Wampum

From Syria Comment

Bashar al-Asad's confirmation, in an interview to the Qatari daily al-Watan, that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had given him a commitment to return the entire Golan Heights to Syria has one meaning: Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations are warming up. For the first time since the failure of the Clinton-Hafiz al-Asad Geneva summit of March 2000, there is a real chance for the resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, and perhaps even for a breakthrough.

And

From Ha'aretz

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is expected to arrive in Israel shortly to receive Israel's official response to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, Palestinian sources in Cairo said yesterday.

Suleiman is to report to Israel on the agreement reached with the Palestinian factions yesterday, who are offering Israel calm in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the opening of the crossing points into the Strip, including the Rafa border crossing with Egypt. The official Egyptian news agency MENA reported that all 12 Palestinian factions whose representatives were in Cairo had accepted the Egyptian proposal.

Remember any Democrats speaking about Jimmy Carter last week? Remember what each one said?

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I don't know but this week there's two in the Gulf. Gates says its just a reminder. I'm reminded that Saint John was an Airdale.

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Nicolas Sarkozy is competitive in the beyond-satire-while-executive event, and without a 9/11 to hold back his first year numbers, may get to ponies well before George W. Bush managed to make his bones in the G-8 world of comedy.

Which is a good thing if you were amused by his break with Chirac on such minor issues as the independence from or subordination to the ultra-armed Zionist-Paleo-Xtian Alliance on the questions of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

The world of satire may not survive a Sarko-Saint-John partnership. In every competitive event, records will be set.

Posted by EBW at 02:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Indianz.com has the whole story:

Artman resigns from BIA after a year on the job Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Filed Under: Politics

After a little more than a year on the job, assistant secretary Carl Artman on Monday announced his resignation as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Artman, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, did not give a reason for leaving. His letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited "many accomplishments" that he said he achieved since taking over the BIA in March 2007.

"I believe at the end of this administration, the work we have done within Indian Affairs will leave not just a legacy, but an infrastructure upon which American Indians and Alaska Natives can build to secure their governmental, cultural and economic futures," Artman wrote.

With May 23 as his last day on the job, Artman becomes the third assistant secretary to quit the BIA during the Bush administration. His predecessors left under clouds of litigation and amid questions about their leadership abilities.

I'll comment more after coffee.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ban Ki-moon's in town. There's a lot of people in town. Trying to set up responses to the grain shortages. Geneva is bustling today, lots of UN agency heads trying to get secondary meetings set up. There will be a meeting of the FAO in Rome in five weeks time. Yesterday in Berne, in the old Postal Union, the oldest agency in the UN systems, Moon said "its not a crisis, its a catastrophy".

Meanwhile I suppose the Hero Twins are sniping at each other and at McCain, missing this opportunity, safely after Iowa, and in the center of target of party reflection on the future of the primary schedule, to talk about ethanol as a root cause of foreign hunger and a contributing factor in unsustainable, and increasingly GMO controlled factory farming.

And I suppose the A listers are dancing on the heads of pins (public policy coverage) damning the darkness rather than providing serious side-by-side-by-side or simply in-depth reporting.

As we drove up the Salinas Valley more crews were out than normal, as farmers try to harvest lettuce and broccoli before it bolts after two days of asphalt melting heat.

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I've pretty much ignored the post-Pennsylvania spin, but was pretty shocked to read at Avedon's that the race was back to an actual race, at least according to Gallup. So I went over there, and found this interesting trend:

Hmmmm...

Posted by MB Williams at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 18, 2008

Dear Tribal Leader:

I am writing to you to give you an update on pending Indian housing legislation and also to seek your assistance in getting the legislation enacted into law this year.

Culminating years of hard work by Indian Tribes and their Tribally-Designated Housing Entities, legislation has been introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 2786) and U.S. Senate (S. 2062) to reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA). I am happy to report to you that both of these bills have been approved by their respective committees of jurisdiction and, in fact, H.R. 2786 has already passed the House. The Senate legislation, S. 2062, will pass the Senate in the coming weeks. The NAIHC has prepared a summary of the major provisions of these bills that will significantly benefit Native communities nationwide. The summary is attached to this letter.

As you may know, a dispute has arisen within the Cherokee Nation involving the citizenship status of the Cherokee Freedmen within the Tribe, with the Freedmen having filed lawsuits pending in the courts of the Cherokee Nation as well as Federal Court. Unfortunately, this tribal dispute has spilled over into the U.S.
Congress and has the potential to prevent the passage of Indian housing and, indeed, other Indian legislative priorities.

On March 13, 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) indicating that the CBC will actively oppose legislation to reauthorize the NAHASDA unless the legislation includes "a provision that would prevent the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from receiving
any benefits or funding under the bill until the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is in full compliance with the Treaty of 1866 and recognizes all Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants as tribal citizens."

The NAIHC is cognizant of the delicacy of the issue to the CBC and is also well aware that Indian Tribes conscientiously guard their rights and prerogatives to determine their own citizenship criteria. The NAIHC is very concerned that the Freedmen matter might upend not only the pending NAHASDA reauthorization but the passage of all Indian tribal legislation in this and possibly future congresses. This would be an unfortunate outcome for the hundreds of thousands of American Indian and Alaska Native low income families that would be unwitting victims in a controversy involving one Indian Tribe.

In the absence of some creative, equitable resolution, the NAIHC fears that NAHASDA will fail to be reauthorized this year. We therefore seek your consideration of these matters and look forward to your involvement and support for passage of NAHASDA in 2008.

Sincerely,

Marty Shuravloff
Chairman

A controversy involving one Indian Tribe. So Chad is on his own. As the root cause was Ross' urge to suppress some specific votes, an urge that also moved Wilma Mankiller and now runs through Chad's veins like ... electoral firewater, the core of a "creative, equitable resolution" lies in the CNO ballot box.

Posted by EBW at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Elizabeth Edwards' has a piece up at the NY Times. Here's the link.

What if I didn't remember the Army McCarthy Hearings? What if no one did? What if the footage from day 30 of the hearings, when Welsh said Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? never made it to the network news? Senator Symington said to Senator McCarthy, Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not fooling anyone, either, but what if no one except those present throughout those six weeks had had a look at Joe McCarthy?

Edward R. Murrow wouldn't have had the material to use to make See It Now and Emile de Antonio wouldn't have had the material to use to make Point of Order and George Cluney wouldn't have made Good Night, and Good Luck.

But it wouldn't have been the lack of footage to recycle for content, it would be because the amount of content made available in the print and broadcast mediums as news would be equivalent to this cycle's content on Joe Biden's health care plan. Only those who were there would even know it existed, and the "American people" of Senator Symington's peculiar America would amount to some Senators and some staffers, the clerks and the a few members of the Capitol Police, and a few amazed children we call pages, and no one else in the world at all. There might be films by Murrow and de Antonio and Cluney, but they'd be art films about chewing gum or someone's colorful uncle.

In the last cycle I made a point of calling up Senator Bob Graham's campaign office as it was closing up, to request a copy of his jobs and economic stimulus plan, and I'm still impressed by his Workdays -- working many jobs his constituents work. It was a good plan then, its still a good plan today, and it got the same coverage as Joe Biden's health care plan. Recall, he got the media blackout and yet when he was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he opposed the War in Iraq for fear it would divert attention from Afghanistan. He had clue then, and he had spine then.

And if he were the nominee we'd sweep Florida.

I can loan a server and bandwidth to blogs in Indiana and North Carolina. It beats waiting for someone else to re-invent journamalism.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, yeah, I've kinda been on a self-imposed blogging strike. It's hard when your blogging strength is Progressive politics, and, frankly, it looks as though your interest is an endangered species. But there are lots of interesting events on the autism and Indian fronts, and so perhaps it's time to just cut those mooring lines and move on.

Eric heads back to Geneva on Monday, and I promise not to let Wampum go dark. So, yeah, I'll be back.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Josh,

Please find attached, the remarks and observations made by Hamas on the proposed statement of Jimmy Carter. I got the official text and published it in Al-Hayat . Here is the English version.

Please note that Hamas accepts on written paper to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Hamas will accept the results of final status peace talks.

Best,
Ibrahim HAMIDI
Al-Hayat

Here's the link

Posted by EBW at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 26, 1986, at 1:23 AM, reactor #4 exploded.

First-responders in the cult of security that arose after 9/11 are untouchables. While budgets are cut, the items labeled "first-responders" remain intact. The phrase is used as a rhetorical device, and all the way down the law-and-order food chain, men and women who seek authority, security and the occasional doughnut rise up above the hum-drum of domestic violence and public drunkenness and stray livestock on that turn of phrase.

On September 18, 2001, the first-responders in Lower Manhattan were told by then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman that the air was safe to breath. But most of the actual "first-responders" were just people who turn towards need. Not paid, not sworn, not subject to disciplinary hearings. The people the Bush Regime exploits in the choir and abandons in the courts. A lot of them are dead, or dying, or just wicked sicker than they'd be if they turned away from need and left the problem to the Regime motivated by Grover Norquist.

When Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary in February 1986 his victory speech included this line¹:

Do not wait for orders from headquarters. Mount up everybody and ride to the sound of the guns.

The first-responders the night of April 26th, 1986, had shovels and firehoses. Nearly a million men and women worked the clean-up, to contain the mess. And 25,000 are dead.

It bugs me that the candidate packaged as "hope" in the Democratic primary process is a sock puppet for Excelon. It bugs me that the odds are wicked high that we Auntie Nukes are going to have to try again to stop the nuclear nutmen, this time in new and improved packaging as "low carbon", and this cycle's most effective electoral crooner is warm and fuzzy towards atoms for peace.

Isn't voting "for security" voting against the likelihood of having only whatever can be salvaged from equipment of the crews that went before you, and proceeding towards, or away from, some point on the horizon?

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Yesterday we were favored by a visit by an adult fish eagle doing circles over the Salinas River. The white tail and head against the dark body and wings was easily visible. Today we are favored by a guest post by Nord Wennerstrom:

I want to call your attention to a cultural treasure that is under threat ... the 10,000+ petroglyphs and pictographs in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon:

May 1, 2008 is the deadline for contacting the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) about a proposal that could dramatically step up damage to the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon, affectionately known as the "world's longest art gallery" and home to more than 10,000 petroglyphs and pictographs made primarily from the Fremont and Ute Indian cultures. A massive proposed oil and gas development project (more than 800 wells!) will cause a four-fold increase truck traffic inside the Canyon, resulting in enormous amounts of dust, chemical dust suppressants and vehicle exhaust that will accumulate on and permanently harm this native, and human treasure.

A recently released study shows a direct link between truck traffic in the Canyon and the deterioration of the rock art panels, due to a build up of dust and harmful chemicals used to control dust on the road. The BLM, which manages much of the land in and around Nine Mile Canyon, needs to recognize the findings of this study and present plans for a new access road to the exploration site, rather than continuing to rely on the narrow dirt roads that run through Nine Mile Canyon.

We urge you to send an email to the Bureau of Land Management today at UT_Pr_Comments@blm.gov and copy the National Trust for Historic Preservation at crc@nthp.org.

Let BLM know that it is imperative for them to protect the thousands of prehistoric petroglyphs and pictographs in Nine Mile Canyon. Tell BLM that it is unacceptable to allow these international treasures to be damaged by the dust and chemicals and exhaust generated by current and proposed truck traffic in Nine Mile Canyon. Ask BLM to perform a detailed evaluation of alternative routes that trucks could use to access the project area instead of the existing dirt roads in Nine Mile Canyon and its narrow side canyons. Encourage BLM to fulfill its role as the steward of the world's longest art gallery and save our shared heritage for future generations.

Additional information:

1. More information and to access the Draft Environmental Impact Study are available from the BLM.

2. Learn more about Nine Mile Canyon.

3. YouTube video

4. The following article appeared in the magazine Science January 25, 2008, Dust Storm Rising Over Threat to Famed Rock Art in Utah: [I'm looking for a non-pay link to the 1pp .pdf, ebw]

5. ninemilecanyoncoalition.org [ebw add]

The author is director of communications for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Posted by EBW at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is there such a thing as a tactical nuclear weapon? Can nuclear weapons be used "tactically" in a "theater limited" war, with acceptable risk of the conflict not escalating into unrestricted warfare with civilian population centers immediately becoming the primary elements of the opposing sides' targeteers?

One of the hallmarks of the Bush Regime's ascendency has been first-use and theater limited use, that complete inventory expenditure is not the most likely outcome of scenarios involving weapons states, whether directly or indirectly.

Would you want to turn over the launch codes to anyone who thinks he or she can "just use a few" to advance American interests?

I'm perplexed by Juan Cole's take on the ABC's Good Morning America show the morning of the Pennsylvania election. Someone set up the question -- Clinton was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. This presupposes Iran's uranium enrichment program is not so that Iran can enter the commercial fuel market, and there is no evidence that Iran has produced highly enriched uranium, and become a vendor of nuclear fuel rods, and it presumes that Iran then weaponizes some stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and it presumes that Iran mates the weapons package(s) with some delivery platforms, and with or without testing, enages some targets in Israel with these nuclear weapons.

One line of analysis is that the candidate accepted the premise of the question, and should not have.

Another line of analysis is that the candidate accepted the premise of the question for reasons that may be more complex than the assumption that the premise is likely to be true.

But what is the better answer to the question "what will happen if one weapons state attacks another weapons state?" Which is the reasonable answer "effect without counter-effect" or "effect and counter-effect"?

Finally, the shared knowledge of the authors of the question, ABC's cast of political talent, and the campaign's political talent which includes the candidate, and of the passive audience, is that three weapons states, Israel, the United States and even France have threatened first-use, specifically against Iran, and the house of cards includes the disposition of more than two nuclear weapons states arsenals, there's Pakistan's to consider, and it may not end there.

Does the question asked "if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons" become meaningless if the sequence of "Iran", "Israel" is reversed? If other weapons states names are used instead of one, or the other, or both? And what about the answer? Is there ever effect without counter-effect?

The worst reading of the intent of the answer I've seen came from Juan Cole who wrote:
"Senator Clinton is by now just flailing around fantasizing about incinerating children in playgrounds in Isfahan.

I do not hope for a candidate who does not use the language of deterrence, and if there is a transfer of power from the Bush Regime to an elected administration of a different political party, I hope that administration will decrement a weapons inventory without adding weapons marketed as "capable of producing effect without counter-effect". I also hope, in that hypothetical and uncertain future, that administration will encourage the administrations of other weapons states to decrement inventories, without without adding weapons marketed as "capable of producing effect without counter-effect."

Posted by EBW at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

You may want to consider writing in Al Gore and someone else. Our choice is the Breck Girl. Click on view image (your howto may vary) to see it at 100%, here it's 50% (and melting).

Posted by EBW at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Real ID went into effect today. I think I'll apply for a renewal from where I am, a wicked long ways away from my domicile of record, and see just how difficult it is to actually have government work.

Posted by EBW at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Its up at defenselink.mil.

I'm still trying to imagine Terry McAuliff taking Matt Soller as his peer for as much as 4.5 seconds, let alone 45 seconds. I just lack whatever that takes.

Posted by EBW at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ethan's wanted to go to the District for a long time. It is why he came to Maine. Someday he'd get through the muni-maze, and with Charlie Harlow's help in the famously broken election 1999 election he made it on to the Portland city council long enough to make a theatrical gesture of "stepping aside", when Jack Dawson appealed Charlie & co's gift of 35 ballots, which was enough to get him into Ann Rand's Senate seat when she term-limited, always "fighting for Portland", because some day the safe seat in the 1st CD would open up. Someday someone would move on, up, out or die, and start the feast of movable chairs, to the Senate or to the Blaine House, but most of all, from Portland to Capital Hill. Funny, when Bob Masse was designing this poster Ethan was just another guy from away who'd lost his break-in race. Now he's talking dirty to the woman who gave John Baldacci the Blaine House and fell on the Party sword to be the symbolic candidate against Susan Collins in the first election after 9/11 made every Republican a Hero, after spending almost as many years in Augusta as Michael Brennan.

I'm a Californian, married to a Mainiac, and the parent of Mainacs. Abenaki Mainiacs. When Ronnie moved from Sacramento to Washington we were really glad in California -- we'd finally gotten rid of an idiot -- the seen-one-tree-seen-em-all guy. So maybe it a good thing that Ethan is trying to leave Maine.

But what is the weirdest way you can think of to celebrate Earth Day? Torching a heap of tires to liberate those poor carbon atoms imprisoned in the harsh bonds of expropriated tropical rubber?

Try messaging that Emily's List, the PAC created to get more women elected, is just a PAC, and a clean candidate doesn't take money from any PAC.

Because there's no connection between business as usual, and all the privileges that go with inherited wealth, and inherited sex, and inherited skin color, and what is wrong with the Earth.

And Mainers should vote against any woman unfortunate enough to run with Emily's List's advice (and girl do they have wicked good political advice to offer) and their money. Because its From Away. And Ethan isn't. Sort of.

Posted by EBW at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The best PA primary coverage is at Fafner, Giblets, and the Medium Lobster's digs. Its surreality based.

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A view of the field of honor, as imagined by Ross Swimmer (center), Jack Abramoff (upper right), and Chad Smith (lower right).

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has threatened to block housing legislation for Native Americans if the final bill does not include a funding ban against the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma .

Frank shares a concern first raised by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), whose members have proposed several measures to punish the tribe for changing its constitution last year to exclude the Freedmen -- a group of largely black Americans who are descendants of freed slaves once owned by tribe members -- from its ranks.

The tribe's actions have led to an intense fight between the Cherokee Nation and the CBC. The tribe has hired a number of lobbyists to push back against punitive legislation as it also battles the issue in federal and tribal court. The powerful House Financial Services Committee chairman is yet another obstacle for the Cherokee.

"We would not pass the bill. We would not acquiesce to give funding to the Cherokees," said Frank, whose committee has jurisdiction over the legislation. Frank said he would not bring a conference report to the floor for a final vote without the ban firmly in place.

The House version of the bill passed in September with an amendment by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) that would bar housing funds for the Cherokee. Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), however, amended Watt's provision so that it would not take effect until a tribal court battle between the Cherokees and the Freedmen is resolved.

That has been a primary argument of the tribe: Let the courts, not Congress, decide the issue. If the bill sponsored by Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) becomes law, Watt's measure would cut $30 million of federal housing funds for close to 7,400 Cherokee, according to the tribe's estimates.

"This legislation will punish some of Oklahoma's neediest citizens based on a complete misunderstanding of the facts. Most Americans understand why it makes sense for an Indian tribe to believe that only Indians should be in a tribe," said Mike Miller, a Cherokee spokesman, in a statement.

The Senate has yet to include Watt's ban in a corresponding bill, which has holds on it unrelated to the Cherokee funding ban at the moment, according to a spokesman for Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), the bill's author.

"Once the bill gets moving again, Sen. Dorgan will look at the issue," said Justin Kitsch, Dorgan's spokesman, in an e-mail.

The CBC has warned Senate leadership that it would oppose and lobby against a bill that does not include the ban. In a letter last month to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), CBC lawmakers said the Cherokee funding ban must be included. Reid's staff has been in discussions with the caucus since receiving the letter.

"We are very aware of their concern and we understand there are very deep sentiments on both sides of this issue," said Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, in an e-mail.

Watt was firm with his position that the ban must stay in the bill.

"You reach a point of where the Cherokees must understand what they are doing," he said. "It seems the only way for them to understand is [if] there will be some consequences."

Frank is not the only prominent Democrat to support the funding ban for the Cherokee. House leadership has also backed the ban, according to a leadership aide. (Guess what that means.)

Asked why he would not bring up the bill, Frank said the Cherokee betrayed the Treaty of 1866, which gave tribal citizenship rights to the Freedmen.

"Because it's the law. It's part of the treaty," said Frank. "Tribes too often have been victims of broken treaties."

But the Cherokee have contended that is inaccurate.

"We would like an opportunity to meet with Chairman Frank so he can become better informed about the 1866 treaty, why we haven't violated it, and why federal and tribal judges are in a better position than Congress to make a decision after hearing all the facts," said Miller, the tribe's spokesman.

Lobbyists for the tribe have begun distributing a five-page white paper to Capitol Hill offices saying Congress, not the tribe, removed citizenship rights from the Freedmen.

Specifically, the tribe points to legislation passed by Congress in the early 1900s, as well as court rulings that revoked Cherokee citizenship rights from Freedmen descendants.

Not all Freedmen have been expelled from the tribe. In amending its constitution in March of last year, the Cherokee approved a change that would exclude members that could not trace their Indian ancestry to the tribe's 1906 census.

Consequently, there are still some black members left in the tribe, though about 2,800 Freedmen are no longer part of the 270,000 member-strong Cherokee. The Freedmen who are no longer part of the tribe also have temporary citizenship rights until the issue is resolved in court.

Nevertheless, Watt said the Cherokee must reverse their position on the Freedmen.

"The ball is in their court. It's their move," said the North Carolina Democrat. "They need to have a reality check. This is the best way to deliver that message."

You'll have to imagine the audio. Or click on the YouTube and enjoy a classic.

Posted by EBW at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From Le Monde's dépêche -- by Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMAS (Reuters) - Le Hamas accepte l'établissement d'un Etat sur les territoires palestiniens occupés en 1967 par Israël mais ne reconnaîtra pas l'Etat juif, a déclaré lundi le chef du bureau politique du mouvement islamiste, Khaled Méchaal.

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The new slide show is at TED. At 22:11 Al is asked "When you look at the leading candidates in your own party are doing now are you excited by their plans on global warming?"

Somewhere in the next two minutes Matt Stoller finds his wee little brass ring. Its all MB's fault, she let him post at It's Still the Ecomony, Stupid (a post I'm fond of is the link to Max Sawicky, in April, 2003, on what to do with Iraq's oil revenues -- we'll be coming back to that next week when we visit Susan Collins' latest idea.

MB and I will be writing in Al Gore's name on the ballot. The Maine 1st CD is wicked safe blue, so its not likely to reverse gravity, but its the only vote we feel represents us.

We'll write in John Edwards just below Al Gore.

Posted by EBW at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you prefer you can read the copy in Ha'aretz. It lacks the spilt mechanical ink.

Palestinian sources revealed l «life» Movement «Hamas» sent yesterday evening «written observations» to the former American President Jimmy Carter Commenting on the paper, which was handed over Friday to the President of the movement's political bureau Khaled Mashaal.

At the same time, continued meetings of the Political Bureau of «Hamas» to discuss an Egyptian proposal to transfer leaders in the movement, Mahmoud al-Zahhar, Said Siam to Mashaal, in the matter of reaching an agreement to defuse the «Gaza first» followed by the West Bank after an agreed period, and that as a compromise between adherence Movement b «calm comprehensive and reciprocal and simultaneous» in the West Bank and Gaza, and the refusal of Israel's commitment to calm in the West Bank «sensitivity of the security». In parallel, continuing Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip, targeting «Hamas», which has lost eight of the activists during the past 24 hours.

The Political Bureau «Hamas» intensive meetings held yesterday in Damascus, al-Zahhar and Siam attend to discuss issues of the response to the proposals of the Carter and Cairo. The sources said that the movement of written comments sent to the Carter so declared today in Israel, in response to suggestions b «ceasefire for a period of a week or two weeks from one side», and «foot on humanitarian initiatives in the release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and to meet with Vice President Israeli Prime Minister Eli purchased »,« signing of the Rafah crossing »in the Gaza Strip, and« supporting President Mahmoud Abbas in negotiations with Israel ».

The officials refused «Hamas» disclosure of the details of written comments on the «paper Carter» to give him an opportunity declared himself, but it is believed that the movement dealt b «flexibility» with his proposals so was recalled document of national accord, which included «support any agreements reached with Israel after Abbas presented to the People and the National Council », with reference to the announcement by the Government Ismail Haniya accept« State Limits 1967, a truce for a period of 25 years ».

It was learnt that the comments «Hamas» included willingness to sign an agreement on the Rafah crossing is not be any Israeli presence, with the approval of the presence of European observers, provided it does not reside in Israel, in addition to accept cooperation with the Palestinian presidency and reject any existence of the members of the Government, Salam Fayyad. As the need to lift the blockade, with the «non-discrimination between military aggression and blockade on Gaza».

Elsewhere, condemned «Hamas» statements, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Washington has revealed a plan for Egyptian contains four items, one excluding «Hamas» of any national unity government might be formed Palestinian future so as not to hamper their peaceful settlement with Israel. The spokesman for the movement in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri that statements by Abu Gheit «mean that he is against the legitimacy that Hamas, which won elections in the (legislative) free», stressing that «no room to overcome Hamas in any political process in the region».

Despite efforts to reach calm, the Israeli occupation forces stepped up its attacks and raids that targeted positions «Hamas» in the Gaza Strip yesterday and on Saturday night - Sunday, resulted in the death of eight Palestinians.

The Hamas newspaper Falastin, published in Gaza, reported that Carter proposed Hamas unilaterally stop rocket fire on Israel and release Shalit in exchange for no more targeted assassinations of its leaders and the release of 400 prisoners.

In a document that Falastin called "very flexible," Hamas said it was prepared to establish a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders on condition that any diplomatic agreement reached by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would be presented in a referendum to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

A member of the Hamas political bureau, Mohammed Nazzal, told Al Jazeera that Carter, who met with Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal on Friday and on Saturday, had proposed that Hamas make a gesture to Israel and implement unilateral calm. Nazzal said the organization had no objection in principle, but would have to weigh "what the price is and what Israel's response will be." Nazzal also said Hamas "did not intend to hold Gilad Shalit forever."

And finally this:

From Reuters, a long enough quote from Ellen Wulfhorst (and I've no idea where her sympathies lie)

The Illinois senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania which holds the next presidential voting contest on Tuesday, told a group of Jewish leaders he has an "unshakable commitment" to help protect Israel from its "bitter enemies."

"That’s why I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas," Obama said. "We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements."

"Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization," he said.

In later Reuters coverage the question was asked again (today) in Reading, PA. The answer in the copy was “I actually disagree with him on his meeting with Hamas,” Obama said.

So its all a bad idea, according to at least one, if not both of the Hero Twins, and of course, Saint John, and to be fair, John Edwards' iPod has the same shuffle.

Posted by EBW at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marc Lynch asked his well-informed readers:

do you know of any NGOs doing particularly good and noteworthy work with Iraqi children? Could be in any relevant realm: health, education, orphanages. If so, please leave a note in the comments or drop me an email.

Wampum readers please leave any suggestions either at Abu Aardvark or here.

I'm in particular interested in means to aid children and their families in the camps in Syria.

Wrack your brains folks, you could be obsessing over back-to-back ads by the Hero Twins in Penn, or side-to-side spin of each by the respective campaign's designated (and urk! spontainious) spinners, and Saint John's designated spinner, and the MSM's sorry collection of corporate welfare recipients, or just stuck listening to talk radio in a 7-11 during a stick-up by a pair with bad meth teeth.

Posted by EBW at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to post something later today on Iraq and Susan Collins, but I just saw Pentagon helps steer military analysts behind the scenes and its long enough, and important enough, to read in its entirety.

Enjoy.

The piece on Susan will come out after the dust settles in Pennsylvania.

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The end-to-end list is experiencing a sudden discussion, one brought about by the lack of discussion. What is preventing innovation? Restarted, where does wicked abuse of incumbent monopoly power lie? In the network, where those evil ISPs make HuffPo load slower, if at all, than CNN and Fox? In the middle-boxen, where track-the-employee and every-last-eyeball value-add "deep inspection" measures every mouse nibble? Or in the end host systems, where a benign "Major Company" wisely controls a network stack (and the memory protection model we all know and love as the home of virii, spam, n'bots)?

Now all the people who answered (a), its the wicked ISPs and would the FCC or Congress please pass a rule or a bill or something, can't read the following without also knowing the outcome of the research suggested is "no impact".

In the US and Europe at least, one Major Company that controls a network stack has been judged thoroughly and beyond appeal by the courts to have a legal monopoly, with the strong assertion that makes by definition about consequent market power. That *legal* position cannot be disputed.

It would take a stronger argument than a mere vague handwave by a computer scientist toward the word "competing interests" to convince most economists and lawyers that when such a company keeps its network drivers protected, proprietary, and engages in agreements with hardware vendors to "certify" their drivers and hardware, the playing field for competition enables easy implementation of anything in that dominant network stack.

Of course, computer scientists are welcome to their political opinions and dissent. But in science, dissent requires testable proof.

Thus, I propose that the next PlanetLab scale experiment on new system architectures be carried out, not with Linux, but with Windows Vista. And without any prior agreement with Microsoft that gives the researchers licenses and access to code and internal interface privileges that students in, say, Ecuador don't have.

Based on that test, we can ascertain whether the monopoly in legal fact has an impact on research freedom.

Posted by EBW at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The House Natural Resource Committee, formerly chaired by Dick Pombo (R-CA-11), now by Nick Rahall (D-WV-03), approved four Indian bills at a markup on Thursday. The bill that caught my eye was HR 1575 To reaffirm and clarify the Federal relationship of the Burt Lake Band as a distinct federally recognized Indian Tribe, and for other purposes.

(b) Membership Criteria-

(1) To qualify for membership in the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, a person must be able to demonstrate through evidence acceptable to the Tribe that the person meets at least 1 of the following requirements:

(A) The person descends from one or more tribal members who were domiciled at Colonial Point, Burt Township, Cheboygan County, Michigan before or at the time that the Tribe's village was burned in October 1900, as said tribal members are identified in the United States v. McGinn litigation and related documents, the 1950 Albert Shananaquet list of Colonial Point Residents, or both.

(B) The person descends from one or more tribal members who are listed on the 1900 and/or the 1910 Burt Lake Township Federal Census, Indian Enumeration Schedule.

(C) The person has an Indian ancestor who was, prior to 1910, living in tribal relations with the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians as the Burt Lake Band is defined in this Act.

(D) The person descends from Rose Midwagon Moses.

No weasel words attempting to limit Indian Gaming either, no sovereignty subordinate to a state.

Posted by EBW at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

NYMEX Light Sweet Crude, Contract 1 closed today (4/18/2008) at 116.69. At 20:50 the price reached $117.

It seemed so rad 22 months ago to have predicted $100/bl as within the realm of possibilities. Remember when it hit $70 and then fell into the low $60s ...

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A month ago I wrote to Peter Asen (Michael Brennan), Corey Haskell (Ethan Strimling), Lisa Prosienski (Chellie Pingree), Marc Malon (Mark Lawrence), Emily Boyle (Adam Cote), and Valerie Martin (Tom Allen), letting each know I'd posted Three Defense Questions, policy and politics, for the 1st CD Dem primary candidates, and Tom Allen, offering all of them a generous "gotcha-free" reading. There were responses from Peter Asen, Marc Malon, and Willy Ritch, substituting for Lisa Prosienski.

The Brennan Campaign on Three Defense Questions, policy and politics reflects an exchange of notes clarify Michael's position on a 10% cut, that the figure is in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, and as a long-term policy, towards 2.7% of GDP.

Today I'm posting the response received from Willy Ritch, Chellie Pingree's communications director.

On the BRAC:

The way we allocate resources for our national security budget is fundamentally flawed because of the segregation of the various functions of our security efforts.

Think of the Pentagon as our offensive effort, the Department of Homeland Security as defensive and the State Department as preventative. Currently each of those departments has a separate budget, so money isn't always allocated in proportion to how effective it would be at keeping America safe. The Pentagon, for example, might want to fund a missile defense system that costs more than the entire Coast Guard budget---when many experts would argue that we are more likely to be attacked by a terrorist device smuggled in through a port than by a missile launched by a foreign government.

Rational choices such as you've asked about can only be made if we move toward a unified national security budget so Congress and the experts can compare the relative effectiveness of different programs and make spending decisions based on which are most effective. I am someone who believes that Congress, including the Democrats, have not asked enough hard questions and have not exercised enough oversight on this and other issues. A unified national security budget is step one in a real and informed process that allows for good decision-making based on our shared national security priorities.

On the questions of control and the economic priority of Iraqi refugees during a recession [combined answer]:

The conversation around national security and Iraq has been limited for far too long by discussions of military tactics, such as the surge, instead of the real conversation that American public and our public officials need to have. Where do we go from here? How do we bring our troops home quickly, and redirect the hundreds of billions that are being spent on the war to solving the many problems we face at home, without leaving chaos in our wake? How do we prevent the mistakes that led to this fiasco so it doesn't happen again?

We have a tremendous responsibility when it comes to Iraq but it's true that we are part of the problem and that our very presence there is an obstacle to developing a reasonable international strategy to move forward.

This winter I worked with Darcy Burner, a Congressional Candidate in Washington State, and several military and national security experts to create A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. Since we presented the plan in March, nearly fifty US House and US Senate candidates have signed on, promising to support the proposals in the plan if elected.

The plan builds off the work of the Iraq Study Group and existing legislation in Congress and is intended to accomplish three objectives:

• End the military effort in Iraq and bring our troops home.
  
• Begin to repair the damage five years of war and occupation have caused, at home and abroad.
  
• Prevent a repeat of this sort of epic and costly foreign policy blunder in the future.

This plan presents a set of actions that Congress can take to remove all troops from Iraq while engaging in a diplomatic offensive in the region. It is designed to convert our current costly and unsuccessful military approach in Iraq into a more effective civilian one that addresses the root problems we face in Iraq. It moves us away from the use of military tools and enables more robust diplomatic and humanitarian work. It offers a path to rebuild the military, the State Department, and a commitment to take care of returning veterans. It also offers a deeper look at our decision-making problems, and fixes the breakdown in checks and balances by rolling back excessive executive authority, restoring civil liberties, and ending practices such as torture and the privatization of the military.

Ultimately we believe that restoring our Constitution is the only way to prevent a repeat of these mistakes and take us where we need to go to end this war responsibly. It also addresses the humanitarian problems created by the war and occupation of Iraq.

This is a substantive plan to end the war in Iraq responsibly, and it is a political document that citizens should use in guiding their political decision-making in 2008. We look forward to building both grassroots and grasstops support around the ideas contained in it. For too long we have been denied a public debate over what to do in Iraq, and it is time to break out of this limited conversation.

I asked a follow-up question whether the portion of the Department of Energy budget spent on nuclear weapons design and fabrication was intentionally left out of the proposed "unified national security budget". The response was to leave the original response unchanged.

These were good answers. Like anyone who isn't distracted by actually running a campaign, I could "improve" on each answer, but keeping in mind what it is like to have scores of reasonable, and unreasonable questions and "push messages" come in over the course of a campaign, these were as responsive as they needed to be, and actually quite good, so I opened up my checkbook and contributed $100 to Chellie Pingree via the campaign's Act Blue page, as I have to Michael Brennan. If you happen to click on the blue image below, you can reward the Pingree campaign, either for taking a Maine blog seriously, or for having wicked good answers to my best three questions for Mainiacs intending to represent Maine in the Congress -- the body charged by the Constitution with the awful responsibility under Article I, § 8, to declare War, to raise and support Armies, and to provide and maintain a Navy, and ultimately, under Article II, § 2, to make an end to the current Wars, and re-enter into Treaties.

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In the six months we spent in the Iowa 2nd, MB working (unpaid) at the IDP office and the adjacent Loebsack office in Iowa City, me talking to everyone in the camps as Jonah did the rounds to visit the curves and reflections of the wheelwells of their tow vehicles, we never encountered an Iowa Dem who had a positive thing to say about The Pledge. For the farmers we talked to, with their acreage split across corn, soy, and alfalfa, the delta it made in silo prices was much less important in determining how they farmed than the general structure of subsidies and cost factors. The bigger issues were rising land prices, the indebtedness that went along with that, and the fragility of operations, large-scale or small, that were essentially share-croppers, leasing land and equipment. A strongly held farm was one that owned both land and equipment and could look at the yield difference and the number of trips over ground (tractor/cultivator) for pesticide-free and/or GMO-free operations.

We didn't have a "candidate" for Draft Gore, so we had the luxury of planning to have our candidate-free campaign return to Iowa a year ago and, like the Arnold Vinnick character played by Alan Alda in the final season of The West Wing, talk about farm policy and western water policy and corn export (NAFTA) being the primary cause for agricultural dislocation in Mexico, that is, a few cents on the acre, most of which goes to ADM and the other giants of the Iowa farm food chain, is what is fueling the loony "Illegal immigrant crisis" marketed by Steve King in the Iowa 5th and Tom Tancredo in the Colorado 6th. It also fueled the agricultural dislocations of the 19th century, ending the farm economy in New England that once fed New York.

We also had the luxury of being able to point to serious academic studies of the ethanol energy economy that showed beyond a doubt that ethanol from corn in the midwest was simply a total energy sink, unlike switchgrass, which leads to the marginal land and nitrogen runoff issues ...

Of course, the problems in Iowa aren't limited to Iowa. California ag interests dictate that Iowan can grow corn, soy, alfalfa, and sunflowers, but not lettuce or anything that might end up in a farmer's market in the midwest that looks suspiciously like a salad. So however venal Iowa's Pledge is, for the producers (starting with the Iowa boosters) and the consumers (what candidate hasn't taken The Pledge), the venality runs along both axis of the refrigerated lettuce line that connects Salinas and New York, and both axis of the grain barge line that connects the ports on the Great Lakes and the Gulf, creating monoculture and fossil fuel and water costs everywhere.

Jean Ziegler's view is that the production of biofuels is "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global food prices. Ziegler is the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food. Last week the European Environment Agency (EEA), advised the European Commission to suspending its biofuel target, as the EU will have to import, which means accelerate the transformation of rain forest into export biomass monoculture, for overstated benefits. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, head of Nestle, the world's biggest food and beverage company, and just about the last place anyone familiar with the exploitation of "forumla" to replace breast milk would look for ethical guidance, last month argued that "to grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible." Robert Zoellick said soaring food costs could potentially push 100 million people deeper into poverty. Mr. Zoellick is the president of the World Bank, which reported last week that global wheat prices jumped 181 percent over the 36 months to February, with overall food prices up 83 percent.

On the other side of the issue is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who just said "Don't tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel. Food is expensive because the world wasn't prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat," and "We want to discuss this not with passion but rationality and not from the European point of view."

And the interests that hold Iowa's position in the early primary calender is inviolate, and its corollary, that there is no farm policy issue but The Pledge.

Posted by EBW at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The day before yesterday President Carter visited the grave of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. He was unable to visit the grave of Ahmed Yassin in Gaza. Gaza is closed to American Presidents. These two men, prior to their murders, were Palestinian leaders, of the Fatah and Hamas organizations, respectively. Neither organization have particularly impressive leaders at present, but President Carter met with former Palestinian Authority deputy prime minister Naser al-Shaer (Hamas), who along with all other Hamas politicians, was dismissed by President Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah) after the Battle of Gaza. Today he meet with Mahmud Zahar, Said Siam, Mohammed Zahar, Jamil Rizq, Taher Nunu and a sixth person who's name I haven't found.. The Hamas party crossed from Gaza to Egypt yesterday morning and traveled by car to Cairo.

The President met with the Hamas delegation at the American University of Cairo today, and afterwards made a statement:

It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Ben-Ami and a host of others have organized the lobbying group J Street and the political action group as JStreetPAC.

Here's Laura Rozen's write up in the Mother Jones blog New "Pro Israel, Pro Peace" Political Group Launches: J Street Hopes to Prod Washington MidEast Policy Towards Center. I'll check if the J Street agenda includes defining a boundary.

I wonder if Anna in Cairo still reads Wampum. I'll be there in November.

Posted by EBW at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Aimé Césaire just passed away. Le Monde's obit is ici.

from the wikipedia:

Négritude is a literary and political movement developed in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas. The Négritude writers found solidarity in a common black identity as a rejection of French colonial racism. They believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French political and intellectual hegemony and domination.

• Poésie
  
  
  
  • Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939)
    
  • Les armes miraculeuses (1946)
    
  • Soleil cou coupé (1948)
    
  • Corps perdu (1950)
    
  • Ferrements (1960)
    
  • Cadastre (1961)
    
  • Moi Laminaire (1982)
    
  • La poésie (1994)
    
  
  
• Théâtre
  
  
  
  • Et les chiens se taisaient (1958)
    
  • La tragédie du roi Christophe (1963)
    
  • Une saison au Congo (1966)
    
  • Une tempête (1969)
    
  
  
• Essais
  
  
  
  • Victor Schoelcher et l'abolition de l'esclavage (1948)
    
  • Discours sur le colonialisme (1950)
    
  • Toussaint Louverture. La Révolution française et le problème colonial (1961) (d'après AFP)
    

  Posted by EBW at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We put real questions to the Hero Twins, take their answers, and offer it to the video broadcast and cablecast distribution chains in the remaining media markets at play?

Duncan can read some questions, he's presentable enough and Avadon can read some questions.

The Democratic primary voters, undecided and potentially redecided, in the remaining delegate accumulation contests aren't tuning in for production values or spin, they're trying to get a glimpse of the real person, and not just brushing off gnats. What is more, up to the convention, automatic (PLEO) and elected delegates, and the party activists who are sending them to Denver, are going to want the same thing. Quality time with the candidate, not corporate fecal flings.

So it is possible. It hadn't been tried when Larry Lessig invited Howard Dean to guest blog, And we're all a lot better at knitting together the audio and video bits now than we were in '03/'04.

Posted by EBW at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You'll find it here. Enjoy. I couldn't stop laughing.

Posted by EBW at 01:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If we have an Obama supporting reader, your preferred candidate is the target of a screed penned by a Chad Smith and John McCain supporting member of the Cherokee Nation. The writing is bad, the style worse (I read five prior pieces, dreck), the politics more of the same and the message -- pan-tribal rejection of your candidate and the Congressional Black Caucus -- a bit overblown.

Make no mistake, the astroturf that went out Saturday night has legs, its wrong on many levels, but Indians are no more gifted than any other demographic at own-BS detection, so this Congressional Black Caucus has WMDs thing will stick.

Where this particular fleck of shit is well beyond the curve of the earth is the association of your candidate, because of his membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, with the advocacy lead by Congresswoman Diane Watson. Only 33 of the 43 CBC members signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that they will try to block a Native American housing assistance bill if the measure does not include language that prevents the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from receiving any of the benefits. As far as I can tell after 6pm EDT, your guy isn't one of the 33, and I'd be surprised out of my socks if he were, but my idea of good policy and your guy's advisers' ideas of good politics don't necessarily have to have non-zero overlap.

In other words, your guy is being hit by a guy who flakes for Chad Smith and is pumping for John McCain. The hit is that because your guy is black, he's part of Diane Watson's posse.

This is where the racism in Chad Smith's base, the same base that kept Ross Swimmer in power in the Nation, and after him, Wilma Mankiller, is evident. But that's a Cherokee problem, a Cherokee Nation problem, not your guy's problem.

Your guy's problem is that Chad's flake isn't right, that your guy hasn't turned the light on, and the cockroaches have the run of the kitchen.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I worked in Beijing, the exchange rate was 8.2. It stayed at that rate until August 2005, and then began to adjust downward. Today a US dollar only buys 7 yuan. That's a 15% devaluation in the space of less than 2 years, and I can't imagine a money market ad on TV or in the WSJ making the case that the yuan is a better investment than real estate ... but it is.

Posted by EBW at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've made rules, we've set standards, we've put Virginia Woolf on the curriculum ... From Rebecca Traister's thoughtful piece in Salon.

Update: The numbers in the Kentucky half of Pennsyltucky are even more ... of a blow-out. Enjoy the link -- that's 34 district / 11 at large, 6 Pledged PLEOs, 8 Unpledged PLEOs and 1 Unpledged add-on delegates that fall on May 20th in a closed primary.

Posted by EBW at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Issue: Whether tribal courts have authority to decide a civil lawsuit that involves business dealings between a company owned by a member of the tribe and a bank that owns land on a reservation, but itself is not owned by a tribal member.

The issue in Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle was whether tribal courts have jurisdiction over a dispute between a nontribal bank and a company that is majority Indian-owned. More than 51 percent of the owners of the South Dakota ranching company in the case are members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and, as such, the company was entitled to loan guarantees from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Roberts seemed concerned about how a bank can be expected to know whether a company it is dealing with is a so-called "Indian corporation," thereby triggering tribal court jurisdiction. After all, companies incorporate under state, not tribal, law.

"That's a concept I don't understand," said Roberts, who then pointed to the left side of the bench and added, "If Justices Scalia and Alito form a corporation, is that an Italian corporation?"

Amid laughter, veteran advocate David Frederick of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen,Todd, Evans & Figel wisely sidestepped the issue. "I would like to beg the indulgence of the Court in not answering that question specifically."

In the past, Justice Antonin Scalia, like many other Italian-Americans, has bristled at being described as Italian since he, like Alito, was born in the United States, not Italy. But Scalia went along with the joke and interjected with a question of his own: "And do we get special loan guarantees?" Justice Samuel Alito Jr. was laughing too.

Isn't Roberts funny? Via BLT.

Posted by EBW at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Condi Rice thinks she's got more gravitas than Jimmy Carter, and can belittle his meeting with Khaled Meshaal.

The photo is from Beruit, the reference is to "hiding in the toilets" during the Civil War.

Posted by EBW at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chad Smith flew in to LA today to meet with the local Cherokees. I just got the fall-out. Here's the money graph:

If the second-largest tribe in the country can be threatened with termination and bullied by Congress -- then no one is safe -- including you.

The expectation is that every Indian is under the impression that Oklahoma Statehood didn't happen and the Cherokee Nation wasn't dissolved in 1907, and the Principal Chiefs Act didn't happen and Richard Nixon didn't recreate the Cherokee Nation in 1970, and that every Indian Tribe shares a Treaty History with the United States just as fungible as the CNO's as a barrel of sweet light crude from any West Texas or Oklahoma well or pipeline.

As if that weren't funny enough, Chad manages to under-inform the people he lobbies for support. Here's one result, from someone I've known via the TribalLaw list for a decade:

Please note that Senator Barak Obama is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Someone needs to ask him how he can reconcile his support of the efforts of the Congressional Black Caucus and his rhetoric about supporting Tribal Governments.

Pushing the CNO off a cliff and restoring the Clinton Executive Order concerning consultation would be a wicked big win, for everyone except Chad's 4,210 voters. Making Chad King-for-Life and leaving everything as is would not be a wicked big win, except for Chad's 4,210 voters. And why the heck can't Chad and his sock puppets ask their own damn push-poll questions? Because the media might ask "Chad, was your election more, or less rigged, than any of the other five Jack Abramoff client/contributor tribal executives who used to control Indian Gaming operations and rubber stamp legislatures and who are now behind bars or lobbyists for non-Indian casino operators or writing their memoirs?"

Brad Carson handled the Obama vote for Oklahoma. Brad is employed by the CNO as the "CEO of Cherokee Nation Businesses". You'd think the contract would cover a phone call. You'd think that Chad might disclose that his guy ran Obama's campaign in OK, and he doesn't need help getting a memo thrown over the transom to the Obama campaign's policy staff.

Corrections from the original version.

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The water level in the Salinas is half what it was the last time Jonah and I went to the river. Footprints of Aziz are everywhere, inch-long glass transparent fish school in the warm shoals, and the tracks of drunks, snails perhaps, or clams I've never known, meander across the sand, leaving furrows.

He found a deeper spot and swam while I stood knee deep in the warmer current and read the 3rd act of Moliere's l'école des femmes.

The distance from 1662 to the present is absurdly small.

Contempler la bassesse où vous avez été,
Et dans le même temps admirer ma bonté,
Qui de ce vil état de pauvre villageoise
Vous fait monter au rang d'honorable bourgeoise
Et jouir de la couche et des embrassements
D'un homme qui fuyait tous ces engagements

Then there's this:

Votre sexe n'est là que pour la dépendance:
Du côté de la barbe est la toute-puissance.
Bien qu'on soit deux moitiés de la société,
Ces deux moitiés pourtant n'ont point d'égalité:
L'une est moitié suprême et l'autre subalterne;
L'une en tout est soumise à l'autre qui gouverne;

Its good that Sir Elton John is using his station in life and letters to say "misogyny". Pity there aren't any straight guys with the same chops saying what's wicked obvious.

Posted by EBW at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After the meeting I got four other survivors together and we drove to Santa Monica and had a fish dinner overlooking the Ocean. We were regaled with stories from Phnom Penh -- I'd no idea that Norodom Sihanouk blogged, or that he'd a nom de plume under which he writes as a childhood friend of the (retired) King sundry things which the (retired) King can't write. That he was a hot rabbit as a youth. That the son living in Paris, a dancer, and the UNESCO rep, who was voted in as his successor, "as a good Buddhist, loves all women like his sisters", that ...

We decided to export good Argentine wine to Cambodia, as the Chinese approach to wine production is chemistry plus sugar. Lots of sugar. Diabetic coma inducing amounts of sugar. Milk in Phnom Penh comes from rather far away too, as only the Cham people have cattle, and their milk production is consumed on-site, so market milk all comes in UTH boxen, from Oz.

Saturday we started the day in the Farmer's Market and spent the afternoon on and off the Promenade, unwinding from the whirlwind of half a dozen city and cultural proposals, and the joy of close encounters with ICANN staff and the GNSO (think "Hairspray") Council and other "observers" like ourselves and going over the entire new gTLD process -- more than 60 slides, or 9 unbroken hours of review and comment.

I picked up the California Green Party rules, not the same as our Maine Independent Green Party's, answered frank questions about Patti LaMarche, learned from the they-might-be-Laruchies that immigration, in particular Mexican immigration, is the root cause of all of California's evils. Silly me, I thought it was something else, like the open boarder to the east. I also learned that 911 is all a big conspiracy, and that if I only just reviewed the flight recorder data ... and there were Obama persons.

I allowed my Obama-besotted European friend to exchange social strokes with the native Obama persons, not distracting from the preening at a 40,000 foot overview (my friend really does "fly over" all of the United Snakes except the high-cap bi-costal metro bits, and his dwell-time in complex-urbia isn't quite long enough to decode why we speak Spanish to people selling organic citrus and veggies in the morning, and why we speak Spanish to wait staff at cafes in the afternoon and evening, while everyone else is speaking English) to suggest he ask an awkward question, like anything about policy, rather than the native Obama persons' scripted histories of enlightenment and conversion to the "true Democratic Party".

It was a first amendment extravaganza, with lots of DFH ephemera. I got a "make coffee, not war" sticker to put on my laptop, and a "Girls can do anything" for Gracie.

Posted by EBW at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When does the claim by privileged elites for an additional franchise to operate a namespace in the DNS root prevail over the claim of unprivileged non-elites?

This is a question that shouldn't have arisen, as the legislative body (and in the ICANN reform context we're now talking about the Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO) as a "legislative body", at least within ICANN), in the results of it's working group on the subject, determined that where a community applied for a string, that if there was one or more communities applying for the same string, the breath and depth of "community support" for each competing application would be objectively determined.

Somehow that comparative evaluation criteria where [warning: example use of "Cherokee"] "two factions claiming to be the Cherokee Community" (for large values of "Cherokee") both apply for .cherokee, who cannot accommodate compromise, say Ross Swimmer's community of vigorously uncolored "Cherokees" -- bleached water subsequently carried by Wilma Mankiller and Chad Smith, vs the United Colors of Beneton community of "Cherokees", has become this:

Comparative Evaluation Criteria : Assessing "added value" of a TLD

• Categorizes a broad and lasting field of human, institutional, or social endeavor or activity
• Represents an endeavor or activity that has importance across multiple geographic regions
• Has lasting value
• Enhances diversity of the namespace
• Enriches broad global communities
• Meets needs that cannot reasonably be met in existing TLDs
• Enhances competition in registration services

So now we know that whatever the relative merits are of Chad's angry mob versus everyone else who's comfortable with accommodation around color and culture within a Cherokee Nation that isn't a racial farce, that if Verisign or NeuStar or Afilias or Google or ... claim they will (someday) realize the superior benefits made possible by their superior civilization capitalization and technology, that .cherokee (or whatever else should be expropriated, for the greater good, etc.) is their's to enjoy.

Oddly enough, I wasn't the only one to point out to "staff" that they'd gone off reservation.

Posted by EBW at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd a peculiar thought yesterday. I was sitting in a group of 30 or so people, and I couldn't tell if anyone other than ICANN staff wasn't there to advocate for an outcome beneficial to their employer, and I couldn't figure out which person(s) were there for Verisign or Godaddy (although the key staffer just joined ICANN from Verisign).

An odd moment in the history of a private industry self-governance and transparency for the Internet. We're going over the proposed new rules of the game for the third round of new top-level domains, so its odd that an informed observer can't tell where "industry" ends and "regulator" begins.

Posted by EBW at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If what passes for coincidence has caused you to take in the winner's side to Nakba, then perhaps you'd like to spend an equal amount of time to take in the loser's side. link.

Posted by EBW at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Update: According to the SacBee tonight, Senator Obama's campaign has now asked the CDP to reinstate the purged delegate candidates. See, not all press is good press after all.

Really, this is just stupid. Stupid. It's normal to "cull" a few people, but I think Senator Obama's campaign really blew it here:

Calif. delegate lists under scrutiny
By Michael R. Blood
Associated Press Writer / April 9, 2008

LOS ANGELES—Barack Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns are purging potential California delegates to ensure that only their loyalists vote at the national convention that will crown one of them as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Locked in a race with an uncertain outcome, representatives for both camps this week directed the California Democratic Party to remove dozens of names from the lists of more than 2,000 potential delegates. Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate.

Driven by fears that some prospective delegates might be concealing their true allegiances, the campaigns are searching campaign finance data, scouring the Internet and making telephone calls to weed out dubious candidates.

Neither side wants to elect a delegate who might really support their rival, or other candidate.

Most of the cutting was done by Obama. His campaign dropped about 900 potential delegates, compared to about 50 excluded on Clinton's side.

Fifty is probably too many as well, but nine hundred? These people are party activist who cared enough to fill out the application and expected they'd have a chance to make their case to their fellow activists and either win or lose via the ballot box. And now they've been branded as potentially "disloyal" to their candidate? These are not $5 online donors, but blood, sweat and tears die-hards - your hard and fast base.

Does Senator Obama plan to field a campaign in California in the general election? If so, he might have just alienated 900 of the best organizers and fundraisers. Just stupid, and so unnecessary.

Democracy works, guys. Even within the Democratic Party. You ought to try it sometime. Grumble.

Posted by MB Williams at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Julio Salazar Monroe, a General and the director of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) during the Fujimori regime was just sentenced to 35 years in prision for approving the operations of the Colina death squad, which killed nine students and a professor at the University of La Cantuta, sixteen years ago.

It's important that for the first time Peruvian justice has established the existence of the Grupo Colina as part of a structured organization that followed state policies in a dirty war that was lead by (Alberto) Fujimori.

Gloria Cano, the lawyer representing the victim's families.

The Principals Committee, which has ordered torture resulting in deaths, has included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Just what is a "Responsible Plan"?

Posted by EBW at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned a while ago that because I now have paid work, that Jonah and Sam are no longer eligible for Maine Care, the Maine version of MediCare. I can, with my paycheck in hand, go out into the private health insurance market and seek a policy ... that covers a pre-existing condition ... autism.

So I did notice when Elizabeth Edwards reminded John McCain that under his plan, neither he, nor she, nor Jonah and Sam, would be eligible for coverage.

And I am aware that Elizabeth Edwards has joined John Podesta's Center for American Progress as a Senior Fellow.

Posted by EBW at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Saturday night, Senator Barack Obama held a brief interview with Montana's Great Fall Tribune. Montana being home of Blackfoot banker and lead plaintiff of the 12 year old Indian Trust case, Cobell v. Kempthorne (was Norton, was Babitt), I wasn't surprised by this question:

Q:You talked about creating a high-level position at the White House for a representative from Indian Country to help you address Native American issues. Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, has sued the federal government for the government's mismanagement of Indian trust lands. Do you have a position on the federal government's responsibility in the Cobell vs. Kempthorne lawsuit?

However, I was surprised by Senator Obama's answer:

A:You know, I haven't looked at the lawsuit carefully. It's something that I want to find out more about.

Why was I surprised? Because Senator Obama has made a very big deal about his proposed Indian policies, purportedly the brain-children of his long-time adviser on Indian issues, Cherokee tribal member, Keith Harper.

Yes, Keith Harper. You know, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Cobell v. Kempthorne. So on top of the fact that not long ago Senator Obama was a lecturer in Con Law at a Tier 6 law school and was still unfamiliar with the most famous federal Indian law case in recent history, he never thought to ask his lead adviser on Indian issues, the lead counsel on the case? And how does a US Senator not know about a case in which three Cabinet Secretaries were found in contempt and potentially headed for jail?

And as if that wasn't enough, the remainder of Senator Obama's response on the Trust relationship was even more pitiful, because, well, it wasn't at all about the Trust relationship:

But the basic principle is that we have to have somebody not just in the Bureau (of Indian Affairs), but somebody in the White House, who has my ear, directly, to communicate the needs of native populations, and a commitment for me to meet, at least once a year, with tribal leaders and hear directly about their concerns. That, I think, is what's needed right now.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has become sort of a backwater. It doesn't have a lot of clout in the administration. I want to put it front and center, along with other agencies, because on every indicator, Native Americans are having a much tougher time than the population at large.

Giving the BIA more power doesn't solve the problem, and on some level, it could create bigger ones. The BIA lacks transparency, and in the wrong hands (as it has been often in the past 100 years) providing it with more "clout" guarantees many more Indians might be harmed by its actions. Not only is the BIA a "backwater", so is the entire Interior Department; we have an agency overseeing one fifth of US lands, billions in resources and millions of people, essentially handed over to whichever Western state governor raises the most cash for the candidate. You can't split the problems with Interior from the problems with BIA, unless you actually split BIA from Interior (which, frankly, would be a positive step.) A simple "someone in the White House" isn't revolutionary - even Richard Nixon had a tribal adviser to chew on his ear now and again. Besides, do we really need Swimmer with a free pass into the Oval Office?

The US government, and its historical antecedents, have signed hundreds, thousands, of treaties with American Indian tribes. With no other nations have they had such a long and interdependent relationship. Imagine if the President proposed speaking to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or the President of France once a year, as if that were an improvement over the current situation. While Senator Obama may believe he is offering a king's feast, these are frankly mere table scraps. Real "change" would entail a true shift of power and control, and not understanding the basic Trust relationship between Indians and the federal government precludes any of that.

I'm putting a call into Senator Clinton's office to see if she's familiar with the facts surrounding Cobell.

I'd actually planned on writing a positive piece on Senator Obama's support for extending tribal jurisdiction when non-Indians commit crimes on federal lands. But now I wonder if he's even heard of Ex Parte Crow Dog, Oliphant, Lara and Duro.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The barge in the photo is delivering the upright pylon and the attached rotors of a 1.2 MW generator. This is the first of a planed 7, to deliver 10 MW to Northern Ireland.

This is also the largest tidal turbine of its type. I saw this and right away I thought of the Old Sow between Passamaquoddy and Fundy Bays.

The cost of a wind electricity generation has dropped by 75% in real terms over the last 25 years since the first wind farms were installed in California. So this could be real, and within finite time more than 5% of Northern Ireland's electrical budget.

Posted by EBW at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A while ago I got a fairly breathless piece of other-the-transom reporting from Reznet News about how insert-adjective it is that the Hero Twins are visiting (insert Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana) here. I see the same cruft leaking out of the various online properties of the two campaigns.

We spent '06 and '07 in Iowa and west, and while the fiction of "native outreach" may translate into a few percentage points in a Democratic primary that yeilds, oh, nearly a 50-50 split of a dozen delegates, which is the only place the "50 states strategy" has the slightest possible meaning in the primary, rather than the general election contexts, the thing that northern tier voters, independent of party, really care about is water.

The Mississippi and tributary locks, and the relatively infrequent barges up and down river, drive the draw-down over all of the Missouri watershed, affecting hydro cost, even availability, irrigation, and recreation. Carbon particulates drive down the Rocky snow pack, and therefore the time and volume of spring melt.

For either of the Hero Twins to win west of the dry line, they need to get religion, and the GOP's values aren't religion, only water is.

For Tribes to win from the one-time presence of the Hero Twins west of the dry line, they need to get ahead of the whole water policy issue super-basket, from cows to corn to current to coal, because the only way anything useful will happen is if the "50 states strategy" is actually run in the Fall, with the surviving Hero Twin and her, or his party, promising to deliver water, not mined out of the future, but cut back from the also-red down-stream states which are east of the dry line, and which are obscenely wasting it to float grain barges.

Indians won't win more than the photo op if a Hero Twin picks off a spring delegate here and a spring delegate there, and water isn't floated as the solvent in which Republican values dissolve, corroded by oxides of hydrogen, throughout the fall cycle.

Posted by EBW at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the bothers of being a semi-literate NDN and being professionally engaged in I/O (and store and all the little bits between I and O) and being involved with "internationalization" (i18n in the trade), which really amounts to forensic software architectural review of the debris left by various encoding schemes as the per-bit price of memory dropped, and as the organization of bits converged towards the 8-bit-byte, is the common one of being taken for the spokesperson of all NDNz.

This week I'm saving Algonquin romanized wrting, that is, the use of the "ou" ligature, or alternately, the numeral "8", to prepresent a sound also represented by the "w" character (which wasn't present in French orthography when latinate script was adopted by Wabanakis co-existing with "New France", and the Cherokee script and the Northern Syllabic scripts (sometimes called Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics).

I'm personally happy with dumping the symbol for some mythical creature central to the cult that props up euro-centricism from the set of characters that can be used to form domain names.

More interesting is the technical question of whether the full-stop (a small "x") should be allowed, or if, as it is a punctuation mark, it should not be, under the general premise that the punctuation marks of all scripts are disallowed within domain names, with the sole exception of the ASCII period ".", which actually is a label separation symbol.

Being the all-knowing Oz, I've decided that the syllabic full-stop shouldn't be allowed in domain names.

And Yes Virginia, because some (modified for typeset) Tsalagi glyphs look like Roman glyphs, there are scads of pipples who think Cherokee is bad-for-the-net (the "confusingly similar" argument). I seem to be winning, but it really is my slender shoulders this load of text rests upon.

I'm still tempted to apply for this sequence of characters as a top-level domain. It has the amusing property of being "confusingly similar", but only to itself, that is, they way Tsa-la-gi is written in ASCII is "CWY". Damn! I just realized I missed today's online Cherokee class. Damn! Damn! Damn! Work should not get in the way of life!!!

Posted by EBW at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Something worth reading is this week's column by Uri Avnery for Gush Shalom. It begins thus:

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

The couple in the photo are staging British Morris Dancing, modified for outdoor political performance, to ritually distinguish wicked bad hands-on-by-others from necessary and good hands-on-by-selves.

I suppose seeing "Free Tibet" next to "Obama" on a bumper after reading his take on Indian Gaming and the Supremacy of States a few weeks ago may have left a ring in my tea cup.

Posted by EBW at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Robert Allen Warrior, who occasionally comments here (and is known to harbor pro-UCONN tendencies, at least through Sunday night) is moving on from Oklahoma to UIUC next Fall, as director of the American Indian Studies program and the Native American House.

Posted by EBW at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The American war in Iraq is over. We know this because we know that independent actors initiated force on force operations with the stated goals of obtaining a monopoly of force. We know this because we know that Fallon, Dempsey, Petreaus and Crocker were not in the sensor to shooter loop. We know this because the opposing forces established their respective relationships between fire and maneuver, yielding no change in their respective monopolies of force. We know this because we know that close air support provided little tactical advantage. We know this because we know that after the initial maneuver phase of operations ended in fixed positions, when ordered to increase the tempo of operations, battalion-strength elements independently opted to lower the tempo of operations. We know this because we know that the opposing forces ceased offensive operations, now generalized beyond the original area of operations, Basra, to Baghdad, Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya. We know this because we know that Ali Adib, Hadi al-Ameri and aides to Moqtada al-Sadr met with Qassem Suliemani in Qom on the 6th day of operations and that ended operations.

Independent of all other theories and claims, politics ended and military operations began, and ended, without a strategic change in the balance of forces, and politics began again. That is what we know, with absolute certainty.

The last rationale for the Occupation is that absent foreign forces, absent foreign control, politics would end and military operations would begin and would not conclude until a monopoly of force was obtained. See the quote below.

I only mention this because no one I read has, and Lisa Prosienski, Chellie Pingree's CM wrote towards the end of the week with the promise that either she or Willy Ritch, the CD, would get back to me with a response to the questions I asked all the Maine 1st CD Democratic primary candidates, so I anticipate responses from the Pingree and the Lawrence campaigns, in addition to the response previously published on behalf of Michael Brennan. I'm not expecting a "Just Go"¹ from any candidate, but it would be silly to act as if nothing fundamental happened last week, by not happening.

Here is the link to the Three Defense Questions, policy and politics, for the 1st CD Dem primary candidates, and Tom Allen.

Here is the link to the Brennan campaign response.

Update: Via Marc Lynch's fine Abu Aardvark (when he isn't doing amateur-hour shilling for one of the primary candidates)

"By the middle of 2005, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved that the only decisive outcome that could be achieved during President Bush's tenure was the triumph of our enemies, America's withdrawal, and Iraq's descent into a hellish chaos as yet undreamed of. The challenge, therefore, was to develop and implement a workable strategy that could be handed over to Bush's successor. Although important progress could be made on that strategy during Bush's watch, ultimately it would be carried through by the next President. This was the reality behind the course followed by the administration in 2005-2006, and it remains the reality behind the new and different course the administration has been following since 2007." - Peter Feaver, Bush's NSC special adviser for strategic planning, in "Anatomy of the Surge" (April 2008)

The choices for 1st CD ME Dems (and Dems everywhere with an interest in contested congressional primaries) are:

1. .5 trillion dollars to "stay the course" (generally), and probably short the refugee and post-war aid by the same amount, no earlier than the 2012 cycle, or
2. .5 trillion dollars to "change the course" (generally), and probably short the refugee and post-war aid by the same amount, no earlier than the 2010 cycle, or
3. .5 trillion dollars to "just go" (generally) and start funding the refugee and post-war aid this cycle, rather than later, if at all.

Posted by EBW at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the swings I charge Jonah for pushes -- a spell out scores of words and pause after each until he gives me the word. Like Yertle the Turtle I spell out what I see (not being very original, and concentrating on not being hit by the swing, and so on). Periodically I walk out from behind him and stand in front of him to ask him numbers "two plus two is?" And we've gotten up to the high teens on symmetric increments to the operands. The asymmetric questions "three plus four is?" are harder. After several cues I hold up one hand with the first operand, then the second with the second, working through all the variations of five or less plus five or less. Choreographing our way towards the dozens. I probably look as ridiculous as the yellow shirts sending Tom Cruise off the deck of a carrier, minus the ocean, the aircraft, and the carrier transmorgified to the bark or shredded tire safety deck, spring ride creatures, climbing structure, and of course, the swings. The less heroic vision is I've slightly invisible pompoms and I'm leading a crowd of one in a series of low digital cheers. Bring It On was the better movie.

I've brought this home from the economy of pushes for "swinging in the air", and started doing hand-over-hand three-plus-three with Jonah, working his hands, first one then the other, into three-fingers, which he then quickly counts to get six. This morning, to get a donut, as usual Jonah couldn't "answer" the "three plus three is?", repeating back "three plus three is", but when prompted "use your fingers" Jonah carefully formed the three fingers, first one hand, then the other, and then counted to six.

I got a donut too.

Update: While driving to Gilroy today to pick up parts, from his seat behind me, Jonah gave me "four plus four" and "five plus five", again, with several prompts and finally "use your fingers, count both hands", in exchange for two beloved CDs worth of music (Disney CARS and PIRATES).

Posted by EBW at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And show just what a dinosaur I am.

So I added 95 songs to my iPod (yes, all purchased from iTunes.) My first 20 song shuffle for Wampum?

Bangles: Walk Like an Egyptian
Pearl Jam: Jeremy
Nena: 99 Luftballoons
Joanne Shenandoah: Katsitsy^Tha
Tori Amos: Silent All These Years
Squeeze: Black Coffee in Bed
Crowded House: Something So Strong
Tracy Chapman: Talking About a Revolution
The Smithereens: Especially for You
Indigo Girls: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Berlin: Take My Breathe Away
Natalie Merchant: Jealousy
The Motels: Only the Lonely
The Go-Gos: Our Lips are Sealed
Erasure: Chains of Love
"Til Tuesday: Voices Carry
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah
Matthew Sweet: I've Been Waiting
10,000 Maniacs: Trouble Me
Bill Miller: Reservation Road

Posted by MB Williams at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Hill today:

Dean says he is also committed to seating Michigan
By Sam Youngman and Manu Raju
Posted: 04/04/08 04:26 PM [ET]

After meeting with Florida Democratic leaders this week, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean met with Michigan party leaders Friday, saying again he is "committed" to find a way to seat the two states' delegates at this summer's convention.

In the case of both states, however, Dean said the DNC and the states will need some sort of compromise agreement from Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), an agreement that looks increasingly unlikely.

Both states were stripped of their delegates by the DNC as punishment for scheduling and holding their primaries ahead of the Feb. 5 date approved by the committee.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For over a year I and a bunch of IETFers argued the issues on the Raven List, and the result was RFC 2804 IETF Policy on Wiretapping. In a nutshell, after we tried to clear our heads of everything we believed about Anglo-American jurisprudence since Charles I was shortened by a head, we tried to come to grips with wiretap as a functional requirement in the architecture of the net.

From my perspective, as an OS geek, it amounted to a requirement that the allocators for threads, memory and scheduling set up not one flow-forwarding collection of resources, but a replication resource, the tap. Fair enough, an interesting problem, a kind of malloc() that had a (let's be sophisticated) lazily evaluted copy-on-write semantics to a second execution context ... so the data plane is done. But the control plane must perform both flow set-up, and independently, that is, from independent from call set-up (viewing the target packet train within a potentially larger set of packet trains as a "call"), there is the call intercept.

The control plane requirement is for a means to over-ride any access control mechanism associated with any access restriction placed by the control plane, and priority over, and therefore more fundamental resource allocation primitives than those contained in the data-path for flow set-up, forwarding and tear-down. If that last bit wasn't obvious (it wasn't to us, initially), think of trying to get a fully loaded box to start a tap on an existing flow. To succeed some resources have to be recovered from existing flows. Starting a tap has to slow down some calls, and just to make it more fun, the call to be tapped can't be in the set of calls to experience resource starvation, least the tap be detectable directly from the tapped flow.

Oh. And that over-ride-all-protections and starve-the-innocents control and data plane capabilities have to be protected from misuse, because the Mob shouldn't be able to just hire CMU grads and conduct surveillance operations on the FBI ... or worse scenarios.

So politely, we opined in our collective judgment that "legal intercept" was unsound engineering.

Abstract

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has been asked to take a
position on the inclusion into IETF standards-track documents of
functionality designed to facilitate wiretapping.

This memo explains what the IETF thinks the question means, why its
answer is "no", and what that answer means.

So the statement by John Brennan link is not just a political problem for those he successfully advises (Senator Barrak Obama), but is a technical problem for anyone with policy oversight over the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, within the Department of Commerce.

There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that's important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that's the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.

The image is from Orgone Lab, which looks like they'd be happy to sell my mom this blanket. I'd prefer something in a woodpecker with acorns.

Posted by EBW at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't blogged much about the Narragansett trial, in part I think because I've met some of the parties involved and feel that might bias me one way or another. Granted, just being an NDN probably amounts to some level of bias. However, while I'd prefer that the jury immediately acquit the five tribal members on misdemeanor charges, it's good to see that they're taking their deliberations very seriously, and have finished their third day. I wonder how much longer the judge allows this to continue until a hung-jury is called. This morning, she gave further instructions on "self-defense", hopefully a good sign for the tribal members.

Anyway, here's the latest write-up on events from the local news, running the AP line:

Jury in smoke shop case ends deliberations for day

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A jury has concluded its third day of deliberations in the criminal trial of seven Narragansett Indians arrested during a 2003 state police raid on a tribal smoke shop.

Superior Court Judge Susan McGuirl urged jurors Thursday morning to continue trying to reach a verdict, but also acknowledged that they have appeared tired, frustrated and even upset by the deliberations. She gave the jury additional instructions on the law to encourage them to reach a verdict.

But the day ended without a decision, and deliberations were set to resume Friday morning. The jury is deciding whether to convict or acquit seven Narragansetts who were arrested during a 2003 state police raid on a tribal smoke shop.

They face misdemeanor charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assault for scuffling with troopers who raided the shop because it was not collecting state cigarette taxes.

Posted by MB Williams at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maybe the CBC aren't kidding around this time. I guess we'll see if they're really serious, or it's just empty threats. From The Hill this afternoon:

CBC warns Reid on Cherokee funds By Kevin Bogardus Posted: 04/03/08 05:13 PM [ET]

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have promised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that they will try to block a Native American housing assistance bill if the measure does not include language that prevents the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from receiving any of the benefits.

The House included such a prohibition in its Indian housing assistance bill passed in September. But the Senate version does not include similar language.

"We are writing to advise you that members of the CBC will not support, and will actively oppose, passage of a [Native American housing assistance] bill that does not include this limitation," the CBC stated in a letter sent to Reid on March 13.

The dispute between the CBC and the Cherokee Nation arose last year after the tribe amended its constitution to exclude the Freedmen -- a group of freed slaves who have been members since the Civil-War era – from tribal membership. Black lawmakers have charged the tribe is ignoring the Treaty of 1886, an agreement the Cherokees signed with the U.S. government that gave tribal citizenship to the Freedmen.

Posted by MB Williams at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a two page overview of the NORTH AMERICAN INDIGENOUS (.NAI) proposal for a cultural and linguistic top-level domain in the current (ca 2008/9) ICANN new gTLD rounds. The original proposal for a NORTH AMERICAN ABORIGINAL (.NAA) to ICANN was drafted in 1999.

Background

This proposal is the continuation of the original North American Aboriginal (.NAA) proposal¹ for a "sponsored generic" top-level domain operated by a consortium formed by the original proposants -- the Nevada Indian Environmental Coalition, the Treaty 7 Tribal Council, the National Indian Telecommunications Institute, the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, and the Western Abenaki of Maine, as a shared registry on a cost-recovery, tribal infrastructure development basis, with a core policy that registry data is a public resource, subject to tribal and other privacy limitations, held in trust for the indigenous public.

In the intervening decade the personnel, interests, and abilities of authors of the .NAA have changed, as have the consensus policies of ICANN.

Introduction

There are well in excess of 1,500 indigenous cultural and linguistic entities in North America. These range from the largest, the Navajo and the Cherokee, numbering in the hundreds of thousands of enrolled members (viewed as indigenous legal entities) and culturally and/or linguistically affiliated educational, cultural and linguistic institutions, groups, clans, extended non-clan kinship networks, and individual persons, to groups consisting of a very limited number of culture and language practitioners, to groups engaged in cultural and linguistic recovery, and even peoples adopting an existant related culture and language as their plan for cultural and linguistic survival.

In addition to these general purpose legal, cultural and linguistic entities, there are tens of thousands of individuals creating works of indigenous scholarship, teaching in and administering indigenous primary, secondary, and post-secondary academic institutions, creating works of classical and contemporary music, fine arts and crafts, the culinary arts, clothing, teaching indigenous languages and managing indigenous cultural and linguistic materials.

In addition to these contemporaneous sources of cultural and linguistic activity there are hundreds of thousands of archived documents, recordings, and objects, in holdings of various kinds, in the Americas, in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, and hundreds, if not thousands, of archivists and archives.

Finally, consistent with our original purpose of creating a means for Indigenous Intellectual Property, also known as Traditional Knowledge, to become incorporated within the evolving quasi-legal ICANN system, and thereby protecting and advancing the interests of Indigenous peoples, implicit in our express choice in 1999 of the Mataatua Declaration, and our long history of work between Indigenous people in the Americas and the Pacific, the proposal includes "light the path" provisioning of indigenous resources for follow-on efforts in subsequent rounds of ICANN's evolving new gTLD process.

Why Generic?

The earliest effort to obtain any form of an indigenous namespace was the attempt by the late Dr. John Mohawk (Sotsisowah) to convince the late Jon Postel to create and delegate a namespace. This effort was doomed by Dr. Postel's choice to use ISO 3166, commonly called "country codes" (though many of its entries, then and now, are non-countries), to manage the task of making changes to the (pre-DNS) host tables. The next effort was a proposal by Mr. Eric Brunner-Williams to Dr. Postel to use X.121, which contains "continental codes", to allow non-national entry into the DNS root, prior to the establishment of ICANN, or ICANN's "new TLD" process of 1999-2001. The proposal died with Dr. Postel as the problem of determining the form and controlling authority of "the new entity", initially the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) and eventually the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), became controlling.

With the possibilities of an pre-generic alternative to a ccTLD exhausted, the focus of our effort became the ICANN gTLD, and we contributed to ICANN's Working Group C, authoring the "sponsored gTLD" model subsequently used by the proposals for .aero, .coop, and .museum in 2001/2002.

There are significant advantages to the "generic" TLD which are overlooked by applicants fixated on obtaining ccTLDs. These are:

• direct immediate use of the ICANN accredited (gTLD) registrars
  
• indirect immediate use of multiple ccTLD registrars via a "public interest (ICANN accredited) registrar"
  
• stability of contractual relationship with ICANN
  
• the "consensus policies" of the GNSO
  
• insulation from government(s)

The offset is the application cost, and the ongoing presumption that Verisign's for-profit business model, copied by Afilias and NeuStar, serves all uses of all namespaces.

Education

Educational institutions, from child-care to Haskell Indian Nations University, the entire gamut of pre-primary, secondary, and post-secondary academic institutions, will use the namespace for their institutional names, their teaching faculty and non-teaching staff, their students and alumni. Implicit in the use of a namespace is literacy, both in the languages of the dominant culture, and in the languages of the students, whether an indigenous language is their first or subsequent language, and our fundamental goal is to preserve and increase indigenous textual literacy, using ASCII, extended ASCII, Inuktitut syllabics, and Cherokee syllabics.

Cultural

Cultural institutions, museums, galleries, ateliers, individual artists, and cultural objects will also use the namespace.

Linguistic

Language standardization committees, preservation projects, writers and oral traditionists (story tellers), and works within the written and oral traditions will also use the namespace.

Non-Indigenous Use

Indigenous people and their cultures and languages co-exist with settled immigrant people and their cultures and languages. Indigenous schools purchase textbooks from specialist educational publishers. Indigenous museums and galleries purchase insurance policies. Much of Indigenous economic activity has consumer or producer dependencies with settled immigrant economic activities. Where the locus of non-indigenous use of the namespace is to maintain and develop the cultural and linguistic interests of an indigenous community, or their economic interests, that use will be encouraged.

Technical

During the first five years of operations, the provisioning side will be carried out using the CORE registry fabric in Europe and the publication side will be carried out using the DNS and WHOIS constellation of WAMPUMPEAG (Western Abenaki of Maine), supplemented by additional DNS constellations, e.g., ISC, PCH, etc. During the second five years of operations, both provisioning and publication will be carried out from facilities within North America.

¹ A Position Paper on some new gTLDs

Your comments are sought. You know who you are.

Posted by EBW at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Albania and Croatia.

But not the former Soviet Georgia, nor the former Soviet Ukraine. I suppose this means the taxpayers do get to pay the usual suspects to build Europe's defense from ... Iranian Strategic Nuclear Rocket Forces.

Posted by EBW at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Statement on the Mid-Term Review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) Between NTIA and ICANN

Released April 2, 2008

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), on behalf of the Department of Commerce, recently conducted a mid-term review of the Department's Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The JPA is a continuation of a series of agreements between the Department and ICANN to facilitate the transition of the technical coordination of the management functions related to the Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector.

Although views during the midterm review represent diverse perspectives, there was general consensus on the need to preserve the security and stability of the DNS and the recognition that ICANN is the appropriate technical coordinator of the Internet DNS. ICANN has made significant progress in several key areas, but most participants agree that important work remains to increase institutional confidence through implementing effective processes that will enable: long term stability; accountability; responsiveness; continued private sector leadership, stakeholder participation; increased contract compliance; and enhanced competition. It is important to note that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions contract was not part of the JPA mid-term review.

Over the next eighteen months, NTIA will continue to monitor ICANN's performance in meeting the ten responsibilities articulated in the annex to the JPA. Furthermore, NTIA remains fully committed to the 2005 U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System.

NTIA would like to gratefully acknowledge the ICANN community's efforts to provide well-reasoned and substantive contributions to the mid-term review of the JPA. NTIA considers all of the contributions and perspectives shared as invaluable elements of this review and looks forward to further discussions on the topic.

Posted by EBW at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Are any of Wampum's readers also readers of Khmer or Tibetan?

Posted by EBW at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No additional comment necessary.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

First there was Susie's flying penguins ... then there was the vast set of poisson d'avril coming out of France, my favorite newspaper-using-drupal, Rue 89.com, ran a story on the creation of a commission on punctuation and a mandate to use no less then three semi-colons in every government document, and finally, again at Susie's bowling for delegates.

Then I visited Stacy's and realized that Acee had some fish of his own ...

Obama discovers native roots

Cherokee Nation promptly disenrolls Democratic presidential hopeful when he traces ancestry to Freedmen Roll.

What a hoot!

Or this:

Misplaced decimal point puts $58 in Indian trust (4/1)

Steve Griles and Jack Abramoff pen prison memoir (4/1)

U.S. Supreme Court overturns tribal sovereignty (4/1)

Congress fails to pass any Indian legislation (4/1)

Tribal lobbyist agrees to work for free (4/1)

All that was missing was Abenakis recognized, Maine Governor signs over 1st Congressional District

Posted by EBW at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just bought my first iPod. Yes, I'm the second-to-last person in the universe to own one (Susie is the last, so someone, buy her one.)

I guess I'll be back to blogging sometime next year. Heh.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There is this by Patrick Barkman, from the Johnson County convention: Scenes from a Convention, which reads really familiarly, but then again MB's run a major metro presidential preference (primary) caucus.

See also Patrick's I Voted for Hillary Clinton... which starts with "...but this reeks of duplicity and desperation" (warning! a link to the Orange Obama 527).

The Dallas News has some wicked stunning numbers, which I didn't notice when I first read them at Suzie's. Enjoy the graphic.

Yes, that's 42 of every 100 ballots marked in the Republican dominated Collins county in an open primary were blank everywhere except at the top of the ticket, and 30 out of every 100 in Dallas county. The miracle of victory in the Red States (or the redder bits of the purple states) continues apace.

Got to wonder how the 32 TX PLEOs are going to take this, knowing that the best they got out of the Obama vote was three in ten couldn't be bothered to vote for any PLEO, and some places it's up to four in ten who wouldn't vote for a single PLEO. Maybe they don't mind not being vote-worthy.

Posted by EBW at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the frustrating things about attempting to work with the vast array of dolts and morons who clutter up the Internet Governance space -- say Milton Meuller and his band of mule heads, who think that policy begins, and ends, with Milton and his posse being able to appropriate, for their own exclusive uses, for as long has they can come up with $6/domain-name-year, the words "cherokee", "dakota", ..., or their notion of the Debbil, the trademarks lobby, who think that everyone using the DNS should disclose their home address and 3am telephone number, because they may be infringing on trademark, or the raft of goons that sails with them who've a theory of net use that reads "everyone is a pedophile until convicted of something worse".

All this stupidity means that the growth of real, organized criminality using various bugs and features of the net as we have collectively botched it, gets to run with scissors and play push-tag (pointy end facing away from self) on all the other 3rd graders during recess.

With that in mind, here's something by FrenchDoc @ Corrente, something the vast array of dolts and morons who clutter up the political blogging space won't touch, probably because they can't see the relationship between cause and effect, or because they are still selling their inventory of Lamont or Hackett or primary neutrality or network neutrality or ... "other content". Why Hillary Should be President (WHSBP) - Untold Stories.

We have a CERT because while at SRI I called the then Chief Scientist of the NSA twice, and each time told him something he didn't know -- the response to each of those two events in the civilian sector was effective and there was no response attempted in the non-civilian sector.

Yet I still have to sit through police science 1 pablum every time I sit down with someone from the Bureau on the subject of computers and crime.

Enjoy. All the way to the end, and don't forget the 'bot black economy, which, if you're using a Windows machine, two sides of a six-sided dice will tell you you're already supporting.

Posted by EBW at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For our circuit-and-datagram reader(s) -- a gem from the group blog Juan Cole spun off from Informed Comment.

So why is it that a "Debate sobre Afganistán: ¿Hay una solución política?" was held in a hotel in Madrid last week, and not at a hotel in say ... Washington?

Posted by EBW at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nicolas Sarkozy just announced that Ingrid Betancourt's health is now critical, and has asked Manuel Marulanda to release her. Of course, Alvaro Uribe has to agree as well, as Ms. Betancourt has been a prisioner of their popular insurgency and elitist repression, respectively, for six years.

Betancourt, 46 years old, and according to her support organization in Paris, went on a hunger strike on February 23rd. She has Hepatitis B.

Posted by EBW at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What Zuzu said.

Excerpt:

This is why I continue to call out the use of misogyny and sexist insults in this campaign. It's not so much that I'm defending Clinton (though I think she's getting an unfair shake in the media and in the blogosphere, and that annoys me), but that I'm calling this shit out because this shit hurts women. Women like me. Women like many of you. Women like your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your friends, your spouses, your SOs. If it's okay to dehumanize a US Senator and presidential candidate as "that thing" or dismiss her as "that bitch," or set up a 527 called "Citizens United Not Timid" (aka C.U.N.T.) to "educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is," then we now have an environment in which it's okay to dehumanize, demean and diminish ordinary women because they're women.

But even some women who don't support Sen. Clinton express unease about the tone of some attacks on her. "Why is it OK to say such horrible things about a woman?" asks Erika Wirkkala, who runs a Pittsburgh public-relations firm and supports Sen. Obama. "People feel they can be misogynists, and that's OK. No one says those kinds of things about Obama because they don't want to be seen as racist."

Posted by MB Williams at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)