IS GEORGE GALLOWAY BENEFITING FROM A MEDIA COVERUP?

I’m pretty sure that if he’d been getting payments from Halliburton in exchange for supporting the war, the story would get more attention.

LORD BEN SAYS I’M TOO HARD ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION regarding secrecy issues.

I don’t think so. I don’t trust agencies to investigate themselves, generally, and I think that experience tends to support my position here.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

Four University of Miami conservatives say the student government is blocking them from starting a club and say the college’s president, former Clinton Cabinet member Donna Shalala, has refused to intervene.

The students say they were told by student leaders that since the university already has a College Republicans chapter, there was no need for another conservative group. Shalala, who was Clinton’s Health and Human Services secretary, has ignored a letter asking for help, the four women and their supporters say.

They call the decision discriminatory, because along with a Democratic club, the school has several groups that they say represent liberal beliefs and causes, such as Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet.

“There’s a difference between Republican and conservative,” said Sarah Canale, 19, the would-be club’s co-president. “But they kept telling us there’s too much overlap with the College Republicans.”

A university spokeswoman said Thursday that neither the school nor the student government would comment.

Sounds pretty embarrassing.

HERE’S THE LATEST INSTALLMENT of an ongoing debate about the relevance of the United Nations.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Eugene Volokh reports on the curious behavior of Prof. Francis Boyle, an adherent of the “free speech for me, but not for thee” school of thought. Perhaps Prof. Boyle should get a job in Hollywood.

JOHN HOWARD: An appreciation.

JEFF JARVIS HAS AN UPDATE, and some comments, regarding imprisoned Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi.

ARTHUR SILBER HAS SOME PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS on gay history.

FOR SOME REASON, I hadn’t stopped by Charles Murtaugh’s excellent blog in a while. So I did. You should, too.

IN LAST WEEK’S TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN, I argued that the Bush Administration’s penchant for secrecy might actually be hurting homeland security. Judging by this Newsweek item, though, the Bush Administration wasn’t listening:

AT THE CENTER of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks—including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of “findings” with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six months later, a “working group” of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to “reclassify” some material that was already discussed in public testimony—a move one Senate staffer described as “ludicrous.” The administration’s stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report—Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Administration’s unwillingness to look into who dropped balls — and, more importantly, why — before September 11 only makes fixing things harder.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: The Boycott Hollywood site is being shut down — by legal muscle from Hollywood. There’s a copy of the threat letter on the site. Here’s the response:

I can say only this – – the fact that we’re being shut down because of the William Morris Agency tells me that we truly touched a raw nerve in someone, somewhere. At the very least, it tells me that our message was recieved by the people that it was intended for. The very fact that we cannot express our opinions regarding the views of these stars/celebs shows me, yet again, the double standard that exists in Follywood.

Yes, if you even criticize these guys they scream “censorship” — but Hollywood is censoring more speech in America than John Ashcroft has.

I’ll also note that there’s a lame subject-verb disagreement in the threat letter. Uneducated philistines!

UPDATE: Hollywood Half-wits is still going strong!

ANOTHER UPDATE: CleverHack notes that Boycott Hollywood put phony information into its WHOIS database entry. Yeah, but I don’t think that makes this any less of an effort to shut down criticism.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Levy notes that IndyMedia has a rather suspicious-looking WHOIS entry and asks:

Does it matter? Would that make it acceptable to shut down Indymedia? Of course not.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Whois information above isn’t quite right. Go here to read more.

BORIS JOHNSON ON CIVILIAN CASUALTIES:

And since it is time to put the good news into our utilitarian scales, here is a statistic that you should be aware of, all you Fisks and Pilgers and Robin Cooks, who prophesied thousands and thousands of deaths. I went to see Qusay Ali Al-Mafraji, the head of the International Red Crescent in Baghdad. Though some name-tags have been lost, and though some districts have yet to deliver their final tally, guess how many confirmed Iraqi dead he has listed, both civilian and military, for the Baghdad area? He told me that it was 150, and he has no reason to lie.

Of course it is an appalling sacrifice of life. But if you ask me whether it was a price worth paying to remove Saddam, and a regime that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands, then I would say yes. What do you see now when you walk past Iraqi electrical stores, which are opening with more confidence every day? You see satellite dishes, objects forbidden under Saddam. One man told me he had sold ten in the last four days, at between $200 and $300 a go.

Snooty liberals, and indeed many Tories, will say that this is vulgar and tawdry, and make silly, snooty jokes about the poor Iraqis now being subjected to Topless Darts and Rupert Murdoch. What such anti-war people don’t understand is that the Iraqis are not only being given their first chance to learn about other countries. They can now learn about their own. They can now watch channels not wholly consecrated to the doings of Saddam.

Read the whole thing, which also suggests that the Allies are ruling Iraq with too light a hand, especially where the Shia clerics are concerned. And there’s this:

As George Bush gave his speech on Tuesday night, I happened to be watching it with three Iraqis. When he said that ‘the windows are open in Iraq now’, meaning that people could talk without fear for their lives, they laughed and banged the table. I can imagine the anti-war lot in Britain, with their low opinion of Bush, also laughing at his folksy rhetoric. But when I asked the Iraqis what they thought of the speech, I found I had completely misunderstood their laughter.

‘We agree with Bush 100 per cent,’ said one, and they all passionately agreed. Really? I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are free now.’ Iraq has huge problems, including colossal debts. It is barely governable. It would be unthinkable for America and Britain to pull out. But he says that his country is now free, and that, to me, is something that was worth fighting for. Saddam may be a ghost, but that is all.

Interesting.

LILEKS has discovered the dirty secret: blogging is a lot easier than column-writing.

He’s also having trouble with video editing. That, you see, is because he’s using a user-unfriendly Mac. I set up Vegas Video 4 from Sonic Foundry, got the backup master for my wife’s documentary, captured the clips I wanted, and produced a trailer that Ken Layne says has “an X-Files/Twin Peaks feel.” All in a weekend. The interface is easy and intuitive, and the program doesn’t crash. And it edits in uncompressed mode, which is a Good Thing. Layne also informs me that Betsy Layne High School, which figures prominently in the film, is named for a relative of his. Somehow, that seems fitting.

UPDATE: I knew someone would rise to the bait. This is pretty funny, though.

MICKEY KAUS is dissing Gary Hart’s blog. This is a test for Hart: now that he’s a blogger, he needs to respond with a “Fisking.” And Kaus could be the first journalist Fisked by a Presidential candidate! (No, Bush’s remarks about Adam Clymer don’t count).

APPARENTLY, WE HAVEN’T BEEN ALL THAT DISTRACTED:

The State Department, in its annual report on global terrorism, says the number of terror attacks declined sharply last year due to increased international cooperation and resolve. Seven countries – Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan – were again listed as state sponsors of terrorism, though Iraq may soon come off the list.

The State Department says there were 199 terrorist attacks last year, a 44 percent drop from 2001 and the lowest figure in more than 30 years.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Unfogged says that the State Department report doesn’t provide quite as much good news as it seems to at first.

GO HERE to see how you can help save Amina Lawal from being stoned to death.

BRITISH SUICIDE BOMBERS:

TWO British citizens were responsible for the suicide bombing of a pub in Tel Aviv early yesterday that killed three civilians and wounded 46 others.

A hunt was under way for one of the bombers, who did not detonate his charge and was believed to have it still in his possession. He is thought to have fled the scene when he saw his accomplice being blocked by a security guard.

Israeli police released an image of the passport of the dead man, Asif Mohammed Hanif, who detonated his explosives at the door. He was born on 2 August, 1981, in Bhowanj, Pakistan. The passport photograph of the wanted man, Omar Khan Sharif, born on 13 March, 1976, in Derby, was also released.

The security guard was seriously wounded as were another five people.

Reports in Jerusalem said the bombers were members of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah.

The British turned a blind eye to Islamic fundamentalism in Britain for a long time. This is the fruit of that policy.

ANATOLE KALETSKY WRITES:

Today is May 1, the International Day of Labour. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this column to the triumph of global capitalism. For if there is one social principle on which all economists, historians and politicians must now surely agree, it is that capitalism has done more than any other human construct to benefit working people around the world.

He’s right, of course. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the real question is whether the lovely Lily Malcolm will find the right special someone under her cherry tree.

MISSING TOURIST UPDATE: According to this report, they’ve been found:

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Thirty-one European tourists who vanished in the Sahara Desert are being held hostage by terrorist groups, a ranking Algerian official said Wednesday.

The official said the tourists had been located by the Algerian army. Some 5,000 Algerian troops and 300 local guides were brought in to track down the tourists. . . .

No one has claimed responsibility for the disappearances, and there has been wide speculation about who might be behind them.

A name that regularly surfaces in the press is Mokhtar Benmokhtar, an Islamic insurgent thought to be a trafficker in arms, vehicles or cigarettes in the vast desert region between Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

Interesting. I think there’s more involved in this region than mere cigarette smuggling. I think someone’s trying to set up a shadow state.

HOORAY FOR THE ALABAMA LEGISLATURE: They’ve managed to render their obscenity law illegal — and they did it knowingly!

COLIN POWELL IS FLOATING THE IRAQI OIL-TRUST IDEA:

“It is under consideration, we’re looking at that,” Powell told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “It’s a concept that applies in the case of Iraq at least for consideration.”

Absolutely. I’m glad somebody’s thinking about it.

ORSON SCOTT CARD IS WORRIED: What if everything goes right in Iraq? No, really, he has a point, sort of.

SEVERAL PEOPLE have emailed me this story from AlterNet about a “Patriot Act” raid. It seems a bit odd to me: 5 NYPD officers come in with drawn guns — but then they’re followed up by “officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.” I’m no expert on how federal raids are conducted, but I’ve never heard of one conducted in this fashion. The feds generally have their own guys with guns.

Does anyone know if this M.O. makes sense?

These questions aside, the raid seems heavyhanded, but not dreadful. (Certainly not as bad as this pre-911 raid, which wasn’t even especially famous.) It’s hard to know more, since the story has few specifics, and we never learn what the feds were looking for.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr is skeptical — there was a raid, apparently, but this account raises doubts:

The idea that the author was told that he was “being held under the Patriot Act” sounds particularly unlikely to me. I can’t find a section of the Patriot Act that could conceivably apply to this.

It’s not impossible, of course, that a cop would claim to be acting under a law that, in fact, offers no such authority.

TRAFFIC FOR THIS MONTH is a hair above last month (which had one more day) at about 3.5 million pageviews. I suspect that it’ll be lower next month. And given that this traffic peak came about because of war, that’ll be just as well.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH NANOTECHNOLOGY PIONEER ERIC DREXLER about various claims regarding nanotechnology safety.

(Via NanoDot).