Author Archives: Lisa

Alright, Alright, The Comments Will Stay

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After receiving numerous letters and offers of solutions and technical expertise, I’ve decided to implement a few technical solutions rather than taking comments down completely.
Apparently, my blog without comments is a completely unacceptable scenario for most of you. This warms my heart, for it is indeed a cornerstone of this community that anyone can post and contribute to the discussion.
So this week I’ll be implementing the MT-Blacklist module, among other techniques that have been passed on to me. I’m going to document the process from beginning to end — even though doing so my help the spammers try to beat it. We’ve all got to work together and learn from each other on this one.
Talk soon…
lisa
ps. I’m still getting my act together in general this month, but the Daily Show Clips, Bill Moyers Clips, and other goodies will be up soon!

Newly-Released Documents Reveal Rummy Supported Saddam Even After 1988 Chemical Weapons Attacks

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Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks
By Andrew Buncombe for the Independent U.K.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America’s condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made “strictly” in principle.
The criticism in no way changed Washington’s wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and “to improve bi-lateral relations … at a pace of Iraq’s choosing”.
Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam’s willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world.
Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds – particularly the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 – as a justification for the invasion and the ousting of Saddam.
But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America’s position was different and that the administration of President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam’s “almost daily” use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.
In March 1984, under international pressure, America condemned Iraq’s use of such chemical weapons. But realising that Baghdad had been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Mr Rumsfeld to travel to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Saddam’s Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, and smooth matters over.
In a briefing memo to Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials in Washington to stress that America’s interests remained “in (1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq”.
The memo adds: “This message bears reinforcing during your discussions.”
Exactly what Mr Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office, told Mr Aziz on 26 March 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting remain classified. No one from Mr Rumsfeld’s office was available to comment yesterday.

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Derrick Z. Jackson: Against The War, For The Soldiers

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Against the war, for the soldiers
By Derrick Z. Jackson for the Boston Globe.

On this eve of the Christian celebration of a baby, I celebrate you. In June, I wrote a column that said our soldiers must be dying for oil, since we found no weapons of mass destruction. I wrote, “Nearly another 50 soldiers have died in nebulous situations that range from justifiable self-defense to dubious overreactions more reminiscent of the shootings of American students and rioters by National Guardsmen in the 1960s.”
That column sparked a letter from the father of a 20-year-old soldier who died a month after President Bush declared major combat operations to be over. The father wrote: “The use of the word `nebulous’ is insulting to all who do their duty every day and especially to those who lose their lives. My son died doing what he volunteered for, doing something he loved and was exceptional at.
“You insult his intelligence by intimating that he was some sort of dupe in this grand power play for the world’s oil. If you have a point, then make it, but do not invoke the memory of my son to justify your political point of view. . . . My son willingly followed the orders of his commander in chief to accomplish a mission.
“During his time in Iraq, he grew to like and respect the people there. On missions (prior to his death) he earned the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal. All this from a 20-year-old Airborne infantryman. Do not dare to insult his memory by equating him with a barrel of oil.”
I wrote the father back: “I am very sorry that your son was killed serving this country. . . . I certainly and sincerely understand how reading my column during this time could inflame your feelings.
“What I want you to know is that while you and I have strong, differing feelings about the political purpose of the war itself and the decisions and actions of world leaders that led to it, I have no doubt that at the individual level, young men and women went off genuinely believing they were furthering the cause of peace and democracy and helping to create a better world.
“If it is of any solace to you, despite the anger my column caused you, I salute your son as he died in the service of freedom, with one of those freedoms being freedom of speech and the freedom to dissent without fear of retribution.”

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Appeals Court Postpones New Crummy EPA Rules From Taking Effect

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Weaker Clean Air Rules Blocked
By the Associate Press for Wired.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked new Bush administration changes to the Clean Air Act from going into effect, in a challenge from state attorneys general and cities that argued the changes would harm the environment and public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency rule would have made it easier for utilities, refineries and other industrial facilities to make repairs in the name of routine maintenance without installing additional pollution controls.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an order that blocks the rules from going into effect until the legal challenge from the states and cities is heard, a process likely to last months.
The court’s decision stops, at least temporarily, one of the Bush administration’s major environmental decisions. The court’s justices said the challengers “demonstrated the irreparable harm and likelihood of success” of their case, which are required to stop the rule from taking effect.
The EPA proposed the rule a year ago December, the then-acting administrator signed it in August, and it was made final in October. It was due to have gone into effect this week.
Bringing suit were attorneys general for 12 states — Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin — and legal officers for New York City, Washington, San Francisco, New Haven and a host of other cities in Connecticut.

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Paul Krugman In The NY Times On The Dangers Of Electronic Voting Without A Paper Trail

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Hack the Vote
By Paul Krugman for the NY Times.

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” No surprise there. But Walden O’Dell — who says that he wasn’t talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail…
What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.

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FCC OK’s Rupert Murdoch’s Purchase of DirecTV

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FCC Approves Murdoch Purchase of DirecTV
By Frank Ahrens for the Washington Post.

The Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department today approved News Corporation Inc.’s purchase of Hughes Electronics Corp.’s DirecTV home satellite system, giving Rupert Murdoch the crucial missing piece of his global satellite empire.
By a vote of 3-2, the FCC commissioners allowed the $6.5 billion cash-and-stock purchase to go ahead with a number of conditions meant to keep News Corp. from using DirecTV as a lever to raise programming prices to rival cable and satellite companies. The merger gives News Corp. a controlling 34 percent interest in Hughes.
News Corp. is the parent company of the Fox television network, Fox News Channel, FX and Fox Sports regional cable channels. Opponents of the merger feared that News Corp. would raise its programming prices to cable rivals, such as Comcast Corp., or threaten to pull Fox programming in order to drive customers away from cable and to DirecTV.
The FCC ruled that the merger would improve service to DirecTV customers — News Corp. has a history of adding channels and features, such as interactivity, to its other satellite systems — would create a more muscular competitor to the cable industry, which has monopolies in most markets, and promote the agency’s goal of localism, by requiring News Corp. to add local channels to the DirecTV system.
FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell joined fellow Republican commissioners Kevin J. Martin and Kathleen Q. Abernathy in approving the deal.
Dissenting were Democratic FCC commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein. The commission has been split along party lines on media issues since the rancorous June vote adopting new media ownership rules.

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RIAA Hires ATF Director To Head Its Anti-Piracy Efforts

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The RIAA has hired the Nation’s top hired gun to fight music piracy.
Apparently, the recording industry doesn’t realize yet that it’s fighting a losing battle. Looks like we’re in for another ridiculous fight this coming year.

ATF Director to Head Music Industry’s Anti-Piracy Efforts
By the Associated Press for Fox News.

The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (search) is leaving his post next month to lead the recording
industry’s efforts to stop music piracy.
Bradley A. Buckles, who served ATF for 30 years and was named director in
1999, will come head of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Recording Industry
Association of America (search), the trade group announced Tuesday.
“Brad’s appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take
piracy (search), here and throughout the world, very seriously,” said Mitch Bainwol, RIAA’s chairman and chief executive officer.

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More On The Shrub’s Attempt To Cover Up His Ever-changing Story About The Cost Of The War By Removing Web-based Evidence Of His Administration’s Lies

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The Shrub is trying to cover his tracks by deleting hundreds of damning documents from the Internet. Nice try shrubby, but the built-in redundancy of the Web will hopefully save the day on this one.

White House Covers Tracks by Removing Information

In a high-tech cover-up, the Washington Post this morning reports the White House is actively scrubbing government websites clean of any of its own previous statements that have now proven to be untrue.1 Specifically, on April 23, 2003, the president sent his top international aid official on national television to reassure the public that the cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq would be modest. USAID Director Andrew Natsios, echoing other Administration officials, told Nightline that, “In terms of the American taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the US. The American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.”
The president has requested more than $166 billion in funding for the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. But instead of admitting that he misled the nation about the cost of war, the president has allowed the State Department “to purge the comments by Natsios from the State Department’s Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.” (The link where the transcript existed until it caused embarrassment was http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/nightline_042403_t.html).

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Shrub Attempts To Alter History By Removing Web Documents

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White House Web Scrubbing
Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By Dana Milbank for the Washington Post.

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq — which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency’s Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush’s May 1 speech, “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,” to insert the word “Major” before combat.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant’s report that had been posted on its Web site.

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