Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds

At The Independent, Michael McCarthy writes:

^{Return of the ivory trade}

The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.

Alarmed conservationists are warning of a new wave of elephant killing across both Africa and Asia if China is allowed to become a legal importer, as looks likely at a meeting in Geneva next week.

The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say.

"This is going to mean a return to the bad old days where elephants are being shot into extinction," said Allan Thornton, of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the group which provided much of the evidence on which the original ivory ban was based in 1989. ...

The EIA released an internal Chinese government document yesterday which, it said, showed that, over 12 years, officials had lost track of 121 tonnes of ivory from the country's official stockpile – equivalent to the tusks of 11,000 elephants. "We have not been able to account for the shortfall through the sale of legal ivory by the selected selling sites," Chinese officials reported in the document to Cites in 2003. "This suggests a large amount of illegal sale of the ivory stockpile has taken place."

Asked about the document, officials from China's Foreign Ministry said they had no information on the subject.

The Overnight News Digest is posted.

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Because of the
Obama
Obama, Obama
Bo Bama
Banana, Fanna, Fo, Fama
Fee, Fie, Moe, Mama
Obama
Diary surge tonight, you might have missed this one well worth reading by A Siegel:

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Avila, BentLiberal, ezdidit, grog, joyful, and srkp23, with srkp23 editing.

• selise presents a carefully-researched tale of corporate betrayal and congressional capitulation: Looking back at FISA's year in the House. (joyful)
• Lindahyattyoung offers uncommonly good sense and suggestions for emotional objectivity in Getting Beyond FISA: What are you Going to Do? (Avila)
• Bjorn in MN elegantly debunks the "centrist" meme and demonstrates that the only way to win over Republicans is by defending Progressive values: Destroying the three pillars of right-wing ideology. (BentLiberal)
• Chris in West Seattle details John McCain's stagger towards the White House in a one-stop round-up: This Week on the Straight Talk Express. (joyful)
• AndrewMC, who has taught all levels from kindergarten to graduate school, offers up some personal and political reflections Apropos of Teaching. (srkp23)
• In a diary that will make your hair stand straight up, windje explains The credit mess --- for nonfinancial readers. (ezdidit)
• MA Voter makes an awesome appeal on behalf of 10 million blind and visually impaired people in the United States in a Call for Action: Blindness and Braille Literacy. (ezdidit)
• BFSkinner looks at HIV & AIDS in the United States Asian/Pacific Islander communities. The public health impact on this overlooked group could be mitigated with greater public education and awareness. (grog)
• Mikey reports on right-wing (or, is it, Fascist?) international politics in a diary about Roma (Gypsies) in Italy: Situation Worsening. (ezdidit)
• Ever on the lookout for historical contradictions, iampunha questions some old rules that were on the books before July 11, 1899: Elements of Elwyn Brooks. (ezdidit)
• Chris Rodda takes us back to the 19th century in A Tale of Two Faith-Based Initiatives. It appears that the right wing has again mischaracterized the use of tax money to fund religious groups. (grog)
• willb48 shares some priceless family tales with a lesson for Democrats, in Fearful Grandmother. (srkp23)

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

More Challenges to Democratic Unity

Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire:

If the elitist snobs at NHPR and other arugula eating MSM outlets who stole the election for Barack Obama are going to cover fringe movements like PUMA, then I demand they stop censoring the real presidential election conspiracy, encapsulated by my own group, DOPEY:

Dodd, Our President, Every Year

And I won't stop until the MY PERSONAL FAVORITE CANDIDATE gets into the White House, or else! Otherwise, it's McCain for me.

Kinda gets you thinking, doesn't it? What other former-candidate fringe groups are out there?

Brownsox doesn't just cover House and Senate races, he has his finger on the pulse of these groups, and wants us to know about:

My Own Richardson American Nation

Democrats United behind Maximizing Biden's All-Star Status

Clinton Loyalists Overly Distraught

Jacksonian Action Crew for Kucinich's Astonishing Song Stylings

The Perennially Obsessed with Obama Party.

Meanwhile, DavidNYC has had run-ins with members of a different Kucinich group:

Kucinich Running Unites Slackers This Year

And Adam B alerts us to a candidate from the 2004 cycle whose supporters are still loyal to his governing vision:

Graham's Rebels Ordering Additional Notebooks

Democrats certainly are facing a divided party this year. What other highly threatening challenges to party unity have you come across?

Abuse Profiling Power? The DOJ? Puhleez.

Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans, along with members of some other ethnic groups, are therefore understandably alarmed that the Department of Justice may soon have the tools to bring them under investigation without any proof of wrongdoing. ... [They] have already suffered from being profiled in a de facto sense. Unsurprisingly, to have that injustice become policy concerns them. The protests would be even louder if so many in the community were not afraid to speak up and draw attention to themselves ...

That’s Juan Cole in his Thursday Salon smackdown of the FBI’s proposed new system for profiling Muslims and Arab-Americans.

As SusanG pointed out yesterday, no less a personage than U.S. Attorney General Mike Mukasey says that merely having a particular national origin or ethnicity will not be grounds for investigating anyone under the profiling system. Because, the A.G. says, the administration believes in constitutional guarantees, or rather, what he actually said was, "we value the Constitution." Uh-huh. Value it for the same reason my parents used to value mail-order catalogs in the outhouse.

In Congress, I suspect, there is a cohort that would fund cattle cars and barbed wire if the administration made the request. So no way a little old profiling proposal would set them atwitch. But the minority of members in the Senate and House who really do value the Constitution – enough to actually show some spine about it, I mean – ought to be pointing out, loudly, that this latest proposal is all part of the total package of torture, rendition, secret prisons, warrantless wiretapping, government snooping into the records of activists and dissidents, national security letters, denial of habeas corpus, ad nauseam.

As Cole points out, there is plenty of reason to be suspicious. What the FBI engaged in in the case of six Florida men was entrapment. The bureau operated just short of being an agent provocateur. So now, with its long history of ignoring constitutional guarantees and worse crimes, the FBI is going to be given more latitude so that it won’t have to step over the line so much? Call me a traditionalist, but I’d prefer that government agencies continue to be forced to break the law when they violate my civil liberties. Why must everything be made so easy for them?

Airport harassment has been a staple of my family’s life since September 2001. That was the year my wife was reunited with her Libyan-raised children, abducted as toddlers in the 1980s and held in Tripoli incommunicado for 15 years. Since each of them, in turn, has come to live with us and attend college, we’ve come to expect extra attention when flying, whether alone, two at a time or all together. Each of us has been subject to extra wandings, brief interrogations in the open, longer interrogations in windowless rooms, missed flights, surly treatment. Two of us have been strip-searched. We’ve all been patted down more than once. In all, we’ve probably made some 70 air trips. Less than 10 of those times has one or more of us not been "randomly" selected for more than average scrutiny.

In the early days after September 11, we not only accepted but also understood the rationale behind this. Its true nature has long since been revealed. It has nothing to do with real security. Heavyweights who would commit or enable others to commit terrorist acts get billions in U.S. taxpayer aid. We get profiled. Yet we get nowhere near the attention that some other unfortunate Americans have. The DOJ proposal would take us further down that path.

Violating civil liberties is an old tradition in America. For instance, the FBI not only spied on dissidents, it also spurred some of them to attack each other and engaged in other actions appropriate to a police state. Once, half my life ago, some people in Congress investigated and made an effort to curtail those violations. It wasn’t a full-throated probe nor were comprehensive constraints enacted. But at least some effort was made. As we have learned to rue, these days cowardice means too many of our supposed representatives are wholly reckless instead of fearless in protecting our rights.        

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