By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
September 18, 2004, 2:13 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
See a book on Amazon, reserve it at your library (part 2): On this
rainy morning, I worked
out the LibraryLookup bookmarklet
for the statewide Providence Public Library catalog search
and
drove
downtown
to
blog it.
-- What it does: Drag this link -- PPL -- to
your personal link toolbar (the one with Home, Bookmarks, etc.).
-- Click it when
you're at the page of a book that interests
you at
Amazon.com and other online booksellers, and it will open a separate window
to the book's page at the Providence Public Library.
--
Here you can see whether
it's on the shelf, you can log in and request it, or just add it to your
personal list of books you want to read sometime.
Here's an
example of what will happen if you click that bookmarklet while you're
at on a book's
page at an online retailer.
Jon says it works at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, isbn.nu, All
Consuming. It also works for me at Powell's and
Booksense.
(Please scroll down to or open a
new window with yesterday's Part 1 for the background.)
Or, you can do this manually: (Nearly?) every commercially published
book has a number, an ISBN ('International Standard Book Number'). If an online
page
has
an ISBN
on it,
you can feed that
number into your library's catalog search and find it in your local library.
For the Providence Public Library catalog, this is the base URL for an ISBN
search: http://pac.provlib.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=
followed by an ISBN number. This is the ISBN number for The 9/11 Commission
Report: 0393326713
This is the url for that search:
http://pac.provlib.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0393326713
Retrace my steps: Jon Udell's LibraryLookup bookmarklet reads the isbn
number off a web page, inserts it into this lookup, and makes it pop up as
a separate
page.
If you use his
form, the base URL is http://pac.provlib.org
In the bookmarklet I made, I abbreviated the name of the library to PPL --
I didn't want the whole name taking up space on my toolbar.
Choose the radio button for iPAC.
For Providence, and several other systems, after you save the bookmarklet,
you need to go into your bookmark manager, and edit/rename the ISBN term in
the
url
to
ISBNEX.
Save,
and it should
work
for you, too.
Updated 9.20.04 to
add the browser's top menu items to the library window that opens; this lets
your form manager save your library card number.
Link
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September 17, 2004, 6:15 p.m.
See a book on Amazon, reserve it at your library: I'm always seeing books
online I want to read, but when I'm actually at the library, I can't remember
any
of the titles. Now, thanks to Jon Udell, the books I see online can
be waiting for me when I get to the library.
Jon's LibraryLookup is extremely cool.
Here's how it works, once you have it set up:
--You see a book online you want to read, and the book's ISBN number is on
the page. (Jon says it works at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, isbn.nu, All
Consuming and possibly more sites.)
-- You click on a 'bookmarklet' (a little bit of Javascript) that you've
dragged to your browser's link toolbar (that's the one with Home, Bookmarks,
etc.
on
it).
-- The bookmarklet will invoke your library's lookup service, feed it the
ISBN, and pop up a new window with the result.
-- From there you can reserve the book, request it from another branch or
just put it on your list, which you can access while you're in the library.
(At
this point you'll have to enter your library card number, of course.)
If your library is not on Jon's list, but uses a software vendor he's tested
it on, there are instructions
for making your own bookmarklet, and a page on
which to test it. (It's a little geeky, but power users who could edit a bookmark
on their own systems can do this.)
Unfortunately, it's late Friday and I have a family birthday dinner to go
to. So I don't have my bookmarklet completely working yet. I did make a bookmarklet
that opens the library system page, but I'll need to tweak it
to go directly to the ISBN search.
Perhaps over the weekend I -- or you -- can finish the tweak and share it
next week.
To get you started: The Providence Public Library is part of the statewide
CLAN (Cooperating
Libraries Automated Network ) system, which uses the iPAC system (one of the
vendor systems the bookmarklet works with). As Jon says,
If you want to make your own, the gateway URL for the library's Horizon Information
Portal is http://www.provlib.org/librarycatalog.htm.
From here, you pick a branch and go. You'll be
at the Home tab, with the Search tab and My Account tabs showing. Click on
Search,
then
on Advanced
to
see the
screen with the ISBN form as one of the options.
If you're elsewhere, play with it. If you get it working, let me know and
we'll compile a list. Let Jon know too, for his list.
I tried it on the Amazon page for The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) : A Citizen's Guide
to Democracy Inaction. It opened the library's page, and I reserved the
book, which won't be published until Monday. I'm now Number 7 on the reserve
list. Five copies are listed as being on order (none of them at Providence
branches, oddly), so I'll be in the second wave of readers.
(To reserve a book, or look up your account, you'll have to enter your library
card number, of course.)
More Monday.
Link
to this item | Comment
What She Said! is compiling "The Mother of All BLOGROLLS" -- blogs
by women.
Nominally, these are the filters for a spot on the blogroll:
- the blog is by a woman or group including women
- they cover liberal politics at least part time, and
- they have a feminist slant- pro-choice, size acceptance, pay equity,
etc.
But I see a few very conservative bloggers on there too.
Link
to this item | Comment
Polls no longer reflect reality: CNN:
Latest presidential polls vary widely: Gallup, Pew Research polls get different
results. This is the sort of story that drives Jon Stewart nuts.
CNN reports that Gallup polls showed Bush leading over Kerry by 13 points
over Kerry with likely voters, by 8 points with registered voters, while Harris
and Pew show the race is a dead heat, with both candidates even.
End of story. You and I are left to wonder why.
Breslin
sees the light on polling: Jimmy Breslin in the N.Y. Daily News Newsday:
Anybody who believes these national political polls are giving you facts is
a gullible fool.
Any editors of newspapers or television news shows who use poll results as
a story are beyond gullible. On behalf of the public they profess to serve,
they are indolent salesmen of falsehoods.
This is because these political polls are done by telephone. Land-line telephones,
as your house phone is called.
The telephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million
cell phones being used in America today - 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according
to the cell phone institute in Washington.
There is no way to poll cell phone users, so it isn't done.
Not one cell phone user has received a call on their cell phone asking them
how they plan to vote as of today.
...If you do a political poll on land-line phones, you miss those from 18
to 25, and there are figures all over the place that show there are 40 million
between the ages of 18 and 29, one in five eligible voters.
And the great page-one presidential polls don't come close to reflecting how
these younger voters say they might vote. The majority of them use cell phones
and nobody ever asks them anything....
Older people complain about Kerry's performance as a candidate. Younger
people don't want to get shot at in a war that most believe, and firmly,
never should
have started...
Think about it: Who's home during the day to answer the landline?
So the polling companies are basically faking it until Internet access is
as pervasive as landlines used to be, and polls can again reflect the views
of a representative sample of the population.
And newspapers are wasting their limited newsholes, and coveted Page One space,
reporting nonsense poll results.
Link
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Insaniquarium: Addictive weekend game. You can play it online, and download
it while you're playing it.
With the downloaded version, you get a free trial
of one hour of playing time. Unfortunately, I paused the game when the phone
rang, got involved in something else and when I got back the trial was over.
Link
to this item | Comment
September 16, 2004, 6:50 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
I read the news today oh, boy...: These are the headlines from a
world that no longer seems run by wise, prudent grownups. I would like to suggest
we try to assemble a Coalition of the Peaceful to try again.
Report: U.S. Intelligence Pessimistic on Iraq Future: Reuters,
U.S. intelligence officials prepared a report for President Bush in late July
presenting a gloomy outlook for Iraq, saying that at worst the country might
descend into civil war, The New York Times said on Thursday.
Citing government officials, the newspaper said the classified National
Intelligence Estimate outlines three possible outcomes for Iraq through the
end of 2005.
The worst would be developments that could lead to civil war, and the best
would be an Iraq with tenuous stability in political, economic and security
terms....
Press
Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says :
NEW YORK (UPI) Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq
and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited
by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International.
Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but
a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.
The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq.
The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and
Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according
to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations.
Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Vietnam War-era defense secretary says US got it wrong in Iraq:
ROME (AFP) - Former US defense secretary Robert McNamara, a key hawk in the
Vietnam War, said as he got married here that the United States had got it
wrong in Iraq (news - web sites).
"They made a mistake," McNamara said in remarks carried in Italian
by the Italian news agency ANSA from Assisi, where he was getting married.
Without naming US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) and his administration,
he said that "it's a terrible problem and I don't know how it will end."
McNamara was the secretary of defense from 1961-68 under presidents John
Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but has since publicly regretted his hawkish
role in the
Vietnam conflict.
Now 88, he married 70-year-old Diana Masieri at a private ceremony in the
Italian city. The couple met four years ago....
GIs
claim threat by Army: Soldiers say they were told to re-enlist or face
deployment
to Iraq. Rocky Mountain News:
COLORADO SPRINGS - Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been
issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other
units expected to deploy to Iraq.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with
that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday,
said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Link
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Rather well done: Doc Searls is
the first blogger I read every morning. Today he
led with a
good bit of sense:
I got slammed in an email this morning that essentially called me chicken(****)
for not piling onto Dan Rather and CBS for whatever it was they did (and
continue to do) wrong.
Well, folks, it's not that I don't care. Or that I don't know anything.
It's that I don't know enough, and I'm busy doing my job, which isn't blogging....
Blogging isn't cable TV. We don't have to fill otherwise empty pipes with "content," and
we don't have to hold eyeballs still while our customers stab them with advertising
messages. Most of all, we don't have to join the ranks of the professionally
opinionated, or the choirs of voices raised in righteous rage against political
enemies.
A journalist's loyalty is to the ongoing truth of the story as it develops,
whatever that may turn out to be.
I've seen very little of that in the blogosphere this week. I've seen a lot
of whoops based on ignorant assumptions that were just plain wrong. ("Typewriters
couldn't do that then" about things I did with typewriters then.)
Certainty based on nothing doesn't affect the truth of what happened one
bit and is worthless.
This
developing story brought a witness forward, Marian Carr Knox, secretary to
Lt. Col. Killian in the '70s, a witness who knows what happened then, who says
the memos reflect the reality she saw, but she does not know how that particular
set of memos came to be. The tale of the memos themselves -- where
they
came from, who typed them, who held them, who turned them loose -- is now
a sidebar to that story.
My respect for Dan Rather grows: His loyalty is to the truth of the story.
Whether Killian typed a set of CYA memos himself, whether someone recreated
them because the truth they told was about to be trashed, whether the originals
can be found -- it will be investigated, and the truth will eventually come
out. And Rather will report it, like the pro he is.
Stuart Carlson
nails the blogosphere.
Marian Carr Knox, Lt. Col. Killian's secretary, on CBS' 60 Minutes - at
CBS - QuickTime
video.
Judge
Orders U.S. to Find Bush Records
Ex-Guardsman:
Probe Gaps in Bush Service: AP
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A former Texas Air National Guard official who served
at the same time as President Bush says he believes the bigger story about
gaps in Bush's service is being overlooked in disputes over the validity of
certain Guard documents.
"I think the public ought to be concerned about his preferential treatment
getting in and whether he satisfied his commitment to the Air Guard. Those
are the two fundamental questions," said Robert Strong, the administrative
officer in charge of air operations at Guard state headquarters from early
1971 until March 1972....
..."Why aren't we focusing on the content?" Strong said, adding
that he
believes there are holes in Bush's official Guard record.
"The White House has just got to be thrilled to death that everybody's
tormenting about subscripts and superscripts," he said, referring to
the several days of debate among experts about whether the memos were forgeries
generated on a computer instead or if a typewriter common in the 1970s was
used...
Footnote: me. To my surprise, I was part of a footnote to
Doc's item:
Bonus links #s 2, 3 and 4s: Jay
Rosen's Pressthink, Sheila
Lennon's Shenews and Terry Heaton's Lost
Remote and POMO blog. Always. Plus all the others who
feel slighted not to have made that very short list.
I'm honored to be on that list. Doc's respect has value way beyond all the
trophies you can store in the closet.
Link
to this item | Comment
News happening here: My colleague Tim Barmann has been writing a national
story that's getting buried in the back of the business section here.
Here's the first one: Microsoft
defends patent suit in R.I.: Arendi
USA claims that its patent covers the technology behind the SmartTags feature
found in
Microsoft's Office XP products.
PROVIDENCE -- Computer software giant Microsoft Corp. is in U.S. District
Court here to defend itself against a claim of patent infringement.
Arendi USA, a software company with an office in Providence, contends that
some of the technology found in Microsoft's Office XP products infringes on
a patent that Arendi was granted in 2001.
At issue is a feature found in Word, Excel and other Microsoft programs called
SmartTags. SmartTags, among other things, provides a shortcut for automatically
inserting someone's address while creating a document.
For example, while writing a letter in Word XP, a user types in a person's
first and last name. Word automatically underlines the name, and offers the
option of looking it up in the user's address book stored in Outlook, another
Microsoft program that manages names and addresses. If the name is found, the
feature lets the user insert the address with a mouse click. If it's not found,
a user can then add it to the Outlook address book.
Arendi claims that its three-year-old patent covers the technology behind
SmartTags.
The company, founded in Norway, launched a product called OneButton Contact
Manager, which is described on some Internet shareware sites as being able
to find, correct and store names and addresses with one button.
Arendi filed for a patent on its OneButton technology in Norway in September
1998 and in the United States in November 1998. Patent number 6,323,853 was
granted by the U.S. Patent Office in November 2001.
Lawyers for both Microsoft and Arendi presented opening arguments yesterday
before a jury of five men and three women before Chief U.S. District Judge
Ernest C. Torres....
Today: PC
jargon dominates patent trial: A Providence jury hears all about
the "Smart Tag" technology
at the center of the lawsuit filed against Microsoft.
PROVIDENCE -- Jurors for the Microsoft patent-lawsuit trial in U.S. District
Court got an earful of computer jargon yesterday.
They heard lawyers and an expert witness bandy about arcane terms such as "compiler," "source
code" and "dynamic-link libraries."
The four-man, four-woman panel is being asked to decide whether Microsoft
Corp.'s popular line of Office products, including Word and Excel, infringe
on a patent held by a small, Cayman Islands software company....
Link
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September 15, 2004, 7:05 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
What specific questions would you ask the presidential candidates? We're still
compiling them. Please send your questions to lennon@projo.com with
the subject "Questions." And please, no "gotcha" questions.
The point is to make informed decisions.
Where Bush and Kerry stand on the issues: Here are some links to help
you frame your questions::
Slate has compliled a list
of sites at which you may compare the presidential
candidates' stands on the issues:
Candidate Scorecard
Council on Foreign Relations
DemocracyNet
Global Stewards political scorecards
President Match
SelectSmart
Vote by Issue quiz
Project Vote Smart
News organizations have such sections, too:
CNN
Fox
USA Today
ABC
CBS
has a portal of staff resources and links to outside websites
MSNBC: Bush vs. Kerry
at a glance
Reuters: FACTBOX-Key
Campaign Positions of Bush and Kerry
Also:
On the Issues
Politics1's links at the bottom of its homepage.
Link
to this item | Comment
It's Worse Than
You Think...: Christopher Albritton, former AP and N.Y. Daily News
reporter, has been reporting independently from Iraq, backed by readers'
donations to his blog, Back
to Iraq. He's on his third trip back, and yesterday he reported,
I don’t know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here
some days. Yesterday was horrible — just horrible. While most reports
show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as “no-go” areas, practically
the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with
pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents
move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.
I wish I could point to a solution, but I don’t see one. People continue
to email me, telling me to report the “truth” of all the good
things that are going on in Iraq. I’m not seeing a one. A buddy of
mine is stationed here and they’re fixing up a park on a major street.
Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this
to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn’t
care less. They don’t want city beautification projects; they want
electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence.
And in the midst of all this violence, most of the Iraqi Interim Government
is out of town. Security Advisors, heads of important ministries and the
chief of the new Mukhabarat are all mysteriously absent. The Iraqi security
forces are a joke, with the much talked about Fallujah Brigade disbanded
for being feckless and — worse — riddled with insurgents who
were being paid and trained by the U.S. Marines.
Thousands of Iraqis are desperate to get a new passport and flee the country.
These are often the most educated Iraqis — the have the money to get
new passports and travel — so the brain-drain will accelerate.
The poor and the disenfranchised are finding their leaders in the populist
and fundamentalist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr or in the radical
Islam of the jihadis, who are casting a long shadow on this formerly secular
country. Iraq has its own home-grown Wahhabists now, something it didn’t
have 18 months ago.
In the context of all this, reporting on a half-assed refurbished school
or two seems a bit childish and naive, the equivalent of telling a happy
story to comfort a scared child. Anyone who asks me to tell the “real” story
of Iraq — implying all the bad things are just media hype — should
refer to this post. I just told you the real story: What was once a hell
wrought by Saddam is now one of America’s making.
Nobody wants this.
Link
to this item | Comment
Stand
up to Putin: A powerful column in the WaPo by Robert Kagan:
Vladimir Putin, the aspiring dictator of Russia, has forced President Bush
to reveal how committed he really is to the cause of democracy around the world.
Putin's decision on Monday to end the system of direct popular election of
Russia's governors, and to have the Russian parliament elected on the basis
of slates chosen by national party leaders he mostly controls, is an unambiguous
step toward tyranny in Russia. It cannot be justified as part of the war on
terrorism. Putin has had these plans ready for months. He is cynically using
the horrific terrorist attack in Beslan as his excuse.
Nor is there any complexity or fuzziness about the significance of Putin's
actions. Putin is imposing dictatorship the old-fashioned way, in the manner
of a Ferdinand Marcos, an Anastasio Somoza or a Park Chung Hee. He claims that
he needs to strengthen the state to face its enemies. So did they. Russia does
need to fight terrorism. But eliminating elections and quashing Putin's political
opponents has nothing to do with that fight.
The question now: Does President Bush care about the fate of democracy in
Russia? Ever since Sept. 11 he has proclaimed a grand strategy of promoting
democracy worldwide. He has rightly made this his goal in Iraq, and despite
the faulty performance of his Pentagon advisers, it remains his primary objective.
Bush has also trumpeted plans for promoting democracy in the greater Middle
East. And again, despite sometimes less than impressive practical efforts to
meet the lofty rhetoric, this has been a worthy and important goal. In Afghanistan
more than 10 million people have registered to vote in the Oct. 9 presidential
elections, a stunning and unexpected success. ...
And, a bit further down,
...A great deal is riding on whether President Bush can muster the will
to denounce the man he has regarded as an ally in the war on terrorism. Some
will
argue,
and Bush may feel, that Putin is "with us." But now Bush needs to
make a different calculation. Putin is not really "with us." With
Russians confronting vicious terrorists, Putin is consolidating his own power.
How, exactly, does that help us win the war on terrorism?
In fact, it will hurt. Failure to take sides with democratic forces in Russia
will cast doubt on Bush's commitment to worldwide democracy. A White House
official commented to the New York Times that Putin's actions are "a domestic
matter for the Russian people." Really? If so, then the same holds for
all other peoples whose rights are taken away by tyrants. If the Bush administration
holds to that line, then those hostile to democracy in the Middle East will
point to the glaring U.S. double standard; those who favor democracy in the
Middle East will be discredited. That will be a severe blow to what Bush
regards as a central element of his war on terrorism. ...
It's important stuff.
Today, President Bush inserted a paragraph about Russia today during a
speechat the Hispanic Heritage Month Concert and Reception. Here it is:
You know, recently I talked to President Putin of Russia. I told him this
country mourns the loss of life as a result of the terrorist attacks, the terrorist
attack on the school. I told him we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in
fighting terror, that we abhor men who kill innocent children to try to achieve
a dark vision. I'm also concerned about the decisions that are being made in
Russia that could undermine democracy in Russia; that great countries, great
democracies have a balance of power between central government and local governments,
a balance of power within central governments between the executive branch
and the legislative branch and the judicial branch. As governments fight the
enemies of democracy, they must uphold the principles of democracy.
Reuters has background: Bush
Urges Putin Uphold Russian Democracy.
Link
to this item | Comment
100
Photographs that Changed the World at The
Digital Journalist.
They were all in Life Magazine.
Link
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One city, two mayors, and some very clean streets ... : Driving home
last night, I caught a delightful story on NPR's Marketplace by
Dan Grech about San Luis, Argentina -- a town with two mayors, two sets of
streetsweepers
(patronage jobs), two sets of watchdogs making sure there's no corruption.
And it's thriving.
Here's the blurb for the
audio, and a photo of the mayors.:
Imagine, for a moment, a city so divided that there were two mayors - two
different police forces - two sets of rules - two separate budgets. Sounds
unmanageable to say the least, but it can be done. Albeit in a somewhat smaller
setting... and with a high tolerance for friction. Visit San Luis, an Argentine
town about the size of Savannah, Georgia. Marketplace Americas Desk reporter
Dan Grech did just that.
Link
to this item | Comment
September 14, 2004, 6:33 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
What specific questions would you ask the presidential
candidates? (Here's the
permalink for this long item)
Reader Sandra Lafond of Wethersfield, Conn., writes,
In the past weeks I've listened to and read more about Viet Nam than the
actual issues of this election. I do not care what happened concerning Kerry
or
Bush during that period of time - What will they do for me if elected?????
Neither one of the candidates is addressing this and it seems like the
majority of the voters are being completely taken in by this ploy. Is it
just a few
of us or is something extremely important being overlooked here?
It began with Swift Boat Veterans (background at
philly.com), whose attacks worked, driving down Kerry's poll numbers. From
there, pick your favorite campaign theory. Diversion?
But we citizens can try to divert the campaigns back to issues we care about.
What do we want to know?
Below, I've tried to highlight some of the latest news on major issues, to
help frame the questions. Among us,
we can come up with questions about issues we actually care about. We'll send
them to both campaigns.
In general, I'm avoiding social issues here, because many derive from personal
religious beliefs that a
secular democracy will not -- and indeed, need not -- agree on. Beyond that,
bring on your issues.
Please send your questions to lennon@projo.com with
the subject "Questions." And please, no "gotcha" questions. The point is to
make informed decisions.
The nature of TV news is to give isolated sound bytes, so I think the debates
are going to be the first chance to see their policies side by side in person.
The first debate is Thursday, Sept. 30 in Miami at 9 p.m., hosted by Jim Lehrer
of PBS. We'll send him our questions, too.
For now, several news organizations have tried to sort out their differences:
MSNBC: Bush vs. Kerry at a glance, updated Sept. 10
Reuters: FACTBOX-Key
Campaign Positions of Bush and Kerry, Sept. 5
Reuters Television offers “Head2Head,” --
"video clips of the key sound-bites from both candidates’ campaigns" --
but it won't open in my Mozilla browser.
Comparisons on specific issues are dribbling out:
On the environment, from
Scripps Howard:
Election
2004: Kyoto, global warming split candidates:
...Bush: Promised in the 2000 presidential campaign that if elected
he would curb power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse
gas responsible
for global warming. He backed off that pledge shortly after taking office
and withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, the international
climate-change
treaty.
Bush unveiled a plan in 2002 to encourage U.S. industry to voluntarily restrain
the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions. The administration has earmarked $4
billion for climate research, including the development of a Global Earth Observation
System. A recent White House report to Congress on climate change acknowledges
that human activity is causing global warming.
Kerry: Has a long history of participating in international climate negotiations
and championing action to address global warming. He says it is no longer possible
at this late date for the United States to meet the timetables of the Kyoto
Protocol, which requires developed nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
to 1990 levels by 2012. He advocates renegotiating the treaty and reasserting
U.S. leadership on the issue.
Kerry's energy plan includes proposals that would reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions, including raising the average fuel economy standard for cars and
trucks to
36 mpg by 2015 and requiring power plants to generate 20 percent of the electricity
they produce from renewable energy by 2020....
Action
Now Can Avert Climatic Disaster, Says Blair; Blair
to urge US to take tougher action on global warming
Spending: Today, from The Washington
Post's Mike Allen: $3
Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda:
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention
was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely
to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.
A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger,
John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the
Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new
tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses
that of the Kerry plan.
Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the
end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion
over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes
in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll
taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming
decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated.
For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize
Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month,
but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Ironically, however, the Bush administration then went on to invade Iraq
for no good reason, where Americans faced the kind of wearing guerrilla war
they had avoided in Afghanistan....
Question for Mr. Bush: If my daughter's investments of her Social Security
payroll taxes turn out badly, what will happen to her in her old age?
September
11 and Its Aftermath: Speaking of Iraq, the most illuminating
writing I've seen about what's really going on there comes from University
of Michigan history professor Juan Cole's Informed
Comment.
...Al-Qaeda wanted to build enthusiasm for the Islamic superstate among
the Muslim populace, to convince ordinary Muslims that the US could be defeated
and they did not have to accept the small, largely secular, and powerless
Middle Eastern states erected in the wake of colonialism. Jordan's population,
e.g. is 5.6 million. Tunisia, a former French colony, is 10 million, less
than Michigan. Most Muslims have been convinced of the naturalness of the
nation-state model and are proud of their new nations, however small and
weak. Bin Laden had to do a big demonstration project to convince them that
another model is possible.
Bin Laden hoped the US would timidly withdraw from the Middle East. But
he appears to have been aware that an aggressive US response to 9/11 was
entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan B: al-Qaeda hoped to draw
the US into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan and do to the US
military what they had earlier done to the Soviets. Al-Zawahiri's recent
message shows that he still has faith in that strategy.
The US cleverly outfoxed al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, using air power and local
Afghan allies (the Northern Alliance) to destroy the Taliban without many
American boots on the ground.
Al-Qaeda has succeeded in several of its main goals. It had been trying
to convince Muslims that the United States wanted to invade Muslim lands,
humiliate Muslim men, and rape Muslim women. Most Muslims found this charge
hard to accept. The Bush administration's Iraq invasion, along with the Abu
Ghuraib prison torture scandal, was perceived by many Muslims to validate
Bin Laden's wisdom and foresightedness.
After the Iraq War, Bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush even in
a significantly secular Muslim country such as Turkey. This is a bizarre
finding, a weird turn of events. Turks didn't start out with such an attitude.
It grew up in reaction against US policies.
It remains to be seen whether the US will be forced out of Iraq the way
it was forced out of Iran in 1979. If so, as al-Zawahiri says, that will
be a huge victory. A recent opinion poll did find that over 80 percent of
Iraqis want an Islamic state. If Iraq goes Islamist, that will be the biggest
victory the movement has had since the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
An Islamist Iraq might well be able ultimately to form a joint state with
Syria, starting the process of the formation of the Islamic superstate of
which Bin Laden dreams.
If the Muslim world can find a way to combine the sophisticated intellectuals
and engineers of Damascus and Cairo with the oil wealth of the Persian Gulf,
it could well emerge as a 21st century superpower....
Please read the whole thing.
I emailed Juan Cole, asking just one question:
If Al Qaeda wants an Islamic
superstate, and the neocons want a region of secular democratic states, is
there any way out of this standoff, in your opinion?
His reply:
It is worse. The Neocons may want a region of secular democratic states,
but they are producing Islamically oriented ones. The Jama`at-i Islami now
has two provinces of Pakistan (it had never been in power before) and the
Islamists run much of Iraq.
I don't think most Muslims want to live under al-Qaeda type rule, and it
is the sense of humor and licentiousness of people like the Egyptians that
will probably save them from both forces.
I hope you'll frame good questions on Iraq for the candidates.
American
Jobs: The
documentary: Here's the trailer. (It loaded very slowly for me.)
Business Week interviewed director Gregg Spotts (The
Story of American Jobs), who makes it clear that he doesn't see the issue
as as partisan -- President
Clinton
signed
NAFTA, after all. (Remember H. Ross Perot in the 1992 debates describing the
giant
sucking sound as jobs left the country due to NAFTA?). Here's an excerpt:
Q: How do you feel about becoming a kind of spokesperson on this issue merely
because you've made a film about it?
A: Nine months ago my expertise was making athletes and musicians look cool
on TV. [Spotts formerly produced live coverage of Los Angeles Galaxy pro soccer
games and MTV specials.] I'm trying to tread carefully on becoming a standard-bearer
on this issue. Yet we do need standard-bearers.
Outsourcing is one of the few issues in this country where there has been
a dominant point of view, and the alternative point of view hasn't been articulated.
Those who have questioned our trade policies are ridiculed as being backward
and ignorant.
Q: What kind of impact do you think outsourcing to other countries will have
on the U.S. in the next 10 years?
A: If we stay on the same course we've been on since Reagan, we'll start to
see a significant erosion of the middle class, a lot of people whose talents
are underutilized or unutilized. What if, as India and China become more like
the U.S., the U.S. becomes more like India and China? We might start seeing
more and more people working for subsistence rather than to achieve the American
dream of affluence. The American dream might become more of a myth than an
accessible reality.
Q: What do you think of recent studies indicating that outsourcing is responsible
for only a minute fraction of job loss? According to a June U.S. Labor Dept.
report, less than 2% of job loss in the nonfarm private sector was due to outsourcing.
A: They're lies. Those studies are completely funded by tech companies. How
can companies say there's a shortage of skilled labor in the U.S. and outsource
work when the unemployment rate among tech workers here is growing to record
highs? As for the Labor Dept., it's outmoded and not making a real effort to
quantify outsourcing. There are no official figures on job loss due to white-collar
tech outsourcing because it's not in their interest to keep track.
Spotts has a blog for the film, which is available on DVD for $11.95, plus
$3.00
shipping and handling, at the link on the headline.
AP: 403,300 high tech jobs lost
in past 3 years:
SEATTLE - The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March
2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according
to a new report.
Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs — 206,300 — were
lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the
researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago.
In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank
by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied.
Powell:
Russia Pulling Back on Democratic Reform:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Tuesday he
was concerned that sweeping political changes to fight terrorism proposed by
Russian President Vladimir Putin would erode Russia's democratic reforms.
"In effect this is pulling back on some of the democratic reforms," Powell
told Reuters. "We have concerns about it and we want to discuss them
with the Russians."
The Kremlin leader said on Monday he wanted a new election law to limit the
number of political parties and to have full control on nominating regional
leaders to combat terrorism following the bloody Beslan school siege in southern
Russia.
Critics immediately accused Putin exploiting the grisly siege, in which at
least 327 hostages died, to amass power.
While expressing sympathy for Putin's desire to go after "terrorists" following
the Beslan crisis, the bombing of two Russian aircraft and a Moscow subway
bombing in the last month, Powell said Russia must balance this with democratic
freedoms....
Indeed, this sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater is exactly what
concerns many Americans about the Patriot Act.
Link
to this item | Comment
A footnote on the debates: The
Commission on Presidential Debates is also sponsoring DebateWatch:
DebateWatch is a voter education program of the Commission on Presidential
Debates (CPD). DebateWatch brings citizens like you together to watch the
televised debates, talk about what you learned, and, if you choose to, share
your reactions with the CPD.
Here's a page listing the Debate Watches scheduled
so far. There's one in Providence:
A statewide DebateWatch will be held for the first presidential debate at
Rhode Island College on Thursday, September 30th at 8 p.m. at the Donovan
Dining Center. All residents, state and local organizations, as well as high
school and college students from across the state are encouraged to attend
and participate. Following an opening session including commentary from national
and statewide politicians and political experts, the debate will be shown
in its entirety. Expert moderators will then lead focus group discussions
on the debate's impact on the election. Refreshments will be served. For
further information, contact Dr. Kay Israel (kisrael@ric.edu) or Dr. Valerie
Endress (vendress@ric.edu) by e-mail. You may also call Rhode Island College's
Bureau of Government Research and Service at (401) 456-9799.
Link
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SaveBetaMax.org:
Lost among my spam, a note from Holmes Wilson of Downhill
Battle with a press release about a Worcester, Mass., group he's involved
with called Save BetaMax.org. Today, they
are trying
to
coordinate
a call-in.
Tomorrow (or later this week) won't be too late to get your message across,
I'm sure. By then, the staffers will know what you're talking about.
From the site: "The Betamax
ruling (link goes to text of the decision) is the only thing that protects
your right to own a VCR, tape recorder, CD-burner, DVD-burner, iPod, or TiVo."
In 1984 the Supreme Court decision, which ruled that home videotape recorders
were legal because they have "substantial non-infringing uses," even
though they can be used to infringe copyrights. (Just because someone may tape
a show, then make and sell thousands of copies at a flea market is no reason
not to let you and me tape a show to watch later, or over and over again.)
Now, the INDUCE act, sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy
(D-Vermont), would hold companies liable if their products were used illegally.
(Apply the same reasoning to kitchen knives and you see where this goes.)
More background in a Wired story from Saturday: Copyright
Proposal Induces Worry:
...
The copyright office contends that the Betamax ruling addresses personal
copying technology, not applications that can be used to distribute copyright
materials to a wide audience, such as online peer-to-peer networks.
"This draft is scary," said Will Rodger, director of public policy
for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, regarding the copyright
office's recommendations.
For the first time ever, Rodger wrote in an e-mail, it would make it possible
for someone who has not infringed to be liable for others' infringement.
"They want to reach anyone who creates a product that turns out to be
used for infringements -- how do you know that in advance?" said Mike
Godwin, legal director for Public
Knowledge. "You could have the noblest
motives in the world and still be liable under this proposal." ...
...At a heated hearing on the bill in July, both senators made it clear that
they want to address the P2P issue quickly to stop massive infringement that
plagues the entertainment industry, and asked for help from the copyright office
and other witnesses.
In response, other groups have proposed their own versions of the Induce
Act. (Major
telcos and device makers go after Induce Act) CEA and Public Knowledge, among other technology and consumer groups, last
month submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee a more narrow form of the
bill that targets only those who distribute products designed for wide-scale
piracy on digital networks.
Godwin said that with so many different proposals to consider, the committee
should hold more hearings on the Induce bill before proceeding. ...
And much
more, with the usual entertaining comments, at Slashdot.
More from Holmes Wilson's email:
It seems like there's a huge consensus among bloggers, tech commentators,
and pretty much anyone who understands the internet that the INDUCE Act is
a very bad idea. Even in it's now slightly watered-down form, it could still
make iPods that play mp3s (and not just DRM tracks) ancient history.
Link
to this item | Comment
Comic relief: How to Make Fried Oreo Cookies!
September 13, 2004, 7:03 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Memos aside, Mr. Bush knows the truth and
should tell it: CBS
News stands by its story on memos (pdf.)
that "seem
to show President Bush's National Guard commander believed Mr. Bush at times
shirked his duties" and
entered the Guard -- rather than the Vietnam-bound service branches -- due to
political influence.
So a legion of young male bloggers make their own ignorance of typewriters
the story. You would think the Selectric itself were on trial. Is this the
blogosphere's finest moment?
(Millions of older women know IBM Selectrics intimately . When I was in college
in the '60s, I came home to a summer job in the physics department at Brown
as a secretary, where I typed subscripts, superscripts, Greek letters, fractions
and much more.)
Whether the memos are authentic (likely) or not, they are separate from the
truth of what happened in those days.
As I write this, CBS is standing firm, and asking the White House the questions
raised by the memos.
The White House refused to answer except to say that George Bush had received
an honorable discharge.
The author of the memos is dead. The author of the events, George Bush, is
not dead and he knows the truth about his National Guard stint, and how he
got into it. It's time he told it.
Related: Longtime
Texas journalist and syndicated columnist Molly Ivins of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: National
Guard dispute: Bush can't close the door on Barnes' claims:
AUSTIN, Texas - Oh for heaven's sake, doesn't anyone know how to research
a story anymore? I have never seen anything as silly as this ridiculous Republican
chorus that, aha!, Ben Barnes is a Democrat and so we know he's lying!
The question is not whether Ben Barnes is a Democrat. Ben Barnes has never
claimed to be nonpartisan or not to have any affiliation with the Kerry campaign.
Of course he does. He's been a major Democratic player for years. The question
is whether Ben Barnes is telling the truth about how he got George W. Bush
in the Texas Air National Guard.
The ridiculous little blowhard Sean Hannity crowed on Fox ''News'' that
''Ben Barnes testified under oath in 1999 that no member of the Bush family
ever contacted him about getting into the Air National Guard.'' How true.
Nor has he changed his story one whit. Barnes testified in 1999 that the
man who called him about little George Bush was Sid Adger, Poppy George Bush's
dear and good friend. Let's ask Poppy about Sid Adger and see some of that
''famous Bush loyalty.''
And how would Adger know whom to call? Adger had two sons in that very unit
of the Air National Guard, that's how he knew whom to call. The notorious
''Champagne Unit'' of the Guard was also graced by the son of former Gov.
John Connally, both sons of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, Bobby Sakowaitz (Houston
department store money), the grandson of H.L. Hunt (Dallas Oil) and several
players for the Dallas Cowboys football team. Anyone who thinks that is just
a coincidence or some kind of freaking accident probably thinks Sean Hannity
is a journalist....
Related links:
Dave
Barry: Your vote counts - well, maybe
Rowboat Vets
for Truth
Team
America: The trailer for the animated movie from the creators of South
Park, opening Oct. 15.
Link
to this item | Comment
Photo by Art Kane
The Harlem 1958
jazz portrait at
harlem.org: "Explore jazz history through one
photograph."
About the Photo: Art Kane attributed his famous photograph to being young
and naïve. In
August 1958 he was hired by Esquire magazine to come up with a photo to open
an article about jazz. He figured he would contact every major jazz musician
in New York to show up on 126th street in Harlem at 10am to take a group
portrait. Getting jazz musicians anywhere together at 10am seemed impossible,
but to
everyone's surprise 57 musicians showed up. It was Art Kane's first professional
photograph.
At harlem.org, mouse over the photo -- different parts -- (the drummers, the
kids, for instance) -- may be viewed separately. Each musician is listed, with
photo
There are just two women in the photo and they stand together -- pianists Marian
McPartland and Mary
Lou Williams.
There's also a 1994 documentary, A Great Day In Harlem, with 8 mm color
footage of the event shot by bassist Milt Hinton and his wife.
Finally, Jim Regan wrote an appreciation at the Christian Science Monitor
last month: A jazz picture is worth a thousand memories
Link
to this item | Comment
Media
spotlight
on Baghdad deaths: BBC reports on events Sunday in Baghdad's Haifa Street,
At least 13 people were killed and about 60 others were wounded by US helicopter
fire as they milled around the burning wreckage of an American armoured vehicle
that had been ambushed by insurgents early in the morning.
News footage shows a few dozen curious Iraqis standing around the Bradley
Fighting Vehicle just before the missile strike.
In the foreground, Mazen Tumeisi, a Palestinian working for two Saudi-owned
TV networks, al-Arabiya and al-Ikhbariya, is preparing to be recorded on camera
as he describes the scene.
Suddenly a big explosion engulfs the street in smoke. Tumeisi collapses.
The lens is spattered with his blood.
As the camera swings around wildly, the fatally wounded journalist can be
heard groaning his last words: "I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
Seif [his cameraman]. Seif. I'm going to die."
As well as Tumeisi, two children - very possibly the ones smiling at the
camera moments earlier - were among the dead. ...
There's video
of the strike, and of Mazen.
Related: Reader Tom Arrison recommends pointing your RealPlayer to
a segment of Sunday's
Weekend Edition on NPR:
Host Liane Hansen presented "Taking
Note of Casualties in Iraq," a simple but moving reminder that
the "1000 Milestone" is only part of the story.
She updates the casualty count for the war in Iraq with a listing of those
who have died, by nationality.
Link
to this item | Comment
Warming
Trend Will Decimate Arctic Peoples, Report Warns: Reader Eric Lilius
sends this story along:
Climate change will soon make the Arctic regions of the world nearly unrecognisable,
dramatically disrupting traditional Inuit and other northern native peoples'
way of life, according to a new report that has yet to be publicly released.
The dire predictions are just some of the findings by the Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment (ACIA), an unprecedented four-year scientific investigation into
the current and future impact of climate change in the region.
"This assessment projects the end of the Inuit as a hunting culture," said
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the group that represents about 155,000
Inuit in the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, Greenland, and the United
States.
The report predicts the depletion of summer sea ice, which will push marine
mammals like polar bears, walrus and some seal species into extinction by the
middle of this century, Watt-Cloutier told IPS.
The assessment was commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental
body involving the eight Arctic nations -- Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden,
Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States.
The Inuit and other Arctic peoples also participate in the Council and contributed
to the ACIA report, along with over 600 hundred scientists from around
the world. Although complete, it will not be made public or presented to
governments
until after the U.S. presidential elections at a conference in Reykjavik,
Iceland, Nov. 9-12....
Link
to this item | Comment
Paris's new slant on underground movies: Clandestine group reveals how it
built its cinema beneath the city
There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions
from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath
the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this
week sent the city's police into a frenzy.
"They freaked out completely," Lazar, their spokesman, said happily. "They
called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist
squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives.
They got it on to national TV news. They hadn't a clue."
To be fair, until recently very few people did have a clue about La Mexicaine
de la Perforation, a clandestine cell of "urban explorers" which
claims its mission is to "reclaim and transform disused city spaces for
the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art".
Huddled round a table in an anonymous Latin Quarter bar, the group's members
- of whom only Lazar wanted to be named - relate past exploits: rock concerts
for up to 4,000 people in old underground quarries; 2am projections in a locked
film theatre; art and photo exhibitions in supposedly sealed-off subterranean
galleries.
But since they aim to leave each venue "cleaner, if anything, than when
we found it", LMDP's activities have never before come to public attention.
Until late last month, when police patrolling one small stretch of the estimated
200 miles of tunnels beneath the city stumbled across the underground cinema.
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