Evil Ali--not so evil after all

FISA Amendments now law.

alih — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:55:27 GMT

Got this from the People for the American Way: *************************************************** Today, President Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act. Together, we fought hard until the end, but unfortunately the Senate chose election year politics over our Constitution. The final bill includes telecom immunity and forsakes Americans' civil liberties by not guaranteeing individualized warrants. We will continue to fight to correct this bill in the next Congress. Thank you for your steadfast commitment to the fight for our constitutional rights and liberties. Those members of Congress who opposed H.R. 6304 should be thanked for their efforts, especially Senators Dodd and Feingold who showed real leadership. And those who let this happen should not be given a free pass. Click to see where your members stood, House http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml and Senate http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168. Then call 202-224-3121 (Capitol switchboard) and let them know how you feel. Below is our press release from yesterday: In response to the Senate's vote on the FISA Amendments Act, People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert issued the following statement: "Today a majority of the Senate sided with the Bush administration and against the rule of law. It was a sadly bipartisan effort, with more than two-thirds of senators voting for a bill that includes blanket immunity for companies that assisted the administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping. Even in an election year with demagogues ready to scream appeaser at those who take a stand, it's a disappointing day. We should be able to expect more from our public officials." You can read People For's letter opposing the bill, including its approval of future wireless surveillance, here. -- Your Allies at People For the American Way

Movers...any recommendations?

alih — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:56:30 GMT

Can anyone recommend decent (reliable/reasonably-priced) MOVERS in Oakland? (They don't *have* to be from Oakland, but it'd probably be cheaper that way.) Thanks!

Tue 6/3 - SEAN SULLIVAN for Oakland City Council (West Oakland)

alih — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:03:14 GMT

Please vote for Sean...he'll be an asset to West Oakland. From his website: http://www.seansullivan.org: Oakland's Third Council District needs a new representative who can combine bold ideas with the ability and willingness to work constructively with all the people that make up this diverse and complex constituency. I live in West Oakland, where daily my neighbors and I are faced with unsafe and unhealthy environments. I work in Jack London Square, where residents and businesses struggle to enhance their neighborhood without a partner in City Hall. From Adam's Point to Pill Hill to Prescott, District Three needs responsive and responsible city leadership. I am committed to providing that leadership, and I ask for your vote this June 3rd to make the change Oakland needs now. **Safer Neighborhoods** Many Oakland residents feel our city is in crisis. People have moved away because they are too scared to remain in their neighborhoods, and businesses have closed because of property crime. It was never acceptable that violence was seen as commonplace in West Oakland. As crime becomes more widespread, the entire city is now on alert and demanding immediate action. Violence from shootings - whether at a corner on Market and 14th or in a piano studio in North Oakland – frightens and touches us all. As citizens we need to demand adequate police services and efficient prosecutions. As a community and a city we must work with the state to ensure adequate rehabilitation that addresses the whole person during incarceration to ensure those returning to our streets have access to employment. To address these issues I fully support: * Immediate redistribution of police from administrative posts to community policing and neighborhood patrols. * Increasing the size of the police force beyond the currently funded 803 officers. * Implementing measures that have proven effective in reducing crime in other jurisdictions, such as the using crime-tracking software to maximize effectiveness of deployment and patrols. * Increasing the number of investigators within the police department. * Institution of aggressive incentives to recruit new cops, such as workforce housing to keep our officers in the neighborhoods in which they work and hiring bonuses. * Recognizing that different areas have different needs, and working to provide appropriate safety measures throughout our city: walking officers in high-density neighborhoods, proper equipment and technology in other areas, and water-based safety along the waterfront. * Working with the Oakland Police Department to ensure that our federally funded Weed & Seed Initiatives partner with violence prevention efforts funded by the city. * Implementation of community policing with new officers hired through Measure Y. * Refocusing of Measure Y violence prevention funds towards more direct street outreach to get youth off of the streets and into schools and employment, and coordinating all programs to achieve desired goals. Demand clear and measurable outcomes from Measure Y funded programs. * Creating youth oriented, educationally supportive, community one-stops with existing non-profits and local churches to address issues of youth truancy, loitering and job creation. * Work with the City Auditor to create systematic analysis of violence prevention programs to identify how to most effectively spend scarce funds. * Ensuring that police are culturally competent and able to appropriately address the diverse citizenry that makes up Oakland – including African Americans, Hispanics, the LBGT community, Asians and everyone else.

Crowded House RAWKS! (They're playing again tonight, too.)

alih — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:29:42 GMT

Went to see Crowded House w/Bruce, Frances & Barney.... WOW, what an amazing concert. These guys (and the opening act) really know how to do it up. They just played and played and played...with MAJOR audience singalong action. I highly recommend catching them, if you have time tonight and ~$50 to spare. Playing at the Fillmore (as of yesterday they still had tickets). Here's a video of Neil Finn getting a haircut on stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0umb_z24lo And here's Four Seasons in One Day (one of my favorites): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9sem05RHnM

All Your Research Belongs to You

alih — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:09:42 GMT

from: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/all-your-resear.html A law guaranteeing the free availability of federally funded biomedical research took effect Monday. Research paid for by the public now belongs to the public -- and everyone else. Passed by President Bush in December as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007, the law requires the submission of all scientific articles produced with National Institutes of Health funding to PubMed, the NIH's public digital library. Within one year of publication, articles must be made freely available in their entirety. The one-year delay should ease the concerns of prominent journal publishers, who were so worried about losing subscription revenues that they hired a PR firm and formed an astroturf group to derail the legislation. But though journals are concerned about their income streams, there's little reason to fear for the future of peer-reviewed science: peer review, which relies on the voluntary contributions of unpaid scientists, exists independently of business models. In an editorial published in the open-access Public Library of Science Biology, PLoS co-founder and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus notes that the law won't make all science free: it doesn't apply retroactively, meaning that large amounts of federally-funded research are still firewalled or unavailable except in print, and it doesn't apply to researchers unsupported by government. But it's still a step in the right direction -- and it's a vast improvement on the NIH's voluntary open-access policy, in which just five percent of grantees shared their work. Progress toward Public Access to Science (PLoS Biology): http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060101 Image: Photograph by Marshall Astor, tweaked by me. Thank goodness this law went live without any further delays, because the image well has clearly run dry.

Torch Protest - view from my office

alih — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:49:07 GMT

It's cwazy 'round here.

YAY Friday!!!

alih — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:56:02 GMT

That's pretty much it. Looking forward to the weekend and all the goodness it has in store. Happy Friday everyone! And HAPPY SPRING!!!!!

Wed 3/19 5-8pm Civic Center Plaza - 5th Anniversary Iraq Invasion

alih — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:13:06 GMT

Hard to believe it's already been half a decade. Anyone else going? Let's meet up! March and Rally Wednesday, March 19 5 8 p.m. Gather at Civic Center Plaza http://answersf.org/ Come by anytime during the week to pick up flyers and posters or to volunteer. The A.N.S.W.E.R. SF office is open 9 a.m. – 9 p.m., Monday – Friday. Call for weekend hours and East Bay office hours. San Francisco office: 2489 Mission St. #24, at 21st St (near 24th St BART) 415-821-6545 East Bay office: 636 9th St at MLK, Oakland (near 12th St BART) 510-435-0844

Really nice Kinetic Sculpture Videos

alih — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:28:02 GMT

Brought to you by Wired's blog: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-5-amazing-k.html Enjoy.

For the science geeks among us - Science Cafes

alih — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:45:47 GMT

I've been to a couple of "Ask a Scientist" evenings and they're good, interesting fun. (Also a little bit of a meet market, so if you wanna meet smart folks it might be a good place to go.) Came across this page that has links to a bunch of different science cafes, so if you're looking for something in your area you might wanna check it out: http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/383 There are 2 in SF, one in the East Bay, one in Silicon Valley version, as well as an interational one. Enjoy!

Get your unclaimed money...this is real, folks.

alih — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:53:54 GMT

There was some legislation passed where unclaimed funds that used to go to the state coffers are now available for you to get. My co-worker got over $600 and his sister-in-law got $2700! It's free and it's slightly scary (since anybody can use it to get your address): http://scoweb.sco.ca.gov/UCP (Unfortunately, I didn't get one red cent.)

New tribe: "Gold Stars" http://tribes.tribe.net/goldstars

alih — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:36:08 GMT

So I've gone and got myself a premium membership. And what's the fun of a premium membership if you can't be a member of an "exclusive" club? OK, well I'm not sure exactly why I started the tribe...it's been SO long since I've started any tribes. But perhaps we can use this to discuss/vet potential premium membership benefits or something. It's a moderated tribe, but the settings allow you to invite friends. (I've invited some of the premium members in my friends list, but undoubtedly I've missed some.) http://tribes.tribe.net/goldstars

Tomorrow (12/1) is World AIDS Day

alih — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:27:17 GMT

This year marks the 20th World AIDS Day, and sadly the event remains necessary, both as a commemoration and as a reminder of the work that remains before us. In 2007 to date, some 2.5 million people became newly infected with HIV, part of the 33.2 million worldwide who live with the virus, including 2.5 million children under 15 years.

CELLspace needs help - meeting tonight (Mon 11/19)

alih — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:52:33 GMT

Was forwarded this from a friend...in case anyone is inclined to participate: Ever Been to CELLpace? What: Community Meeting to Keep the CELL Alive and Well When: Monday, November 19th @ 7pm Where: CELLspace (2050 Bryant Street btwn 18th & 19th, Mission District SF) Who: the CELLspace community: anyone who has passed through our doors (or has been wanting to!) to attend an event, receive services, create some art, participate in community building, or for refuge. Why: CELLspace's future is in jeopardy. The collective and Board members are struggling to pay monthly operating costs. We need to refocus community support and revitalize our fundraising efforts and collective energies! The Evening will provide an update of the current status, a gathering of creative thoughts and ideas, and an opportunity to get involved in our metamorphosis. The NEED: * Events bookings * grant-writers * Youth service providers * publicity/outreach management * Save the CELL campaign development which includes: reaching out to CBOs, local government, the media, former stakeholders and current stakeholders * monetary and in-kind donations The GOAL: * Revive the collective process within CELL, and engage resources: In 2005-2006 alone, CELLspace welcomed over 80,000 people into the space with services, educational opportunities, events, space and more = 1 in every 8 residents in SF have been through our doors. The purpose of these meeting is to ignite these folks who deem CELLspace a resource and vital ficture within San Francisco's artistic, youth development and social justice community. We will walk away with working groups to tackle 4 major areas: fiscal health/debt management, events development, program development for youth and adults, and leadership involvment. Please circulate this announcement to all Bay Area residents who are willing and able to keep the CELL alive and well!

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

alih — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:58:36 GMT

Maybe it's because I rewatched Fahrenheit 9/11 this morning, but I wanted to share this article that was brought to my attention not to long ago. FASCIST AMERICA, IN 10 EASY STEPS Tuesday April 24, 2007 - The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration. Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have. It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise. Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US. 1. INVOKE A TERRIFYING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ENEMY After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end." Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth. It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms. 2. CREATE A GULAG Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place. At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well. This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising. With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street. Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately. But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too. By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions. 3. DEVELOP A THUG CASTE When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution. The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities. Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order". 4. SET UP AN INTERNAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched. In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent. 5. HARASS CITIZENS' GROUPS The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone. Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition. 6. ENGAGE IN ARBITRARY DETENTION AND RELEASE This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list. In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens. Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list". "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee. "I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution." "That'll do it," the man said. Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life. James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest. Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list. It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off. 7. TARGET KEY INDIVIDUALS Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors. Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933. Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them. Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job. Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow. 8. CONTROL THE PRESS Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already. The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration. Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career. Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers. Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers. You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. 9. DISSENT EQUALS TREASON Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution. Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade. In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors". And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly. Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.) We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR. Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now. 10. SUSPEND THE RULE OF LAW The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens. Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'." Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction. Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that. Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion. It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster." As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone. That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs". What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise. What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite. Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world. We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now. "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry. · Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

Tue Oct 9 - 5pm City Hall Room 263, SFLNC Special Meeting of the Entertainment Commission

alih — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:52:34 GMT

Reposted from an email...in case anyone is so inclined as to show support/give input: First: Feel the Love To all of you who came, volunteered, danced, spun music, partied or just watched, congratulations to the electronic dance community for an extraordinarily successful LoveFest Parade and Festival last Saturday. Follow the link to see what you missed (even if you were there). http://www2.sflovefest.org/photos.php Second: Change the Law When? Tuesday October 9th at 5 PM Where? City Hall Room 263, Special Meeting of the Entertainment Commission What? Public Hearing on proposed changes to the Entertainment and After Hours Permits Why? The Place of Entertainment and Extended Hours permits are needed to have a legal party. The Entertainment Commission was created 4 years ago to grant and oversee those permits. The permit has not been updated and needs some changes. This hearing is to get public input on the proposed changes. You? Go to www.sflnc.com and read up on what changes are being proposed. Come to the Special Meeting next week and voice your support/input/concerns. Questions? Email Terrance Alan at terrance@sflnc.com Chairman, SFLNC PO Box 77406 San Francisco, CA 94107 "saving San Francisco, one party at a time"

Support Open Access - Please write your Senators by Fri 10/5

alih — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:41:45 GMT

I just did this and it was very easy. All you really need to do is cut/paste. Step 1: Go to: http://www.capwiz.com/ala/issues/alert/?alertid=10301446 Scroll to bottom and enter your Zip Code Step 2: (form opens) I cheated and just wrote "Please support Open Access" and pasted these talking points: Dear Senator, Please support Open Access. * American taxpayers are entitled to open access on the Internet to the peer-reviewed scientific articles on research funded by the U.S. government. Widespread access to the information contained in these articles is an essential, inseparable component of our nation's investment in science. * The Fiscal Year 2008 Labor/HHS Appropriations Bill reported out of committee contains language directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to change its Public Access Policy so that it requires NIH-funded researchers to deposit copies of agency-funded research articles into the National Library of Medicine¹s online archive. * Over the more than two years since its implementation, the NIH's current voluntary policy has failed to achieve any of the agency's stated goals, attaining a deposit rate of less than 5% by individual researchers. A mandate is required to ensure deposit in NIH¹s online archive of articles describing findings of all research funded by the agency. * We urge the Senate to support the inclusion of language put forth in the Labor/HHS Appropriations bill directing the NIH to implement a mandatory policy and ensuring free, timely access to all research articles stemming from NIH-funded research without change in any appropriate vehicle. That's it! Thanks! Cheers, Ali P.S., Barbara Boxer has a different email system: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm

A look back on Bush's "great goals" of 2000

alih — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:56:11 GMT

Yeah, I know, I'm preaching to the choir...but I think it's useful to look at prior candidates' campaign promises when listening to the current round... He would overhaul Medicare, Social Security and public education; cut taxes; reinvigorate the military; restore civility to the political system; and help the poor with tax credits for health insurance, assistance buying homes and charitable-giving incentives. "We will use these good times for great goals," he said. "We will confront the hard issues." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54556-2004Sep1.html "When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming,'' said George W. Bush in 2000, when accepting his party's nomination. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/01/eveningnews/main640262.shtml

PLoS needs an Office Manager

alih — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:51:49 GMT

If you have a moment, I'd appreciate your help. Please take a look and forward this job on to anyone you think would be interested in the position, or anyone else who could help me find a great candidate. Company: Public Library of Science (PLoS) Job Title: Office Manager The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a leading edge online publishing organization located in the China Basin area of San Francisco, California. PLoS is seeking an experienced and dynamic Office Manager to help run the day to day office functions and provide diverse administrative support to the CEO, COO and other senior members within the organization. This position will serve as the “go-to” person for all matters related to managing the office and will wear many hats. Desired Skills & Qualifications • 5+ years experience in an administrative or office management role in a professional and fast paced office environment. • Previous experience with HR, recruiting (phone screening); and some accounting background is highly desirable. • Advanced level of skill with MS Office Suite. • Well developed oral, written and interpersonal communications skills. • Highly organized and attentive to detail. • Comfortable working in a fast paced environment and able to work well under pressure and changing priorities. • Easily approachable with a great personality and professional decorum. • Enthusiastic and positive with a good sense of humor. Application Procedure PLOS offers competitive salaries, a creative and casual work environment as well as a full range of comprehensive benefits, including medical; dental and vision; life, LTD and STD coverage and a matching 401k program. If interested, please send your resume and cover letter to ntannenbaum@plos.org and use the job title "Office Manager" as the subject of your email. No phone calls or visits, please. Principals only – email from recruiters will be ignored. For more information about PLoS, visit http://www.plos.org/.

Weds 8/8 - SF Mime Troupe and Ricky Lee Robinson in Oakland

alih — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:38:06 GMT

Here’s some fun that’s happening tomorrow – Weds 8/8 – wanna join me? I’m psyched to finally see a Mime Troupe show…and quite excited to see Ricky Lee play at the Uptown. Figuring we’ll do a little potluck-picnic-in-the-park action during the play. San Francisco Mime Troupe presents “Making a Killing” 7pm (music at 6:30) – FREE! Lakeside Park – Oakland (Grand Ave between Bellevue and Perkins, in the park on Lake Merritt, Oakland) Ricky Lee Robinson - Jennifer Gentle (Subpop) - The Dodos 8:30 doors/9:30 show - $6 (21+) The Uptown Nightclub - 1928 Telegraph (19-20th Sts), Oakland ******************** About “Making a Killing” and SF Mime Troupe: "Part savagely acute political satire, part living newspaper and all broad, tuneful and timely musical comedy, "Killing" is the Mime Troupe's most direct grapple yet with the war in Iraq. It's very funny and equally politically engaged...in the best tradition of agitprop theater." San Francisco Chronicle "Making a Killing" is one of the Troupe's best... it's a tightly plotted military 'murder-most-foul' mystery..." San Francisco Examiner The San Francisco Mime Troupe does not do pantomime. We mean 'mime' in the ancient sense: to mimic. We are satirists, seeking to make you laugh at the absurdities of contemporary life and at the same time, see their causes. We’ve done shows about most of the burning issues of our time, generally shows that debunked the official story. We perform everywhere from public parks to palaces of culture, aiming to reach the broadest possible audience. About Ricky Lee Robinson: New York-via-San Francisco rocker Ricky Lee Robinson is a one-man band, but not like Prince or Lenny Kravitz or any of those other 'geniuses' notorious for fussily neat-freaking themselves into playing every instrument on their records. Performing and recording several instruments simultaneously—including a foot-controlled three-piece drum kit and a guitar specially rigged with a 'polyphonic octaver' to cover the high and low ends—Robinson’s an old-timey one-man band, like that sad guy in the straw hat at Six Flags whose eye contact you and your punk friends made sure to avoid. But instead of barking out dixieland ditties or knee-cymbal soloing to When the Saints Go Marching in, Robinson uses this unusual performance style to revel in his serious jones for obscure 60s- and 70s-era Nuggets-friendly pop. Busking his heart out in a double-tracked voice reminiscent of a less-sexed Diamond Dogsera Bowie, Robinson’s debut disc of mostly original material (following a 2003 self-titled all-covers release) is sparkling with inspired energy—a record so sunny that two of its nine tracks (Welcome Home Sunshine and Hello Sunshine) speak directly to our solar system’s big (fiery) cheese. While Robinson indulges his love of rare and unusual ’70s pop covers early on here—opening with the heartfelt Crabby Appleton rocker Go Back and Jeans on, a minor U.K. hit by 'Lord' David Dundas that originated as an ad jingle for Brutus Jeans—it’s the seven originals that follow those fun exercises in pop nostalgia that really shine. Robinson’s sharp ear for classic pop chord progressions pays off in spades—whether he’s singing about mysterious ladies (the serpentine stomp-rocker Psychic Woman, with a wicked falsetto Barry-Gibb-on-a-bender hook) or absolutely nothing (Nana Nanana), he fills every corner of Mushu Pork with sticky hooks, reverb-drenched guitars, and the joyful noise of someone doing what they truly love. PlaybackSTL Magazine http://www.myspace.com/rickyleerobinson

House Backs Taxpayer-Funded Research Access - wooHOO!

alih — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:09:18 GMT

Thanks to any and all who wrote in! Final Appropriations Bill Mandates Free Access to NIH Research Findings Washington, D.C. - July 20, 2007 - In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. With broad bipartisan support, the House passed the provision as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill. "The House has affirmed the principle that broad sharing of publicly funded research findings on the Internet is an essential component of our nation's investment in science," said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), and a leader of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA). "This action paves the way for all scientists and citizens to access, use, and benefit from the results of publicly funded biomedical research." "We're pleased by Congress's recognition of the fundamental rationale for public access - that better-informed patients, clinicians, and researchers will mean better health outcomes," said Sharon Terry, President of the Genetic Alliance and an ATA activist. "The time has come to sweep away unnecessary barriers to understanding and treating disease. The Genetic Alliance thanks and congratulates the House of Representatives for taking this vital step." The current NIH Public Access Policy, implemented in 2005 as a voluntary measure, has resulted in the deposit of less than 5% of eligible research by individual investigators. In a recent letter to Congress, 26 Nobel Laureates called for enactment of mandatory NIH public access, noting that, "requiring compliance is not a punitive measure, but rather a simple step to ensure that everyone, including scientists themselves, will reap the benefits that public access can provide. We have seen this amply demonstrated in other innovative efforts within the NIH - most notably with the database that contains the outcome of the Human Genome Project." "The coalition of support for the NIH policy is extremely broad," added Joseph. "This critical step was achieved as a result of the vision and collective effort of patient groups, scientists, researchers, publishers, students, and consumers who registered their support." A similar measure has been approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee and will be considered by the full Senate later this summer. ### The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

Please call your representative to voice your support Public Access to publicly-funded research - by end of Wed 6/6

alih — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:52:07 GMT

Please take 30 seconds to call your representative. (All you need to say is "I'm calling to voice my support for the NIH Public Access Policy" They'll ask for your name and zip code...that's all there is to it.) The NIH Public Access Policy is under consideration by Congress as part of the FY08 Labor/HHS Appropriations Bill. Supporters are encouraged to contact their Representatives and Senators as soon as possible to request that the policy be made mandatory. The House and Senate are expected to mark up their versions of the Bill before the end of June. (Recent word is that opponents are now aiming their resources at *all* the democratic/majority offices of the House Appropriations Labor/HHS Subcommittee.) Again, status and talking points are at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/NIH.html Barbara Lee (CA) District: http://lee.house.gov/index.cfm?SectionID=7&ParentID=0&SectionTypeID=2&SectionTree=7 Phone: (202) 225-2661 Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA) District: http://www.house.gov/roybal-allard/district.shtml Phone: (202) 225-1766 Michael Honda (CA) District: http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/CA15_109.gif Phone: (202) 225-2631

Stop Price Gouging - yeah, you've prolly seen/signed this, but just in case...

alih — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:01:59 GMT

http://pol.moveon.org/pac/stoppricegouging/?id=10388-1441264-XXv1xL&t=1

Happy Hour Tonight--Thu 5/17--CA Acad of Sciences JAZZ SOIREE & Costume Contest

alih — Thu, 17 May 2007 18:01:45 GMT

I'll be going to this right about after work (we'll likely stop somewhere else along the walk there from my work - across fm AT&T Park). If anyone's interested, please come along! Third Thursdays at California Academy of Sciences. Info: http://www.calacademy.org/events/thirdthursdays/ Photo gallery: http://www.calacademy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=8894 Put the Third Thursday May Jazz Soiree on your dance card. Swing to the music of SanJazz Sextet, visit Steinhart Aquarium, cozy up to live animals and view exhibits while enjoying a cash bar. Be a bit bold and enter the Swankiest Dressed Costume contest. Come donned in any vintage wear. The most fabulously dressed will be eligible for the following prizes: 3rd Place is a Third Thursday party pass, 2nd place is a $50 gift certificate at Vendima Vintage Clothing, and Grand Prize is a two night stay at The Carlton Hotel. Special $5 admission from 5 - 9 pm Members always get in free 875 Howard Street (bet 4-5th Sts) - SF

Duck Penises - NYT coverage of a PLoS ONE paper

alih — Thu, 03 May 2007 18:26:50 GMT

An excerpt: "While working in a Costa Rican forest, she observed a pair of birds called tinamous mating. “They became unattached, and I saw this huge thing hanging off of him,” she said. “I could not believe it. It became one of those questions I wrote down: why do these males have this huge phallus?” New York Times Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/science/01duck.html?_r=1&em&ex=1178164800&en=1d6d57b2944a7137&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin Original Paper (yep, you can read it without subscription---thanks to Open Access publishing via PLoS): http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000418