while accusing the NEA of "obstructionist scare tactics."

Oh, well, that's all right, then.

Does anyone have any count of how many opponents of Shrub policies have been called "terrorists" or "terrorist-sympathizers" or of "standing with the terrorists" or whatever? The NEA is certainly not the first. "Terrorist" has become the 21st century version of "communist," the catch-all, "you're all the same" denunciation intended to squelch dissent while requiring no explanation. If Joe McCarthy was around today, he'd be saying "I have in my hand a list of terrorists...."

Oh, wait, he is.

Footnote: Wielding another catch-all phrase, this one the standard defense of anyone caught saying something truly asinine, an administration official said Paige was "clearly joking."

Well, yeah, he is a joke - but I don't think that's what the White House meant.

Frontiers of free enterprise

This is a few days old, but I just heard about it and thought it too good to let pass.

According to AP for February 17, advertising writers in Florida were planning to use Johnny Cash's classic "Ring of Fire," which is about spiritual crisis and the redemptive power of love, to pitch a hemorrhoid-relief product.

Cash's family said no.

Good to know some things are still beyond the reach of corporate checkbooks.

This actually has been a matter of some debate among creative artists. For the Britney Spears of the world, for who music is just the way they make their big bucks, trading themselves in for some ad work and thereby putting a few more paychecks in the account is a good thing. For some of us who still to at least some extent identify either as listeners, creators, or performers with "That Old Time Rock and Roll," music was/is something more than just a way to buy a bigger house.

As an example of the latter, I remember reading a letter in "The Nation" some time ago from one of the former members of The Doors who recalled the group unanimously agreeing to turn down an offer for "an amount of money that still makes my knees wobble" from an ad agency for the use of one of their songs.

Seems that the Cadillac slogan "Break on through" was originally supposed to be "Break on through to the other side."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Mars? (Acceptable: Ares)

JEOPARDY!
I Need My Space for $200

Its "A" ring is a little over 9,000 miles wide.

Dark times, part two

Perhaps the two key items in all the press coverage of the trials of Haiti were tossed off in single short references in today's news. From the Toronto Star:

The rebels say they have no political agenda beyond ousting Aristide, but the man who started the rebellion, Gonaives gang leader Buteur Metayer, on Thursday declared himself the president of liberated Haiti.

And from AP:

As an opposition coalition was on the brink of rejecting a U.S.-backed peace plan on the grounds that it did not call for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down, Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned opposition politicians and asked them to delay responding formally to the plan for 24 hours.

Evans Paul, a leading opponent who once was allied with Aristide, said the coalition agreed the extra time "will perhaps give Mr. Powell a little more time to consider his position ... and give us the assurances we need" on Aristide's departure.

The significance, especially of the latter, arises from the situation. On Sunday, the rebels captured Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, with little resistance. As they have in other places, they burned buildings and freed prisoners from the jails (I note that I've seen no coverage as to who these prisoners are or why they were jailed, or what happens to them. I wonder, frankly, how many become recruits to the cause of "freedom."), unleashing what AP called "a rampage of reprisals and looting." In addition,

rebels hunted down militants loyal to Aristide, accusing them of terrorizing the population in the days before the fall of the northern port city of 500,000. ...

"We're going to clean the city of all 'chimeres,'" said rebel Dieusauver Magustin, 26. Chimere, which means ghost, is used to describe hardcore Aristide militants.

It was not clear what would happen to those detained. One rebel said they were saving them from lynching. But another, Claudy Philippe, said "The people show us the (chimere) houses. If they are there, we execute them."

There is obviously no intent to stop there. Rebel leader Guy Philippe told AP that he hopes to take Port-au-Prince by Sunday, adding, says the Toronto Star, that "I think that in less than 15 days we will control all of Haiti."

Remissainthe Ravix, another rebel leader, told The Associated Press there was no turning back.

"We have the weapons and the expertise to take the country," he said. "Nothing can stop us."

Meanwhile, the US has sent a contingent of 50 Marines into Port-au-Prince to protect the US Embassy and staff while

hundreds of armed Aristide supporters set up more than a dozen barricades on the road leading north, near the international airport. Their tension was evident as they banged on a car with rifle butts and waved shotguns and pistols at vehicles to force them to stop.

"We are ready to resist, with anything we have - rocks, machetes," said a teacher guarding one roadblock, who gave his name only as Rincher.

That is the violent, chaotic, and dangerous situation in which the political opposition to Aristide feels it can dither about, making flip remarks about giving the US more time to "consider its position" because of the refusal of the international community to give that opposition everything it wants. Clearly, they smell total victory within their grasp. But if they are being honest about having no connections to the rebellion other than a mutual desire for Aristide to resign, do they really imagine that people like Guy Philippe, on the verge of their own outright victory, are going to just lay down their arms and swear fealty to this "new" government? If they do, I frankly think they're fools.

Since I don't expect that they're fools, I can see only two alternatives: Either they are lying about their support of the bloodshed (perhaps the less likely, since they did condemn the violence in Cap-Haitien) or they are naively convinced they can work with the same thugs whose c.v.s include "drug runner," "FRAPH officer," "coup plotter," "convicted mass murderer," and "notorious human rights violator."

I've already said I think Aristide should step down in return for an orderly transition and new elections. I also think that the opposition should accept the international community's proposal for a new Cabinet while allowing Aristide to finish out his term, as Aristide already has. But it seems to me now that both parties - even assuming honorable intentions - may well have waited too long. The dark days are returning.

And I can almost guarantee that when they do, we'll hear over and over again it was all Aristide's fault. Not just some (surely justified), not even most (doubtful but at least debatable), but all. None of it an opposition dominated by the old guard of the rich, none of it the murderers returning to power, none of it the cutoff of aid that has plunged Haiti into even worse poverty. All Aristide.

Footnote: In the wake of the 1991 coup, economic sanctions were placed on Haiti in an attempt to force the military dictatorship to allow Aristide's return. During that time, a number of voices on the right argued against such a course, saying sanctions "only hurt the poor." The effectiveness (and effect) of sanctions can be argued back and forth - but what's often forgotten is that, as I just mentioned, in the wake of the disputed 2000 elections, millions of dollars in aid to Haiti has been cut off. Have you heard one - just one - of those same rightwing voices say that the aid should be restored to avoid hurting Haiti's poor? That should tell you all you need to know about their actual commitment to justice.

Dark times, part one

To no one's surprise, the reactionaries have retaken control of majlis, the Iranian parliament. The outcome was never in doubt after the Guardian Council succeeded in tossing out the candidacies of over 2,000 reformers. By the time of Friday's elections, fewer than 250 veteran reformers could be found among the 4,500 candidates. As a result,

[c]onservatives took at least 149 places in the 290-seat parliament, which has been controlled by pro-reform lawmakers since their landslide win four years ago. Reformers and self-described independents won about 65 seats, according to Interior Ministry figures. The final count was expected Tuesday,

AP reported.

It's hard to measure the effect of the reformists' call for a boycott of the elections. The turnout, according to the Interior Ministry, was just over 50% nationwide, the lowest in any general election since the 1979 Islamic revolution; in Tehran, only about 1/3 of voters turned out. Those figures represent a significant drop since the last round of elections, when nationwide participation was at just over 67% and that in Tehran a little under 50%. However, they're also higher than reformers hoped and conservatives feared; reformers had hoped to keep the national turnout below 40%. The boycott effort was undoubtedly hindered by differences in the ranks of reformers, some of who, like President Khatami, openly urged people to vote, and by a massive PR campaign by conservatives who said it was a "religious duty" to go to the polls. And it may also represent disillusionment with the inability of reformers to deliver on their promises because of opposition from the unelected clerical bodies that still hold the levers of power.

In any event and despite the reduced turnout, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a "national and an Islamic epic in the true meaning." Reformers, however, called it an "historical fiasco." Indeed, reformist lawmaker Rasoul Mehrparvar went so far as to say that hardliners will face God's punishment.

"I hope you will be questioned on Judgment Day before God because you are not responsive to the people in this world," he said, addressing the head of the Guardian Council, which was responsible for the mass disqualification of liberal candidates.

In the midst of this, some are trying to put the best face on the outcome. There are, for example, predictions of splits in the conservative block. The Christian Science Monitor considers that possibility:

Among the conservatives, two factions - hard-line and moderate - are already gearing up for the new tug of war. But amid a cascade of uncertainties and mixed signals, Iran's political future is far from clear.

Many reformist Iranians predict renewed repression, and point to the closure of two reformist newspapers on the eve of the vote as a sign of things to come. But others argue that moderates will prevail and embrace key elements of the reform agenda.

"This is the point where the usefulness of hard-liners is over," says Amir Mohebian, a director of the conservative newspaper Resalat. "They will endeavor to stay in [control], but their time is over. The new mission belongs to moderate conservatives.

"Hard-liners are like dynamite: You can destroy things with them, but can't build things," adds Mr. Mohebian.

Even if the victory of moderate conservatives over extreme conservatives does come to pass, a victory that I think will not mean reform as we would understand the term but could mean more tolerance for some openness of expression both politically and personally - that is, not letting go of the reins of power but holding them somewhat more loosely - it will still be a long and hard road and one on which I think those "moderates" will find they need the help of the very reformers they cooperated in ousting.

Footnote: The Guardian Council has accused the Interior Ministry of "playing with figures" to lower the turnout rate, the BBC reported on Monday. Interior put the nationwide turnout at just over 50%, but the Council says the real figure is closer to 60%. Apparently, reformers aren't the only ones trying to put the best possible face on things.

The week ahead

I'm moving on Friday, a matter of absolutely no interest to more than maybe two or three of you, if that. But I did want to let you know that as we enter the last leg of the effort, I'll probably be doing less blogging. So entries might be on the thin side for the next several days. I'll try to keep up a little - I know how you depend on my sage insights - but don't be surprised if there isn't a lot of new content between now and maybe Monday.

Talk of the town

So Ralph is running. (Big shock - did you really think he was going to go on Meet The Press to say he wasn't running?) I think I can guarantee - I haven't checked yet - that this is going to be the big hot topic on the blogs today with almost everyone screaming about how evil he's being and how all he's going to do is throw the election to Bush "again" (with some, like Buzzflash, implying that's what he actually wants to do) and how they've "lost all respect for him," and so forth and so on, all adding up to a sounding board for the official Democratic Party meme that for Ralph Nader it's all about "his ego."

People, chill out.

First, the charge that Ralph Nader is now a closet George Bush supporter and "a creature of Karl Rove" is unmitigated crap. Calling him foolish is one thing, calling him a conscious hypocrite and liar is another. In fact, just by mentioning it I've given it more credit than it deserves. So enough of that.

As for throwing the election, I've already expressed my views on that on December 7, where I also laid out my own reasons why I thought Nader should not run in 2004. (With something of a reprise on December 13.) So I'm just going to give a quick summary here. Simply put, Ralph Nader did not cost Al Gore the election in 2000. He couldn't have, because Al Gore won the election. He won the popular vote and would have won the electoral vote if there'd been a complete recount in Florida - and that's with the scrubbing of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the voters' list and the infamous "butterfly ballot" that even the beneficiary of which, Pat Buchanan, says cost Gore a few thousand votes.

Beyond that, it wasn't Nader's fault that Al Gore and the Democrats ran an incompetent campaign in which Gore blew the debates, failed (as even his supporters admit) to define himself and what he stood for, and couldn't even carry his own home state. Nader didn't cost Gore the election, Gore did.

So clean slate. The question is, what effect will Nader have on the race in 2004?

Now the truth be told, if the Green Party wasn't on the ballot in Massachusetts and he was, I would likely vote for him. Yes, I know all about John Kerry; I suspect more than a lot of you. Hell, I even remember Dewey Canyon III. I like some things about him (he would be much better on civil liberties than Bush), dislike others (he's very establishment and corporate-friendly), and am suspicious on yet others (he talks a better game on trade than he used to but his voting record doesn't reflect it). But the bottom line here is, let's face it, friends, Massachusetts is not going to be a tossup state. Even Joe Lieberman would have carried it handily.

But what about other places? How much impact will he have? I think very little. Nader himself suggested he'll pull more votes from libertarian and conservative types who want to express dissatisfaction with Bush. Personally, I doubt that but the facts remain that he doesn't really have an organization and that so much of the left side of the spectrum is focused on Anybody But Bush that I can't see him (or any other leftist third party or independent candidate) getting much support from there from anyone except the genuinely ideologically committed who otherwise likely wouldn't vote at all. His support will be clearly less than in 2000. Overall, Nader's effect on the outcome will be negligible. I actually think he'll get more hostility than support, as he already has.

That hostility may have been counterproductive for those who wanted to convince him not to run. It came in desperate waves of anger and paranoia mixed with piles of scorn. I began to think several weeks ago that if people really didn't want him to run, they should just shut up about it. As it was, it came to appear that a decision not to run would not have been a tactical choice or a personal decision but a capitulation to a form of intellectual mob rule - and as others have pointed out, that's not the way to get Ralph Nader to do something.

And for those who say that just proves that for him it's all about his ego, I have two things to say: First, whatever candidate you're supporting, are you telling me they don't have a big ego? That anyone could do what they're doing and not have a big ego?

And second, you have attacked Nader's motivation, judgment, sincerity, honesty, even his intelligence. Frankly, folks, you're the ones that made it personal.

Update: I've now checked, and I was right on both counts. It's all over the blogs and most comments are nasty and personal. I think a good tactical argument can be made against a Nader run (in fact I made one, linked above) but what I read rarely went beyond spittle-covered venom and vituperation.

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo was perhaps the worst of the lot; somehow, when Nader comes up, he loses all sense of proportion and flops over into irrationality. He called Nader a "latter-day political narcissist," "an enemy of progressive change," "a cat's paw of the Republican party" (which he then said was too generous because "a dupe at least doesn't know he's being used," meaning Nader not only is, but knows he is, helping the GOP), and a "pied piper of political oblivion" running on "a platform of vacuous moral posturing and self-aggrandizement." All in eight sentences.

The one thing most (not all, but most) seem to agree on is that he will garner much less support than in 2000 and will have little if any impact on the race. Why, then, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Is this really about Nader or about, as I suggested in that same earlier post, a stubborn refusal to face up to the Democrats' own failings and spineless refusal to stand up to the GOP slime machine? The fact that everyone seems so delighted - and astonished - that Kerry is not rolling over under Rethuglican attacks suggests to me it's the latter.

Update: Edited to correct typos and for grammar.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Texas?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
Greek and Roman Mythology

The English names of this god's two companions are panic and fear.

Ya lose some

For the second time in five weeks, Shrub has used a Congressional recess to appoint a reactionary to a seat on a federal appeals court. The beneficiary this time was William H. Pryor Jr., the attorney general of Alabama.

Pryor, a fanatical opponent of abortion, also had argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that if a law in Texas outlawing sex between homosexuals was overturned, it would open the way for legalized "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia." In addition, he had a record of soliciting contributions for the Republican National Committee from companies doing business in Alabama, who would be subject to his authority as Attorney General. His nomination had been blocked by a Democratic filibuster.

Displaying the usual sort of whining you hear from bullies who are faced with people ready to play by their rules, Bush pouted that

"A minority of Democratic senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist tactics to prevent him and other qualified nominees from receiving up-or-down votes. ... Their tactics are inconsistent with the Senate's constitutional responsibility and are hurting our judicial system."

But of course, such tactics are entirely in keeping with Senate rules, and they and a number of others were used regularly against judicial nominees offered by Bill Clinton.

The actual abuse here is by Bush. (Big surprise.) The authority to make recess appointments was intended to cover periods in which there might be an extended time before the Senate could act on a nomination. The recess in this case was one week, which certainly was not what anyone had in mind when the provision was written into the Constitution. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) called it "questionably legal and politically shabby."

But that of course didn't deter the Rethuglicans, who suggested in the wake of the appointment that there may be more to come.

The only upside is that a recess appointment is only valid until the end of the current session of Congress. So unless he's confirmed by the Senate, Pryor will have to leave the bench sometime in the fall of 2005. Judge Charles Pickering, the other recipient of Bush's largesse, will have to vacate the bench this fall.

Footnote: During the debate in the Judiciary Committee about Pryor, Democrats complained about a television campaign that smeared opponents of Pryor as anti-Catholic.

But Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and Mr. Pryor's principal supporter, called him "this solid Catholic individual" and said that his opposition to abortion, for example, in cases of rape and incest, was good Catholic doctrine. Therefore, he said, if someone is opposed for holding that position, "Are we not saying that good Catholics need not apply?"

No, what we're saying is that someone who by your own argument would base his judicial decisions on his religious beliefs is unfit for the bench. We are not - at least not yet - a theocracy.

Ya win some

In a victory - perhaps a short-lived one, but still a victory - for San Francisco and advocates of same-sex marriage, Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay declined to issue an injunction ordering the city to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He combined three suits on the matter - two against the city's practice and one by the city challenging a state law defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman - but did not announce who the presiding judge would be in the combined case and did not set a date for arguments.

San Francisco's city attorney, Dennis Herrera, said his city and county are "going on the offense" with their lawsuit. "Mayor Newsom took a bold step last week, and we fully agree with him that his position is justified."

Herrera said the city's case will assert that the state law banning same-sex marriage goes against California's constitution because it violates the equal protection and due process clauses.

President Bushleague, reveling in his new-found love of the word "troubled," said he felt that way about the terrible, terrible goings-on in the city by the bay. Interestingly, while his aides keep saying he's going to endorse a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, he hasn't done it yet. My suspicion is that they haven't calculated the political fallout - or perhaps they have and realize it's not going to be as potent a wedge issue as they hoped.

That is actually what I suspect, that is, that same-sex marriage is not going to be an effective hot-button issue for the GOPers. For one thing, while polls consistently indicate a clear majority of Americans oppose the idea, they also indicate that about 40%, give or take, approve it. That's a minority, but it's still a good chunk of people. And some of them are of a libertarian mind, people who would tend to lean Republican. Make this a big issue, you risk pushing some "small government" people away from you rather than toward you. You also risk making some people who still think of you as somehow "compassionate" uncomfortable: "Hey, I don't like the idea any more than you do. But, I dunno, this seems like going too far, y'know?"

Those risks are based on another point, an important one: There simply doesn't seem to be the passion about this that other wedge issues were generating at the time the Republicans abused them. Even after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision, even with the events in San Francisco, there doesn't seem to be any wave of fury sweeping the populace. The voices heard are the ones that have been heard all along. My impression is that overall, straight people in the US may not like the idea of same-sex marriage, they might even be downright against it. But unlike previous wedge issues like crime and affirmative action, they don't see it affecting them personally in any significant way, so they are unlikely to overlook other issues to cast their vote based on it.

I expect Bush will endorse the amendment as a means of shoring up his weakening right flank, but I don't think he's going to try to make a real issue of it. There's not going to be a same-sex version of Willie Horton.

I could be wrong, of course, I am often enough, and I do think the Democrats, if they're smart (making the bold assumption that "smart Democratic campaign" is not an oxymoron), will have something prepared for it, just in case, something that doesn't wimp out on the issue, which would probably be worse politically than an open endorsement of same-sex marriages.

Of course, I'd love to see such an open endorsement, but it ain't gonna happen this year. But I'm confident I will live to see it.

Footnote: Barney Frank, an openly gay member of Congress from Massachusetts, says he's "sorry to see the San Francisco thing go forward" because of an image of "lawlessness and civil disobedience."

Frank said he had hoped Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding the right of same-sex couples to marry would serve as a national model for orderly, legal protection of gay marriage.

"If we go forward in Massachusetts and get same-sex marriage on the books, it's going to be binding and incontestable," Frank said Tuesday.

Instead, Frank said, San Francisco's move promotes the notion that unpopular laws can be broken or ignored. ...

Newsom spokesman Peter Ragone praised Frank as a respected leader on gay rights issues but denied that the mayor's decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses promotes illegal behavior.

"We don't view this as breaking the law," Ragone said. "We view this as upholding the state's constitution, which explicitly prohibits any form of discrimination."

Aw, jeez. Has it really come down to this? Have we really become so limp, so domesticated, as a people?

Of course what San Francisco is doing is civil disobedience! It's civil disobedience in the truest sense and grandest tradition. The city officials are defying a law they believe to be wrong in pursuit of a higher law - in this case, the state constitution - and using their breaking of that unjust law as a means to mount a legal challenge to it.

C'mon, folks! John Peter Zenger! Henry David Thoreau! The underground railroad! The suffragists! Martin Luther King, Jr.! This kind of thing is, well, it's, it's, well, it's downright American! Props to Mayor Newsom and his administration!

Unintentional Humor Award Dept.: A few representatives of a wacko antigay group called "Repent America" were demonstrating outside San Francisco's City Hall. One of the participants said "We wanted to just uphold the laws that already existed, lock the door, keep them from marrying, stopping the spread of AIDS, stopping the spread of perversion."

Making the I think safe assumption that the "perversion" here is sex and noting that AIDS is an STD, just how does stopping gays and lesbians from getting married stop them from having sex?

It's a hard road ahead

The crisis in Haiti is worsening even as diplomatic efforts aimed at a settlement increase. As the Toronto Star reports

Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Scores of foreigners, including missionaries and aid workers, streamed out of Haiti yesterday to escape a two-week rebellion that has overwhelmed the impoverished country's north. Many police deserted their posts, and rebels threatened new attacks this weekend.

Later in the day, diplomats from Canada, the United States and other countries handed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide a plan that calls for an interim governing council to advise him, and for the appointment of a prime minister acceptable to the opposition.

There would appear to be a curious disconnect in these efforts in that while they treat the situation as if Aristide and his political opponents were the parties in control of events, that opposition insists it has neither a connection with nor influence over the armed thugs overrunning the northern half of the country.

However, it's likely the world community realizes that the thin denials of the opposition are hardly persuasive. Consider this quote from Saturday's New York Times:

"We are not allies," Mr. [Chavannes] Jean-Baptiste[, a leader the opposition,] said of the rebel soldiers. "We are on the same battlefield, we have the same opponent and the same objective but completely different methods."

Not exactly a ringing rejection of violent insurrection. Another clear clue, drawn from the same article, that the political opposition, even if it didn't originate the rebellion, is allying itself with it:

A burly former army captain known as Commander Ravix, who led the well-armed and apparently well-disciplined troops clad in camouflage into Hinche on Friday, said his troops were "not rebels, but representatives of the new Haitian army."

Jean-Baptiste echoed the term in defending the rebels, saying "at least the army doesn't fire on the people," thus according them a legitimacy that the term "rebel" does not.

That may also explain another aspect of the diplomatic efforts: Aristide is obviously not happy with the plan, which proposes to establish a multiparty cabinet with a prime minister agreeable to both him and the political opposition while allowing him to finish out his term as president. In fact, as the BBC reported on Friday,

at a ceremony to honour policemen who had died in the uprising, a combative President Aristide made it clear he did not intend to go quietly.

"I, too, am ready to die if that is what I must do to defend my country," said the president, who has survived three assassination attempts and a coup d'etat.

"If wars are expensive, peace can be even more expensive," he added.

Nonetheless, he has accepted it even after insisting he's defending democracy against "a band of terrorists." On the other hand, today's New York Times reports,

[d]espite hours of hard negotiating, the opposition refused to budge, insisting that Mr. Aristide must resign immediately. At one point during talks with a group of opposition leaders, one diplomat could be seen hammering the table with his fist. But the visiting diplomats evidently had few inducements to offer the opposition.

"The plan calls for us to build a government with Mr. Aristide, but that is not acceptable," said Rosemond Pradel, leader of one opposition group, who briefly left the talks in a luxury, hillside hotel.

Apparently, however, there were some second thoughts about seeming so rigid, as later Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell told reporters

"While we did not get a yes, we did not get a no, and they (the opposition) have agreed to revert to us with an answer by the close of business on Monday,"

says the Toronto Star, quoting wire service reports. Perhaps they, too, will ultimately decide that even if they're unhappy with the deal, it's the best thing going right now.

But even if an agreement is reached, what will that mean? If, as the opposition claims, it has no influence over the armed rebels, what will that change? Those troops of thugs - composed largely, the Miami Herald reports on February 20, "of former soldiers seeking revenge against Aristide for dissolving the military in 1995" - are the 900-pound gorilla in this who are unlikely to be moved by any rapprochement between Aristide and his weekend negotiating partners. In fact, the media, having pigeonholed the rebellion as some kind of spontaneous uprising against an unpopular president, has failed to take a critical look at the leadership that has emerged.

Last Saturday, Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain arrived in Gonaives, announcing their support for the insurgents. In the time since, Philippe has emerged as first among equals, declaring, the Times reported, that the forces of the Central Plateau were allying as the Haitian Liberation Front, with himself in command.

The Miami Herald piece contains one of the very few critical examinations of Philippe's record. He is accused by both Haitian and US officials as being a drug trafficker both during his time as police commissioner in Cap Haitien and later during his exile in the Dominican Republic. He has also been accused of involvement in several plots to overthrow the government, the first one an attempt to overthrow then-President Rene Preval in October of 2000. Subsequently, he was linked to a July 2001 attack on the Police Academy in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville and an attack by more than two dozen gunmen on the National Palace in Port-au-Prince on December 17, 2001. Furthermore,

last year he was briefly detained in the Dominican Republic for questioning about alleged meetings with former Haitian military officers to hatch a coup plot.

Throughout the spring of 2003, there was a string of attacks by mysterious gunmen around the Central Plateau - the area now occupied by Philippe's forces - that the government blamed on Philippe.

It was after the 2001 attack that he fled into exile in the Dominican Republic. There he was supposedly "under the guard of the Dominican authorities," who claimed they were looking for a third country to take him since the Dominican Republic had no extradition treaty with Haiti. (The link is to a translation of the original page, which in in French.) Apparently, they weren't watching him that closely any more because he seems to have gotten back into Haiti rather easily.

Chamblain, who arrived in Gonaives with a 20-member commando team, is for his part labeled by Amnesty International "a notorious perpetrator of human rights violations" who was apparently involved along with Philippe in the attacks in the Central Plateau, including the July, 2003 ambush of four employees of the Ministry of the Interior. Like Philippe, he fled into exile to avoid prosecution, but in his case it was in 1995. He was convicted in absentia of murder. The Herald notes that he was a "notoriously brutal leader of FRAPH, a paramilitary group that supported Haiti's 1991-1994 military dictatorship."

AI also notes that a third leader of the armed opposition,

Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune", is also a former paramilitary leader who was sentenced to forced labour for life for participation in the 1994 Raboteau massacre.

These people are not democrats and are not interested in political power-sharing. On Friday, the Times quoted Philippe as having

told reporters in Gonaives that he and his 300 men were planning an assault on Port-au-Prince.

"If Aristide doesn't leave, we will march on the capital," Mr. Philippe said on Radio Vision 2000.

The first part of any agreement reached in Port-au-Prince, assuming that the opposition is being even halfway truthful about its lack of support for the violence of the insurrection, would have to be a common stand denouncing it and demanding it stop. The second act would have to be a common stand by the international community that if those who are attempting to return to the days of dictatorship and bloodbath ignore that call, they will stand literally alone.

The third thing would be for that same international community, if by some miracle this gets pulled off, to stand with Haiti and commit real resources, real money, real time, to helping that shattered society rebuild not only its economy but its institutions.

Writing in the New York Times on February 19, James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND and Bill Clinton's special envoy for Haiti from 1994 to 1996, claims much for Clinton, saying he "strongly supported the ousted president, sending 20,000 troops in 1994 to restore him to power." Which is true. But, as I mentioned on February 9, that was "only after making so many promises to, and compromises with, the Clinton administration that it became impossible for him to fulfill any of the promises he'd made to the poor of Haiti to improve their lot." And afterwards, the US largely turned its back on Haiti, leaving it to fend for itself. And, as Dobbins says,

[t]he current administration ... cut off all American assistance to the Aristide government while giving advice and moral support to Mr. Aristide's opponents.

In that sort of vascillating among shows of force, indifference, and hostility, which has left Haiti a land of, if it's possible, deeper poverty and greater despair because of the fall from higher hopes, can be found by far the deepest and strongest roots of the current crisis. It must not be allowed to continue.

Other previous posts on Haiti were on February 12 and February 15.

Right hand, meet left hand; I thought you two should get to know each other

Oh, me. From the New York Times, February 21.

The most active terrorist network inside Iraq appears to be operating mostly apart from Al Qaeda, senior American officials say.

Most significantly, the officials said, American intelligence had picked up signs that Qaeda members outside Iraq had refused a request from the group, Ansar al-Islam, for help in attacking Shiite Muslims in Iraq. ...

American intelligence officials continue to describe Ansar, which has many foreign members, as the most dangerous terrorist network operating in Iraq.

By contrast, the evidence since the war began of operations inside Iraq by Al Qaeda has been limited and generally inconclusive, American officials say.

From Reuters, February 22.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, flying to Kuwait on Sunday on a previously unannounced trip to the Gulf, blamed al Qaeda guerrillas for violence in Iraq.

"They clearly are involved and active," Rumsfeld told reporters during a refueling stop in Ireland....

Is there any remaining basis for suggesting these people have a single clue about what they're doing?

Footnote: Just a reminder: The prewar presence in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Ansar al-Islam who Colin Powell called "an associate of and collaborator with" Osama bin Laden, was the White House's primary basis for suggesting a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda - a sort of Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance deal. Now they're reduced to saying that the request for help is, in the words of an unidentified official, a sign of "emerging links" between Ansar and al-Qaeda, effectively admitting to yet another lie.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Standard Oil (of New Jersey)?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fill 'Er Up for $2000

Gulf Oil goes back to the famous oil find at Spindletop in this state in 1901.

TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
Greek and Roman Mythology

Copywrong

We've been down this road before; I expect the ultimate result will be the same, but it does show how corporations learn lessons for each new battle.

Los Angeles (Reuters, February 20) - A federal court has ruled that privately held 321 Studios must stop making software that allows users to copy DVDs, handing Hollywood's major movie studios a victory in their ongoing battle against copyright piracy. ...

The case had tested the limits of 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects copyright holders from illegal copying of movies, music, books and TV shows, among other creative content.

321 Studios had argued its software protected DVD owners because it gave them the ability to make copies in case their original DVDs were destroyed and the company claimed the DMCA allowed the copying DVDs if copies were designed for the sole use of the owners.

The studios had countered that 321's software circumvented special software encryption codes that protected the DVDs from being copied and therefore violated the DMCA.

This same fight has occurred on various fronts over the last years, most notably in the cases of computer software and videotapes. In each case, the producers' argument has been the same: pirated copies cost them money. In each case, the figures offered - $3 billion a year in the case of videotapes - have been grossly inflated because they assume that every pirated copy is a lost sale. That is, if there are, let's say, 10,000 pirated copies of Raiders of the Lost Ark floating around out there they're assuming that every one of those 10,000 people would have purchased a copy at full retail price if the pirated copy hadn't been available - which is absurd on its face.

Nonetheless, such piracy did undoubtedly cost them bucks. So they tried various routes and ruses to prevent people from making copies - and just as repeatedly failed. Particularly in the case of software, they were frustrated by the fact that people had the legal right to make backup copies - so if means to defeat copy protection were found, the companies had little basis to object because it only allowed people to do what they had a right to do.

Ultimately, the companies pretty much gave up and instead did what some pirates themselves said they had to do to undermine piracy: lowered their prices or, in some cases, kept them the same over time, in effect lowering them in comparison to the price of other items. (Which they certainly could afford to do: When CDs were first coming onto the market, a lot of people complained that they usually cost as much as twice what a cassette or a record - a what? - of the same music did, even though the production costs were actually lower.)

In the case of the DMCA, however, if I understand it correctly - and I'm sure someone here will correct me if I'm wrong - it has become illegal to evade a copy-protection scheme, overriding any remaining rights you have to make backups for your own protection. It was that provision the 321 Studios ran afoul of.

There is a bit of slimy legal trickery going on here, which many people don't know about. You can find it buried in the small print of some of the contracts you supposedly agree to by using software and sometimes find it in fine print on DVD cover sheets. Under this view of law, when you buy that software or that DVD you don't actually own it. That physical disc you hold in your hands isn't yours. It still belongs to the producing company. What you have purchased is the right to use that software or right to view that DVD and the item itself is merely the means by which the production company enables you to do that. So you have no right to make any copy of it - because it's not yours in the first place.

That was the lesson learned between the software battles and now. The issue, now as then, frankly is more than money: To something like the entertainment industry, the actual amounts lost to piracy are little more than chump change. The bigger issue is control. That's what terrified them about bootleg software, about Napster, about overriding DVD protections: losing control. Control means power and power means money - yes, it does come back to money - but power also means power. I believe the notion of having and using power for its own sake is an aspect of corporate behavior which we who resist it have failed to consider adequately.

Ultimately, however, I think the studios will fail here as they have failed before. Someone will post code to override DVD copy protections (in fact, I bet someone already has). It will spread sub rosa with the studios constantly playing catch-up, suing or threatening to sue providers and trying to track down individuals as they did with file-sharing. By such means they can limit bootlegging, but they won't stop it. In fact, they'll likely have less success here than with file-sharing because there they could attack the continuing transmission of a large number of files whereas here they'll be trying to chase down one. (Because of their sheer size, the internet distribution of full-length DVDs simply does not for at least the near future rise to the level of probability - or, for that matter, possibility - that distribution of individual songs does, so the concern is over the distribution of physical as opposed to digital copies. Once you have the protection-busting software, you no longer need a web connection to burn copies.)

Obviously, I've addressed here only one part of the issues raised by the DMCA and that in a rather jumbled way. I want to make clear that I'm not indifferent to the problems facing the creators of works who have seen their work ripped off for the use of others. I have been in that position both as a writer and a photographer (although I admit that in neither case was I financially injured, just pissed off). I do support copyright laws. But the fact is that movie studios, frankly, do not actually create movies; writers, actors, technicians, f/x people, directors, and all the rest do. Studios are the ones that bring them together to accomplish that end, but the corporation is not the creative force. In cases like the one brought against 321 Studios, it's not the artistic creator who's being harmed by bootlegging, it's the corporation distributing that work.

So let's be honest about who's actually being protected here.

Update February 24: "In fact, I bet someone already has." Yup. 321 Studios has announced that it will market a revamped version of its product without the protection-busting features, noting as it did that such software was already widely available on the internet, often for free.

Ironically for the industry, removing the copy-busting also removed a feature that labeled a copy of a DVD made with the product as a copy and prevented more than one copy from being made.

Frontiers of free enterprise

The New York Times reports that federal officials have already uncovered people marketing fraudulent versions of the drug discount cards approved under the Medicare deform law passed some weeks ago. (Previous posts about the law: One from November 24 and these three posts from December 1.)

In some parts of the country, people have gone door to door offering "Medicare approved" cards, though none have been approved and enrollment does not begin until May, federal health officials said. ...

Valeria Allen, an insurance specialist at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, "Someone is fraudulently impersonating or misrepresenting Medicare by telephone and by door-to-door visits to beneficiaries' homes, to discuss the Medicare discount drug program and to obtain personal identifying information from beneficiaries."

Seems to me these are just entrepreneurs whose activities are entirely in keeping with the spirit that drove the legislation in the first place. By the way: Have you told AARP you're not renewing (or joining) yet?

Jeopardy!

This slipped by yesterday, so there will be two today (Saturday)

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Texaco?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fill 'Er Up for $1200

Esso stood for S.O., which stood for this.

An important thing to know

Thom Hartmann is the author of a book called Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. I haven't read it so I make no recommendation about it (although I do find the title intriguing), but the basic premise is noteworthy.

Much of the dominance corporations have been able to achieve over the last several decades has drawn on the idea that they are "legal persons" and thus have the same rights of free speech, the same ability to make political contributions, and so on, that actual people do. Combine an equality of rights with an enormous imbalance in resources and you get what we've got.

The "legal persons" doctrine supposedly arose from Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, a tax case the Supreme Court decided in 1886. However, Hartmann has learned that nowhere in the actual decision did the Court rule that "corporations are persons!" The phrase actually occurs in the summary written by a court reporter of the arguments presented in the case.

What apparently happened, based on letters reproduced on Hartmann's site, is that before arguments began, the Court said it didn't want to hear about whether or not the 14th Amendment applied to "corporations such as are parties in these suits" because the Court felt that it did. Court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis asked if that should be included in his summary of the case. In reply, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite said it didn't really matter one way or the other "as we avoided meeting the constitutional questions in the decision." Davis chose to include it and on that was built an entire edifice of corporate-friendly decisions.

There are two important points here: One, already made, is that the Court never actually ruled on the issue of corporate personhood, indeed, it "avoided meeting the question." And two, the Court's opinion that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations need only mean that they are entitled to due process - not that they have all the rights of human beings.

Any legal challenge based on this, of course, would be a long, long shot. Corporations are just too powerful and too much a part of our political and economic establishment for it to be otherwise at the present time. But every change started out as a long shot, and it's important for us to keep in mind the illegitimacy of "corporate personhood."