Election Workers in Iraq Are Scared but Resolute

Election Workers in Iraq Are Scared but Resolute



And I thought MY job was tough last fall:

"Threatened, attacked, kidnapped and killed, Iraq's election workers are finding that being at the forefront of the electoral process means surviving the frontlines of an insurgency determined to stop it."

Sounds almost as bad as HAVA!



They did install a security camera here but we don't have any "high concrete walls and checkpoints" yet.

Israel's security fence, dividing lives

Israel's security fence, dividing lives



A couple of great articles today on Israel-Palestine. First up is on Salon, translated from Der Spiegel. Well worth the watch-the-ad thing.

Suddenly a 1980s song by Queen begins blaring from loudspeakers in the room: "Another one bites the dust." In this place, however, the rock music isn't for entertainment. It's an alarm signal indicating that someone or something has touched the fence. Highly sensitive sensors are activated by even the most innocent contact: Palestinian school children throwing stones at the hated wall on their way home, stray dogs coming too close to the barrier...

My favorite Reagan moment - did I just say that?!? - was "Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And to Gorbachev's credit, he did.



If Bush were truly serious about stopping the "war on terror" he would go to the West Bank and say "Mister Sharon, tear down this wall." Then he'd cut off every dime to Israel till it happened. binLaden would be completely impotent against that.



And I thought I was the only one with the fantasy of a South Africa solution, a one person one vote unitary state. Maybe not:

Thousands of Palestinian guest workers still cross the green line to Israel illegally every night. For them, an independent Palestine can only fulfill their dreams temporarily. Many secretly hope for a state shared with the Israelis, one in which everyone has the same rights and that could guarantee their survival.

The other item is a diary on MyDD that looks at the potential for the Palestinian movement to shift toward nonviolence:

Blocking roads and bridges, holding general strikes, boycotts of Israeli products: These are just some of the tactics that Abbas should be advocating. If he fails, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to follow the lead of Hamas. Bad leadership is better than no leadership.

If Palestine had had a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, they would have a country by now. Too often the Palestinian cause had been diminished by violence - it was too easy to dismiss the legitimate grievances because of the terrorist tactics (tactics the Israeli founding fathers used against the British, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel).



A nonviolent movement would force the world to look at the issue rather than the methods.



At some time I need to write and publish my longer thoughts on this, what my firends and family know as "the Israel Rant." The tricky part is discussing the domestic U.S. politics of it without being accused of anti-Semitism. That may be impossible simply because in our political culture criticism of Israel, no matter how justified or well-documented, is always equated with anti-Semitism...

Blogs force withdrawal of VA miscarriage bill

Blogs force withdrawal of VA miscarriage bill

Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, was shaken by the speed and volume of the response as word of his bill traveled across the country via the Internet.



"I’ve never been blogged before," he said. "The tone of the e-mails has been disgusting. It’s,'You’re a horrible person. You ought to be crucified.' And those were the nice ones."



Information about Cosgrove’s bill was first posted on a Virginia Web site, http://democracyforvirginia.typepad.com. Maura Keaney, a Falls Church woman and former volunteer for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, uses the site to monitor state government and political issues.



Keaney said Monday her site had received about 70,000 hits in the previous 24 hours, and that information about the bill was picked up by more than 100 blogs, including Web sites for women who have suffered miscarriages...

I'm not sure if this bill had a chance, even in Virginia, but score one for the bloggers. It's an illustration of the blogosphere playing to its strengths: publicizing items that the commercial media may bypass. Not Trent Lott's head on a platter - but maybe more important on a real-life level.

Ice Ice Baby

Ice Ice Baby



The weather here is awful. It's that coat-everything ice. This morning walking seemed like the least objectionable transportation option.



Made it 17 blocks and only fell down once. Naturally, it was in front of a bar. It's been a very very long time since I fell down in front of a bar, especially at 8 a.m. But I'm sure I'm not the first person to fall down in front of Gabe's...



Which reminded me of the time when Vanilla Ice was "coming back hard" and played at Gabe's... that was what, six years ago?



Meanwhile, this very timely letter to the editor from Noah Siela appeared in today's Press-Citizen. Since they still don't keep the letters up on the web more than ONE DAY I'll share the whole thing:

Next time, break out city's shovels



Instead of the Iowa City Council handing out tickets to underage drinkers, why not have them hand out shovels instead? Then maybe everyone on the road wouldn't look like they're two days into happy hour.



I guarantee that the snow being left on the roads these last two days has caused more problems to the residents of Iowa City than the 19-year-olds being let into the bars did all last semester.



Push the snow, not the agendas.

British Cocaine Documentary Advocates Legalization

British Cocaine Documentary Advocates Legalization



"30 years of the war on drugs have achieved almost nothing except to make a few people fantastically rich, to arm our inner cities, to criminalise a generation of users, and to leave tens of thousands of Latin Americans dead.



Let's be honest. People try drugs, whether in the form of alcohol or pills, because they are fun. In his book Cocaine, Dominic Streatfield quotes the monetarist Milton Friedman: 'I do not think you can eradicate demand. The lesson we have failed to learn is that prohibition never works. It makes things worse not better.'



....over the past 15 years, the US has spent £150 billion trying to stop its people getting hold of drugs. In Britain and the US almost 20 per cent of the prison population is inside for drugs offences. So what is left? We can muddle on or we can legalise cocaine - and indeed all drugs.



It should be sold over the counter... at a reasonable, taxed price that does not encourage a black market. Then we must attack demand by using some of the millions saved to invest in education drives that are honest. Look how effective a generation of anti-smoking education has been in bringing the public behind stringent restrictions on smoking in public, but not an outright ban..."



As someone who struggled long ago with addiction to a legal drug, and as someone who after two decades of sobriety became collateral damage in the drug war, I find this approach fascinating. And I applaud it 100 percent.



Unfortunately, only documentary filmmakers have the nerve to speak so openly and honestly. Politicians - even some who would endorse this view in private - do not.

More Scary Roe-Wade Backpedaling

More Scary Roe-Wade Backpedaling



"Letting Go of Roe v. Wade," reads the headline in The Atlantic. It's an elaborately constucted argument balanced on the head of a pin:



"The day the Court overturns Roe... thousands of conservative politicians will face a dreadful choice: backtrack from the anti-abortion ground they have staked out and risk infuriating their pro-life base..."



Which they will never ever do.



"or deliver on their promise to eliminate the right to abortion..."



Which they could well do. But here's the weak link:



"and risk the wrath of a moderate, pro-choice majority... Abortion will suddenly become a voting issue for millions of pro-choice voters who care about it but know today that the right is protected not by congressional politics but by the courts."



The most likely result is that choice will become a victim of a passionate minority. In electoral politics, a minority focused on a single issue or a cluster of issues can defeat a large majority that's on the other side but only softly. Intensity beats larger numbers. We saw this in the 1970s with the defeat of ERA, and in the 1990s with the gun control issue. And without Roe-Wade, we could well see it with choice. This is not an issue the Democratic Party can afford to back down on.

Democrats Pick Emanuel as Campaign Chief

Democrats Pick Emanuel as Campaign Chief

"Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a former senior adviser in the Clinton administration, was named on Sunday as the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The appointment by the minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, means Mr. Emanuel will direct the Democrats' effort to recapture the House in the 2006 midterm elections, after they suffered losses in both the House and Senate last November."



'Some people argue about old Democrats and new Democrats,' Mr. Emanuel said in explaining his philosophy. 'I'm a Vince Lombardi Democrat. Winning is everything.'"

Which isn't exactly what Vince said...

Hey, we'll take Packer fans everywhere we can get after yesterday.



But Rahm may have to spend a little extra time shoring up his Chicago district, as some of his constituents might not like his choice of football coaches.