Month: July 2005

I wonder if Judith Miller and Li’l Kim are gonna be cellmates. Miller goes to the pokey for not talking:

WASHINGTON, July 6 – A federal judge today ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times to be jailed immediately after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative.

… and Li’l Kim for the wrong kind of talking:

The hip-hop star, born Kimberly Jones, was sentenced today to one year and one day in prison for perjury and must turn herself in to authorities on September 19th. Kim was convicted in March of lying to a federal grand jury to protect two associates in relation to a 2001 shooting against rival rap outfit Capone-N-Noreaga outside New York City hip-hop radio station Hot 97 in which one man was injured.

But also for sticking to the rappers’ code of silence:

In sentencing Lil’ Kim for perjury, the judge cited the unsolved slaying of Notorious B.I.G as evidence of a troubling code of silence in the hip-hop community.

”It’s because people did what you did, that we still don’t know who killed him,” he said.

What’s the difference between the rappers’ code of silence and the journalists’ code? And if journalists are to be shielded by the law from penalty for sticking to their code, don’t rappers (and Mafiosi) deserve the same kind of protection? It seems that they do.

H/T Notorious Orin Kerr.

George Soros’ stooge Duncan (Atrios) Black is whining about the so-called Chickenhawks who opposed Saddam even though they hadn’t actually been tortured or murdered themselves, so the Indepundit puts him in his place:

DUNCAN BLACK says Nathan Taylor should “sign up or shut up.”

I’ve never met Nathan Taylor. I’m guessing that Duncan hasn’t, either. Yet Duncan seems to be arguing that Nathan can’t support the war unless he is prepared to fight in it himself.

I’m not going to speculate as to why Nathan hasn’t enlisted. It’s his life, and he has to make his own choices. Not having met Duncan, I also won’t speculate as to why he wants Nathan to “shut up.” I thought liberals were supposed to believe in freedom of speech.

It’s not surprising that some of these free speech-deniers support the communist Chinese police state recently embarassed by hackers:

Police states, like China, have a serious problem with the Internet. They need it, for economic reasons. The Internet has become part of the worldwide economic infrastructure. But the Internet also allows unfettered exchange of information. For a police state, this is bad. A police state remains in power, in part, by controlling the media. China has a booming economy, and cannot afford to lock down, or keep out, the Internet, as has happened in police states with poor economies (North Korea, Cuba, Burma). So China is adding more software, and personnel, to police Chinese Internet users. So far, their approach has made many casual Internet users wary of saying, or looking for, anything the government does not approve of. But millions of more savvy Chinese Internet users know of ways to get around the “Great Firewall of China,” to do as they wish on the Internet. This attack on the Beijing General Security Service was just a reminder that the Chinese war on the Internet is far from over.

The Internet is the kind of disruptive technology feared by fascist powers.

You would think that dams would be a no-brainer in a country that gets all its rainfall in three months of the year and has no significant snowcap to slow its release into the rivers and the ocean, where most people still work in agriculture and where drought and starvation are constant problems. Certainly, every government in India has built them, and every political party has supported them, and they’ve done more than any other modern invention to raise living standards for the poor.

But along comes an expert who knows better than all these people, a person of such excellent insight in civil engineering and agriculture she puts all the experts to shame, exposing hidden facts that dams actually cause flooding, disease, and even earthquakes. This genius is Arundhati the novelist, champion of the poor:

Big Dams started well, but have ended badly. There was a time when everybody loved them, everybody had them – the Communists, Capitalists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists. There was a time when Big Dams moved men to poetry. Not any longer. All over the world there is a movement growing against Big Dams. In the First World they’re being de-commissioned, blown up. The fact that they do more harm than good is no longer just conjecture. Big Dams are obsolete. They’re uncool. They’re undemocratic. They’re a Government’s way of accumulating authority (deciding who will get how much water and who will grow what where). They’re a guaranteed way of taking a farmer’s wisdom away from him. They’re a brazen means of taking water, land and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to the rich. Their reservoirs displace huge populations of people, leaving them homeless and destitute. Ecologically, they’re in the doghouse. They lay the earth to waste. They cause floods, water-logging, salinity, they spread disease. There is mounting evidence that links Big Dams to earthquakes.

That’s some heavy stuff.

Molly Ivins complains that the right twists liberals’ positions around:

Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of “argument” for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what “liberals” think, and then demonstrate how silly it is. Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I’ve ever heard those on the right claim “liberals” believe, I’d be richer than Bill Gates.

So she clarifies things with this boner:

I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.

I think we should take Molly’s wishes to heart and carefully and correctly state her positions and those of people who think as she does.

It’s much more damning to use direct quotes like this one. Jeff Bishop has more.

Happy Independence Day.