licentious radio

Saturday, February 22, 2003
[8:40:00 PM]

We repeat: it is *satire* that is dead, not irony.

1) Doonesbury pointed out several weeks ago that the oil price spike would "cure" deflation. Now the White House is actually saying the same thing.

2) Our first thought at Ridge's duct tape fearmongering was that some big-time Republican campaign contributor makes all the duct tape. Guess what the Washington Post turned up?

[8:09:47 PM]
To summarize, if the Chronicle is right about where the leading edge of the march is in their photos, Sunday's march was *vastly* smaller than the January 18 march -- 200,000 is still a good estimate for January 18. But I suspect the Chronicle is wrong -- that the leading edge of the march had already arrived at the Civic Center, and tens of thousands had gone home.

If you're standing on the street, it's hard to tell the difference between 100,000 people, and 200,000. Aerial photos will make it easier to judge relative sizes, even if they don't provide a definitive answer. The problem is, aerial photos will always underestimate total size, and it's non-trivial to estimate how many people weren't counted.

At any rate, I'm *thrilled* that they took the pictures, and I'm *ecstatic* to have them online. We need to do an even better job of estimating crowd size -- we need to know how many people come and go over time. That's *really* hard to work out. We'll have to take pictures at several times during the march and rally, and we'll have to get better information out of CalTrain, Muni, and BART. We'll also survey the next crowd to see how they arrived.

Key question: BART says they had 43,000 extra riders to stops along the march. What percentage of marchers took BART? Half? That seems too high to me. A third? That would make the march total 130,000, not 65,000....

[7:34:34 PM]
The SF Chronicle Friday ran a long article with aerial photographs of the SF anti-war march and rally. From photos taken at 1:45 pm, they calculate 65,000 present. They point out that anyone who had already left, or not yet arrived would not have been photographed.

Personally, I'm *very* pleased that they took the pictures. Why shouldn't we get accurate counts?

Then again, I question their central premise, and if they were right about the premise, I think they missed a big story.

Their claim is that at 1:45, the leading edge of the march had just reached McAllister & Market. Since I was at the back of the march, I don't know whether this is accurate. I'll see if I can track someone down who knows.

But I think it's wrong. It looks to me like the leading edge of the march reached the Civic Center at about 1:00, and tens of thousands of people had left by 1:45.

In the photos there is certainly a crowd at McAllister & Market, but it is common for traffic to get jammed up there. At times it is practically impassable. Several reasons: drummers accumulate there, with their crowds of dancers and spectators; people who don't want to go to the rally stop marching at that point and hang around; people leaving the rally jam up there against the march; it's a corner and just slows things down.

The photos show 20,000 people in the Civic Center plaza. Did one-third of the people skip the march and go straight to the rally? I'll ask around, but I find it unlikely. It seems more likely that those 20,000 people are people who marched, and stayed for the rally. My impression is that relatively few people stay at the rally for a long time. Maybe twenty or thirty percent? I wonder if 40,000 or more had gone home by 1:45.

Bottom line is that a snapshot at any point in time might underestimate significantly. A snapshot at 1:45 may have been low by 50 percent. (People join the tail of the march all along the route.)

But if the Chronicle is right that the leading edge of the march was at McAllister at 1:45, then the big story they missed was that this march was *tiny* compared to the January 18 march.

On January 18, I walked near the leading edge as far as McAllister, then walked all the way back to Justin Herman Plaza. By the time I got back, the tail end of the march hadn't started moving yet. I remember that it took another twenty minutes or so. The people at the tail end of the march were jammed together practically shoulder-to-shoulder for blocks. In other words, the January 18 march was fifty percent longer than Sunday's (if the Chronicle is correct). Also, these photos show a lot of empty space. I suspect the January 18 march was not only longer, but also denser. Say one and a half times as long, and twice as dense. That would be 200,000 people -- the final estimate.

I hope the Chronicle keeps taking aerial photos. I hope they become more sophisticated about judging how many people come and go, because a count at a single moment will necessarily underestimate the total. I hope they keep working with BART and Muni to get comparative rider numbers.

I hope they'll check CalTrain's rider numbers for the two marches. CalTrain is using buses, but the percentage change in CalTrain riders between marches would be interesting to know.

The aerial photos [sfgate.com].

[11:03:40 AM]
I live in Menlo Park, California. Saddam's missiles with an extra 20-mile range do not threaten me. 23% extra range seems like a small tactical advantage. If it is a strategic advantage -- easier to bomb Kuwait City, for example -- let's make sure -- first -- that the missiles are not deployed in range.

Not that I'm against destroying the missiles. But it is not *urgent* to destroy them. We could haggle for six months about these missiles. Wouldn't bother me a bit. Let Saddam save some face. That wouldn't bother me a bit. Bush is the loser-moron here.

The distinction to draw is the difference between an extra 20-mile range, and an extra 100-mile or 500-mile range. A technicality is no reason to kill Iraqi children -- even by accident, even only a few hundred or a few thousand. At the very least, it is not an *urgent* reason to kill children. Saddam hasn't yet killed anyone with those missiles. Let's keep it that way.

Another angle is the Al Qaeda bogeyman. Does the extra 20-mile range create an extra threat if Saddam gives one of these missiles to Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Al Qaeda isn't going to shoot an Iraqi missile at New York City. And if Al Qaeda did, are we supposed to think we would be safe if the missile range were 90 miles, instead of 110 miles?

[12:17:58 AM]
Tale of two propagandists....

The SF Chronicle has this Debra J. Saunders -- surely among the least competent of all media whores. She might, of course, be a genuine right-wing krank, but it seems implausible.

Her ditty today was truly sad. I'll spare you most of it, but here is one paragraph -- selected more or less at random:

"Posters accused the United States of being 'imperialist.' I guess old Europe is senile, because people with memories know that America won the Persian Gulf War, but claimed no lands, people or riches. Ditto Afghanistan. Ditto -- should there even be a need to say it? -- Europe after World War II."

How many US troops were stationed in Germany and Japan in 1938? How many in 2003? How many in Saudi Arabia in 1989, and how many in 1995?

Imperialism? How about power? We occupied Germany, and used it to fight off the Soviet Union. Remember the idea at the time of the 70s oil embargo that we should occupy Saudi Arabia? Or how about Poppy Bush's suggestion to Kuwait that Chevron should get the oil contracts after liberation....

It *is* true that we haven't been terribly blunt in exercising our power in Saudi Arabia. But Kuwait is sort of a different matter, isn't it. But Iraq.... We'll be there for years. We'll set up a proxy government, and we've already warned everybody that the US decides who gets oil contracts in post-war Iraq. We will control the spigots, even if "the Iraqi people" get some royalties. Beyond that, we have the strategy documents of the Cheney-Rumsfeld clique. "Seize the oil." We have a new pre-emptive strike policy.

Anyway, the rest of her article goes on to ignore anything but what the most rabid right-wingers believe.

Much more interesting is Bill Keller.

Billy starts out by acknowledging many of the things I might say. This is much more effective propaganda. Seem reasonable. Seem like you understand the people you're talking to.

But when he gets to his five points, they're as ridiculous as anything Debbie might say.

First, it is true that Al Qaeda might want to attack us, even without the conquest of Iraq, as he says. But the conquest of Iraq will give them 150,000 easy targets, and create thousands of new recruits for terror. Sorry. Al Qaeda is no reason to kill Iraqi civilians by the thousands.

Second, he says any containment regime won't last. What does "containment" mean, anyway? Deterrence works, and *will* last. Inspections destroyed most of Saddam's bio/chemical weapons before. Lets use the troop buildup to inspect widely and destroy the rest. Saddam may *want* nukes. Let's make sure he doesn't get them. Israel blew up his last reactor. That was before we had no-fly zones and daily bombing. Saddam won't last forever. Let's prepare a transition. Heck, let's buy him out. He has been on our side before, let's make that happen again.

His third point is almost a throw-away. He fantasizes that a couple years of inspections would provoke Saddam into war. Yawn. That's no reason to kill Iraqi civilians today.

Fourth, he claims that because Al Qaeda and Saddam seek power, they are in league. The way he words it is almost reasonable:

"The administration has surely strained our trust hyping the connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but skeptics have just as badly understated the mutual interests of these two thugs. Yes, Saddam came to power as a secular, pan-Arab extremist and Osama bin Laden as a virulent Islamic fundamentalist. Stalin and Hitler were ideologically incompatible too, when they signed their nonaggression pact."

But then he gives the game away, citing Bin Laden's recent tape as the proof that they are in league. Sorry. The tape doesn't imply cooperation, and directly states that fighting the US is good, even if it is in defense of Saddam. For Bin Laden, Saddam is a stinky-poo.

In fact, of course, the threat of invasion and regime change is exactly what might throw these two evil bastards together. Only Keller's proposed butchery of Iraqi citizens and "shock-and-awe" mass terrorism unleashes the harm he claims to want to avoid. Bill: grab an assault rifle and a bayonet and go kill some Iraqis yourself. Don't wait. Find a couple of eighteen year-old Iraqi kids in uniform. Shoot one. Hold his hand while he dies. Then get the other one with your bayonet.

And in case you were holding your breath in anticipation -- here is the truly *big* reason to kill Iraqi civilians and let slip the dogs of war: because we would look bad if we don't.

You know what? I'm perfectly willing for Bush to take the fall for this. It's his stupid idea. It's his utter diplomatic incompetence. That Bush is a moron is no reason to kill Iraqi civilians. It's no reason to unleash all the insane dangers Bush is trying to subject us to. We can just *pretend* we're mindlessly stupid, and keep the army over there for a while, and crank up the inspections. We'll *say* it proves we're tough, but we'll say that *not* invading proves we're righteous, or fair, or something that the Mad King would like to be. We could say it proves we aren't freaking *morons*. I think that would work.