Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

driftglass: "The Aristocrats"

The Republican Party walks into the American people’s living rooms, and says, "We're the Family Value’s Party, and we'd like to represent you."

The American People say, "Sorry, but we’re a little leery of Family Values parties. They tend to be scams run by demagogues.”

Republican Party says, "But this is really special."

The American People says, "Okay, well what's the act?"

The Republican Party replies, "Well after the worst attack on American soil in history, we hijack the nation's grief and rage to plunge us into a war with entirely the wrong country.

“Then we let the actual terrorist responsible for the attack to sit in a comfy chair on the edge of the stage and laugh and laugh and laugh for the duration of the performance.

“The Mainstream Press then comes out, bends over and we take them violently and repeatedly from behind by jamming giant lies up their poop chutes, which come spurting out of their mouths the next day as 'authoritative reporting'. Then we cite our own regurgitated lies as independent ‘proof’ that we're right.

“Meanwhile Fox News and Hate Radio will peel the flesh from the fallen soldiers (whose flag-draped coffins are to be kept strictly hidden during the entire act. Out of, y’know, respect), wrap themselves in their skin, the Flag and the Bible and spend the rest of the act as a kind of Rich White Greek Chorus, screaming that anyone who is not in the act is a traitor.

“They will also hypnotically repeat ‘9/11/Iraq/Saddam Hussein/Osama bin Laden’ over and over and over again until any distinctions between them become magically invisible.

“We then wheel a brain-dead body on the stage named Terri Schiavo, and proceed to use it to defile both the institution of marriage and the sanctity of life…in the name of the Jesus. And then the President himself will interrupt one of his many vacations to make a special guest appearance and sign a special law to do this.

“Our ‘maverick’ candidates then come out, set fire to their remaining principles, and slither though their own shit to kiss Jerry Falwell’s pasty, pestilent ass.

“Then a kick-line of severely wounded veterans of our illegal war hobble across the stage, are locked into tiny rooms crawling with rats and roaches, and are left to sit in their own waste.

“The stage will be ringed by White Male Conservative Fundamentalist Evangelical on tall pulpits who will repetitively rant about the feminists, queers, Darwin and the ACLU oppressing and destroying Christian America while urinating continuously on the proceedings. To spice it up a little, every now and then one of the White Male Conservative Fundamentalist Evangelical preachers will smoke meth and/or orally pleasure some young gentleman volunteer from the audience.

“The daughter of the Vice President will stand under the shower of Conservative urine and sing a merry song about her great love of the Family Values of her Father and her Party.

”Then ‐ live and on stage -- she and her lesbian lover will then give birth to a child out of wedlock.

“Every six minutes a voice will shout from offstage ‘Who is to blame for this horror show?’ and everyone on stage will shout back ‘Slick Willie!’ in unison.

“Every four minutes a spotlight will pick out various Family Values leaders in the wings engaged in various acts of including but not limited to sex with a gay prostitute, sex as a gay prostitute, attempting to solicit gay sex from young boys, embezzling funds from disabled veterans, stealing from native Americans, looting and then busting out various massive corporations, rigging elections, selling soldiers tainted food and toilet water at premium prices, attacking senior citizens for hating soldiers and loving “teh gay”

(Or did you forget?)

“And so forth…”

The American People look very uncomfortable, but the Republican Party continues…

“This will be followed by a series of what we call Ironic Soliloquies.

“First, one of our Faith Based 'scientists' will sodomize a baby polar bear with the worlds 'Global Warming' painted on its fur.

“Second, the head of the agency in charge of responding to national emergencies will let an entire American city die. No expense will be spared in making this as realistic as possible, including the mocking of the dead, the dying and the devastated as being 'lazy and stupid'...

“Third, the top Law Enforcement Officer in the country will torture a series of bound prisoners live, soak the writ of Habeas Corpus in kerosene and set in alight, smash the machinery of democracy, all while singing a rockin’ cover of 'I Don’t Remember'.



“The Secretary of Defense will then fuck an entire country into the ground, destroy the military, lie until his ass actually falls off, and mock anyone who asks honest questions.

“Then, for laughs, the Vice President will shoot a guy. An old guy. In the face.

“The old guy will then profusely apologize for getting in the way of the Vice President’s buckshot.”

The Republican Party pauses, smiling, and then continues:

"This is the best part: the President of the United States then comes back onstage in a flight suit and a massive codpiece, struts over the dead and wounded, over our ruined national reputation, over our failing schools, over our crippling debt, and praises every one of us for the brilliant job we have done, and passes out Presidential Medal’s of Freedom.

“Then a giant banner reading ‘Mission Accomplished’ drops out the ceiling, and 29% of the audience applauds wildly as we all get up and take a bow."

The Republican Party looks at the American People and says, "Well, that's the act. What do you think?"

The American People just sit there stunned for a long time. Finally they say, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call yourselves?"



"The Aristocrats!"

Labels: Bush, wingnuttery

Film lobbyist Jack Valenti dies at 85

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer Fri Apr 27, 3:10 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - Jack Valenti was not just Hollywood's top lobbyist. He was one of its biggest stars. The 85-year-old Valenti, who died Thursday of complications from a stroke in March, led the movie industry out of the prudishness of old Hollywood and into an age of freer expression with the creation of the film rating system that has endured nearly 40 years.

The former White House aide went from politics to show business, overseeing the Motion Picture Association of America with eloquence, bullheadedness and flair.

Valenti was a passionate envoy, deflecting criticism of Hollywood with wit and humility, fostering its interests overseas and fiercely combating threats to the industry such as film piracy.

"In a very real sense, he was the ultimate leading man," said Dan Glickman, Valenti's successor as head of the MPAA.

A former aide to Lyndon Johnson who was in the motorcade the day President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Valenti went from Beltway insider to Hollywood baron when he took over the MPAA in 1966.

His impact on American culture was almost immediate. Recognizing that the industry had outgrown the morality code regulating movie content since the 1930s, Valenti replaced it with a ratings system that survives today with its G, PG, PG-13 and R designations.

Valenti's ratings system "enabled the industry to give parents the information they need to make appropriate decisions for their children while at the same time eliminating the possibility of government censorship from the content of the movies," said John Fithian, who heads the National Association of Theatre Owners.

The ratings system has its critics, but Valenti always defended it as an example of democracy in action.

Without it, films might have been subject to government censorship, so it ensured freedom of expression for moviemakers, Valenti said. And, he said, the ratings designations gave fair warning to audiences about content they might prefer to skip.

"While I believe that every director, studio has the right to make the movies they want to make, everybody else has a right not to watch it," Valenti told The Associated Press shortly before his retirement in 2004. "All we do is give advance cautionary warnings and say this is what we think is in this movie."

Labels: entertainment, movies, MPAA

Labels: Bush, condi, corruption

Truth's Consequences

by digby

Since the Moyers show, I have been thinking of many things that happened during that intense period in 2002 and 2003 when the political and media establishment seemed to lose its collective mind (again) and took this country into an inexplicable and unnecessary war. As tristero notes below, the story is long and complicated and it will take years to put it all together, if it ever happens.

I was reminded of one episod, after the invasion, that came as big surprise to me because it came from an unexpected source. And it was one of those stories that was clearly a cautionary tale for any up and coming members of the media who valued their jobs.

On 9/11 those of us who were lucky enough not to be in Manhattan sat glued to our television sets and watched a star being born. Here's how the Wikipedia described it:

On September 11, 2001, Ashleigh Banfield was reporting from the streets of Manhattan, where she was nearly suffocated from the debris cloud from the collapsing World Trade Center. Banfield continued reporting, even as she rescued a NYPD officer, and with him, fled to safety into a streetside shop. After the initial reporting of the tragedy had ended, Banfield received a promotion, as MSNBC sent her around the world as the producer of a new program, A Region in Conflict.

A Region in Conflict was broadcast mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, generally considered locations unfriendly to Westerners. To report day-to-day local stories in that area of the world, she sometimes used her Canadian citizenship to provide access where Americans might not be welcome. She would read viewer e-mails on-air, sometimes without reviewing them beforehand, to avoid bias.

During the conflict in Afghanistan, Banfield interviewed Taliban prisoners, and visited a hospital in Kabul. Later entries covered her travels from Jalalabad to Kabul, as well as other experiences in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, she interviewed Father Gregory Rice, a Catholic priest in Pakistan, and an Iraqi woman aiding refugees. While in Afghanistan, Banfield darkened her blonde hair in order to be less obviously a foreigner.

I made terrible fun of Banfield. She seemed to me to be the personification of the infotainment industrial complex, a reporter better known for her stylish spectacles and blond highlights than her journalistic skills. She was their girl hero, a Jessica Lynch of TV news, constructed out of whole cloth in the marketing department of MSNBC. But I was wrong about her. It's true that she was a cable news star who was created out of the rubble of 9/11, but her reporting that day really was pretty riveting. Her stories from Afghanistan were often shallow, but no more than any of the other blow dried hunks they dispatched over there, and they were sometimes better. Still, she symbolized for me the media exploitation of 9/11 and the War on Terror Show and I was unforgiving.

But very shortly after the invasion of Iraq --- even before Codpiece Day --- Banfield delivered a speech that destroyed her career. She was instantly demoted by MSNBC and fired less than a year later.

Do you remember what she said?

Ashleigh Banfield Landon Lecture
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas
April 24, 2003



...I suppose you watch enough television to know that the big TV show is over and that the war is now over essentially -- the major combat operations are over anyway, according to the Pentagon and defense officials -- but there is so much that is left behind. And I'm not just talking about the most important thing, which is, of course, the leadership of a Middle Eastern country that could possibly become an enormous foothold for American and foreign interests. But also what Americans find themselves deciding upon when it comes to news, and when it comes to coverage, and when it comes to war, and when it comes to what's appropriate and what's not appropriate any longer.

I think we all were very excited about the beginnings of this conflict in terms of what we could see for the first time on television. The embedded process, which I'll get into a little bit more in a few moments, was something that we've never experienced before, neither as reporters nor as viewers. The kinds of pictures that we were able to see from the front lines in real time on a video phone, and sometimes by a real satellite link-up, was something we'd never seen before and were witness to for the first time.

And there are all sorts of good things that come from that, and there are all sorts of terrible things that come from that. The good things are the obvious. This is one more perspective that we all got when it comes to warfare, how it's fought and how tough these soldiers are, what the conditions are like and what it really looks like when they're firing those M-16s rapidly across a river, or across a bridge, or into a building.

[...]

So for that element alone it was a wonderful new arm of access that journalists got to warfare. Perhaps not that new, because we all knew what it looked like at Vietnam and what a disaster that was for the government, but this did put us in a very, very close line of sight to the unfolding disasters.

That said, what didn't you see? You didn't see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you're getting the story, it just means you're getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that's what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid oaf horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn't see what it took to do that.

I can't tell you how bad the civilian casualties were. I saw a couple of pictures. I saw French television pictures, I saw a few things here and there, but to truly understand what war is all about you've got to be on both sides. You've got to be a unilateral, someone who's able to cover from outside of both front lines, which, by the way, is the most dangerous way to cover a war, which is the way most of us covered Afghanistan. There were no front lines, they were all over the place. They were caves, they were mountains, they were cobbled, they were everything. But we really don't know from this latest adventure from the American military what this thing looked like and why perhaps we should never do it again. The other thing is that so many voices were silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.

That just seems to be a trend of late, and l am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across. This was a success, it was a charge it took only three weeks. We did wonderful things and we freed the Iraqi people, many of them by the way, who are quite thankless about this. There's got to be a reason for that. And the reason for it is because we don't have a very good image right now overseas, and a lot of Americans aren't quite sure why, given the fact that we sacrificed over a hundred soldiers to give them freedom.

[...]

All they know is that we're crusaders. All they know is that we're imperialists. All they know is that we want their oil. They don't know otherwise. And I'll tell you, a lot of the people I spoke with in Afghanistan had never heard of the Twin Towers and most of them couldn't recognize a picture of George Bush.

[...]

That will be a very interesting story to follow in the coming weeks and months, as to how this vacuum is filled and how we go about presenting a democracy to these people when -- if we give them democracy they probably will ask us to get out, which is exactly what many of them want.

[...]

As a journalist I'm often ostracized just for saying these messages, just for going on television and saying, "Here's what the leaders of Hezbullah are telling me and here's what the Lebanese are telling me and here's what the Syrians have said about Hezbullah. Here's what they have to say about the Golan Heights." Like it or lump it, don't shoot the messenger, but invariably the messenger gets shot.

We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. Some of you may know his name already from his radio program. He was so taken aback by my dare to speak with Al -Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they're prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut on the air. And that's not all, as a porn star. And that's not all, as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. So these are the ramifications for simply being the messenger in the Arab world.

How can you discuss, how can you solve anything when attacks from a mere radio flak is what America hears on a regular basis, let alone at the government level? I mean, if this kind of attitude is prevailing, forget discussion, forget diplomacy, diplomacy is becoming a bad word.

[..]

When I said the war was over I kind of mean that in the sense that cards are being pulled from this famous deck now of the 55 most wanted, and they're sort of falling out of the deck as quickly as the numbers are falling off the rating chart for the cable news stations. We have plummeted into the basement in the last week. We went from millions of viewers to just a few hundred thousand in the course of a couple of days.

Did our broadcasting change? Did we get boring? Did we all a sudden lose our flair? Did we start using language that people didn't want to hear? No, I think you've just had enough. I think you've seen the story, you've' seen how it ended, it ended pretty well in most American's view; it's time to move on.

What's the next big story? Is it Laci Peterson? Because Laci Peterson got a whole lot more minutes' worth of coverage on the cable news channels in the last week than we'd have ever expected just a few days after a regime fell, like Saddam Hussein.

I don't want to suggest for a minute that we are shallow people, we Americans. At times we are, but I do think that the phenomenon of our attention deficit disorder when it comes to watching television news and watching stories and then just being finished with them, I think it might come from the saturation that you have nowadays. You cannot walk by an airport monitor, you can't walk by most televisions in offices these days, in the public, without it being on a cable news channel. And if you're not in front of a TV you're probably in front of your monitor, where there is Internet news available as well.

You have had more minutes of news on the Iraq war in just the three-week campaign than you likely ever got in the years and years of network news coverage of Vietnam. You were forced to wait for it till six o'clock every night and the likelihood that you got more than about eight minutes of coverage in that half hour show, you probably didn't get a whole lot more than that, and it was about two weeks old, some of that footage, having been shipped back. Now it's real time and it is blanketed to the extent that we could see this one arm of the advance, but not where the bullets landed.

But I think the saturation point is reached faster because you just get so much so fast, so absolutely in real time that it is time to move on. And that makes our job very difficult, because we tend to leave behind these vacuums that are left uncovered. When was the last time you saw a story about Afghanistan? It's only been a year, you know. Only since the major combat ended, you were still in Operation Anaconda in not much more than 11 or 12 months ago, and here we are not touching Afghanistan at all on cable news.

There was just a memorandum that came through saying we're closing the Kabul bureau. The Kabul bureau has only been staffed by one person for the last several months, Maria Fasal, she's Afghan and she wanted to be there, otherwise I don't think anyone would have taken that assignment. There's just been no allotment of TV minutes for Afghanistan.

And I am very concerned that the same thing is about to happen with Iraq, because we're going to have another Gary Condit, and we're going to have another Chandra Levy and we're going to have another Jon Benet, and we're going to have another Elizabeth Smart, and here we are in Laci Peterson, and these stories will dominate. They're easy to cover, they're cheap, they're fast, you don't have to send somebody overseas, you don't have to put them up in a hotel that's expensive overseas, and you don't have to set up satellite time overseas. Very cheap to cover domestic news. Domestic news is music news to directors' ears.

But is that what you need to know? Don't you need to know what our personality is overseas and what the ramifications of these campaigns are? Because we went to Iraq, according to the President, to make sure that we were going to be safe from weapons of mass destruction, that no one would attack us. Well, did everything all of a sudden change? The terror alert went down. All of a sudden everything seems to be better, but I can tell you from living over there, it's not.

[...]

There was a reporter in the New York Times a couple days ago at the Pentagon. It was a report on the ground in Iraq that the Americans were going to have four bases that they would continue to use possibly on a permanent basis inside Iraq, kind of in a star formation, the north, the south, Baghdad and out west. Nobody was able to actually say what these bases would be used for, whether it was forward operations, whether it was simple access, but it did speak volumes to the Arab world who said, "You see, we told you the Americans were coming for their imperialistic need. They needed a foothold, they needed to control something in central and west Asia to make sure that we all next door come into line."

And these reports about Syria, well, they may have been breezed over fairly quickly here, but they are ringing loud still over there. Syria's next. And then Lebanon. And look out lran.

So whether we think it's plausible or whether the government even has any designs like that, the Arabs all think it's happening and they think it's for religious purposes for the most part.

[...]


I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war about the horrors of war, but I'm very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it may have changed people's opinions. It was very sanitized.

It had a very brief respite from the sanitation when Terry Lloyd was killed, the ITN, and when David Bloom was killed and when Michael Kelley was killed. We all sort of sat back for a moment and realized, "God, this is ugly. This is hitting us at home now. This is hitting the noncombatants." But that went away quickly too.

This TV show that we just gave you was extraordinarily entertaining, and I really hope that the legacy that it leaves behind is not one that shows war as glorious, because there's nothing more dangerous than a democracy that thinks this is a glorious thing to do.

War is ugly and it's dangerous, and in this world the way we are discussed on the Arab street, it feeds and fuels their hatred and their desire to kill themselves to take out Americans. It's a dangerous thing to propagate.

[...]

There is another whole phenomenon that's come about from this war. Many talk about it as the Fox effect, the Fox news effect. I know everyone of you has watched it. It's not a dirty little secret. A lot of people describe Fox as having streamers and banners coming out of the television as you're watching it cover a war. But the Fox effect is very concerning to me.

I'm a journalist and I like to be able to tell the story as I see it, and I hate it when someone tells me I'm one-sided. It's the worst I can hear. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership, that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it's turning out, but not news.

I'm hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big hires on other networks, right wing hires to chase after this effect, and you can already see that flag waving in the corners of those cable news stations where they have exciting American music to go along with their war coverage.

Well, all of this has to do with what you've seen on Fox and its successes. So I do urge you to be very discerning as you continue to watch the development of cable news, and it is changing like lightning. Be very discerning because it behooves you like it never did before to watch with a grain of salt and to choose responsibly, and to demand what you should know.

That's it. I know that there's probably a couple questions. No one's allowed to ask about my hair color, okay? I'm kidding, if you want to ask you can. It's a pretty boring story. But I just wanted to say thank you, and let's all pray and hope in any way that you pray or hope for peace and for democracy around the world, and for more rain this summer in Manhattan. Thank you all.

She may have been hoping for a future in able news, but you can't help but feel she knew she wouldn't after delivering those remarks. (Read the whole thing at the link if you're interested in a further scathing critique of the government.)

Perhaps someone with more stature than Banfield could have gotten away with that speech and maybe it might have even been taken seriously, who knows? But the object lesson could not have been missed by any of the ambitious up and comers in the news business. If a TV journalist publicly spoke the truth anywhere about war, the news, even their competitors --- and Banfield spoke the truth in that speech --- their career was dead in the water. Even the girl hero of 9/11 (maybe especially the girl hero of 9/11) could not get away with breaking the CW code of omerta and she had to pay.

She's now a co-anchor on a Court TV show.

Labels: Bush, media, tv

A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key

By HELENE COOPER and JIM RUTENBERG

Published: April 29, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.

Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider’s insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with Israel as part of a broad American plan to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. King Abdullah countermanded that plan.

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

...

Mr. Bandar, son of one of the powerful seven sons born to the favorite wife of Saudi Arabia’s founding king, “needs to personally regroup and figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty together again,” one associate said.

Robert Jordan, a former Bush administration ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis’ mixed signals have come at a time when King Abdullah — who has ruled the country since 1995 but became king only in 2005 after the death of his brother, Fahd — has said he does not want to go down in history as Mr. Bush’s Arab Tony Blair. “I think he feels the need as a kind of emerging leader of the Arab world right now to maintain a distance,” he said.

Labels: Bush, saudi

Renzi could soon resign U.S. House seat

Nice characterzation of that, 'encourage' him to resign.... better than 'convince'

The Democrats' Gonzales

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 26, 2007; Page A29

blah blah blah blah Harry Reid blah blah blah Bill Clinton blah blah blah Harry Reid blah blah blah

a spokeswoman for SAIC said the company was told to contract with Ms. Riza by an official in the office of the under secretary of defense for policy, then headed by Douglas J. Feith.

Labels: corruption, feith, neocon, republicans, riza, wolfowitz

Labels: Bush

I have been reading BAGnewsNotes.com since probably its inception. The visual analysis of news photographs is a fascinating aspect of the media war we are currently in. For you newsblog fans who dont regularly go to BAGnewsNotes.com I strongly reccommend you do. Michael Shaw the proprietor over there has provided us with an original post, enjoy.
-- Hubris Sonic update: i screwed up the order, now they are right. gomen nasai.

by Michael Shaw
BAGnewsNotes.com

For a couple years now (I'm sorry to say), I've been tracking images of U.S. soldiers conducting searches and raids in Iraq. What bothers me most about these scenes (here's one from October 17, 2005) is how they violate the Iraqi's domestic space.

I've taken heat for focusing on these types of images. "It's a war, don't you know!" "Where do you thing 'they' stash their weapons??" The thing is, if I felt that these raids were effective, or if I had seen how this cat-and-mouse business cumulatively added up to something over the years, I would have backed off.

That said, I hadn't done a "raid" search for a while. What "inspired" me last week, however, was just one more shot of our guys busting through gates, going up what appears like the same staircase, and putting heat on the same Iraqi women left to deal. ... See the NYT slideshow here (with article).

On my latest "raid tour," I turned up the two images above. If the whole Iraqi debacle wasn't so sick, I would push harder on the analogy of "the game." Still, to the extent that war -- especially an asymmetrical one -- is a match of wits, the metaphor doesn't seem off base.

In the first shot, the fact that U.S. soldiers are poking around a basketball court (which actually is America's game, right?) conveys to me the complete incongruity of us still being over there.

It's the second shot, however -- with the pool table -- that seems emblematic of our current military circumstances. These guys, the Iraqi's, with all the complexity of their factions, actions and inactions, hold down the table, while we, fully dressed for our own style of combat, sit off at the periphery, looking like aliens, because we really don't know the game.

(image 1: Bob Strong/Reuters. April 4, 2007. image 2: Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force Photo/A.P. April 10, 2007. Both photos from Baghdad/Mansour district via YahooNews)

Five customers at Hoss’s Steak & Sea
House, including two people in Centre County
[Pennsylvania], were sickened by E. coli bacteria last
month, events that triggered a voluntary recall by a
Claysburg meat processing plant, federal and state
officials said late Friday.

The illnesses were linked to steak products produced
at HFX Inc., a company related to Hoss’s Steak & Sea
House, which voluntarily recalled about 260,000 pounds
of beef products because of possible contamination.
The beef was pulled off shelves after a test from
eastern Pennsylvania came back positive for E. coli.

“The bottom line is that food safety is very
important, and the well-being of our customers comes
first,” Hoss’s spokesman David Fuscus said.

The recall follows E. coli-related illnesses of five
people at Hoss’s locations in Centre, Dauphin, Venango
and York counties between March 24 and 29, state
Health Department spokesman Richard McGarvey said.

E. coli is a potentially deadly bacteria that can
cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration.

The very young, seniors and people with compromised
immune systems are the most suspectible to foodborne
illness.

Helena Hunt feeds her family a lot of
fresh vegetables. She does so knowing they’re
nutritious, but not always knowing if they’re safe.

‘‘I’m pretty careful about what I eat,’’ said the
Brockton mother, who was having lunch in the food
court at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree last week.
‘‘I’m very aware of (food safety) and I do take extra
steps.’’

Hunt threw out bags of spinach last year when news
came of an E. coli outbreak that killed three people,
and she washes her produce carefully. Still, she
worries.

Hunt has reason for concern, according to consumer
advocates and government watchdogs who point to the
nation’s system for inspecting food and other products
and pronounce it to be woefully inadequate.

Recalls, more than 5,000 last year, are symptoms of a
system that is overtaxed, overworked and under
staffed, those critics say.

Some of the particulars the critics point to:

- The federal Food and Drug Administration,
responsible for overseeing more than 126,000 domestic
food producers, according to one consumer group, has
fewer than 1,300 inspectors to do that job, and has
long been inadequately funded.

Labels: FDA, food

Labels: VTech

Labels: Contractors, Iraq, Withdrawal

Nearby on the same base, a staff sergeant was in his tent when a captain walked in and told him to burn Tillman's bloody clothing.

"He wanted me alone to burn what was in the bag to prevent security violations, leaks and rumors," the staff sergeant testified. The superior "put a lock on communications" in the tent, he testified. Other Army officers said this was probably a directive to the staff sergeant to keep the conversation to himself.

Then he left the staff sergeant to his work: placing Tillman's uniform, socks, gloves and body armor into a 55-gallon drum and burning them.

Two other sergeants who examined Tillman's vest noticed the bullet holes appeared to be from 5.56-caliber bullets - signature American ammunition. An awful realization dawned on the sergeants, whose names, like those of others who testified in the investigation, were deleted from the recently released testimony.

Ranger Spc. Russell Baer had witnessed Rangers shooting at Rangers. Afterward, he was directed to travel from Afghanistan to the United States with his friend Kevin Tillman. But he was ordered not to tell Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Ranger that friendly fire was the likely cause of the former football player's death.

He kept the secret, fearing he did not know the whole story. But in a personal protest, Baer later went AWOL and was demoted as punishment.

"I lost respect for the people in charge of me," Baer testified in an earlier Tillman investigation. He had gleaned "part of the puzzle" of Tillman's death, but lamented that "I couldn't tell them about it."

Labels: Bush, tillman, US Army

Labels: Bush Iraq, wingnuttery

Labels: Bill OReilly, Jewish World Conspiracy, Nutjob, Soros

Labels: Cheney, Iraq

The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter.

The "citizens" who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (OK, I'm not sure what's in it for them), along with seven other food producing associations.

...


I'd say we've already demonstrated our preference for true chocolate. That's why real chocolate outsells fake chocolate. Nine of the 10 bestselling U.S. chocolate candies are made with the real stuff. M&Ms, Hershey Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - all real chocolate. Butterfinger is the outlier.

Granted, a change to the "food standards of identity" won't require makers to remove some or all of the cocoa butter, it would just allow them to. But really, why else would they ask?

But as long as they're asking, the FDA does have a way for other citizens to voice their expectations. It's buried deep in its website. Until April 25, the agency is accepting comments - by fax, mail or online - on a docket with the benign-sounding name of "2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to All Food Standards that Would Permit, Within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity."

Labels: food

BLACKSBURG, Va. - The family of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho
told The Associated Press on Friday that they feel "hopeless,
helpless and lost," and "never could have envisioned that he was
capable of so much violence." "He has made the world weep. We are
living a nightmare," said a statement issued by Cho's sister, Sun-
Kyung Cho, on the family's behalf

"Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It
is a terrible tragedy for all of us," said Sun-Kyung Cho, a 2004
Princeton University graduate who works as a contractor for a State
Department office that oversees American aid for Iraq.

The family's whereabouts are unclear. But authorities said they are
under law enforcement protection.

The statement was issued during a statewide day of mourning for the
victims. Silence fell across the Virginia Tech campus at noon and
bells tolled in churches nationwide in memory of the victims.

"We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and
lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like
I didn't know this person," Cho's sister said. "We have always been a
close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved,
yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was
capable of so much violence."

She said her family will cooperate fully with investigators and "do
whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless
acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well."

Wendy Adams, whose niece, Leslie Sherman, was killed in the massacre,
said of the family's statement: "I'm not so generous to be able to
forgive him for what he did. But I do feel for the family. I do feel
sorry for them."

"I do believe they're living a nightmare," she added.

Labels: VTech

Vonnegut never pitched Death as a villain in his work, but more as a relief or a last resort. His characters longed for it, loathed it and fought it, yet accepted it as a reasonable and sensible conclusion once all other avenues had failed.

What’s going to happen is, very soon, we’re going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world. We’ve become far too dependent on hydrocarbons, and it’s going to suddenly dry up. You talk about the gluttonous Roaring Twenties. That was nothing. We’re crazy, going crazy, about petroleum. It’s a drug like crack cocaine. Of course, the lunatic fringe of Christianity is welcoming the end of the world as the rapture. So I’m Jeremiah. It’s going to have to stop. I’m sorry.”

Labels: vonnegut

Labels: Godzilla

Not the way to make friends and influence people

Jen here. For those of you not familiar with the work of Mike Daisey, he's a wonderful monologuist and the author of "21 Dog Years: Doing time at Amazon.com." He's also a helluva nice guy and was a tangential but a very welcome part of the New York New Media scene back in the Netslaves days.

This past Thursday, some Christian group decided that they didn't like Mr. Daisey's language and content in his latest piece, Invincible Summer. So, they stormed the stage and destroyed his only working copy of the notes for that night's performace, and walked out without saying a word.

There's no doubt that this was planned--it was a sold out show and over 80 ChristoZombies attended.

Other than thanking these retards for giving him material for his next monologue and book (and no doubt shitloads of free publicity--he's already been on TV a few times (search Mike Daisey on YouTube)--I think he's re-opened the dialogue on the place of religion in public policy discourse in his own way, especially its role in "liberal" cities like Boston.

When it all boils down, a lot of "public policy" on tolerance in the US and on college campuses isn't about keeping angry mobs from burning down the houses of worship of unpopular minorities--it's about allowing a certain degree of intolerance by verbal minorities to be enshrined in public policy. Lip service to creationism, restrictions on sex education and contraception access, and blue laws of all stripes are all sleeping Nosferatus with spikes in their hearts, rumbling in the shallow grave of America's Puritan past.

In the particular case at hand, one of the Nosferatu-infected rats gnawed its way out of the coffin and jumped up into the horrified view onto the dinner table of the genteel academically tolerant who were suddenly forced to see what they were really "defending."

What do I mean like this? Well, after 9/11 and the Danish Cartoon Fiasco I asked where the moderate Muslim groups were; where was the outcry. Now I ask: What does the Harvard Campus Crusade for Christ have to say about this? Local Catholic League? Any on-campus, tuition-and-tax-dollar funded group that in its spare time in between "cleansing souls" is busy bombing clinics, bashing gays, and censoring what we read and see? No? How about the regular Priest/Pastor on the street; the leaders of moderate congregations, the vast majority of churchgoers? Last time I checked, Boston had a few churches of various stripes up there. Will this be on anyone's sermon sheet today?

I don't expect much feedback from these folks. Why not? Because for the fundies and clinic bombers, these six-fingered split-palette drooling raving demented freaks are the MONEYMAKERS, just like the geeks at a travelling carnival. They are the ones who get donations (and the gibbering footsoliders that collect them) that make it back into the "mainstream" sides of religious institutions--you know, the nice polite, scrubbed folks who do polite little canned speeches at Earth Day celebrations, Yom Hashoa memorial services, and so forth.

(Side note: This is why I only donate items or service to my local shul, NOT money. The shul school needs software, I get a list and order it for them. They need a computer set up, I do it. I NEVER give ANY money unless it's for a direct and immediate material thing (ie Seder meal for myself) because I don't believe in sending my money, no questions asked, to Israel or to ANY radical religious group, even my own. I encourage all people who identify with ANY faith to do the same.)

So far, no news on what particular ChristoFascist group was responsible, or if charges can or will be pressed. However, I can't help but wonder what the result would be if 80 performance artists all attended a Church service, and got up in the middle of Mass and destroyed the alter as a sort of performance art.

I encourage everyone to go see Mike's show if you can, and if not, buy his book and/or throw him a few bucks, just by way of moral support.

And to the people who did this: Please take your stupid, inbred, repressed selves the fuck out of any city that has at least one institution of higher learning-the grown-ups are trying to talk.

Labels: christianity, civil liberties, wingnuttery

Thanks for this post... It hits on a number of things we should think about- Americans in America, Folks living in japan, humans in general.

The HFCS warning is worth heading- it is highly transportable, cheap and profitable and make no mistake that these are the major reasons it is spreading like wildfire (Americans have been making more corn and corn related products than we could healthily consume for more than 200 years.

http://www.radioactive-banana.com/blog/2006/05/11/corn-the-weapon-of-the-industrial-hegemony/

Also the Burger part- the MEGA MAC in japan is a sign of another trend--- Portion Distortion. which is another bad business.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-06-21-portion-usat_x.htm

The rant about ranting about "refined" stuff and corp. stuff is just silly, We SHOULD rant about it- it has been going on in American since the late 1800's- companies changing our diet, fundamentally- for profit. If you want to read more about the campaign to make refined sugar and flour POPULAR- and brown sugar and whole wheat unpopular- Read this book--- it is wonderful.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781573228534-6

I have been reading and writing about food and working in the industry for years- and the big bad- is that people are unaware and don't care to be aware about what they eat. They just don't want to think about it most of the time. Carbs are fine in moderation- like with anything else, but people don't make deliberate decisions. And so process-food-corp-USA makes those decisions for you, and now those same problems are occurring more and more around the world.

PS. the other flip bad juju in Japan right now, is with the rise of obesity, there is a rise of reactive eating disorders among young women. The diet is changing but the expectation of slim Asian body types is stronger than every- so the kids are eating bad but expecting to still look healthy!

http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2001/0628/fe20-1.html

tlg

Labels: Food Politics, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Japan

Labels: VTech, wingnuttery

Really not much to say about this. Except of course that is the stupidest idea yet. See previous comment about incoherence. A wall, good lord. Whats next?

Labels: Iraq, Wall

The smell of blood and gunpowder wafted through Baghdad on Wednesday

Iraq Sadrists vow no return to streets despite bombs

UK troops hand over province

British commanders ceded security responsibility for Maysan, a critical province with Iraq's longest Iranian border and large oil reserves, at a colorful outdoor ceremony and military parade.

Labels: gun control, mental illness, VTech

Wolfowitz girlfriend planned the Iraqi government
by leevank

Tue Apr 17, 2007 at 08:05:02 PM PDT

As if the tangled web of Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, weren't already sordid enough, now comes word that while he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon ordered Science Applications International Corp., a Pentagon contractor, to enter into a subcontract with Ms. Riza under which she spent approximately a month in the spring of 2003 "studying ways to form a government in Iraq."

Here's the way Reuters describes the arrangement:

leevank's diary :: ::
SAIC said Riza's subcontract lasted from April 25 to May 31, 2003. She was paid expenses but no salary during her trip to Iraq, at her request, according to the contractor. [NOTE: The article doesn't make it clear whether she was paid a salary for the portion of time under the contract in which she wasn't actually in Iraq, but was presumably drafting whatever report she prepared -- if she actually prepared one.]

Melissa Koskovich, a spokeswoman for SAIC, said the contractor "had no role in the selection of the personnel who comprised the Iraq Governance Group under this contract."

Defense sources said the Pentagon was reviewing the matter.

I'd be fascinated to know who, other than Ms. Riza, constituted the "Iraq Governance Group," and what work product Ms. Riza actually delivered. It's not enough that Wolfowitz had a major role in leading this country into an unnecessary war that I think may well turn out to be the most serious foreign policy blunder in this country's history. No, he couldn't leave bad enough alone, but had to get his girlfriend a job planning the most screwed-up occupation and transfer to a new government in perhaps the entire history of military occupations.

I've got a suggestion for Mr. Wolfowitz: After you get fired by the World Bank, why don't you and your honey move to Baghdad and form your little love nest somewhere outside the Green Zone, where you can have lots of togetherness while living in the middle of the great success that you've created? Maybe the Iraqis will be so impressed by this great love affair between a Jewish man and an Arab Muslim woman that they'll realize the foolishness of their silly sectarian quarrels, and Iraq will become the shining beacon of tolerance and democracy that you told us it would be. Of course, things might not turn out that way, but since you're willing to take big risks with other people's lives, I'm sure you won't hesitate to take some risks with your own.

Labels: Iraq, wingnuttery, wolfowitz

"...I'd been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was alreadystarting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.

I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians
and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows
D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far
less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection
requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional
surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital
readmission.

A review of 300 second- trimester abortions published in 2002 in the
American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that 29 percent of
women who went through labor and delivery had complications, compared
with just 4 percent of those who had D&Es.

... [But] the years of angry debate that led to the passage [of the
2003 abortion procedure ban], restrictive state laws and the violence
targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors
willing to do dilations and evacuations (D&Es) and dilations and
extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus,
sometimes in pieces, from the womb.

... After examining me and confirming I was bleeding but not
hemorrhaging, the attending obstetrician, obviously pregnant herself,
defensively explained that only one of their dozens of obstetricians
and gynecologists still does D&Es, and he was simply not available.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the next day."

Labels: abortion, SCOTUS

Wal-Mart and Target Spy on Their Employees

By Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet


With Target and Wal-Mart acting as though they are entitled to spy on,
stalk and imprison their own employees, we are on the road to a
full-scale workplace dictatorship.

It reads like a cold war thriller: The spy follows the suspects through several countries, ending up in Guatemala City, where he takes a room across the hall from his quarry. Finally, after four days of surveillance, including some patient ear-to-the-keyhole work, he is able to report back to headquarters that he has the goods on them. They're guilty!

But this isn't a John Le Carré novel, and the powerful institution pulling the strings wasn't the USSR or the CIA. It was Wal-Mart, and the two suspects weren't carrying plans for a shoulder-launched H-bomb. Their crime was "fraternization." One of them, James W. Lynn, a Wal-Mart factory inspection manager, was traveling with a female subordinate, with whom he allegedly enjoyed some intimate moments behind closed doors. At least the company spy reported hearing "moans and sighs" within the woman's room.

Now you may wonder why a company so famously cheap that it requires its same-sex teams to share hotel rooms while on the road would invest in international espionage to ferret out mixed-sex fraternizers. Unless, as Lynn argues, they were really after him for what is a far worse crime in Wal-Mart's books: Openly criticizing the conditions he found in Central American factories supplying Wal-Mart stores.

In fact, the cold war thriller analogy is not entirely fanciful. New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro, who related the story of Wal-Mart's stalking of Lynn and his colleague, also reports that the company's security department is staffed by former top officials of the CIA and the FBI. Along the same lines, Jeffrey Goldberg provides a chilling account of his visit to Wal-Mart's Bentonville "war room" in the April 2nd New Yorker. Although instructed not to write down anything he saw, he found a "dark, threadbare room... its walls painted battleship gray," where only two out of five of the occupants will even meet his eyes. In general, he found the Bentonville fortress "not unlike the headquarters of the National Security Agency."

We've always known that Wal-Mart is as big, in financial terms, as many sizable nations. It may even have begun to believe that is one, complete with its own laws, security agency, and espionage system. But the illusion of state power is not confined to Wal-Mart. Justin Kenward, who worked at a Target store in Chino CA for three years, wrote to tell me about his six hour interrogation, in 2003, by the store's "Asset Protection" agents, who accused him of wrongly giving a fellow employee a discount on a video game a year earlier:

After about an hour of trying to tell them that I don't remember any thing about that day let alone that transaction, I had to use the restroom. I asked if I could and was denied. This goes on for about another hour when I say "Look I have to pee, bad, can I go to the restroom?" Once more I was told no. So I stand up and start walking out the door, and was stopped. At this point I thought to my self "They're looking to fire me!" So I start to think of ways that transaction might have came to be. I say something like "I would never give a discount unless an L.O.D. (Leader On Duty aka: a manager) or a Team Lead (aka: supervisor) told me to ......" I was interrupted and told that it sounds like I was trying to place my mistake on other people. 3 hours in to this and still needing to pee I was told that I need to write an apologetic letter to the company with the details, every detail, that we just went over and then I could use the rest room...

Labels: target, wal-mart

Labels: imus, racism

Arriving on a motorcycle, wearing jeans and a carrying a backpack, Alain Cojean is hardly the image of a Paris restaurant mogul. But then again the 45-year-old with an unassuming but frenetic demeanor hasn't created your typical Paris eatery. On an unusually warm April morning across the street from the Louvre, in a former tea salon in a building built in the mid-19th century, he is inspecting progress on the construction of what will be the newest location
of his namesake fast-food restaurant. Five or six weeks from now, the team of workers sanding and drilling will give way to crowds of customers ready to sample the fresh foods served quickly, with a focus on nutrition, in a modern, smoke-free environment that has become the trademark of Cojean. Since opening his first restaurant in 2001, he has expanded his chain to nine locations, mostly clustered in the office-heavy 8th and 9th Arrondissements of the French capital. And
he's done it all without any advertising.

The restaurant chain's popularity is proof that in a city famous for its smoky brasseries and aloof,
bow-tied waiters serving up artery-clogging dishes, there are citizens hungry for alternatives. Until Cojean, Parisian lunchers who didn't have time for hour-long steak-frites meals were mostly limited to baguette sandwiches on the run or the international fast food chains hardly noted for their selection of nutritional offerings. But now Cojean, with his vegetable-packed toasted sandwiches, chicken curry wraps and salmon and quinoa salads, is the de facto godfather of a near-movement. In the last few years, other like-minded, health-conscious fast food
restaurants have sprouted up around town, with easy-to-pronounce, linguistically neutral names like Bioboa, Noon, Jour and the deliciously provocative Eatme. The Belgian chain Exki (motto: "natural, fresh & ready") opened their first location in France last August — also in Paris's financial district. All of these places emphasize fresh products, clearly labeled ingredients and absolutely nothing fried.

Labels: food, france, nutrition

Labels: abortion, SCOTUS

April 16, 2007 — - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned. That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave.

Gonzales was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, but his testimony was postponed until Thursday because of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University.

When Gonzales appears before the committee, a central focus will be the extent of his involvement in the firings.

Gonzales has insisted he left those decisions to his staff, but ABC News has learned he was so concerned about U.S. attorney Carol Lam's lackluster record on immigration enforcement in San Diego that he supported firing her months before she was dismissed, according to a newly released e-mail from his former chief of staff.

Labels: gonzales

Labels: apple, ipod, technology

Labels: blogs

"Home sales were falling prior to every recession, with the exception of the business investment led recession of 2001. This should raise concerns about a possible consumer led recession in the months ahead."

Labels: economy, housing

'The crucial issue goes well beyond Don Imus's pathetically
infantile behavior. The real question is whether this controversy is loud
enough to shock Americans at long last into the realization of just how
profoundly racist and sexist the culture is.'

Labels: imus

Recently Retired Marine General Sheehan turned down the 'honor' of being named War Czar. Lets gloss over the fact that we already have someone who is supposed to be a Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, but that lazy, awol, coward doesnt have a clue about what to do. So apparently Karl is looking around for another dancing monkey to put on stage as they try to run out the clock.

The day-to-day work of the White House implementation manager overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan would require a great deal of emotional and intellectual energy resolving critical resource issues in a bureaucracy that, to date, has not functioned well.

"has not functioned well", of course means, doesnt have fucking clue. The General has learned to at least be civilized on the pages of the wapo, pretty impressive restraint for a Marine.

The General knows, as do many of the readers here, Bush has no strategy, except stall until January 2009. Thats Bush's only interest here. I dont credit him with understanding that he cant win. He just doesnt know what to do, and equates leaving with losing. The only way out of Iraq is for Congress to step up.

When a guy with these credentials is saying that this war is being run by a small but powerful group that [is constantly repeating] we are going to "win," even as "victory" is not defined or is frequently redefined., Congress should realize just how weak Bush is. All this bluster about congress better shape up and send him a bill he can sign is odd. Why not just veto the thing. Why all the sturm and drang? Is it bluff?

Labels: Iraq Bush

Jen here...about to head home and go to sleep, but could NOT help crossposting this amazing smackdown of the latest Food Network phony"awards ceremony." I am too tired to look up the link to Bourdain's first smackdown of FoodTV, but enjoy this brief sequel.

Labels: ue

Gunman kills at least 21 at Virginia Tech

(CNN) -- A lone gunman is dead after police said he killed at least 21 people Monday during twin shootings on the Virginia Tech campus -- the worst school shooting incident in U.S. history.

"Some victims were shot in a classroom," university police Chief Wendell Flinchum said during a news conference in Blacksburg.

Police believe there was only one gunman, Flinchum said.

"Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions," said university President Charles Steger. "The university is shocked and indeed horrified." (Map of Blacksburg)

The shootings mark the deadliest school shooting incident in U.S. history, topping attacks at Columbine High School in 1999 and at the University of Texas in 1966.

The Associated Press quoted officials saying more than 20 people were wounded. A hospital spokeswoman told AP that 17 Virginia Tech students were being treated for gunshot wounds and other injuries.

Sharon Honaker at the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in nearby Christiansburg, Virginia, told CNN that four patients had been transported there, one in critical condition.

One person was killed and others were wounded at multiple locations inside a dormitory about 7:15 a.m., Flinchum said. Two hours later, another shooting at Norris Hall, the engineering science and mechanics building, resulted in multiple casualties, the university reported. (Campus map)

The first reported shooting occurred at West Ambler Johnston Hall, a four-story coed dormitory that houses 895 students. The dormitory, one of the largest residence halls on the 2,600-acre campus, is located near the drill field and stadium.

Amie Steele, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, said one of her reporters at the dormitory reported "mass chaos."

The reporter said there were "lots of students running around, going crazy, and the police officers were trying to settle everyone down and keep everything under control," according to Steele. (Watch police, ambulances hustle to the scene )

Kristyn Heiser said she was in class about 9:30 a.m. when she and her classmates saw about six gun-wielding police officers run by a window.

"We were like, 'What's going on?' Because this definitely is a quaint town where stuff doesn't really happen. It's pretty boring here," said Heiser during a phone interview as she sat on her classroom floor.

- posted by Jim in LA

BAGHDAD, April 16 — Political followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, said today that their six cabinet ministers would quit their posts in government in protest at the refusal of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to set a timetable for American troops to withdraw from Iraq. (nytimes.com)

Sadr has had enough, he gave them a couple of months to see if the 'escalation' would work, it didnt, His people and the neighborhoods arent safer. Soon the current government will collapse. Dont think that the asinine comments of John McCain using his people as props in a potemkin marketplace and resulting in the execution of 30 people the following day had no effect. But ultimately it was the poodle al-Maliki parroting Bush's bullshit about not setting timetables that probably is what made him realize it was all pointless, and was pushed to action with this current crescendo of death of nearly 300 Iraqis on Saturday alone. Lets hope he doesnt decide to let slip his dogs.

-- Hubris Sonic

Labels: economy

T-rex fossil yields clues to evolutionary puzzle: study

An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but
its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest
preserved proteins ever found, scientists say.

And a comparison of the protein's chemical structure to a slew of
other species showed an evolutionary link between T. rex and
chickens, bolstering the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

The collagen proteins were found hidden inside the leg bone of the T.
rex fossil, according to two studies published in the April 13 issue
of the journal Science. Collagen is the main ingredient of connective
tissue in animals and is found in cartilage, ligaments, tendons,
hooves, bones and teeth. It yields gelatin and glue when boiled in
water.

"I mean can you imagine pulling a bone out the ground after 68
million years and then getting intact protein sequences?" said John
Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, lead
author of one of the studies. "That's just mind boggling how much
preservation there is in these bones."

The previous record holder for the oldest protein tissue belonged to
collagen found in a 100,000- to 300,000-year-old mammoth bone.

The new finding will be viewed skeptically, admitted one of the
researchers involved in the two studies. "It's very, very, very
controversial because most people have gone on record saying there's
an absolute time limit to anything that's protein or DNA," said Mary
Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State
University

Matthew Carrano, a dinosaur curator at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C., who was not involved in either study, said the
protein findings are robust. "Here are the pieces of the protein. If
you're going to refute this you have to explain how these pieces got
in there," Carrano said in a telephone interview.

"It's not another molecule mimicking the protein and giving off a
similar signal. This is the actual sequence."



Bone basics

The T. rex leg bone, which looks like a giant drumstick, was
unearthed by Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies in 2003 in the
Hell Creek Formation, a fossil-packed area that spans Montana,
Wyoming and North and South Dakota.

In 2005, Schweitzer and her colleagues reported they had found
evidence for soft, stretchy tissue sealed inside the dinosaur's
fossilized femur. The finding made headlines, but was also questioned
by some experts.

The hard stuff of bones is all that usually remains when a dead
organism is buried beneath layers of earth. Usually, microbes devour
all the easy-to-access soft tissue. So finding relatively intact soft
tissue was a major claim.

"For centuries it was believed that the process of fossilization
destroyed any original material, consequently no one looked carefully
at really old bones," Schweitzer said.

To gather her evidence, Schweitzer ran chemical analyses, finding the
tissue reacted with antibodies from collagen taken from chicken and
other avian tissues. Also, images from high-powered microscopes
revealed a repeating series of thin stripes characteristic of
collagen fibers.

Asara then ran the tiny samples through a mass spectrometer, a
machine that measures mass and charge of individual molecules,
finding the relic tissue was indeed collagen.



Dinosaur-bird link

A comparison by Asara's team of the amino-acid sequence from the T.
rex collagen to a database of existing sequences from modern species
showed it shared a remarkable similarity to that of chickens. Amino
acids are the molecular building blocks of proteins; there are 20 of
them used by organisms to build proteins, and their precise order is
determined by instructions found in DNA.



"I'm grateful that he was able to get the [amino acid] sequences out.
That's the Holy Grail," Schweitzer told LiveScience.

This finding supports the idea that chickens and T. rex share an
evolutionary link and bolsters previous research showing that birds
evolved from dinosaurs and that birds are living dinosaurs.

"Here we have a real molecule from a real dinosaur, and it's much
more similar to a bird than it is to anything else," Carrano said.

The discovery will open the door for a suite of studies once thought
off limits in the field of paleontology. For instance, proteins could
supply more direct evidence about evolutionary links between living
and extinct organisms.

"Protein sequences often reflect little bits of the evolutionary
history of animals, how they are different or similar among groups,"
Carrano said. "This can provide information for extinct animals on
how they are related through evolution to living groups of animals if
we could pull out these kinds of molecules."

Plus, the process of fossilization remains somewhat of a mystery.
"This is a really valuable window into [fossilization] because here
you have some of the original material preserved," Carrano said.

"We would never have asked a question that required this information
in the past and that shut the whole door on those avenues of
research. And now they are potentially open to us," Carrano said.

Labels: dinosaurs, evolution, science

``Compared to a year ago, he’s not doing so well,’’ said Dick Bennett, a New Hampshire-based pollster. ``He’s lost support. It isn’t like it was eight years ago. He’s holding his own, but it isn’t anything like it was.’’

The most recent survey by Bennett’s firm, the American Research Group, found McCain still holding an edge over the field, but by a much narrower margin. He lost 6 percentage points in the first three months of this year - as did Giuliani - while Romney gained 8.

A common complaint among Republicans here is that McCain lost the rebel quality that they liked so much in 2000.

``He’s trying too hard to appeal to all parts of the Republican Party. Appealing to all parts of the party is a death knell,’’ said Carlisle. ``He looks old and tired. He is old and tired.’’

``His time is past,’’ said John Tinios, a caterer and restaurateur from Portsmouth.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain's job offer.

"I'll take it!" one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. "You can't do it, my friends."

Some in the crowd said they didn't appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

Labels: 2008 race, mccain

The first three months of the new Democratic Congress
have been neither terrible nor transcendent. A Pew poll had it about
right: a substantial majority of the public remains happy the
Democrats won in 2006, but neither Nancy Pelosi nor Harry Reid has
dominated the public consciousness as Newt Gingrich did when the
Republicans came to power in 1995. There is a reason for that. A much
bigger story is unfolding: the epic collapse of the Bush
Administration.

The three big Bush stories of 2007--the decision to "surge" in Iraq,
the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army
Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry
political reasons--precisely illuminate the three qualities that make
this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance
(the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S.
Attorneys).

Iraq comes first, as always. From the start, it has been obvious that
personal motives have skewed the President's judgment about the war.
Saddam tried to kill his dad; his dad didn't try hard enough to kill
Saddam. There was payback to be had. But never was Bush's adolescent
petulance more obvious than in his decision to ignore the
Baker-Hamilton report and move in the exact opposite direction:
adding troops and employing counterinsurgency tactics inappropriate
to the situation on the ground. "There was no way he was going to
accept [its findings] once the press began to portray the report as
Daddy's friends coming to the rescue," a member of the Baker-Hamilton
commission told me. As with Bush's invasion of Iraq, the decision to
surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or
military doctrine. Iraq was invaded with insufficient troops and
planning; the surge was attempted with too few troops (especially
non-Kurdish, Arabic-speaking Iraqis), a purposely misleading time
line ("progress" by September) and, most important, the absence of a
reliable Iraqi government.

General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, "A military solution to
Iraq is not possible." Translation: This thing fails unless there is
a political deal among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no
such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President's aversion
to talking to people he doesn't like. And while some Baghdad
neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the
increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is
likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall 'Afar: dueling
Sunni and Shi'ite massacres have destroyed order in a city famously
pacified by counterinsurgency tactics in 2005.

The latest to make a fool of himself is Paul Krugman of
the New York Times, who argues that those who favor the increase in
troops are either cynical or delusional. Mostly the latter.
Delusional neocons like Bill Kristol and Fred Kagan, to be precise.
But what about retired General Jack Keane--whom Krugman doesn't
mention--and the significant number of military intellectuals who
have favored a labor-intensive counterinsurgency strategy in Baghdad
for the past three years? They are serious people. They may be wrong
about Iraq now, reflexively trying to complete a mission that has
been lost, but they are not delusional. The counterinsurgency
doctrine they published in 2006 is exactly what the U.S. military
should be doing in places like Afghanistan. And they, not Kagan and
Kristol, are the motivating force behind Bush's new
policy.

On April 3, the President again accused Democrats of
being "more interested in fighting political battles in Washington
than providing our troops what they need." Such demagoguery is
particularly outrageous given the Administration's inability to
provide our troops "what they need" at the nation's premier hospital
for veterans. The mold and decrepitude at Walter Reed are likely to
be only the beginning of the tragedy, the latest example of
incompetence in this Administration. "This is yet another aspect of
war planning that wasn't done properly," says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq
and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The entire VA hospital system
is unprepared for the casualties of Iraq, especially the psychiatric
casualties. A lot of vets are saying, 'This is our Katrina moment.'
And they're right: this Administration governs badly because it
doesn't care very much about governing."

And then there is the pessimism problem. Populists of
both strains tend to believe that the system is rigged by dark and
powerful forces that prevent the little guy from getting ahead, which
means they tend to be angry. They also tend to be dividers rather
than uniters. Even the nice-guy populism attempted by former Senator
John Edwards in the last presidential campaign had a divisive edge.
His theme was "two Americas." Pessimism, anger and unsubtle
divisiveness tend to be total nonstarters in American politics.
"Being optimistic is a patriotic value," says Diane Feldman. "If you
are down on the United States, you are not patriotic."

Compared with Iraq and Walter Reed, the firing of the
U.S. Attorneys is a relatively minor matter. It is true that U.S.
Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, but they are
political appointees of a special sort. They are partisans,
obviously, but must appear to be above politics--not working to
influence elections, for example--if public faith in the impartiality
of the justice system is to be maintained. Once again Karl Rove's
operation has corrupted a policy area--like national security--that
should be off-limits to political operators.

When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after
receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new
President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be
successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship
has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive
failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but
the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance,
incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his
personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly
difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a
leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Klein: I think that that's part of the answer, that
certainly Bush and Cheney have run a big business oriented
presidency, to their detriment. But also, you know, I spent time with
George Bush when he was governor of Texas and he spent an awful lot
of time talking about [and with poor people] and there were a lot of
times that I saw him in 2000 him go into country-club Republican
audiences and get tough questions about all these wetbacks and he
would go right up into the face of those audiences, which was kind of
like Newt Gingrich going into the face of the Evangelical Christians
on Intelligent Design. I think that he truly believes that the people
who are coming across the border, as I believe, are just coming over
for the best of all possible reasons: to support their families, to
work hard. [....]Every last motive that George W. Bush has isn't a
malign one. You know, there are sometimes that the guy acts for what
he considers to be the very best and the most moral of reasons. A lot
of times I'll disagree with him, like going to war in Iraq, but, you
know, I take him at face value in those things.

And so the President finds himself in an exceedingly odd
position for a post-Reagan Republican. He is acting like a Democrat,
standing for abstract principles and high-minded long-term projects
in the face of a public demanding easy answers and immediate results.
His Middle East-democracy campaign is Wilsonian.

Bush's indifference to reality in Iraq is not an isolated
case. It is the modus operandi of his Administration.

Labels: joe klein

McConnell seeks to boost U.S. spy powers

WASHINGTON - President Bush's spy chief is pushing to expand the government's
surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under
attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft
bill that would expand the government's powers under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used.

...

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger
category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists
and other national security threats. The surveillance could include
planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and
breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives.



Yeah, today it's suspected "enemy combatants," tomorrow, it's anyone
who's gone to a peace rally or signed a petition against the abuses
of this Administration.



According to officials familiar with the draft changes to FISA,
McConnell wants to:

_Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA
court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping
phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.

"Determinations about whether a court order is required should be
based on considerations about the target of the surveillance, rather
than the particular means of communication or the location from which
the surveillance is being conducted," NSA Director Keith Alexander
told the Senate last year.

_Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders
for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number
dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil
liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the
government to access this information.

_Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from
120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer
without checking back in with a judge.

_Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for
their cooperation with Bush's terrorist surveillance program. Pending
lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they
violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the
program.

_Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government
can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

Labels: intelligence, spying

Labels: Argentina, uk, USA

Porn could be the key to next-generation DVD war
Fri Apr 06 13:44:43 UTC 2007

By Michael Kahn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the battle over next generation DVDs, pornography could prove to be the XXX factor that helps determine a winner.

Thirty years ago, VHS toppled Betamax in part because of the adult film industry, and now some see blue movies playing a key role again as backers of HD-DVD and Blu-ray maneuver to make their formats the standard.

The stakes are high. As prices of high-definition televisions and DVD players fall, backers of the rival -- and incompatible -- formats are looking to tap a home and rental DVD market approaching $25 billion.

Yet so far, neither next-generation format has been able to land a knock-out blow.

James McQuivey, a principal analyst at technology research firm Forrester, said in the VHS-versus-Betamax war, porn provided a significant boost for the winning format.

He also noted the adult entertainment industry has often paved the way with new uses of technology -- such as streaming video on the Internet -- and said porn could help tip the scales in the current DVD format battle.

"If the porn industry wanted to break the logjam of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, it could," McQuivey said. "If they said 'We are going to go with HD-DVD' you would see a few million homes immediately go out and buy HD-DVD players. They have that power."

It is a potential weapon that one side, at least, has ignored. Instead, Blu-ray backer Sony Corp. blocked manufacturers from producing porn DVDs in that format -- a move that some say has pushed adult film studios into the camp of HD-DVD camp led by Toshiba Corp.

Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment Group, said Walt Disney Co. also refuses to use DVD makers -- known as replicators -- that press porn titles.

This makes finding a Blu-ray replicator willing to alienate Sony and Disney almost impossible for porn studios because the format requires costly new equipment and there are only a handful of replicators able to make such DVDs.

That isn't a problem for HD-DVD because that technology is based on previous-generation standards, which makes it far simpler and cheaper for companies to hire replicators to press their DVDs.

Hirsch said that Vivid -- home to adult film stars such as Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick and Briana Banks -- found a willing manufacturer to press "Debbie Does Dallas ... Again," which the company plans to issue in April.

But the cost and difficulty of doing so for the sequel to the 1978 adult film classic "Debbie Does Dallas" clouds whether more adult films in Blu-ray will follow, said Hirsch, who declined to provide details on who is pressing the movie.

"We have been able to find a replication facility to do our title but it wasn't easy and it has deterred us for the most part from releasing titles on Blu-ray," Hirsch said. "That can be potentially problematic for Blu-ray."

Studios like Vivid say they have been shooting films in high-definition for years to build up a library, but so far the number of titles is only a trickle as the industry weighs the advantages of each format.

HD-DVD machines are cheaper but Blu-ray has backing of a majority of the mainstream studios and an advantage in that the format is compatible with the PlayStation 3, the latest version of Sony's popular series of video game consoles.

The founder of adult studio Digital Playground -- whose films include "Island Fever 3" and "Pirates" -- believes Blu-ray backers are erring in not embracing porn as they fight over billions of dollars in royalties.

"The reason they should want to work with us is that they are in a war with HD-DVD and in a war you would want as many people in your corner," said Joone, the Digital Playground founder who goes by one name.

Joone said in an ideal world Digital Playground would offer films in both formats. Instead, he sees Sony and other Blu-ray backers pushing the adult entertainment industry toward HD-DVD, whose supporters he said have welcomed porn producers.

"In general we need to have one format because it cuts down the confusion in the marketplace for the consumer," Joone said. "HD-DVD has helped us tremendously to get titles out."

Labels: porn, technology

"when we opened an independent CD shop on the Upper West Side of
Manhattan in 1993. At the time, we figured that as far as business
ventures went, ours was relatively safe. People would always go to
stores to buy music."

"Fourteen years later, it’s clear just how wrong our assumptions
were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005."

"The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted
peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely
the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record
labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed
to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep
the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who
tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead."

"Something had to be done to save the record store, a place where
hard-core music fans worked, shopped and kibitzed... "

"But instead, those labels delivered the death blow to the record
store as we know it by getting in bed with soulless chain stores like
Best Buy and Wal-Mart. "

"A year after our shop closed, Tower went out of business — something
that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier."

"We would be gloating, but for the fact that the occupation we
planned on spending our working lives at is rapidly becoming
obsolete. And that loss hits us hard — not just as music retailers,
but as music fans."

What will record stores look like in ten years? Think of something
more akin to a coffee shop than the store you're in now. Your
customer will come for the same thing they always have, music but
they will be buying it in different ways. You'll have kiosks or
tables with computers where you customers will download music from
remote servers and they'll use your facility to print the booklets
and burn the discs. They'll bring their MP3 players and connect them
to your computers to download music as well. (ed note: I had seen
the Diamond Rio player the previous at CES and was blown away by the
implications) Because the memory of the MP3 players is so limited,
they'll visit your store frequently to download new music. They'll
come to your store for what they always have, to get inside
information from your staff and to talk with other buyers. The real
security in this business model is that you're not just selling
music; you're selling the experience of buying music. Your new store
will make the experience something the customer will value. Gone
(and thankfully so) will be row upon row of dusty CDs in grimy
plastic cases. Instead, your customers will browse the complete
catalogs of the record labels on computers and create their own
collections. While your business will change operationally, you'll
still be selling music but I would emphasize, without a nightmare of
retail inventory and you will most likely be in the position to offer
your customer something they cannot get at the big boxes that are
currently beating you about the face and head, and that's a pleasant
experience.

Labels: music, RIAA

Labels: peabody

Labels: celebrities, endorsements

All I can say is that wasn’t the Newt I gave a standing ovation to at the Oxford Union in 1985(I very rarely give standing ovations), nor the one who appeared at the National Review Institute Summit a couple of months ago. He seemed off his game somewhat, and was perhaps trapped by a desire to seem reasonable on the issue, which Kerry exploited to the full.

Labels: environment, global warming, wingnuttery

Labels: economy

Labels: video, you tube

Corzine may not have been buckled up

CAMDEN, N.J. - Gov. Jon S. Corzine was apparently not wearing his
seat belt as required by law when his official SUV crashed into a
guard rail, leaving the governor hospitalized in critical condition,
a spokesman said Friday.

A state trooper was driving Corzine to a meeting between Don Imus and
the Rutgers women's basketball team Thursday night when another
vehicle, swerving to avoid a pickup truck, hit the governor's SUV and
sent it into the guard rail on the Garden State Parkway.

The crash broke the governor's leg, six ribs, his sternum and a
vertebrae. Authorities were searching for the pickup truck driver
blamed for causing it.

Corzine, 60, did not suffer any brain damage in the crash. But he
won't be able to resume his duties as governor for several days, if
not weeks, and he won't walk normally for months, Dr. Robert Ostrum
said performing surgery on the governor Thursday night at Cooper
University Hospital.

Labels: corzine, imus, new jersey

BAGHDAD (AP) A raging, daylong battle erupted in central Baghdad on Tuesday and four Iraqi soldiers were killed, 16 U.S. soldiers were wounded and a U.S. helicopter was hit by ground fire at the close of the second month of the massive security crackdown on the capital.

...

The resumption of violence was in stunning contrast to Monday, when a 24-hour driving ban left the capital eerily quiet on the fourth anniversary of its capture by American forces. But just hours after the ban was lifted before dawn Tuesday, artillery fire echoed across the city. By day's end, at least 52 people were killed or found dead nationwide in strife confined mainly to Sunni enclaves.

...

In Muqdadiyah, most of the victims of the woman suicide bomber had taken police exams just days earlier and were assembled to learn the results

more here

Tens of thousands of followers of young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad on Monday, protesting the continued presence of US troops in Iraq. They burned US flags and held up posters saying, "America will fall, will fall." Chillingly, some of the demonstrators appeared to be soldiers in the Iraqi army. -- Christian Science Monitor

The U.S. military announced the weekend deaths of 10 American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday.

-- AP Story here

Must read

Robert Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?

Labels: Iraq

Prosecutors drop charges in Duke case

RALEIGH, N.C. - North Carolina's top prosecutor dropped all charges
Wednesday against the three former Duke lacrosse players accused of
sexually assaulting a stripper at a party, saying the athletes were
innocent victims of a "tragic rush to accuse" by an overreaching
district attorney.

"There were many points in the case where caution would have served
justice better than bravado," North Carolina Attorney General Roy
Cooper said in a damning assessment of Durham County District Mike
Nifong's handling of the sensational, racially charged case. "In the
rush to condemn, a community and a state lost the ability to see
clearly."

Cooper, who took over the case in January after Nifong was charged
with ethics violations that could get him disbarred, said his own
investigation "led us to the conclusion that no attack occurred."

"I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people,"
Cooper said in a news conference held before dozens of reporters in
the press room at the arena where Raleigh's NHL team plays.

...

The Duke case was troubled almost from the start. DNA failed to
connect any of the athletes to the 28-year-old stripper. One of the
athletes claimed to have ATM receipts and time-stamped photos that
provided an alibi. It was also learned that the stripper had leveled
similar gang-rape allegations a decade ago, and no charges resulted.

The case came down to her word against the athletes, and her story
kept changing. In December, Nifong dropped the rape charges after the
woman said she was no longer certain she was penetrated.

Nifong came under furious criticism from the community, the
university and other members of the bar for pressing ahead with a
case that they said seemed pitifully weak.

The district attorney withdrew from the case in January after the
North Carolina bar charged him with making misleading and
inflammatory comments to the media about the athletes under
suspicion. It later added more serious charges of withholding
evidence from defense attorneys and lying to the court.

Labels: duke, race

Labels: imus

From Salon:

I like to consider myself a progressive thinker in general, and specifically when it comes to sex. I'm very interested in representations of sexuality in culture, am an attentive reader of gender theories, and have worked in both editorial and writerly capacities with sex as a theme.

I also consider myself open, curious and nonjudgmental in trying new things in practice. So what I'm wondering this morning is why, as a thoughtful and "progressive" person, did I so instinctively feel uncomfortable (and, I don't know, jealous?) when my boyfriend casually mentioned he'd been looking at porn yesterday? (Mentioned it casually, and then got defensive and dismissive when I told him of my discomfort.)

I know it's common to look at porn. And I like it, too (though I wouldn't say it's part of my regular routine). But for some reason, I have this primitive and unenlightened hope somewhere in my subconscious that my boyfriend is only turned on by me. Am I deceiving myself by considering myself open-minded? Am I really a Victorian?

Partially, I think, it could be leftover feelings from my last relationship, with a man who very much liked a specific type of porn (think Leg Show), and would use it to spite me when I was too tired (or angry, disheartened, etc.) to have sex.

---

It is important to be specific and factual. Porn is not a drug -- it is not a substance. But it is a mind-altering phenomenon. It affects the nervous system quickly and powerfully.

It is sex crack. It is dangerous. While it is dangerous and many dangerous things are against the law, it is not a good idea to outlaw it. Giving the state more power over our lives is like giving the sex addict more porn. It makes the state sicker and sicker. But for those of us who can't handle it, we have to face what it is, why it is so powerful.

...

It reaches right into your pants is what it does. That's kind of weird, isn't it, to have something come out of the computer and reach into your pants? Maybe you want it reaching into your pants and you're fine with that, you asked it to reach in your pants. But maybe it's just entering your eyeballs and then reaching into your pants and then it feels good but not entirely because something about it isn't right, because it's a little like being molested, isn't it?

...

It's not so much that he is cheating on you with these images. It's more that the images are cheating him of who he is. He is being robbed. He's being molested by porn.

Labels: cary tennis, sex

Since President Bush came into office, the Justice Department has made 'voter fraud' prosecutions a high priority. Yet, not for lack of effort, they've barely been able to find any examples of it. The grand effort has boiled down to a program to send a few handfuls folks -- mainly black -- to jail for what are in almost every case notional or unintentional voting infractions.

. . .

Another example is that of Pakistani immigrant Usman Ali. He'd been in the US for ten years and owned a jewelry store. He was in line one day at the DMV when a clerk put a registration form in front of him along with other forms. Ali hastily filled it out. He never made any attempt to vote. But the mistake got him deported back to Pakistan where he's now trying to rebuild his life with his US citizen wife and daughter.

We're certainly lucky to be rid of Mr. Ali and his efforts to undermine our democracy.

Most of the examples, like these, are genuinely disgusting -- non-malicious errors for which people get serious punishment because federal prosecutors are under immense pressure to find someone to indict for voter fraud. But it's also easy to get lost in or distracted by the individual stories. The bigger picture is what you need to focus on. And the picture looks like this.

Republican party officials and elected officials use bogus claims of vote fraud to do three things: 1) to stymie voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in poor and minority neighborhoods, 2) purge voter rolls of legitimate voters and 3) institute voter ID laws aimed at making it harder for low-income and minority voters to vote.

. . .

The tie-in with the US Attorney story is that the White House and the Republican National Committee have used the power of the Department of Justice to accomplish those three goals that I outlined above. Only most of the relatively non-partisan and professional US Attorneys simply didn't find any actual fraud. Choosing not to indict people on bogus charges got at least two of the US Attorneys (Iglesias and McKay) fired. And we are seeing evidence that others may have been nudged out less directly for the same reasons. In turn they've been replaced by a new crop of highly-political party operative prosecutors who, in the gentle wording of the Times, "may not be so reticent" about issuing indictments against people who have committed technical voting infractions with no intent to cast a fraudulent ballot. Along the way, the fever to find someone, anyone guilty of committing even a technical infraction has landed folks like Ms. Prude in the slammer. They are what you might call the prosecutorial road kill in the Rove Republican party's effort to ride roughshod over American citizens' voting rights to entrench the GOP as the country's permanent electoral majority.

Who's running all this? Who's put it all in motion. Look at the documents that have already been released. It's been run out of Karl Rove's office at the White House.

-- Josh Marshall

Labels: Bush, gonzales, Justice

People are dying in New York City. Of course, professors may close their classes if they wish, and students may miss classes if they wish. But this University will remain open. And to anyone whom asks why, it is this. We don't know yet what has happened, but the chances this happened by accident are nil. Someone did this. Someone did this instead of negotiating, talking, communicating. This University will stay open today because Education is the silver bullet. Education is how we reach people. Education is how we build a world together. I grieve for the people dying and dead in New York and for their families. This is a sad day. Thank you.

Trash Talk Radio
By Gwen Ifill - Op-Ed Contributer - The New York Times


LET'S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather.

The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women's basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.

In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee's Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers' Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That's the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It's what explodes so many March Madness office pools.

But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded "nappy-headed ho's" — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The "joke" — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.

The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he's done some version of this several times before.

I know, because he apparently did it to me.

- - - - - -

Whatever. This is not about me.

It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.

Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus's program? That's for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don't know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.

Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It's more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well.

So here's what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field.

Let's see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.

Gwen Ifill is a senior correspondent for "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and the moderator of "Washington Week."

Labels: imus, racism

Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

Labels: comedy, imus, racism

The sun was shining, the temperature stayed a few degrees north of bone chilling and the Shea Stadium stands were packed tighter than a clown car. The only ones not cooperating for the Mets’ home opener yesterday were their opponents, the Philadelphia Phillies, whose young left-hander Cole Hamels thwarted them through six innings before he left with a two-run lead.

With Hamels gone, the Mets did what good teams are supposed to do against suspect bullpens, erupting for seven runs in the eighth inning to coast to an 11-5 victory.

To the delight of the sellout crowd of 56,227, a franchise record for a home opener, the game turned when Philadelphia shortstop Jimmy Rollins, whose preseason proclamation that the Phillies were the team to beat in the division provided good tabloid fodder, booted a one-out, bases-loaded grounder by José Reyes that allowed the tying run to score. In a matter of minutes, after David Wright’s two-run double and Moises Alou’s two-run single, the Mets had demoralized a Philadelphia team that lost its third consecutive game and dropped to 1-6 this season. “It just happened,” Carlos Beltrán said. “When Jimmy made that error, everything changed.”

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Wolfowitz Pays Arab Gal $200,000 Per Year To Fuck Him

World Bank boss and Neocon sociopath Paul Wolfowitz can’t manage to buy new socks, but he has given his Arab girlfriend $61,000 in raises for a job she actually left years ago — to work for Elizabeth Cheney at the State Department!

The girlfriend of the married Wolfowitz, Shaha Ali Riza, now earns $193,590 per year from the World Bank — that’s more than Condi Rice makes as secretary of state. And she apparently doesn’t even pay taxes, since she’s not an American.

Wolfowitz, who has the morals and dignity of a feral dog, finally put out a memo today taking “full responsibility” (he’s not quitting) for brazenly stealing money from the world’s poor to pay for his adulteress. The World Bank’s board will fire him later this week.

Wolfowitz Responds to Controversy Over Staffer [WSJ Washington Wire]
Earlier: Paul Wolfowitz Too Busy Ruining

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Indeed, all that is on the table now is the restated Saudi peace initiative, calling for full peace with Israel after full withdrawal and justice for Palestinian refugees - with no maps, details or Arab plan for how to pursue it with Israel. And we have the Saudi-brokered Mecca peace accord between Hamas and Fatah, which doesn't even acknowledge Israel.

If you read the Mecca agreement, said [Dennis] Ross, "Israel appears only as an adjective, not as a noun. Israel only appears in the agreement modifying words like 'aggression' and 'occupation,' but never appears as a noun - much less as a state to be recognized." '

' "Recognizing Israel" or any other state is a formal legal and diplomatic act by one state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate - indeed, nonsensical - to talk about a political party or movement [e.g. Hamas or Fatah] extending diplomatic recognition to a state.
...

' "Recognizing Israel's existence" appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgment of a fact of life. Yet ... what Israel? within what borders? Is it the 55 percent of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78 percent of historical Palestine occupied by the Zionist movement in 1948 ...? The 100 percent of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967? ... Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would necessarily place limits on them.
...

'There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba -- the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 -- is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.
...

'To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to ... imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive.

(via Portside )

Labels: israel, mideast, palestine

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Boom for corn drives planting record

Friday, March 30, 2007

NEW YORK: U.S. farmers are planning to plant more corn this year than at any time since World War II as farmers rush to cash in on high prices bolstered by demand for ethanol.
The United States Department of Agriculture released a report Friday on prospective plantings that estimated that American farmers would plant 90.5 million acres of corn in 2007, a 15 percent increase over last year and the most since 1944.

Considered one of the most highly anticipated agriculture reports in years, if not decades, the prospective plantings report promises to have broad implications throughout the agriculture, food and energy sectors.

The rush to plant corn comes at the cost of other crops, particularly soybeans and cotton. The Department of Agriculture said that if farmers followed through with their stated intentions, soybean acreage would drop 11 percent and cotton acreage would fall 20 percent.

"This year, we are planting wall-to-wall corn," said Webb Bozeman, a farmer in Flora, Mississippi, who normally plants cotton, corn and soybeans. "Corn is profitable. Cotton is pretty much break-even at best."

Commodity markets reacted immediately to the report, with corn futures falling 5 percent. Soybean futures also fell, about 3 percent, but they have gained more than 30 percent over the last year on expectations that farmers would reduce acreage. Cotton futures rose about 0.5 percent.

With corn prices expected to soften, at least temporarily, the report should ease concerns about rises in food costs, which had started to tick upwards.

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US 'no longer technology king'

The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.
The US is now ranked seventh in the body's league table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations.

A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said.

The top spot went for the first time to Denmark, followed by Sweden.

Innovation

Countries were judged on the integration of technology in business, the infrastructure available, government policy favourable for fostering a culture of innovation and progress and leadership in promoting the usage of the latest information technology tools.

The Networked Readiness Index, the sixth of its kind published by the World Economic Forum with Insead, the Paris-based business school, scrutinised progress in 122 economies worldwide.

Despite losing its top position, the US still maintained a strong focus on innovation, driven by one of the world's best tertiary education systems and its high degree of co-operation with industry, the report said.

Labels: technology