a boondoggle of breathtaking proportions

With threats of losing the 2012 Olympics (as if we're getting them anyway!), New Yorkers are being held hostage to backroom brokering among Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Robert Wood Johnson IV (known as "Woody"), the mayor's good friend who owns the Jets football team, the MTA, and the construction industry.

What they are railroading us into is outrageous, even in this town. It's like something out of Tammany Hall days, but this time it's happening in public.

The Stadium plan is insane. The city can't afford it, doesn't need it, will lose money from it, won't benefit from it in any way, and will suffer long-term problems because of it. But it will create some temporary construction jobs and will make Bloomberg and Woody very happy, so who cares.

Please read what Bob Herbert has to say.

Trust me, it's going to be a boondoggle of breathtaking proportions.

Here's the first thing you need to know about the insanely expensive football stadium ($2.2 billion and counting) that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki want to build on Manhattan's West Side for Robert Wood Johnson IV, the billionaire owner of the New York Jets.

The rail yards on which the stadium would be built are owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the development rights have been valued by the M.T.A.'s own appraisers at $923 million. But the M.T.A. has agreed to sell the rights to this publicly owned property to Mr. Johnson and the Jets for a mere $250 million. That's a subsidy of nearly $700 million for the mayor's fabulously wealthy buddy.

When you add that subsidy to the $600 million in public funds that the mayor and the governor had pledged from the beginning to hand to Mr. Johnson, we're talking about a giveaway of $1.3 billion. The rascals used to do this sort of thing in back rooms, while worrying about headlines, indictments and handcuffs. Now they've figured out how to do it legally.

. . .

That the M.T.A., which is hemorrhaging cash, is ready to give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Jets is beyond absurd. Over the past couple of years it has raised fares, reduced service on subway and bus lines, closed dozens of subway token booths, cut back on maintenance and cleaning, and treated its riders to a long succession of major fires, foul-ups and breakdowns.

That's the first thing you need to know.

The second thing is that hardly any of the ordinary taxpayers and transit riders subsidizing this glittering playground on the Hudson will be able to see the Jets play there. This is not like Yankee Stadium, where you can actually go to a game. Unless you've already got season tickets (or unless you're wealthy and can afford one of the staggeringly expensive luxury suites), you're out of luck.

The Jets' Web site couldn't be clearer about this. Under the heading "Waitlist Policy," it says: "The New York Jets are sold out on a season ticket basis. There are NO individual game tickets available. If you are not a season ticket holder, you may join our Waitlist. There are currently over 10,000 people on our Waitlist."

You have to pay $50 a year just to be on the waiting list. The wait is approximately 10 years. And after waiting 10 years, the maximum number of tickets you can buy is four. Does this sound like a good deal for a stadium that you're helping to pay for?

Full column here; all emphasis mine.

A real David and Goliath story is at work here, with Gene Russianoff, the heroic public interest attorney, filing lawsuits on the people's behalf, the residents of Clinton/Hell's Kitchen, whose already beleagured neighborhood would be completely destroyed by the proposed stadium, organized and fighting, and, oddly, another Goliath throwing in with them: the owners of Madison Square Garden seeking to protect their franchise. (That strange bedfellow has helped pay for some great TV ads, all of which are true.)

This is all Mike Bloomberg cares about these days. The rest of us can all go to hell, as long as Woody gets his stadium.

doing ok, should be doing better

That was the conclusion of the UN committee against torture about Canada. Canada and six other countries were up for review at the committee's latest session. The committee monitors compliance with the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Citing extradition and torture victim Maher Arar, the UN committee said Canada should do more to prevent extraditions where torture is a likely outcome.

The committee also criticized Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2002 for what it described as a blanket exclusion of refugees and other people in need of protection. The new law, enacted almost a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, allows for the removal of foreign nationals who constitute a danger to the public or the security of Canada.

However, the Canadian report to the committee said "this is to be done only in exceptional circumstances and after the risk to the individual has been carefully balanced against the risk to Canadian society ... To date, Canada had not deported anyone to a country where the person was determined to face a substantial risk of torture."

On the positive side, the panel praised Canada for using the UN's broad definition of torture in its own criminal code (which, as we know, the US does not), and for deeming evidence obtained by torture inadmissible.

It also welcomed Canada's application of criminal standards to its military personnel wherever located worldwide. Under this stipulation, soldiers cannot use the argument that they were following orders or plead exceptional circumstances -- including armed conflict -- in their defence.

This is heartening, and it makes sense for Canada to examine its own role in Arar's ordeal. (There is an ongoing inquiry in Ottawa.)

Unfortunately, the countries who most need the panel's review are the least likely to heed their recommendations, but that will always be the problem with an international body of any type. Article here, thanks to ALPF, of course.

to the new commenter

...whose comments have been deleted: If you need to insult me, please do so from your own blog. As for liberals attacking conservatives, you won't find that here either.

Since you've started off on the wrong foot, your comments will always be deleted.

eliminate the middleman

Redsock posted this excellent excerpt from Greg Palast:

Was there a problem with the [Newsweek] story? Certainly. If you want to split hairs, the inside-government source of the Koran desecration story now says he can't confirm which military report it appeared in. But he saw it in one report and a witness has confirmed that the Koran was defiled. Of course, there's an easy way to get at the truth. RELEASE THE REPORTS NOW. Hand them over, Mr. Rumsfeld, and let's see for ourselves what's in them. ...

Despite its supposed new concern for hidden sources, let's note that Newsweek and the [Washington] Post have no trouble providing, even in the midst of this story, cover for secret Administration sources that are FAVORABLE to Bush. Editor Whitaker's retraction relies on "Administration officials" whose names he kindly withholds. ...

As with CBS's retraction of Dan Rather's report on Bush's draft-dodging, Newsweek's diving to the mat on Guantanamo acts as a warning to all journalists who step out of line. Newsweek has now publicly committed to having its reports vetted by Rumsfeld's Defense Department before publication. [Emphasis mine.] Why not just print Rumsfeld's press releases and eliminate the middleman, the reporter?

That pretty much sums it up for me.

roots

For a time, I wrote about adoption issues, a topic that fell into my lap, not one I was led to from personal experience. I am not personally involved in any side of the "adoption triad" - as adoptee, birth mother or adoptive parent - but I spent a lot of time listening to people on all sides of the triangle, as well as professionals in the field.

So this headline in yesterday's Toronto Star -"Adoptees vow to fight for access to records" - jumped out at me.

Adults who were given up for adoption as children say they have an inherent right to know their birth name, and are vowing to fight any restrictions added to a bill that would unseal adoption records.

For 78 years, adopted children have had no right to access basic information such as their name and birthday, and that must change, said Wendy Rowney, an adoptee and president of the support group Adoption, Support, Kinship.

"This is a human right, and we will keep fighting until we have access to our own original birth information," Rowney said today before presenting her case to the committee examining the proposed legislation.

The bill, introduced by the government in March, has come under intense scrutiny this week.

I was sorry to see that Canada lags behind the UK on this, though encouraged that BC, Newfoundland and Alberta have unsealed records (though with the controversial "contact veto").

I'm not saying this is a simple issue, but I will say that the more I learned about it, the simpler it became. Every person should have access to basic information about themselves. It's a right every person who was not adopted takes for granted, but one denied to adoptees based on antiquated social norms. (The silence surrounding adoption was originally intended to protect women and children from the double stigma of birth without marriage.) How can a legal system decide that an adult is not allowed to know where she or he came from?

I wish the Canadian adoptees good luck in their battle. I hope they fare better than their American counterparts, who are still struggling.

dipstick

So there won't be an election yet. Talk about a squeaker. Feel free to tell us how you feel about this, unless it's all been said already, then feel free not to.

ALPF mustered his courage and sent more links, so I have some good commentary to post. I found this Macleans story on the Conservative party's reaction to Stronach's decision - and public reaction to that reaction - very interesting.

Canadians seem almost universally turned off by the name-calling and sexist slurs. On the other hand, when a certain governor made his "girly men" pronouncement, his constituency howled with glee. (Which is not to say the rest of us weren't appalled.)

The Macleans article also notes that not all the sexism came from politicians:

Some of the most sexist characterizations of Stronach didn't come from her political adversaries, but from media.

Montreal's La Presse newspaper ran a cartoon of Martin leaning out his car window to solicit a street-walking Stronach.

Columnist Christie Blatchford in the Globe and Mail wrote that if Stronach's perfidy "isn't politically slatternly behaviour, what on earth is?"

"Blond Ambition" headlines sprouted across the country.

I can't even express how beyond sick of this I am. It is the 21st Century. Women are astronauts, soldiers, surgeons, heads of state. And they are still being characterized in terms of hair color, sexual habits and reproductive capacities. (You know the one: "Grandmother Chases Thief". Turns out she's a 50-year-old former track star. I don't think I've ever seen the male equivalent.)

The mainstream media is so far behind! In the US, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed every story about political protest began with "It was like the 1960s all over again...", as if public protest began and ended in that decade. That kind of laziness and ignorance just drives me nuts.

Elsewhere, military historian, writer and thinker Gwynne Dyer held court on, among other things, Canadian-American relations.

"Any politician in Ottawa understands how to say 'no' to the Americans without getting hurt too much, but also they have to calculate how many times they can say 'no' before they've got to say 'yes.' If the present two administrations (Paul Martin's Liberals and George Bush's Republicans) continue, we can probably manage it without getting the Americans too cross."

"Of course, if [pro-U.S. Canadian Conservative leader] Mr. Harper became Prime Minister we'd all be effectively under the same government wouldn't we?" Dyer chuckled.

Dyer also talked about the war in Iraq, terrorism, and US military power.

Interestingly, Dyer predicted that Islamic terrorism would peter out due to a lack of success on its part. Dyer said the war is all about a panicky America worried about losing its status as the world's only superpower trying to reassert its might by making Iraq an example of what it means to tangle with the U.S.

[interesting military predictions based on historical precedents . . . ]

Dyer predicts that by 2045 the U.S. will have lost its sole superpower status and be one of several great powers, including the two awakening Asian giants - China and India. That said, Dyer believes the U.S. must become multilateral in its thinking and adhere to the United Nations efforts in striving for a more harmonious world.

"What we need to do is hang on to that multilateral world and not slide back into military confrontations and alliances, which the current American strategy risks driving other countries into."

"America has to stop trying to take over."

As the Irish say, Can't say fairer than that. Article here. I don't know what L-TV is, but I like the name!

paging linda blair

Check out this gif file!

This is also a cool pic from the same blog, though only with the post title and commentary. Alone, and without irony, it's beyond nauseating: it's terrifying.

Seems like an interesting Irishman, though I wish I read Gaelic.

newsweek again

Two quick links on the Koran desecration story and the Newsweek retraction: in The Progressive and the Boulder Daily Camera (original requires registration, so thank you Common Dreams).

Good stuff.

book slut

You know I love books. I also have a thing for reference books. (Am I a geek, or what?) So naturally I love libraries. I always have. When I was a kid, when I walked into a library, I would sometimes get that spine-tingly, awed feeling that some people get when they walk into a church. If I have the chance to visit a really old or really vast library, like the one we saw at Trinity College in Dublin, I still will.

As if this wasn't enough love, in these days of government censorship and spying, librarians are now also freedom fighters, leading the battle against the so-called Patriot Act. And so I dedicate this post to wmtc's resident librarian, who keeps the flame alive while battling bunheads on a daily basis.

Librarian's brush with FBI shapes her view of the USA Patriot Act
By Joan Airoldi

It was a moment that librarians had been dreading.

On June 8, 2004, an FBI agent stopped at the Deming branch of the Whatcom County Library System in northwest Washington and requested a list of the people who had borrowed a biography of Osama bin Laden. We said no.

We did not take this step lightly.

Read Airoldi's story here.

overheard elsewhere

Whew! That was quite the discussion we had going on. Thanks for all your thoughts, your patience with each other, and your page views.

However, you may have scared away ALPF! I will await your return, my friend.

Back in the discussion about racism (notice how the post wasn't even about racism?), Sassypants - who I believe is Sassycat wearing trousers - said: "I started to write a response about some of the stuff discussed here, and it really just sort of snowballed into a blog entry. A really really long one. So, go read it there, if you'd like." "There" is here. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I will, as soon as I post this.

Which reminds me: the rampant commenting and replying has taken me away from the blogs I try to read regularly. So if I've been absent from your discussions, it's your own fault! I plan on catching up at work this weekend.

Also, someone left an interesting comment about breed-specific dog bans, way back here. I don't know who wrote it and can't verify her/his credentials, but there it is. Anything that helps educate about pits is worth linking to.

in labor we trust

A liberal Texan brings us This Day in Alternate History. I'm kind of amazed. A lot of thought and creativity goes into this.

don't blame newsweek

The right is falling all over themselves blaming the you-know-what media, and the government has Newsweek backed into a corner. I'm sure I don't need to link about this, commentary and innuendo is all over the internet.

But Molly Ivins reminds us that the retracted story is essentially true.

Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time. The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen released from Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner said he had been physically beaten but did not consider that as bad as the psychological torture, which he described extensively. Jamal al-Harith, a computer programmer from Manchester, said 70 percent of the inmates had gone on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. The strike was ended by force-feeding.

Then came the report, widely covered in American media last December, by the International Red Cross concerning torture at Gitmo. I wrote at the time: "In the name of Jesus Christ Almighty, why are people representing our government, paid by us, writing filth on the Korans of helpless prisoners? Is this American? Is this Christian? What are our moral values? Where are the clergymen on this? Speak up, speak out."

Read more here.

On the same theme, here is the transcript of James Galloway's statement to the US Senate. (The original is here but it takes forever to load.) Some snips:

As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

and

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

Read. Seethe. Organize. Write, call, take to the streets.

better now than never

Why are these women smiling?

I've been reading some heart-wrenching stories lately, tales of human cruelty that defy comprehension. This victory in Kuwait is welcome and soothing. I can only imagine the celebration among the Kuwaiti activists!

The story linked above is also a tale of human strength and survival. I read it in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, and it's been captured here. Once again I say to myself: geography is destiny.

brain trust

This blog sometimes morphs into a discussion board for intellectual and political discussion. I love it! I never imagined this would happen and couldn't have planned it if I tried.

One thing I am continually impressed with is the quality and tone of discourse among the Canadians who post here. Why is it I've never had to delete and banish a Canadian poster? And the answer is not because I always agree with them. Julia B says:

I have no interest in a leader who spends more time firing insults than promoting a platform, and no respect for a party whose members refer to a departing member (no matter the circumstance) publically as a "dipstick" and a "whore".

And G concurred:

Add to it the many members of the CPC party's insult-laden attacks on Belinda Stronach's decision to leave. No high road there. Far too often these guys sound like they belong in the playground - every day they prove themselves to be mere boys among men with the personal attacks that are anything but issue-related. And Canadians will not respect that in their votes.

Americans say they don't go for this stuff, yet election results don't bear that out. The guy with the dirtier campaign usually wins.

I am really enjoying all the craziness that's going on in Canadian politics right now. I hope I don't offend you all when I say I'm finding it very entertaining, and I'm learning so much.

a path northward

And there's a very interesting Canadian history lesson going on here. Someone called loneprimate said this:

When I say that (English) Canada was founded by Americans, I don't mean the people you meet in, say, Kentucky today. I mean people with a certain set of experiences and assumptions, in common with others who lived in places that are today the United States, but had a different opinion of the necessity of the Empire, and moved to another part of North America to live in accordance with those opinions. In a way, that is exactly what Laura is doing, though not, I think, because she has some attachment to the Crown... but rather, to values being given the force of policy here, but not currently in the United States. In that, she is very much a Late Loyalist... the object of her loyalty may be different, but the tradition is a long and honourable one, and she and Allan are treading a path northward well-worn by the feet of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen over the centuries.

I love that image of treading a well-worn path. It especially resonates with me as an activist who believes we are all part of the same struggle, across time and all cultures.

Who are you, mysterious loneprimate?

blogs of note

Procrastinating - no, letting my work sit before editing! - I found this very cool blog: Canadian Cynic. Through CC, I found Skeptico, who has some amazing links.

Warning: contains material offensive to the reverent. Atheists, agnostics and skeptics, enjoy!

gorgeous mosaic

There's a great discussion of racism going on here.

I really appreciate the different perspectives people bring to the table. Sassycat has a particularly interesting take, having grown up in Canada and New Hampshire, currently living in Florida.

not so fast

Not everyone thinks the Conservative government is a lock.

Canada's opposition Conservative Party, which is set to bring down the minority Liberal government later this week, was hit by a new opinion poll on Monday that showed it was trailing in the country's most vote-rich region.

The Leger Marketing poll for the Sun chain of newspapers put support for the Liberals in the powerful central province of Ontario at 43 percent compared with 31 percent for the Conservatives.

Ontario, a Liberal stronghold at the federal level for the past 12 years, accounts for 106 of the 308 seats in House of Commons, and no party can hope to form a government without doing well there. . . .

Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals have been badly hurt by a corruption scandal and Conservative leader Stephen Harper says the government must be defeated as soon as possible. The Leger figures, however, suggest there is no guarantee Harper can end 12 years of Liberal rule.

Thanks, ALPF! I must say, I'm finding this Parliamentary system fascinating. I still don't have a very clear understanding of it, but a lot seems to be seeping in through osmosis.

hostage crisis

I know I'm blogging out of control today. Maybe I'll skip tomorrow, but right now I've got to bring you Paul Krugman, because I know you can't find him without me!

Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.

Krugman links to the Downing Street Memo and says:

In other words, the people who got us into Iraq have done exactly what they falsely accused Bill Clinton of doing: they have stripped America of its capacity to respond to real threats."

So what's the plan?

The people who sold us this war continue to insist that success is just around the corner, and that things would be fine if the media would just stop reporting bad news. But the administration has declared victory in Iraq at least four times. January's election, it seems, was yet another turning point that wasn't.

Yet it's very hard to discuss getting out. Even most of those who vehemently opposed the war say that we have to stay on in Iraq now that we're there.

In effect, America has been taken hostage. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the terrible scenes that will surely unfold if we leave (even though terrible scenes are unfolding while we're there). Nobody wants to tell the grieving parents of American soldiers that their children died in vain. And nobody wants to be accused, by an administration always ready to impugn other people's patriotism, of stabbing the troops in the back. . . .

So we need to get beyond the clichés - please, no more "pottery barn principles" or "staying the course." I'm not advocating an immediate pullout, but we have to tell the Iraqi government that our stay is time-limited, and that it has to find a way to take care of itself. The point is that something has to give. We either need a much bigger army - which means a draft - or we need to find a way out of Iraq.

Twice a week, I am grateful for Paul Krugman, my favorite voice in the wilderness.

apples and oranges

A friend and loyal wmtc reader sent me two Canada-related items from The Economist. (Thank you!)

The first is a letter to the editor, in reply to a story on the EU. A man in Toronto writes:

Canada Belongs In Europe

I believe that the citizens of the European Union would be best served if the next expansion of the EU was not to the east but rather to the west, to incorporate Canada ("Now that we are all bundled inside, let's shut the door", April 30th). While this notion might seem odd at first, a little investigation would show that the vast majority of Canadians claim ancestry from the nations of the EU and Canada's cultural, social and economic policies are very similar to those of Europe. Access to NAFTA as well as Canada's natural resources, such as oil and gas, holds obvious advantages for our European brethren. Equally, Canada's easy access to Europe would be just as beneficial to Canada. It is time for Canada to petition the EU for membership. The advantages for both parties are too significant to ignore.

Dan Taylor
Toronto

Canadian readers, please weigh in?

The other is an interesting perspective on the new War Museum in Ottawa. The article is here, but you need an Economist subscription to read it.

Don't Even Memorialise It

A new war museum sparks a typically Canadian row

Historically, the 160-acre LeBreton Flats, just upriver from Ottawa's Parliament Buildings, has been a place of both war and peace. On its slopes, Irish canal builders and French-Canadian lumberjacks used to camp and brawl. For the past four decades, it has been a toxic wasteland. Now, after a C$100m ($80m) face-lift, it has become home to Canada's spectacular new War Museum, opened on May 8th, the 60th anniversary of VE-Day.

But the C$136m museum is already mired in a typically Canadian row over whether it presents too bellicose an image for a peaceloving country. The museum's purpose "is not to celebrate hostility", Canada's governor-general (and commander-in-chief), Adrienne Clarkson, insists. While it is not easy to find a peace motif among all the traditional artefacts of war, a message of regeneration does emerge.

The museum's grass-covered roof tilts up towards Parliament's Peace Tower. Its chief architect, Raymond Moriyama, is a Japanese-Canadian who was interned in Canada during the war. And among its 13,000 works of art are some strikingly frank portrayals of the underside of war: a portrait of a disgraced Canadian peacekeeping soldier who tortured a Somali boy; another of a despondent General Romeo Dallaire, head of UN troops in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.

But if the museum does not glorify war, does it sufficiently project Canada's self-proclaimed role as international peacemaker? Ever since Lester Pearson, then Canada's top diplomat, helped end the 1956 Suez crisis by replacing the Anglo-French invasion force with the world's first international peacekeeping contingent, Canadians have headed such blue-helmet units, taking part in some 45 UN missions from the Sinai peninsula to Afghanistan.

Although the new museum does reflect some of this, many Canadians would like it to do more. Why not celebrate, they ask, years of Canadian diplomatic efforts culminating in the creation of the International Criminal Court (now headed by a Canadian), the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Ottawa Treaty on anti-personnel mines? Or the unsung exploits of the multitude of Canadian humanitarian groups working abroad? Probably because war is more exciting than peace, and perhaps because the proper subject of a war museum, even in Canada, is war.

This piece is very fitting, given my recurrent attempts to explain some basic differences between Canada and the US. In a recent comment, Mollie, an American ex-pat in Canada, said:

Apples and oranges. "Liberal" in Canada means something so different than "liberal" in the U.S. Likewise with "conservative."

Perhaps you can see the connection.