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Top Stories Monday 20 Jan

WampumBlog
has a friendly ghost in her answer machine:

Jim also told me about a new romance, and his plans to head West to try and arrange for her
emigration to the US. A few weeks later, annoyed at his flightiness over my son’s case, but
otherwise happy for him, I received a letter letting me know he was closing up his practice.
It wasn’t until September 18th that I read his name on the list of passengers on United flight
175. We were on vacation, and although I had seen the plane, time and time again, flown into the
south tower of the WTC, I didn’t know my friend was on it. It wasn’t until I arrived home and
played through all my messages did I find the old one from Jim.

The Sideshow talks about why
sometimes there are legitamite reasons to view child pornography:

First of all, there are many legitimate reasons to review child pornography, or to want to see for
yourself how much is out there, on the net or in circulation by any means. The police are constantly
claiming that there are extraordinary amounts of child porn available, and any honest reporter who
wishes to comment on the subject, from any side, would reasonably want to see the evidence for
themselves.

I’m forced to rely on sources from other countries to tell me how much actual child porn is really
on the ‘net, because there is no legal way for me to do primary research. So I can never give
first-person accounts on a matter I’m a relative expert on; I can only report what others have said.
I’m certain that the police have made highly misleading statements on the subject; I just can’t prove
it. Many activists and journalists simply take the cops’ word for it and state it as fact. I can’t,
because a lot of it makes no sense. (A few years ago the cops were claiming that there were warehouses
full of child porn up and down the country, but that they had no powers to investigate. Leaving aside
the fact that there really wasn’t any reason to believe such warehouses existed in the first place,
there is no question that if the police had any evidence that they exist, they have had all the power
they need to investigate since 1976 when the original child porn laws were passed.)

Daily Kos on
the “Party of Lincoln”:

The Trent Lott affair did not cleanse the GOP of its craven flirtations
with racist, segregationist, neo-Confederate types in the South who
catapulted the party into national prominance. This shit is so ingrained
into the Party of Lincoln, that it doesn’t think twice about honoring the
father of the Confederacy, supports the Confederate flag, nominates and
renominates judges who fight for the rights of cross burners and work to
close loopholes in laws banning interracial dating, and that mischaractarizes
university admissions guidelines as quotas, when they merely provide points
for being a member of a disadvantaged community (which could be race-based,
or also help under-priviledged or rural whites).

Top Stories Thursday 16 Jan

Pandagon is pissed off:

I’ve just about reached my breaking point with the sad song of rich white people. Get over yourselves. You are not oppressed. You have to pay taxes on the money you earn. The rivers you cry will be mopped up by black and hispanic women guaranteed a whole two bucks over minimum wage, lucky duckies. Affirmative action does not discriminate against white people – there is an inherent value to the life experiences of those in racial, economic, and ethnic minorities. White people are denied virtually nothing in American society if they want it and will work for it.

John Quiggin
about attitudes towards privatisation:

Most interesting to me was a study by Jonathan Kelly and Joanna Sikora showing that public opinion
against privatisation has hardened steadily over time. In 1986, views on the privatisation of Telstra
were about evenly divided. By 2002, 70 per cent were opposed and only 16 per cent in favour. Similar
views apply even to firms like the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas that have been privatised for years,
and opposition is even stronger in the case of Australia Post, the only business in the study still
in full public ownership.

It’s difficult to attribute this to emotional attachments to Aussie icons, in view of the fact that
people were quite willing to contemplate privatisation in the 1980s. Advocates of privatisation hoped
that experience would lead people to accept it. In fact, the reverse has been the case, here as in
Britain and New Zealand. People have experienced privatisation and they don’t like it.