Bad news on three levels

Oct 13, 2006 16:49

International level: the Bloomberg School of Health at Johns Hopkins, the School of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and the Center for International Studies at MIT have released a report on civilian deaths in the war in Iraq. They estimate that 650,000 people have died because of our invasion, or 2.5 percent of the population. You can read the report for yourself here: http://web.mit.edu/cis/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf
After a quick check of the BBC and Google news, I am disappointed to note that there does not seem to be much news coverage of this.

National level: not only are we still torturing people, the Senate passed a bill (S3930) which followed an earlier House bill, and which abolishes habeas corpus. (You can go here: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00259 to see who voted how on the bill. In New England, the republicans in Maine and New Hampshire voted for it (well, Olympia Snowe was a coward and skipped the vote) and the Democrats all voted against it... except for Lieberman. What a dick.) I'm not sure if the president has actually signed this bill into law, but what a sad, sad day this is. Here's Keith Olberman on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUzUljH8EHU&eurl= Again, there doesn't seem to be much discussion of this incredibly important issue.

Local Level: last night, at a public meeting, the Northampton City Zoning Board of Appeals passed, by a 4-3 vote, a change to the city's zoning ordinances confining business selling 'adult material' to the region of King Street (rt 10) north of town, near the Walmart if they have more than 1000 square feet of the store devoted to such materials. Adult material is defined by Massachusetts law here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-31.htm . The 1000 square feet is contiguous displays and the adjacent aisle spaces. Of course, that means that if we have Omaha TPBs on the waterfall at Modern Myths (which we do, on the top level towards the rear of the store), the entire waterfall rack (or half the store) is contaminated with adult material. Basically, for a host of reasons, it's a bad regulation, and it appears to be an effort to prevent the Capital Video people from opening their store on King Street (you can go here: http://nopornnorthampton.org/ for a lot of nonsense by the folks spearheading the opposition; basically, it boils down to A) they don't like the people who own Capital Video, B) they don't like the kind of porn that they think it will sell, and C) they are worried about property values. They are upfront about A and C, but not B.) Aside from the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of censorship, the problem with this regulation is that it can be used to close down business that the no porn folks claim to like, such as the Pride store and Pleasant Street Video. (Obviously, it could be used against us, too.) If the City Council approves the ordinance, I shall be very disappointed.

work, politics, censorship, rights

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