Author: jp

MAIN PHOTO: U.S. President George W. Bush points the way for his dog, Spot, before boarding Air Force One on January 3, 2004 in Waco, Texas. Seeking to tout his domestic agenda in an election year, President Bush said the education bill he signed two years ago was spurring reform at local schools. ‘We have recently received test results that show America’s children are making progress,’ Bush said in his first radio address of the new year. (Mike Theiler/Reuters)
INSET: While Democrats stump to replace him in neighboring Iowa, President George W. Bush begins the election year on January 5, 2004 by visiting Missouri to promote his education reforms and raise campaign money. Bush leaves St. John’s Church in Washington, January 4. (William Philpott/Reuters)

First off, this is not some right-wing reference to Noam Chomsky.
Rather, consider this a well-meaning notice to pundits and politicos that it may be time to refrain from your excessively liberal usage of the loaded lexicon of “terrorism” and its popular siblings, “terror” and “terrorist”.
In last year’s State of the Union address, for instance, President Bush made use of this “terror trilogy” a striking 21 times, according to the LA Weekly.
And last month, researchers at Syracuse University pored through Justice Department records to better examine Attorney General John Ashcroft’s braggadocio-inducing, supposedly “successful” prosecution of the War on Terror™, I mean, “Terror”. Their results may be considered surprising, at least if you’re the sort of overworked and under-relaxed American who occasionally watches CNN when not flipping through the 11PM local newscasts or 6PM Moesha reruns.

“TRAC data shows that convictions in cases the Justice Department says are related to international terrorism jumped 7 1/2 times compared with the two years before the attacks – from 24 to 184 – but the number of individuals who received sentences of five or more years actually dropped, from six in the two years before the attacks to three in the two years that followed.
When crimes the Justice Department said were related to domestic terrorism are included, convictions jump from 96 before the attacks to 341 after. Despite that dramatic increase, the number of those individuals who received sentences of five or more years dropped from 24 to 16.
…In what authorities describe as a strategy of prevention, potential or suspected terrorists are being charged since the 2001 attacks with minor nonterrorism crimes to get them off the street or out of the country.
…Federal authorities in New Jersey initially included attempts by 65 Middle Eastern men to cheat on an English-language entrance exam among their “terrorism-related” cases, briefly boosting terrorism prosecutions in that state from two to 67. The categorization was changed after it was reported in the media.”

And then there’s this verbal gadfly from today’s Arizona Republic, in what very well may be the straw that broke the terrorist’s back:

“Family members of slain soldier Lori Piestewa lashed out at the media Wednesday for practicing ‘domestic terrorism’ by televising a tape of the badly wounded Piestewa in an Iraqi hospital bed shortly before her death.
‘This terrorism was not from any foreign group wishing to harm the United States but from our own people wanting to make a quick buck off the misfortune of two young women,’ a prepared statement from the Piestewa family said of NBC’s decision to air the tape on their Nightly NewsTuesday. Several cable channels picked it up, but local affilliate, Channel 12 (KPNX) decided not to air the footage.”

As early as October 2001, Nation columnist Bruce Shapiro foresaw these sorts of problems arising when he discussed a bill pending before the House and Senate–one which had not yet come to be known as Ashcroft’s original PATRIOT Act.

“The point is simply that terrorism is a term of politics rather than legal precision. But in Ashcroft’s vision, it appears to be a label to be applied indiscriminately. Ashcroft’s initial bill defined terrorism as any violent crime in which financial gain is not the principal motivation. The House adds more precise language: To qualify, crimes or conspiracies must be “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion or to retaliate against government conduct.” Yet even this definition is big enough to drive a parade wagon through. An unruly blockade of the World Trade Organization could bring down the full force of antiterrorism law as easily as could a bombing.”

Orange Alert be damned. Let’s try some of that compassionate conservativism and lay off the liberal usage of “terrorism” for a while.

I’ve been in Los Angeles, away from any form of regular internet access, for a little more than a week now, but, I swear…didn’t I hear something about roughly 25,000 Iranian people dying this weekend? I mean, I couldn’t have imagined that, right?
Based on an assessment of the major dailies’ headlines and a perusal of the cable news networks’ coverage, reporting on this natural disaster seems to have nearly dried up. With only a handful of exceptions, there’s been no indefatigable documentation of scores of volunteers sifting through the rubble, trying to locate loved ones and instead turning up dead bodies. Does anyone know the Farsi word for “telegenic”?
Earlier this weekend, however (when not watching the “People on CNN” coverage of Nicole Kidman’s resilience in the face of divorce), I may have seen a snippet or two regarding “thousands dead in Iranian quake” and then some closing commentary about President Bush’s willingness to send humanitarian aid-despite that nation’s being on “the axis of evil,” as the commentators consistently reminded viewers when fleetingly discussing the massive amounts of deaths.
I guess I missed the correlation there. It couldn’t possibly be as base and simplistic a matter as “we Americans are helping those whom we have unilaterally declared to be our enemies,” right? And it most certainly couldn’t have been some second-tier implication of “they deserved it”?
We all ought to be thankful that this was an act of God and not the work of evil-doers, and that Iran isn’t under the sway of any sort of Christian sense of vengeance, lest we should see Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the democratically elected, though effectively useless, President Mohammad Khatami declare an endless “War on Seismology“.
Look out, faultlines.

via Reuters: California Town Digs Out After Powerful Quake
“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency on Tuesday for the central California county hardest hit by the state’s strongest earthquake in four years, freeing up disaster aid for education healthcare reconstruction.”
(Some liberties may have been taken with Reuters’ original wording above.)

This week, fans of rational and democratically-protected civil liberties had many reasons to rejoice (or at least, wait with bated breath until the inevitable appeals process begins) as federal courts issued three striking rejoinders to Big, Bad, and Powerful Interests–notably, King George and the RIAA.
Seriously, try smiling, just this once. Because, realistically, we all know it will be frown season again when November 2004 rolls around.
1. Court: Gitmo suspects need lawyers

In another legal setback for the Bush administration, a federal appeals court has concluded terrorist suspects held in secret U.S. custody on foreign soil deserve access to lawyers and the American legal system.
…The 9th Circuit [ruled that] “even in times of national emergency — indeed, particularly in such times — it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike. … We hold that no lawful policy or precedent supports such a counter-intuitive and undemocratic procedure.”

2. Court Rules Bush Cannot Hold Padilla As “Enemy Combatant”

In New York, a divided court ruled that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain Jose Padilla – a U.S. citizen – simply by declaring him “an enemy combatant.”
The majority of the three-judge panel ruled that while Congress might have the power to authorize the detention of an American, the president, acting on his own, did not. Padilla has been held in solitary confinement for 18 months without access to a lawyer or the courts. No charges have been filed against Padilla who is a US citizen born in Brooklyn.

3. Record Industry May Not Subpoena Online Providers

The recording industry cannot compel an Internet service provider to give up the names of customers who trade music online without judicial review, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled today.
The sharply worded ruling, which dismissed one industry argument by saying that it “borders on the silly,” is a blow to the music companies in the online music wars. It overturns a decision in federal district court that favored the industry and ordered Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of a subscriber based on simple subpoenas submitted to a court clerk.

While conventional wisdom encourages bitter veterans of failed relationships to dispose of incriminating love letters and other such mementos, Donald Rumsfeld sure has proven to be quite the obstinate paramour. Or maybe they just forgot to throw these letters in the big Republican fireplace?
Today’s Washington Post runs a feature by Dana Priest examining newly-declassified (don’t you loooove that shit?) documentation of the Reagan administration’s stances on All Things Saddam, and, in particular, the efforts of special envoy Donald Rumsfeld, who supposedly experimented with Bilateralism in the ’80s (hey–who didn’t?).

When details of Rumsfeld’s December trip came to light last year, the defense secretary told CNN that he had “cautioned” Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, an account that was at odds with the declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting, which did not mention such a caution. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Aziz…Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.

Additionally, the following romantic missives were gleaned from the oh-so-sexy National Security Archive at the George Washington University:

During the spring of 1984 the U.S. reconsidered policy for the sale of dual-use equipment to Iraq’s nuclear program, and its “preliminary results favor[ed] expanding such trade to include Iraqi nuclear entities” [Document 57]. Several months later, a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis said that even after the war ended, Iraq was likely to “continue to develop its formidable conventional and chemical capability, and probably pursue nuclear weapons” [Document 58]. (Iraq is situated in a dangerous neighborhood, and Israel had stockpiled a large nuclear weapons arsenal without international censure. Nuclear nonproliferation was not a high priority of the Reagan administration – throughout the 1980s it downplayed Pakistan’s nuclear program, though its intelligence indicated that a weapons capability was being pursued, in order to avert congressionally mandated sanctions. Sanctions would have impeded the administration’s massive military assistance to Pakistan provided in return for its support of the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.)
…Later in the month, the State Department briefed the press on its decision to strengthen controls on the export of chemical weapons precursors to Iran and Iraq, in response to intelligence and media reports that precursors supplied to Iraq originated in Western countries. When asked whether the U.S.’s conclusion that Iraq had used chemical weapons would have “any effect on U.S. recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with Iraq across a broad range, and also a willingness to open diplomatic relations,” the department’s spokesperson said “No. I’m not aware of any change in our position. We’re interested in being involved in a closer dialogue with Iraq” [Document 52].
Iran had submitted a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq’s chemical weapons use. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to lobby friendly delegations in order to obtain a general motion of “no decision” on the resolution. If this was not achievable, the U.S. delegate was to abstain on the issue. Iraq’s ambassador met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, and asked for “restraint” in responding to the issue – as did the representatives of both France and Britain.

Sadly, none of the various cables and telegrams posted on the publicly available website archive contain any of the purportedly hand-lettered notebook scribblings, “Mr. Donald Hussein, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld Hussein, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld-Hussein…”
Although some of those blottings do recall cupid’s arrows. Hope they’re not poison-tipped, ba-dum!