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Today's
Stories
January 24/5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
January
21, 2004
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Spring in Palestine
Ron
Jacobs
Drive, He Said
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
Weekend
Edition
January 24 / 5, 2004
Egrets of Mass Destruction?
The
Birdwatcher Menace
By SUSAN DAVIS
On
the heels of the almanac uproar comes the binoculars uproar, as reported
by a friend in Buffalo, New York:
"...
Yesterday we went for a walk through the new park they're working
on near the Peace Bridge. It was warm and foggy……. As
we're driving in we notice that there are several border patrol cars
parked near the entrance, but we think nothing of it ... We walked
for a few hours. On the 11 o'clock news we hear that down by the Peace
Bridge a few guys were detained under suspicion of possible terrorist
acts--they'd been carrying an almanac and binoculars. It turned out
that they were bird watchers..."
Benign
birdwatchers beset by border patrol? I checked with another Buffalo
friend.
“Yes,”
he reports, “it happened on Bird Island, out in the river ...They
were out there with binoculars and maybe cameras. And suddenly there
appeared a bunch of cops, one of whom reportedly had a drawn gun.....”
Although
the stories differ it happened at the Peace Bridge or on the island,
it was cops or the border patrol, it was an almanac or Peterson's Guide.
“I have no doubt that the core story is true....This is a major
border crossing, the Yellow alert was up which meant all the cops were
pissing in their pants, and everybody around here knows there's a lot
of scrutiny at this border..."
Buffalo's
Channel Two TV suggested that in future bird watchers should ask authorities
for advance clearance. A final comment from Buffalo: “The real
story is that America is now a bunch of paranoids, scared of everything
and everybody." He's right. If we’re expecting bird watchers
to register with the police or the border patrol, it's bad.
There
was no report of birdwatcher harassment on the web page of the Buffalo
Chapter of the Audubon Society. Nor was there advice about the dangers
wearing binoculars in public. A query to the president of the Buffalo
Chapter went unanswered, and the press agent for National Audubon said
he'd heard nothing about it and couldn't comment.
We
think of bird watching as one of those harmless, older traditions of
quiet enjoyment of the outdoors, like mushroom hunting and mountain
climbing. Bird watching begets environmental concern, even activism.
But sifting through the National Audubon web site I began to have an
uneasy feeling. Maybe there are unnoticed connections between ornithology
and national security. Certainly birders' preoccupations mirror those
of our experts in homeland vigilance, and the language they use is the
same.
There’s
data mining. Like our professional snoops, amateur ornithologists are
enthusiastic collectors, categorizers and hoarders of facts about individuals
and populations. Birders keep personal bird lists, and logs of birds
seen over a lifetime (life lists), and observation diaries. They band
birds and put them under surveillance for a lifetime. As a group, they
aspire to collate all those individual observations, in a sophisticated
stab at mastering the fluid and uncontrollable worldwide movements of
birds.
The
Buffalo border patrol may have been alarmed one of these popular fact-gathering
projects. Every year around Christmas thousands of Audubon members conduct
their annual bird count, surveying and noting all the bird species sighted
in their local areas over a 24-hour period. The Christmas survey has
built a famously deep database, with impressive time depth and geographic
reach. It's proven useful as a picture of the disappearance or recovery
of species. You could see the Christmas activities of tens of thousands
of birders as a worldwide project to trace population movements.
Then
there's the language. It's not clear who's borrowing from whom, but
the vocabulary of public information available on Audubon's web site
echoes the wording of pronouncements issued by the National Security
State. It’s heavy with the imagery of threat and protection. For
example, the Audubon Society issues a watch list, "an early warning
system for bird conservation," "designed specifically to highlight
those bird species that have the greatest conservation needs."
Data
mining, watch list, early warning system: it’s resonant. Change
the words "bird conservation" in the paragraph above to "terrorists"
and substitute "people posing the greatest threat" for "species
with the greatest conservation needs" and what do you get? A press
release from Tom Ridge.
Perhaps what birdwatchers and security bureaucrats share is formative
experience, leading to a peculiar cognitive style. If we sorted through
the autobiography of every well-known government snoop (William Colby,
Louis Freeh, Robert Gates) maybe we'd find passages like this.
"I
realize now that the skills I draw on to serve America were shaped
very early by my love of birds. From my childhood, I found joy in
patient waiting and watching. I had a high tolerance for solitude
and cold feet. And I liked nothing better than to be outdoors, in
the early morning darkness, listening for the rustle of the rare specimen
one no one else had seen. Over the years, I became very good at seeing
what others could not, at sorting pattern out of chaos and distinguishing
the extraordinary from what seemed ordinary. There was pleasure in
keeping detailed notes of my observations, and later there was pleasure
in sharing the details with the few others who understood my passion.
“
Come
to think of it, serious birdwatchers, like other careful observers,
could make excellent spies. A team sent to collect information on endangered
Central American song-birds could, on the side, easily gather data on
indigenous insurgencies. It may well be that the Audubon Society and
the CIA have shared personnel.
Covert
operations aside, birders are definitely into coding for risk. The Audubon
Society categorizes North American birds according to a color scheme:
green, yellow, red. Green means a bird is either not declining or "has
unknown trends", species-wise. There may be too many of them to
count, or nobody's counting. Yellow means slipping in environmental
security. Yellows are species of national conservation concern, very
similar to those shadowy "persons of interest" whose status
we never seem clear on. As you can guess, red stands for high alert:
let us know if you've seen one of these, because we’re worried.
These are species of global conservation concern.
Veering
over to the human flight path, we see that the Transportation Security
Administration, formerly the National Transportation Safety Administration
and now part of the Department of Homeland Security, confirms that it
too will begin sorting all fliers into three color-coded groups. According
to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening
System II, and it requires every traveler to provide full name, phone
numbers, home address and date of birth -- that's the link to the master
key, the Social Security number -- when booking a flight.
The
personal information will then be fed into consolidated computer databases
of financial, consumer and marketing information, legal and public records.
Passengers will then be sifted: green means good to go after standard
screening, yellow means investigate further, "including search
and question", and red means bar from boarding the flight. And
you thought Admiral Poindexter's wet dream of Total Information Awareness
had dried up in the sunshine of public scrutiny.
Gentle
amateurs with what are usually good intentions (but keep in mind that
possible CIA-Audubon connection) and ungentle people with the creepiest
of intentions are now using the same language of security, surveillance
and threat. Fear has become our fall-back vocabulary for everything.
Over
the January holidays, National Audubon's web site featured the reddish
egret (he also goes by Egretta rufescens) on its watch list sidebar.
Rufescens is on the yellow list (search and investigate further), and
as far as is known, he hangs out in Central America and on the Gulf
Coast of Louisiana and Texas. Things have been tough: in the late 19th
century, his ancestors were devastated by commercial hunting for the
women's hat industry. Possibly the reddish egret harbors some resentments
toward consumer capitalism. He looks glum and hunched over in his mug
shot, his beautiful trailing plumage notwithstanding. Just when he thought
the big hats craze was over and his family and friends were on the rebound,
his preferred coastal habitat is threatened by oil rigs and resort building.
How did Rufe come under suspicion? Perhaps he wrote a letter to the
Daily Owl, expressing outraged environmental sentiments or denouncing
egret genocide. Or maybe there’s a bench warrant out on him for
not sticking by his nest. In any case, he's been categorized as definitely
not good to go.
There's
one more bit of information: According to the National Audubon database,
reddish egrets have a "tendency to wander north following the breeding
season." Wander north! Upgrade him to red and cancel his frequent-flier
miles.
Susan
Davis teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
She can be reached at sgdavis@uiuc.edu
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