free press

Last week, a huge National Conference for Media Reform was held St. Louis. Danny Schechter, "blogger-in chief" of the amazing MediaChannel, filed this report, called "Why We Need A Media and Democracy Act".

My idea: A Media and Democracy Act to package proposals for an anti-trust program to break up media monopolies; a funding strategy for public broadcasting and the independent producing community (perhaps financed with a tax on advertising); reinstatement of an updated fairness doctrine; free broadcasts for political debate across the spectrum; limits on advertising and monitoring for honesty and accuracy; guarantees for media freedom in the public interest; media literacy education in our schools; provisions for free wireless; media training and access centers; more support for media arts, etc.

This list is endless. No one group has the clout to put its priorities on the agenda without support from others, so why not make everyone a stakeholder in the process? Politics is the art of compromise. That's why a Media and Democracy Act that incorporates all these concerns can have appeal across the partisan divides of politics as well as the political divides within the media and democracy movement.

Read his whole argument, it's worth your time. Democracy can't be restored in the United States without media reform, and it has to start somewhere.

Schechter also links to Bill Moyers's speech on the closing day of the conference: "Take Back Public Broadcasting". If you haven't heard it yet, read it here.

what i'm watching: question for canadians

I have a practical - totally non-political - question for the Canadians among us. Do you use a DVD rent-by-mail service? If so, which one, and do you like it?

I am a complete Netflix addict. We both love movies - especially enjoyed without stupid people talking behind us. (Perhaps Canadian audiences are more considerate?) I love Netflix's great selection, the service is speedy, and if you watch a lot of movies, you can't beat the price ($17.99/month for unlimited rentals).

Last year I read that Netflix was going to expand into Canada by early 2005, but apparently those plans have been postponed indefinitely. Checking around online, I found several competing Netflix-type services in Canada. I'm wondering if anyone has feedback on selection, speed of delivery, price, and so forth.

"you want old stuff? go to europe."

I learned today that CBGB, that Bowery institution where I discovered... oh, a lot of stuff... will likely close next year. It's a complete wonder that Hilly Kristal's palace has managed to survive so long, and it's not surprising that it has finally come to the end of the line after 32 years. (It does make me feel a little old, but that's ok.)

I gleaned this NYC tidbit from an Op-Ed in last week's New York Times City section, called "Go To Brooklyn, Punk", which I traced back to Tony Fletcher, who I confess I had never heard of before.

Fletcher's piece is about New York's ever-changing - some would say ever- disappearing - music scene, forever forced to discover new neighborhoods as areas become too pricey.

And then there's CBGB. When Hilly Kristal opened his Bowery bar in December 1973, the neighborhood was too dangerous to draw an audience for the club's promised country, bluegrass and blues. Instead, a new generation of downtown rock musicians, attracted by the neighborhood's cheap loft rents, talked their way onto his stage. The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Television duly started punk rock and made CBGB internationally famous; the club has continued to champion underground music ever since. CBGB's lease expires this summer, and Mr. Kristal says he won't meet a proposed doubling of his rent to $40,000 a month.

Mr. Kristal doesn't glorify the days when the club, below a flophouse, was among the neighborhood's only functioning storefronts. A recent Village Voice story about the Bowery's gentrification found him remarkably sanguine. "A lot of this neighborhood could be nicer and cleaner," Mr. Kristal said. "So things are gone, places are gone. You want old stuff? Go to Europe. This is New York."

Precisely. Besides, as Mr. Kristal knows, success does not guarantee survival in this city. The factors that enable a music club to become a going concern - cheap rents, low prices, a poor but avid customer base - are certain to change when the neighborhood becomes popular, the venue makes money or the lease is up.

He's right, of course, in one sense. New York is all about change. New York is change. The city exists for profit, not to subsidize fledgling art and music scenes.

Yet I wonder if New York risks losing the constant influx of young adventurers that add so much to the city, as the slum-to-art-to-gentrification cycle turns faster and faster. One day I read that Red Hook, Brooklyn is the new frontier, and it seems the next I'm reading about development in that neighborhood that only the very rich can afford.

Yet... the next day I read about an arts boom in the South Bronx. Yes, the South Bronx. And it just keeps spinning.

shea stadium, 1:05 est, pavano vs petey

The Yankees are playing the Mets this weekend (boo, interleague!), and today's the game everyone's been waiting for: Pedro vs the Yankees. Here's how it looks from my little corner of the world:

1. I hate the Mets. I love to hate the Mets! Hating the Mets is like a national pastime for me.

2. I love Pedro Martinez. He's one of the many attractions that ushered me into Red Sox Nation.

3. I really like Willie Randolph, former Yankee, now the Mets manager. I've liked Willie from his playing days in the late 1970s, when I first got into baseball. Plus he's the first African-American manager in New York and I want him to do well.

4. I want the Yankees to lose. The more they lose this year, the happier I am.

5. I especially want the Yankees to be bested by Pedro, for reasons that should be obvious to most baseball fans. (And if you're not a fan, I won't bore you with the explanation.)

6. But I hate the Mets!

What to do?!

"the confinement even of an attractive cage"

Sometimes as children, we admire certain people, we have heroes, but when we grow up, we learn those people weren't very heroic. It turns out their public images were mainly myth, or their private lives were hateful, or worse, they didn't really achieve the feats they are credited with.

But sometimes, the reverse happens: someone we admired as a child turns out to be even better than we imagined, and the more we learn, the larger their stature grows.

I've had that experience with two of my childhood heroes: Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. I was always fascinated with both these women. I read kids' biographies about them, saw documentaries, collected quotes, and just generally loved the idea of them, in a kid way. Imagine my joy and amazement when I learned that my idol Joni Mitchell identified with her, too.

Now that I've learned much more about them, as an adult, I can truly say they are heroes. (If it seems I'm always referring to people as heroes, it's because I have a lot of them - my famous role models for what's important in life.)

Roosevelt and Earhart had much in common, as both women were consciously, radically feminist. (Roosevelt, if she lived today, would still be a radical. The world has yet to catch up with her vision and her brilliant open mind.) And I've recently learned that they were friends! They flew together several times; their friendship made Roosevelt want to take flying lessons. (FDR said no!)

In my last "what i'm reading" post, I was about to start Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism by Susan Ware. And the more I learn about "Amelia" - as I still think of her, from childhood days - the more I love her. Earhart, the aviator - and Earhart the feminist, writer, public speaker, clothing designer, and towering public figure.

Earhart was overtly, consciously feminist. She used every opportunity - and there many, as when she wasn't flying, she was writing, speaking, giving interviews and otherwise trying to raise money for more flights - to champion women's rights, to talk about women's achievements, to place her own accomplishments (and those of other female aviators) in a larger context, as proof that women were capable individuals, and deserved equal opportunity and treatment.

Like my favorite baseball player, Lou Gehrig, Earhart's death overshadows her life. Her disappearance has become what she's best known for, the way that Gehrig's farewell speech overshadows his incredible career.

Earhart's personal life is very interesting to me, too. She had an innate understanding of what came to be called "the personal is political". She was highly skeptical about marriage, which for middle-class women in those days, meant the death of individuality and achievement. After much reluctance, she eventually married her manager and publicist, G. P. Putnam. They had a modern marriage by any standards, one based on mutual respect, friendship and a working relationship. (Also one purposely without children.)

Before she would agree to marry Putnam, Earhart wrote this:

There are some things which should be writ before we are married - things we have talked over before - most of them.

You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which mean much to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.

On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply (or in passing) with anyone else.

Please let us not interfere with the other's work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.

I must exact a cruel promise, and that is you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.

I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want.

A.E.

I relate to this letter in many ways. I'd love to talk to Earhart and find out how it really worked out.

I wish I could meet Amelia, hang out with her. Maybe she would let me borrow a scarf.

Here is Amelia Earhart, as she should be remembered.

the other war

"Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him."

When I first read this story, I assumed you all saw it, too, and didn't need my take. And it was so sickening, I caught myself looking the other way. But after taking a few deep breaths, I feel an obligation to post it, just in case someone stumbles on it for the first time on this blog.

The story I'm referring to is the details of the deaths of the Afghan prisoners, by torture at the hands of the US military, in the Bagram prison. And how the military tried to cover up those deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

The army even admits that "most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar [one of the men tortured to death] was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time." New York Times story here.

How do the neocons and fascists - the O'Reillys and Coulters of the world - defend this? Maybe it's the one bad apple defense. Maybe it's breaking eggs to make omelets. Or perhaps it's the media's fault, for reporting it.

The tortured prisoners lost their dignity, then their lives. Their tormentors lost their dignity, and their souls.

I would never compare what a murderer and his victim suffer. No matter how much the perpetrator one day regrets his actions, the hammer hurts less than the nail. I'll only conjecture that the American torturers may run from their demons for the rest of lives, and no amount of alcohol or drugs will let them run fast enough.

And what of the people who put them there, who created a climate that allowed such horror? What of those defenders of freedom? What will happen to them?

good question

G alerted me to an excellent post at Are We Still A Democracy?. Apparently the White House press corps recently borrowed some courage and did their jobs. (You know I won't say the journalists found their balls. But anyone with evidence suggesting a correlation between testicles and courage is welcome to email me.)

While over at AWSAD, you can read a wonderful quote from Ben Franklin, one of the US's more enlightened founders: "They that give up an essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

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.

encouragement

I just got this comment on an early post:

I've been wanting to move to Canada. My daughter and grandkids are in Thunder Bay.

It just looks like the whole immigration thing is so overwhelming. And that's why i haven't tried.

But I am encouraged by your site. And I realize now that it is a possibility.

This makes me feel great. It's exactly one of the reasons I started this blog! What applies here is a wonderful cliche: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

A long time ago, I quit my career in the nonprofit theatre to see if I was really a writer. I literally rearranged my entire life, bought a new typewriter (yes, I predate home computers!), and thought, holy shit, what do I do now? I typed that little saying on a slip of paper and taped it to the wall above my desk. And started to write a book.

I hope the anonymous commenter downloads the application and gets to work.

terrorism

Naomi Klein recently attended an event honoring Maher Arar, the Canadian man who became the most famous victim of the US torture "renditions". She observed some interesting things about torture - especially what an effective political tool it is.

Arar was being honored for his courage by the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, a mainstream advocacy organization. The audience gave him a heartfelt standing ovation, but there was fear mixed in with the celebration. Many of the prominent community leaders kept their distance from Arar, responding to him only tentatively. Some speakers were unable even to mention the honored guest by name, as if he had something they could catch. And perhaps they were right: The tenuous "evidence"--later discredited--that landed Arar in a rat-infested cell was guilt by association. And if that could happen to Arar, a successful software engineer and family man, who is safe?

In a rare public speech, Arar addressed this fear directly.

It's a very good column; read more here.

warnings

Many people are warning me about the (apparently) impending Conservative Canadian government. Where will I go? What will I do?

They just don't get it.

Is Canada eliminating national health care, and almost all other social programs?

Will it suddenly become a huge military power, invading foreign countries to control their natural resources and further their business interests?

Will it imprison hundreds (thousands?) of people indefinitely, without charges, without access to the outside world, even counsel?

Will a neo-Conservative religious minority suddenly exert enormous influence on legislation and the judicial system?

Will abortion suddenly become illegal?

Will gay Canadians be demonized as second-class citizens by the very government to whom they pay their taxes? (And don't tell me about Stephen Harper's opposition to same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is already legal in 7 of 10 provinces, is about to become legal in an 8th province, and will eventually be legal federally, too.)

Will Canadians suddenly become arrogant, ethnocentric egomaniacs, unable to bear the slightest criticism of their Greatest Nation On Earth, ready at a moment's notice to "blow them off the map," whoever "they" happen to be?

Folks, it's not as if I'm emigrating to Canada because I love Paul Martin!

As I've said ad nauseum in wmtc, emigration is far too big a decision - and too prolonged a process - to be based on what party happens to be in power today.

safety valve

Just now a newcomer to wtmc left a much kinder and more thoughtful (and more sane!) comment. She/he said, among other things:

You shouldn't think of it so much as leaving your country, though, for someone else's. After all, Canada (English Canada, anyway), was founded by Americans who left the US for political reasons in the first place. In essense, all you're really doing is continuing that heritage. Canada has always been a safety valve for the United States. Years ago, I had a friend in Seattle who surprised me by saying he hoped Canada would never become a part of the US... he told me it was far too useful the way it was. It provided a few necessary examples of practical alternatives that would vanish if it weren't there, and gave people in the US with unpopular views a means to voice them (Malcolm X, Ralph Nader), or even, if needs be, a familiar place to escape to (draft dodgers). He said something to the effect that 'when the world wants to be free, it moves to America. When Americans want to be free, they move to Canada'. [Emphasis mine.] It's an oversimplification, but I've always thought it was a nice, pithy way of summing it up.

I agree! I had a similar thought, though less articulate, here.

It's especially true as the US becomes less and less free. It retains the superficial veneer of freedom, but there's little democracy left under the surface.

i am a fascist pig

So says a commenter who visited wmtc last night. I'm also a traitor and a conspiracy theorist and I should change my name to - get this! - Jane Fonda. Whoo-hoo! Now if I can have Jane Fonda's body and money, I'll be all set!

In another comment, he hopes "the government tags you as terrorists and blocks your mover." Then I guess he realized that wasn't English, and posted "I hope the government tags you on the terror-watch lists and blocks your move to Canada," but didn't bother to remove the first comment.

Hey, if the government put me on the terror-watch list, wouldn't they want me to leave the country? Or is "Werner" admitting that the government of the "Great United States of America" (direct quote) puts people with dissenting opinions on the terror-watch list to harass them? Just wondering.

Werner also says I am free to criticize the US, but only from "Canuck soil or Mexican soil or any soil that is not a part of the Great United States of America". That's an interesting concept of free speech he's got there. (As an aside, why are these people so obsessed with soil? What is so special about this dirt I keep hearing about?)

You know, since I announced our final acceptance, many friends, family and sister activists have been emailing with good wishes, and I've been feeling sad at what I'm leaving behind. Not that I will never see them again, just a natural sadness at leave-taking. Hearing from this wacko was excellent timing, since it reminds me of everything that's wrong with this fucking country. Thanks, Werner!

not surprised, but astonished

The great Helen Thomas writes:

I am not surprised at the duplicity. But I am astonished at the acceptance of this deception by voters in the United States and the United Kingdom.

I've seen two U.S. presidents go down the drain -- Lyndon B. Johnson on Vietnam and Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal -- because they were no longer believed. But times change -- and I guess our values do, too.

There are many reasons why the shrinking electorate accepts this bullshit from our elected officials. The lying corporate media, the consumer culture that numbs wills and minds, endless betrayals and scandals that foster cynicism and apathy, the learned helplessness that threatens to engulf us all, among others.

Yet still... still... if enough of us cared enough, could this happen? If 90% of Americans voted, could we have this war? If we took to the streets in such massive numbers and so frequently that we couldn't be ignored or dismissed, couldn't we end it?

These are hypothetical questions, of course. They have no definitive answers. I just feel very discouraged tonight, and I'm glad I am leaving.

Read Thomas's opinion piece from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer here.

local news

The country. Paul Krugman on Wal-Mart:

In 1968, when General Motors was a widely emulated icon of American business, many of its workers were lifetime employees. On average, they earned about $29,000 a year in today's dollars, a solidly middle-class income at the time. They also had generous health and retirement benefits.

Since then, America has grown much richer, but American workers have become far less secure.

Today, Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation. Like G.M. in its prime, it has become a widely emulated business icon. But there the resemblance ends.

The average full-time Wal-Mart employee is paid only about $17,000 a year. The company's health care plan covers fewer than half of its workers. [Read it here.]

The state next door. Connecticut executes someone for the first time in 45 years. This might be considered state-assisted suicide, as the man fought for the right to abandon appeals and be killed. However, had there been no legal death penalty, had he been sentenced to life in prison, that would not have been an issue.

[Please note: proponents of capital punishment are respectfully asked to make their cases elsewhere.]

Down the street. This happened a few blocks from us. Check out that picture. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

On the other side of the globe, the US continues to spread democracy and good will.

more synergy

Two things I love coming together. Minus the corporate ad, anyway.

thank you

Wow. Thank you, you guys. Thank you to everyone who left comments or emailed to congratulate us. It really means a lot.

OK, our plans.

The immediate next step is to get our photos taken again - all we do is get our pictures taken for this thing! Then we send our passports and the photos to Buffalo in a special envelope that came with yesterday's letter. The passports are returned to us stamped with our visa. (Yippee!!) The visa has an expiration date, by which time we must take residence in Canada or lose our chance.

How long we get has been the big question of this process. We've known that, at some point, the clock will start ticking and there will be a "must move by" date, but have never known with certainty what that time frame will be. The fact that it's not published anywhere tells me it must change, and probably varies for people from different countries and at different times.

Right now, based on the experience of other Americans who emigrated to Canada fairly recently, we believe we'll have six months. But we won't know for sure until we get our visas.

Once we have our visas in hand, we start looking for a place to live. We know exactly what we're looking for, and we've decided that if we find the Perfect Place early on, we're packing up and going. (Argh!) If we don't, we'll need to decide how long to look for Perfect Place before taking Less Than Perfect Place and moving again during our first year. More about Perfect Place later.

Ideally, I'd like to move around the beginning of September, but I don't expect to be able to fine-tune things that precisely.

Since some of you asked, I will tell you unequivocally: yes, I will continue blogging throughout. I warn you that wmtc is likely to get really boring, as I blather about our moving plans, and then later, our settling in and our impressions of our new home.

But believe it or not, I originally started this blog as a way to keep in touch with friends and family through the immigration process and after we moved. Little did I know it would morph into this wonderful little community. Hopefully by now you're all hooked and will keep reading through the boring bits. One nice thing about blogging: reading is always voluntary, so I don't have to apologize for boring you. (Though I probably will.)

I'm still quite overwhelmed by yesterday's news. Someone said this anonymously in comments yesterday: "It seemed as though your blog would forever be about the desire to immigrate to Canada. Now the Big Shift happens, where all your entries will move on to, well, moving on."

In fact, I said something very similar to a friend just the other day. It felt as if I'd be saying "I'm moving to Canada" forever. The transition has been going on for so long - in my mind at least - that it seemed permanent. It's hard to believe (or so I thought, just a few days ago) that one day it would actually happen: we will drive ourselves and our dogs out of New York City, and go live somewhere else.

Wow.

green light

Allan returned from walking the dogs with the mail, as he always does. He opened the door and said one word: "Canada". Handed me a thin manila envelope from Buffalo. My hands were shaking when I opened it:

IMPORTANT NOTICE.

The processing of your application for permanent residence in Canada is complete. We require your passports before we can issue your immigrant visas. You must provide your passports to our office as soon as possible. Failure to do so could result in delays in processing...

If you're keeping score, here's the timeline so far:

March 22, 2004 - applications submitted for first time
April 3 & 23 - corrected applications resubmitted
June 3 - applications declared correct and placed in queue
Jan 18 - initial assessment complete, request for additional documents
Feb 1 - medical exams done
March 21 - FBI clearances received [note: this has changed, CIC now asks for FBI certificate with initial application]
March 23 - second round of documents sent to CIC
May 11, 2005 - applications are complete; request for passports

Oh shit. I'm freaking out. And I'm on deadline.

stop the presses

The mail just came. We're in.

WE ARE IN!!!!!!!!!!!

More later. Too busy bouncing off walls to be coherent.

ladies and gentlemen...

Thanks to Barbara from California's recent post about aging, I remembered something I meant to blog about. (And yes, I am supposed to be working, thank you for asking.)

Yesterday, continuing their tradition of kicking off tours on the streets of New York City, the Rolling Stones announced their 2005 tour by holding a press conference and free concert outdoors at Lincoln Center. Some local coverage here and a good pic here.

In 1975, the Stones famously played "Brown Sugar" on a flatbed truck rolling down Fifth Avenue. In 1989, they announced their "Steel Wheels" tour at Grand Central Terminal; for "Bridges to Babylon", they drove across the Brooklyn Bridge in a cherry-red Cadillac convertible. A few years ago, Mick and the boys descended on the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park from a blimp. I'm sure there are others I can't think of and don't have time to look for right now. Feel free to post anything I've missed.

I won't lie to you: I haven't actually seen any of these appearances, despite both my Rolling Stones and New York City fanaticism, and despite having seen them on 7 or 8 different tours, until I purposely stopped going. I just love knowing it's here.

sneer

"Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience."

Sometimes a silly signature line says it all. In this morning's Toronto Star, I see a recap of Ambassador Frank McKenna's appearance on John Gibson's Fox News show.

In an encounter more game show than great debate, Frank McKenna fended off Fox News allegations yesterday that Canada is soft on security and welcoming to terrorists.

The show was "The Big Story" with John Gibson, but the new Canadian ambassador, his on-air time squeezed by reports on a double murder and a police shooting, took on the host as if he were on Final Jeopardy.

"Mr. Ambassador, the big question: Are Islamic radicals inside Canada a threat to both your side of the border and ours?" asked Gibson, a well-known critic of Canada — or Canada-baiter, depending on one's point of view.

Hard on the heels of that question, Gibson asked McKenna: "Explain to me something — I hear there are a certain number of Americans who were mad that President Bush was re-elected. They want to move to Canada."

It takes them a long time to get in, he added.

"But you get the impression that if you get off the plane from Afghanistan and say, 'I'm here claiming political asylum,' you're welcome to Canada," Gibson asserted.

I understand why McKenna has to make these appearances, but sheesh, this is a loss out of the gate. Read more here.

The Star story closes with this:

His message to Americans thinking heading north of the border?

"You like sneering Canadians so much? Fine. Stay forever."

This is not the first time we've encountered this Fox cartoon. Who are these sneering Canadians Gibson is so obsessed with? I've yet to meet one, nor has anyone I know or have ever heard from.

OK, Rob, Kyle, ALPF, G, Raspberry Jubileee, my unknown loyal reader from Nova Scotia, and all you other Canadians reading: one, two, three... sneer!!

Come on, you can do better than that. Really get into it. Crinkle up your noses, curl your lip, feel superior. Think of Elvis! That oughta help.

struggle

Enough complaining, time to do something.

Purple Ocean, the political arm of the Service Employees International Union, is still fighting to make the US's largest employer responsible to something other than the bottom line. A sister organization, WalMartWatch is helping to get the facts out.

The Maryland legislature has passed historic legislation to deal with Wal-Mart's abuse. "The Wal-Mart bill" would require businesses with more than 10,000 employees in MD to spend at least 8 percent of their total payroll on employee health benefits or pay for their employee's reliance on state heath insurance programs. Governor Ehrlich is threatening to veto the bill after receiving generous campaign contributions from Wal-Mart Inc.

Details and a press release here, how you can help here.

Black Box Voting is still fighting to restore and preserve democracy. There are five main focuses right now, including this one in Illinois:

Large payments from Diebold are fueling influence-peddling for a $45 million Cook County/Chicago voting machine contract. Diebold has been lobbying both Ohio and Cook County/Chicago through a small corporation formed by a Republican and two well-connected Democrats. Diebold is reportedly making payments directly to the individuals and payments are also flowing through a corporation formed by the three partners...

Other battles for honest and accountable voting continue in California and elsewhere. Particularly disturbing to me are attempts to undermine fair voting under the guise of compliance with disability-access laws. File that under bullshit, right next to W's claim that destroying Social Security is good for African-Americans. For more info - and to see what you can do - start here.

The NRDC is fighting to preserve America's natural heritage, and keep a few parcels of peace and beauty out of the hands of industry. Here's a typical move:

Earlier this year, the Interior Department approved a plan to open 95 percent of New Mexico's Otero Mesa -- part of our Greater Rockies BioGem -- to oil and gas exploration. In response, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson filed suit on April 22nd against Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton for failing to adequately protect this fragile and irreplaceable wildland. . . .

New Mexico's Otero Mesa is home to pronghorn, burrowing owls, the endangered Aplomado falcon, mountain lions and countless other species. Beneath its grasslands lies a freshwater aquifer that is large enough to supply drinking water for New Mexicans for more than a hundred years.

Even though Governor Richardson proposed a plan for protecting the most fragile parts of Otero Mesa, the Interior Department chose instead to give oil and gas companies virtually unlimited access to this special place. The agency's decision also ignored comments submitted by tens of thousands of people from all over the country in support of protecting Otero Mesa.

What's worse, the Interior Department went ahead with its plan even though federal land managers believe there is little chance of finding economically recoverable amounts of oil and gas in the area.

Here are some things you can do.

And this wouldn't be Activists' Corner (is this Activists' Corner? dunno, just made that up) if I didn't update you on the reproductive rights front.

If you haven't educated yourself about the Teen Endangerment Act (falsely called the "Child Custody Protection Act"), now is the time. Even if you're not a teenager - or the parent of a teen - or the parent of someone who will one day be a teen - even if you feel this dangerous legislation will have little or no direct effect on your life - ask yourself, What kind of country do I want to live in?

This is such an extreme intrusion of government into the private lives of citizens, and such a blatant forcing of someone's private (so-called) morality into the public sphere. It's one more step down the slippery slope called fascism. Resist it.

Read more here. General resistance here, among other places.

shame

Robert Fisk must be reading my blog. (I wish.) In his latest hard-hitting piece in The Independent, Fisk expands on my post "routine".

Here it is courtesy of Common Dreams (you need to register to read the original).

Two years after "Mission Accomplished", whatever moral stature the United States could claim at the end of its invasion of Iraq has long ago been squandered in the torture and abuse and deaths at Abu Ghraib. That the symbol of Saddam Hussein's brutality should have been turned by his own enemies into the symbol of their own brutality is a singularly ironic epitaph for the whole Iraq adventure. We have all been contaminated by the cruelty of the interrogators and the guards and prison commanders.

But this is not only about Abu Ghraib. There are clear and proven connections now between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the cruelty at the American's Bagram [typo corrected here] prison in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

It's an excellent, very disturbing story. He ends with this wrap-up:

Ten bloody days in Iraq: 338 dead, 588 wounded

Thursday 28 April

Roadside bomb leaves four American troops dead and two wounded. Two other US troops die in an accident. Five Iraqis killed in attacks.

Friday 29 April

Seventeen bombs, including four suicide attacks in almost as many minutes in Azamiyah, and 13 car bombs in Baghdad area, leave at least 50 dead, including two US servicemen, with 114 Iraqis and seven Americans wounded.

Continued here.

foreign relations

Canada-US relations again, courtesy of ALPF. According to a recent poll, fewer people on both sides of the Canadian-US border view each other as close friends and allies.

The numbers of Canadians who like the US is still surprisingly high - surprising to me, that is - but the numbers of Americans who share the love is surprisingly low. This makes me wonder about the media's portrayal of Canada in the US, and I don't mean only the Feral and Unbalanced (TM Crabletta) folks at Fox. I wonder what they're being told, because I can't imagine why most Americans wouldn't have a positive view of Canada and Canadians.

Cross-border respect appears to be fading, a new poll says, despite Canadians and Americans seeing eye-to-eye on a lot of key issues.

According to an Ipsos-Reid poll, the number of Canadians who view America as their country's closest ally has slipped to just 53 per cent, compared with 60 per cent in 2002.

More Canadians -- 73 per cent -- said their country is a "friend and ally" of the U.S., but that number was also down from 85 per cent last November.

South of the border, the same trend applies, with only 14 per cent of Americans calling Canada their country's closest ally. That figure was 18 per cent three years earlier.

. . .

In recent years, many took differences over the war in Iraq as a symbol of the growing gulf between the North American neighbours.

But according to the poll, citizens on both sides of the border actually agree on a broad range of value-laden issues.

That last is an interesting bit. When asked whether the government has a responsibility to protect the poor, if caring for the elderly is a government duty, and if civil rights are threatened by the war on terror, the surveyed Americans and Canadians largely agreed.

The percentage of Americans who answered yes to those questions was 78, 88, 40, respectivey. Though all surveys should be taken with a few grains of salt, I do believe that most Americans are not as selfish, mean-spirited and focused only on profit as their current leaders.

Survey results here, summary article here.

synergy

Sometimes several things we love come together. Redsock, in his baseball guise, sent me this link to some baseball poetry. Specifically, limericks. For example:

The Yankees are sitting in last.
Steinbrenner cries, "I'm aghast!
I have a bill
For 200 mill!
Gimme my victories, fast!"

Baseball Toaster has written one for each MLB division. (It's a really nice blog. Scroll down to see his lovely tribute to a former professor.)

This Toaster guy has found an entire dictionary (or dictionary-in-progress) being written in limericks! Really! It's called the OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form.

You have to see it believe it. An example from today's "recently approved limerick" listing:

The apostrophe's often abused:
It gets battered, and bruised, and misused.
On a plural, a blight;
For possessives, just right,
Barring "its", which leaves people confused

And following the limerick is a concise definition of the word. I especially love that he's retaining the name of the contributor for each entry, a nice touch that will attract more people. Go. Give it a try.

ex-pats unite

A nice person named Julien contacted me about his new blog directory: Expat-Blog, "an open community dedicated to expatriates and their adventures all around the world."

To those ends, Julien is contacting ex-patriate bloggers from all over the world and creating a multi-lingual forum for information sharing, support and fun, as well as blog hosting. I know there are many ex-patriate friends of wmtc, so I hope you'll give it a look.

Julien didn't mind that I'm not technically an ex-patriate yet. He correctly pointed out that I already am - in my mind. And hopefully in a few months the rest of me will come along.

krugmanize your mind

In case you started reading this blog yesterday: I love Paul Krugman. This morning he compares BushCo to more mundane con men and grifters.

Hell hath no fury like a scammer foiled. The card shark caught marking the deck, the auto dealer caught resetting a used car's odometer, is rarely contrite. On the contrary, they're usually angry, and they lash out at their intended marks, crying hypocrisy.

And so it is with those who would privatize Social Security. They didn't get away with scare tactics, or claims to offer something for nothing. Now they're accusing their opponents of coddling the rich and not caring about the poor.

Well, why not? It's no more outrageous than other arguments they've tried. Remember the claim that Social Security is bad for black people?

One of the many cool things about our man Krugman is that he's an economist. This makes his bullshit cutter particularly sharp.

The point is that the privatizers consider four years of policies that relentlessly favored the wealthy a fait accompli, not subject to reconsideration. Now that tax cuts have busted the budget, they want us to accept large cuts in Social Security benefits as inevitable. But they demand that we praise Mr. Bush's sense of social justice, because he proposes bigger benefit cuts for the middle class than for the poor.

Sorry, but no. Mr. Bush likes to play dress-up, but his Robin Hood costume just doesn't fit.

Read. Learn.

trust

Don't miss ALPF's comment here. I imagine readers may have a bit to say about this.

(ALPF: Blogger spellchecker asks me if I mean alpaca.)

nevermore

This is getting ridiculous.

I have tried three times, on three separate trips, to visit the Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore. Each time, it was closed.

When we were in Philadelphia last summer, I learned there is a Poe National Site there. It was closed. (I went to college in Philadelphia - an English major, no less - but never knew it existed.)

Today, getting some info for the rest of my "NYC to do" list, I learned that the Poe Cottage in the Bronx is open... you guessed it: Saturdays and Sundays. When I'm working.

They do admit groups by special appointment on other days. I'm contacting them to ask if they can let me and Allan in, even though we constitute a very small group. I love literary pilgrimages, and I'd hate to leave New York without making this one.

Plus, I don't like being thwarted. I become determined!

ocho de mayo

When he's not auditioning for Lifestyles of the Peeing Famous, ALPF is still finding me interesting wmtc-related tidbits.

In this story from the Arizona Republic, we learn that Canada is fulfilling America's promise to the tired, poor and "wretched refuse". These are the Mexcian immigrants, who are simultaneously employed, exploited, depended upon, harrassed, arrested, and occasionally murdered in the US.

As the United States fortifies its border with Mexico, Canadian companies are reaching out to immigrants who are frustrated by U.S. restrictions and tempted by dreams of a better life in Canada.

The Canadian government has been relaxing its immigration rules in an effort to attract students and skilled workers from all over the world. That, and the push by companies promising jobs and visas, is attracting Mexican professionals turned off by the Minuteman Project, new border walls, tougher U.S. entry requirements and laws like Proposition 200 in Arizona. . . .

"Canada has its arms open to immigrants, and the United States has its arms closed. It's as simple as that," accountant Marcos Ramírez Posadas said as he stood in line with other visa applicants outside the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City.

The article explains why Canada is courting Mexican workers, and how it's making it easier for them to live and work legally in Canada.

I happen to love Mexican culture, and my interactions with Mexicans, both in Mexico and with Mexican-Americans here in the States, has been overwhelmingly positive. I realize this is a generalization, and the usual caveats apply. But for the most part, Mexicans will bring hard work, close-knit families, neighborliness, and a consideration for others - especially strangers in need - to the Canadian immigrant mix.

American immigration policy towards Mexicans has such a long, convoluted and contradictory history. In a word, it's insane. Canada is smart to capitalize on that.

It's an interesting article, worth reading if you're interested in immigration issues. It closes with this:

"I find [Americans] very egotistical," said Ramírez, an accountant for an oil-drilling firm. "There are a lot of historical problems between our countries. Canadians are much nicer; they appreciate other cultures."

. . .

For Victor Pérez Muciño, 33, a municipal worker in the town of Huixquilucan, recent news coverage of the Minuteman Project, a civilian patrol on the Arizona-Mexico border, was the deciding factor.

"We're always hearing about what they're doing to our fellow citizens . . . all these things with vigilantes, migrant hunters," he said. "Who wants to live with that?"

brush with fame

I hope it's ok to share this exciting news I received from ALPF. I don't see why not. After all, he is - by self-definition - anonymous:

Hey guess what?
I took a pee beside Prime Minister Paul Martin yesterday! I'm not kidding! He was very nice and I told him that it was an honour to be standing beside him, even if it was an odd circumstance. He shook my hand (after we washed them) and said it nice to meet me!!

Very cool! I've met a few famous people here and there, but never a Prime Minister, and never so up-close and personal. Certainly never while urinating!

addiction

Do you get addicted to stuff like I do? First it was Freecell, then Spider. Now it's a stupid red button. Don't say I didn't warn you...

reboot

Micrsoft has changed its collective mind. From an internal email that was made public:

Text of Steve Ballmer E-Mail to U.S. Microsoft Employees Regarding Public Policy Engagement

REDMOND, Wash. -- May 6, 2005 -- In response to widespread public interest in the company's position on anti-discrimination legislation, Microsoft Corp. today released the following text of an e-mail sent today from Steve Ballmer, CEO, to all Microsoft employees in the United States:

Date: May 6, 2005

To: All U.S. Microsoft Employees

Subject: Microsoft’s principles for public policy engagement

During the past two weeks I’ve heard from many of you with a wide range of views on the recent anti-discrimination bill in Washington State, and the larger issue of what is the appropriate role of a public corporation in public policy discussions. This input has reminded me again of what makes our company unique and why I care about it so much.

[skip to most relevant bit . . . ]

Accordingly, Microsoft will continue to join other leading companies in supporting federal legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation -- adding sexual orientation to the existing law that already covers race, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability. Given the importance of diversity to our business, it is appropriate for the company to endorse legislation that prohibits employment discrimination on all of these grounds. Obviously, the Washington State legislative session has concluded for this year, but if legislation similar to HB 1515 is introduced in future sessions, we will support it.

Thanks to Alan with one L.

update

From this morning's New York Times:

Elation in Harlem as Girl Held in Terror Inquiry Is Released
By Nina Bernstein

It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed "an imminent threat to the security of the United States."

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family.

Read the Times story here. I'm sure there'll be a lot of commentary about this as the day goes on. For now, I'm so happy to hear they are alive and safe. Not so happy that one family is being deported. Though at this point they might prefer a different country. I know I would.

time warp

Reggie Rivers, a former NFL player, writes a column for the Denver Post, and I thank Mr Rivers from the bottom of my heart for his latest piece. Athletes and former athletes are so rarely willing to be political, and given their built-in audience, it always seems to me a wasted opportunity. (I understand the reasons for it, but I'm activist - I want people to be active.)

In a recent comments-conversation with Crabletta, I was espousing my views on reaching more mainstream audiences with political material. For me, that is the greater challenge.

I couldn't live without venues like The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive (etc. etc.), and of course the blogosphere. It's incredibly important that we educate each other.

But for me personally, the more important stuff is Barbara Ehrenreich writing for Time, or an Oprah show on domestic violence, or a column just like this in the Denver Post.

You can read it in its entirety here. Oh what the hell, read it in its entirety right here. I love this little piece.

++++++

Good news, guys: It's back to those good ol' sexist days
Reggie Rivers

Gentlemen, we're in a time warp, and I mean that in a good way. Over the millennia, we've been able to keep women's options severely restricted. If a woman wanted a beautiful home, nice clothes, a family and respect in the community, she needed a husband.

Once she was married, she'd face stiff penalties if she left her husband. It used to be that divorce laws didn't offer her much help, and the community was structured to reduce her options. Life without a better half could be pretty bleak.

Banks would not loan money to a single or divorced woman, apartment houses would not accept her signature on leases, employers would not hire her, other women wouldn't associate with her, and most men wouldn't date a divorcee. These powerful social constraints kept women in marriages, where they belonged.

Nowadays, the old patriarchy has lost some of its sting and, predictably, society is falling apart. Women have access to education, jobs, respect and opportunity with or without a husband, and that's a disaster. They're fueling the divorce rate, having children out of wedlock, bossing men in the workplace, demanding alimony and child support and not suffering reasonable sanctions for upsetting the natural law.

Gentlemen, we cannot give up the fight. We have controlled women for millennia, and we can still do it now. We just need to focus on reproduction. It takes two to tango, but she's got a bigger stake in the dance. Once the music ends, the effects can last forever, and that's where we gain our advantage.

We want women pregnant. It slows them down, interrupts their careers, places more demands on their time, makes them more dependent on men and encumbers them with children who further reduce their options.

In 1973, the Supreme Court ridiculously fashioned a privacy right out of thin air in Roe vs. Wade, giving women the right to have abortions. Every effort to overturn this bad decision has so far failed. But, thankfully, we're in a time warp. The strategies we used for hundreds of years to repress women are still useful today. We must focus on erecting barriers that will keep women from pursuing abortions.

Good news! The Colorado legislature this week affirmed Gov. Bill Owens' veto of the emergency-contraception bill. Liberals had demanded that health providers inform rape victims about the so-called morning-after pill, and it was typical of them to manipulate the rape issue to try to create a back door for abortions. But the governor rightly asserted that rape victims aren't on par with doctors. We've got to remember whose rights are important here.

In fact, any gynecologist who examines a teenage girl should refuse, on religious grounds, to inform her that she's pregnant. If the doctor suspects that the teen will use his diagnosis to seek an abortion, then he has a moral duty to keep her in the dark about the pregnancy as long as possible.

On the national level, our representatives are working on the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which would make it a criminal offense for a grandmother, aunt, older sister or other non-parent to ferry a teenage girl across state lines for an abortion without the consent of her parents. Let's see how long this little underground railroad stays in business after a few women get sent to prison.

Insurance companies pay for Viagra (good) but not birth control pills (better). And now, right-minded pharmacists across the country have started refusing, on moral grounds, to fill birth-control prescriptions (best).

Like the good old days, we'll just keep reducing their options and keep the ladies under control.

++++++

Thanks, Mr Rivers. You are one cool dude.

routine

Every morning, I walk my dogs, give them biscuits, make coffee, and sit down at my computer. First I check my email, then I look at headlines.

This is what I've seen this week so far:

Sunday, May 1: Violence in Iraq Claims More Than 100 Lives in Past 3 Days

Monday, May 2: 35 Iraqis Killed as Leaders Seek to Fill Cabinet Posts

Tuesday, May 3: 13 Are Killed by Car Bombings in Baghdad and Mosul; 12 Die in U.S. Raid Near Syrian Border

Wednesday, May 4: Many killed in Baghdad violence; At least 23 people have been killed in several attacks targeting security forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Thursday, May 5: Clash at Iraq checkpoint kills 15

Friday, May 6: Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 26 in Separate Strikes in Iraq; Insurgents Press Attacks on Iraq Security Forces, Killing 22

What a relief to know the US has everything under control.

hostage crisis

Who holds affordable health care hostage in the US? Read Paul Krugman to find out.

Hint: it's about profit! Shocking, I know.

extreme makeover

Naomi Klein asks this important question:

What were the real reasons for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq?

When we identify why we really went to war—not the cover reasons or the rebranded reasons, freedom and democracy, but the real reasons—then we can become more effective anti-war activists.

Read her answer here.

For those who don't subscribe to Klein's economic interpretation of war, In These Times allows reader comments, blog-style. I hope I don't sound unkind, but I don't really want to use this blog as a place to debate the relative merits of - and reasons for - the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

fives

Before the day is over, let me wish everyone a happy Cinco de Mayo. Today is the best Cinco de Mayo because it's 2005: 05.05.05.

I always note dates like that: January 1, 2001 (01.01.01) or February 2, 2002 (02.02.02). Don't even get me started on palindromes. I love palindromes. Naturally the best time of day is 12:21.

Not so, Boston.

blog the war

Thank goddess for the blogosphere. Citizen journalists continue to do the job the mainstream media has left behind in search of greater profits.

Check out today's In Cold Blog, who will then direct you to "Happy Birthday, Mission Accomplished". I can't seem to get the direct link. Plus I want to plug Redsock's blog, as I'm encouraging him to link to more of you guys, and the reverse.