March 31, 2002
Regarding the flame war discussed below, here is the actual text of the "Washington Whispers" column in U.S. News and World Report article which caused Insight mag and these tighty righties to get their underpants in a scrunch:
McVeigh's ghost
Some dismiss it as being akin to Elvis sightings, but a few top Defense officials think Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh was an Iraqi agent. The theory stems from a never-before-reported allegation that McVeigh had allegedly collected Iraqi telephone numbers. Why haven't we heard this before about the case of the executed McVeigh? Conspiracy theorists in the Pentagon think it's part of a coverup.
If you're waiting for the punchline, there isn't one. This is about as gossipy as a National Enquirer report on Liza Minelli's wedding. But here's how Insight recounted the above article, albeit with the addition of "sources" unknown and unnamed:
Last October, U.S. News & World Report revealed in its "Washington Whispers" column that McVeigh was carrying Iraqi telephone numbers when he was arrested on the day of the bombing. Sources tell INSIGHT that the phone numbers apparently were contained in a sealed manila envelope that was turned over to the FBI unopened by the Oklahoma state troopers who arrested McVeigh. The FBI logged in the evidence as "manila envelope with content," but never disclosed what was inside.
First of all, there's the obvious difference between McVeigh's "collecting" telephone numbers and having them physically discovered on his person when arrested. (I wonder how easy it was to dial Iraq after the Gulf War anyway. If anybody tried, let me know. Perhaps McVeigh was part of some sort of Iraqi telephone number underground. Maybe there's an ebay connection. I'll look. I promise.)
Second, US News didn't even feature this blockbuster as its lead item. It was buried way down the list, underneath a hot tidbit about Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her congressional ambition, and way after an explosive expose of a White House ban on kung pao and pizza deliveries after 9/11. In other words, it's fluff. Insignificant, and maybe even propaganda. After all, finding a connection between Iraq and McVeigh, or Iraq and Al Qaeda, or Iraq and Lyme Disease, is all the more ammunition for mounting an attack.
We don't need this to prove that Saddam's dangerous and needs to be dealt with. He acts very much like Trujillo and Somoza did, except he's got oil money. If the U.S. needs reasons to attack Iraq, or at least disrupt and destroy its chemical and nuclear weapons programs, is it really necessary to rely on McVeigh's ghost to do so? Please. He did enough damage when he was alive.
eric 10:25 PM
Midnight golf, anyone? Not if the VP is nearby.
eric 3:46 PM
March 30, 2002
Lilek's bleat on terrorism vs. domestic tranquility (in the non-political sense of the term) has been committed to eternal url-ness. It was incredibly touching, and a remarkable work for someone who does this every day. The only question arising from my liberal guilt (and we all know liberals do guilt while conservatives do anger) is this: I'd like to see someone compare the triviality of worrying about malt vinegar with the average day of a Palestinian parent in a refugee camp. What would that sound like?
eric 11:26 PM
March 28, 2002
Just read this. The link might change over time, but just remember Lileks, March 28, 2002.
eric 10:09 PM
Been having a little pissing contest about the McVeigh/Iraqi connection over at Transterrestrial Musings. Sorry about screwing up the name below, but somehow I don't feel like changing it. I'm just a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to facts, I guess, and I deserve anything I get.
eric 9:25 PM
March 25, 2002
So the Iraqis are responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. How f***ing convenient. You know, I really want to like some of these blogger guys. After all, many of them have been doing this a long time, some of them have advanced degrees, and many of them seem somewhat connected and intelligent. But then I read something like this, and I truly wonder. Glenn Reynolds, the "Instapundit," mentions an article from Rand Simberg, of "Extraterrestrial Musings," who actually got it from Insight on the News, a Moonie owned publication you might find in a Republican dentist's office. The story, if you can somehow follow it, goes like this: Lawyers for Timothy McVeigh, the 1st OK City conspirator, are trying to prove that Terry Nichols, the 2nd OK City conspirator, was in cahoots with Ramzi Youssef, the first WTC bomber. Got it so far?
Youssef, they claim, was an Iraqi intelligence agent. McVeigh's lawyers, according to Insight, have now been to the Philippines 4 times to investigate this link. Unfortunately, there are still a few loose ends. Like, for example, proof that anything actually occurred. From the article:
If these allegations are confirmed in court, they constitute a stunning indictment of Iraqi state complicity in murderous attacks on the United States well before Sept. 11.
That's kind of a big "if." Kinda like:"If I can prove that aliens landed in my backyard, it's a stunning indictment of previous government denials of extraterrestrial life."
So, gosh! Maybe it's true. Perhaps Tim McVeigh, Gulf War veteran, found killing Iraqis too distasteful, so he joined the other side. Perhaps Waco, never mentioned in this particular Insight article, was just an excuse. McVeigh was a radical Muslim, aligned with the very nation we want to attack right now! Yeah, that's the ticket!
The worst of the bunch is Simberg, who almost accuses Bill Clinton of orchestrating the bombing to prop up his failing political ambitions. (And this was years before Monica-gate; you'd think after that he would have blown up the Sears Tower to deflect attention from his shortcomings.)
It not only allowed the Big He to go out on one of his "feel your pain" trips, but he and his minions used it to blast militias, talk radio, and evil Right-Wing Republicans, blaming them and their "hate speech" for the bombing.
Gosh. The Oklahoma Bombing as political opportunism. Bush would never do that. Would, he, Rand?
Much of blogging is an idiot chain at work. I wonder if Glenn Reynolds actually read the Insight article, or if he just saw Simberg's screed and decided it was a delightful thing to link to. (Reynolds seems to have come down with some form of blog diarrhea. I wonder if he even remembers from minute to minute what he links to.) Either way, isn't it a wonderful thing how quickly this stuff gets around?
eric 10:00 PM
It's the April issue of Harpers. They just didn't have it on the web yet.
eric 7:56 PM
March 24, 2002
Speaking of depressing, Harpers magazine (must be the Feb. issue, since I can't find it on the website's March edition preview) has an extremely troubling article on the death of the Aral Sea. What was once a thriving seaport and fishery is now basically a poisoned, dry desert, where winds blow the lakebed's remnants of Soviet-era pesticide residue into what's left of the former seaside communities. I don't have any quotes from the article, since it's not online, but basically, all 24 species of fish which once lived in the sea are dead, the rivers which once fed the sea have all been diverted to maintain a tenuous-at-best cotton industry, and the people who subsisted on resources of what was once the fourth largest lake in the world have either left the area or are now trapped in one of the largest environmental disasters in human history.
Here's something from oneworld.com:
As far as the eye can see, the former seabed is now a salt pan desert, a virtual graveyard littered with the rusting remains of fishing trawlers and barges and the bleached bones of cattle, which died from eating salt-poisoned vegetation.
This is a unimaginable catastrophe, which is no doubt well documented, but probably unknown to most Americans. Including myself, of course. It's not the only depressing piece I read this weekend. The New Yorker has a remarkable report, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, on the Iraqi campaign against the Kurds in the late 80s, which was carried out through the use of poison gas.
There are remarkable similarities between the two disasters. Both are man-made, and both resulted in devastating health problems for the victims. Both are criminally under-reported, although certainly there are those who have tried to expose the truth. And both serve as warnings, in different but equally insidious ways. The gradual drying-up of an inland ocean probably isn't as interesting as chemical attacks and a possible Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda. But on a grass-roots level, your average human may be able to do more about it.
eric 9:49 PM
In the meantime, the Oscars (TM) are on, and Julia Roberts is breathless over her Armani. I was wondering how they'd work in 9/11, but Tom Cruise, wearing his best John-Belushi-as-samurai facial hair, is already telling us how important the movies are since the attacks. Since I haven't seen any, I guess I'll abstain from commentary.
eric 8:39 PM
I apparently don't work at the only community college in budget hell; Lane Community College in Eugene Oregon is having major problems, especially in its professional-technical programs. (You know, those insignificant areas such as nursing, dental hygiene, and aircraft mechanics. Note to self: Don't fly into or out of Eugene, and please avoid any health difficulties until you leave.)
eric 8:26 PM
March 20, 2002
Here's an email sent to James Lileks, a columnist/blogger/all around pop culture maven, in response to this column:
We librarians are a fussy bunch. . .
. . .and if you doubt this, just check out the debate over a student opinion column at the Daily Bruin at UCLA.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/printer.asp?ID=18860
and responses at:
http://www.lisnews.com/article.php3?sid=20020308125444
if you're interested.
I wanted to read the response "from the librarian side", but that site is experiencing too much traffic at the moment. Probably thanks to you!
Anyway, while I sympathize with your problems at the library (believe me, even librarians have run-ins with obstinate and uncooperative library staff; there's no cabal working here), those of us who do consider ourselves worthy public servants get very sensitive when we're painted with too broad a brush. After all, we generally choose this profession to HELP PEOPLE, not because we think it's fun to shush people or play book Nazi. Needless to say, there are too many stereotypes to overcome in a single email. Check out
http://www.librarian.net
to get another side of the image.
Anyway: First of all, I wonder if the person you dealt with was actually a "librarian." I know it might seem picayune, but not everyone who works in a library has this title. Not to overstate the case (which of course means I'm about to do just that) but you wouldn't walk into a doctor's office and immediately assume that the person who confirms your appointment is a doctor. All kinds of various employees work in libraries. Only those who have a Masters Degree in Library Science, or some semantic variation thereof, are "librarians." Like I said, it might sound picky, but to those of us who have toiled, or are toiling (like me) in a graduate-level library school, it's an important distinction.
Next: I didn't quite grasp the address problem. Probably doesn't matter. When people move, they generally set up phone, cable, electric, gas -- stuff they'll need to survive. Nobody probably thinks of library privileges. On the other hand, it was a driver's license. Can't really fault the "librarian" if your current license doesn't reflect your current address.
Further: I'm not Dr. Laura. Really, I'm not. But if you can't tell a child at the library to choose two books, when she wants four, what do you do at the grocery store when she wants skittles and m&ms and gumballs and ice cream? Books are no doubt healthier, but that's not the point. Every now and then, we've gotta make a choice, whether it's how many books we can check out, how much house we can afford, or how many CDs we can buy.
I hope I've never treated any user in my library like you were treated the other day. Unfortunately, I'm sure some of my users feel differently. (Fortunately, I've never had any columnists/bloggers come in. That I know of.) There are actually people who think that working in a library means you get to read books all day. I wish. Given the resources we're allotted, and the constraints and challenges of providing as much as we can to the public, I'm somewhat surprised that we do as good a job as we do. With exceptions, of course.
Eric
eric 9:34 PM
March 14, 2002
Our campus budget protest/rally yesterday got the press coverage it deserved. Page B-4 of the Union News, and you have to know it was pretty bad if there was that much more going on in Springfield yesterday. At least they featured the library.
eric 8:46 PM
March 12, 2002
Yeah, I know times are tight all over. But Massachusetts is in a total f*ing mess. I'm fearful for my job, and the jobs of many of my colleagues. What I haven't been able to determine is, where exactly did all the money go? "Revenue streams have dried up" is the usual response, as if someone turned off a money faucet, or decided unilaterally to dam the revenue river and not open the floodgates. We're talking depression-like spending limits here, folks, and whether you can blame it on the Big Dig, September 11th, or the MCAS tests, our elected officials have screwed something up. One of them, Tom Finneran, doesn't want to hear anything from UMass about budget cuts. Not only are his comments offensive, he doesn't even have an email address on his web page so we can respond to this drivel.
eric 11:50 PM
Here's an amazing story from National Geographic. I've remembered the original photo every since I was a kid, when my grandmother gave us a subscription.
eric 11:16 PM
March 09, 2002
Well, the UConn/Pitt game is over, but now they have to interview every member of the victorious Connecticut squad. Where is ESPN located, anyway?
eric 10:33 PM
This is so typical. SDSU is supposed to be playing a game on ESPN right now, but because the UConn/Pitt game is in double overtime, with multiple injury delays, it hasn't even started yet. Happens all the time, and I guess it serves me right for being the only SDSU fan on the entire East Coast. Thank god for the live broadcast from the left coast. I'd put up a link, but since I got the connection off Yahoo, I have absolutely no idea where it's orginating from.
eric 10:20 PM
March 04, 2002
Nolan Richardson's departure as Arkansas basketball coach wasn't unexpected under the circumstances. He sounds like a guy that was thoroughly fed up. What might be unexpected is the guy who's in line to replace him: None other than former President and Arkansan Bill Clinton. Hey, you heard it here first.
BTW: Nice toss, Bobby.
eric 11:27 PM
March 02, 2002
librarian.net seems to be down tonight, so I'll post this here: an interesting article from the Daily Hampshire Gazette about how Jones Library in Amherst, Mass. is profiting from the demise of their card catalog.
eric 10:33 PM
Snood is absolutely insidious. It's a weird combination that marries Tetris and guns. It's one of those rare games that seems to attract boys and girls, too (some of them slightly past puberty). Hate it. Love it. Hate it. Love it.
eric 9:32 PM
eric 9:31 PM
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