Prometheus 6

That Privilege Meme simply will not die, moving now among a number of blogs written by people of color, and generating infinitely more complicated discussion about class, gender, and race than were evident in the early rounds rounds of denial, discrediting, and general disdain of the very idea of class privilege....

I’m finding the discussions in this round of the meme to be particularly intriguing, because in every single conference session I’ve done on class, people in the audience (both white and people of color) stand up to argue that if we open the door to talking about class, whites will have an excuse to simply stop talking about race....

In contrast, the conversations on which I’ve eavesdropped this week are rich, frank, and complicated. Sample them here at Racialicious, The Apostate, What Tami Said, Postbourgie, Prometheus 6 and The Luscious Librarian

Are there other conversations about class and race out there this multi-faceted?

Still haven't gotten to the good stuff.

When Eugene Robinson said "There's also a pretty solid consensus on what's racist and what isn't" yesterday, I disagreed. I thought there's a consensus on what is racist but not on how to establish it or what to do about it. We on P6 have had two rather interesting threads on the cross blog Billary discussion that made me realize I was wrong. There's an idea need clarification.

Slavery is not racism. Racism is not slavery. And some of your minds just went into overdrive looking for objectionable moral implications, but I'm warning you: I'm not talking about anything more than the physical fact that they are different phenomena linked by the fact that, in this country, one was the justification of the other. So when you say "racism," all the slave imagery leaps forward.

In a speech earlier this month, the city’s mayor, Cory A. Booker, said the city would “set the national standard for urban violent crime reduction.”

Since homicide detectives have fewer new investigations to handle, the police said they were using the lull to try to resolve old cases. The Essex County prosecutor, Paula T. Dow, said her investigators were also looking at old cases, with the help of a new federal grant that would allow them to take a closer look at DNA evidence.

“When you keep adding on increased resources, manpower and strategizing, you’re going to reap results in the long run,” Ms. Dow said. By the end of June, law enforcement officials will know better whether a real change is under way, she said. “I’m hoping for the best.” 

You can understand the doubters. But at least Booker has the responsibility properly assigned. 

In Calmer Newark, the Unease Persists
By KAREEM FAHIM

A veto of the FISA bill endangers Americans
Olbermann: The president is demanding immunity for the telecoms yet, he can’t confirm they did anything for which they need to be cleared

Are Britney’s civil rights being violated?
Her conservatorship battle may be headed to federal court
Access Hollywood
updated 6:59 p.m. ET, Fri., Feb. 15, 2008

A stunning development in the Britney Spears conservatorship battle has left lawyers and legal experts scratching their heads all over Los Angeles.

It appears that the case, which involves a small army of lawyers, is now stalled until an unusual (to say the least) dispute can be resolved. What it boils down to is this: are Britney Spears’ civil rights being violated by the conservatorship which has been engineered by her parents?

In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.

Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote
By SAM ROBERTS

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

I actually had an obscenity in mind instead of 'messing' but I'm tired of Google searches sending perverts over here... 

I’d like to know why, after the better part of a year, the authorities are still tormenting some of these kids. Why are charges still hanging over 10 of them? Why should it take more than nine months to resolve charges of unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct?

A number of the kids have missed days at school to show up for court dates at which nothing of consequence happens. Asher Callender, a senior at Bushwick Community High School, had to go to court on Friday, only to have his case postponed again until March 3.

Cruel and Gratuitous
By BOB HERBERT

It happened last spring.

The police commissioner’s office and a New York City police captain tried to convince the public that a marauding band of kids had gotten out of control and terrified residents, motorists and pedestrians on a street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

The cops were wrong. And they must have known that they were wrong, that the picture they were creating of youngsters climbing on top of cars and blocking vehicular and pedestrian traffic was completely false.

U.S. Struggles to Tutor Iraqis in Rule of Law
By DAVID JOHNSTON

BAGHDAD — A mob had gathered by the time the F.B.I. agents arrived at the house where an assassin’s bomb killed nine people last year, narrowly missing a deputy prime minister. Fearing their own lives might be at risk, the agents gave themselves no more than 30 minutes to collect evidence.

As agents worked inside the house, an Iraqi police commander outside ordered the arrest of a man on the fringe of the crowd, according to American agents who were at the scene. The man later confessed to complicity in the attack. The case, if it could be called that, was quickly closed.

But it was never really clear to American investigators whether the man was actually guilty, or whether the Iraqi police coerced his confession. As an attempt at Iraqi-American cooperation in law enforcement, the investigators said, the episode was clearly disappointing.

F.D.A. Seeks to Broaden Range of Use for Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — When federal drug regulators approve a medicine for sale, they limit how drug makers sell it. A drug approved to treat only breast cancer cannot be marketed for lung cancer even if some studies suggest that the medicine may save lung patients.

But the Food and Drug Administration proposed guidelines Friday that would change this, and advocates on both sides of the issue say that lives are at stake.

The rules would allow drug and device makers to provide doctors with copies of medical journal articles that discuss product uses that have not been vetted or approved by the F.D.A. The rules also say that drug companies do not have to promise to adequately test the unapproved use discussed in the article.

Advocates of the rule say the F.D.A. is so slow in assessing drug and device benefits that companies need to be able to hand out medical journal articles so that doctors can learn immediately about life-saving uses....

But critics of the proposal say that drug and device companies have a long history of promoting unapproved drug and device uses that later proved dangerous and that allowing companies to talk about such unapproved uses removes incentives for companies to research adequately whether the new use is actually beneficial.

“People will die if they are getting drugs that don’t have clear evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s health research group.

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, said the proposed rule “caters to the industry’s desire to market their products without adequate testing or review.”

The F.D.A. will accept comments from the public on the proposal and take it up for final consideration in 60 days.

The American carmakers’ problems underscore the need for a government-backed system of universal health care, which would relieve some of the costs that have made competing so much harder.

A Fighting Chance?

There seems to be no end to the Big Three automakers’ woes. This week, General Motors offered a new buyout plan to its 74,000 unionized workers in the United States — those who didn’t take the 2006 buyout offer. The Ford Motor Company and Chrysler also have plans to buy out thousands of employees. Still, there is a glimmer of hope: the companies plan to hire new workers to replace at least some, and perhaps a substantial share, of those they let go.

Maybe next election, okay? 

Read Their Lips

A year ago, before Barack Obama’s prodigious fund-raising powers were clocked in at $1 million a day, the senator made a great show out of raising a good idea: He would take the narrower road of public financing in the general election if he secured the nomination and his opponent did the same. Senator John McCain, then a long shot, agreed. Mr. Obama even secured a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that he could return unused private donations and then accept public financing.

Well, Mr. McCain is now the presumptive Republican nominee and says he is eager to take Mr. Obama up on the idea if he beats Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sounds good? Not so fast.

Representatives of Mr. Obama are cautiously saying this plan was an option, not a pledge, and it will not be definitively addressed unless Mr. Obama secures the nomination. An idea floated by a contender is now too “hypothetical” for a front-runner.

A Crime-Fighting Opportunity

In October, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a smart new law that will help police apprehend violent criminals and deter the gun traffickers who supply them. The measure requires that all new semiautomatic pistols sold in the state starting in 2010 be equipped with technology known as microstamping, which will allow police to quickly match empty bullet casings to the weapon that fired them.

Legislation that would extend that requirement nationwide has just been introduced in both houses of Congress. It deserves full support from lawmakers of both parties, and both sides of the gun control debate.

The microstamping process uses lasers to make microscopic markings on a gun’s firing pin and other internal surfaces, identifying the weapon’s make, model and serial number. When the gun is fired, this information is stamped onto the bullet casing, providing an immediate lead for investigators to pursue when casings ejected from the weapon are found at a crime scene.

He said

If I were advising the Republican nominee, this is one of the places I’d ask him to plant his flag. I’d ask him to call for a new human capital revolution, so that the U.S. could recapture the spirit of reforms like the Morrill Act of the 19th century, the high school movement of the early 20th century and the G.I. Bill after World War II.

Doing that would mean taking on the populists of the left and right, the ones who imagine the problem is globalization and unfair trade when in fact the real problem is that the talents of American workers are not keeping up with technological change.

True...very few people can write integrated circuits by hand. Few can write an operating system, much less the microcode they run on top of. I don't even know anyone that writes in assembly anymore...they used to be falling out of the Windows [sic].

And because they made sure you couldn't tell them apart. 

The operative word in all of this, of course, is “seemed.”

A Crisis of Faith
By PAUL KRUGMAN

A decade ago, during the last global financial crisis, the word on everyone’s lips was “contagion.” Troubles that began in a far-away country of which most people knew nothing (Thailand) eventually spread to much bigger countries with no obvious connection to Southeast Asia, like Russia and Brazil.

Today, we’re witnessing another kind of contagion, not so much across countries as across markets. Troubles that began a little over a year ago in an obscure corner of the financial system, BBB-minus subprime-mortgage-backed securities, have spread to corporate bonds, auto loans, credit cards and now — the latest casualty — student loans.

Indeed, this week the state of Michigan suspended a major student-loan program because of the sudden collapse of another $300 billion market you’ve never heard of, the market for auction-rate securities.

Body mods and tatoos (<--SERIOUSLY not safe for work)

Clinton’s Delegate Tactics
By Chris Suellentrop

Has Hillary Clinton lost the netroots? Josh Marshall, perhaps the ur-blogger for online Democrats, writes at Talking Points Memo that Mrs. Clinton is “carving a path to the nomination through the heart of the Democratic party.”

Marshall is one of many liberal bloggers who object to the Clinton campaign’s attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination with superdelegates instead of with victories in primaries and caucuses across the country. Others dislike her campaign’s pledges to attempt to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at the Democratic convention in August, even though those two states held their primary elections in defiance of the rules imposed by the Democratic National Committee.

Being unapologetically racist or sexist is no longer acceptable in this country, at least in most settings. The social censure for being publicly racist, though, is well codified; the perpetrator must recant and repent, and may never completely eliminate the taint. There's also a pretty solid consensus on what's racist and what isn't [P6: I disagree...more accurately, there's a consensus on what is racist but not on how to establish it or what to do about it]. The views on sexism are less settled.

The Clintons' Beef With the Media
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, February 15, 2008; A21

Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators -- as Bill Clinton suggested but didn't quite come out and say in a radio interview Tuesday -- basically in the tank for Barack Obama?

Synthetic fuel concept to steal CO2 from air
By Nancy Ambrosiano
February 14, 2008

Green Freedom™ for carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuel and chemical production

The Laboratory has developed a low-risk, transformational concept, called Green Freedom™, for large-scale production of carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuels and organic chemicals from air and water.

Currently, the principal market for the Green Freedom production concept is fuel for vehicles and aircraft.

I got this by email.

Don't click that link. It does not go to the Listerhill Credit Union Online Banking. It goes somewhere that will have to break a god damn Pulitzer Prize winning story before they get another link.

Why was it a bad idea?

An annual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico has appeared earlier this year than in the past, suggesting it might be larger this summer.

The dead zone is created by spring runoff, which carries fertilizer and other nutrients into the Gulf. Phytoplankton blooms around river mouths spread. When the creatures die and sink to the bottom, their decomposition strips oxygen from the water, creating inhospitable conditions for other marine life.

The lack of oxygen is called hypoxia. 

Commercial Ocean Fertilization Project Halted
By Andrew C. Revkin

Planktos, the California company trying to turn a profit by fertilizing the ocean with iron dust, pulled the plug on planned field tests on Wednesday, citing a lack of funds. At the company’s Web site, planktos.com, a simple notice blamed the shutdown on a “highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders.”

The business plan had been to sell “carbon offset” credits earned by triggering blooms of phytoplankton that, in theory, would absorb a predictable amount of the climate-warming gas carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then sink to the seabed. The credits would be sold to companies or individuals trying to compensate for unavoidable emissions of carbon dioxide (from driving, flying, and the like).

US Judge Scalia on 'So-Called Torture'
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER
Associated Press Writer
4:54 PM CST, February 12, 2008

LONDON

One of the United States' top judges said in an interview broadcast in Britain on Tuesday that interrogators can inflict pain to obtain critical information about an imminent terrorist threat.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that aggressive interrogation could be appropriate to learn where a bomb was hidden shortly before it was set to explode or to discover the plans or whereabouts of a terrorist group.

"It seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say you couldn't, I don't know, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face. It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia told British Broadcasting Radio Corp.

It's important to note that these criteria describe an overarching pattern: a group needs to score high on at least 10 or 12 of these to be within even hailing distance of "cult" status. On the other hand, just about any group trying to create social change is going to partake of at least a few of these qualities.

The Cult of Obama
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
-- by Sara

Every political news outlet, from the networks to the blogs, is abuzz today with the question: Is the Obama phenomenon a cult?

People -- particularly Hillary partisans -- are eagerly putting this idea out there. I want to make it very clear before I get started that I'm not a partisan of either candidate: there are things about them both that have my skepticism pegged to the limit. Personally, I'm for the Democrat. But when it comes to the topic of what is or ain't a cult -- that's something I know something about. Or, at least, I seem to understand it a bit better than most of the people who are bandying the term around today.

Diabetes Treatment Risk Not Found in 2nd Study
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; A03

One week after U.S. researchers announced that pushing down blood sugar levels as close as possible to normal might be dangerous for high-risk diabetes patients, a preliminary analysis of a similar international study has found no such risk.

The seemingly conflicting findings, released yesterday, stoked the uncertainty about the best strategy for treating Type 2 diabetes, one of the most common health problems in the United States and elsewhere.

"This unfortunately just makes things more confusing," said Richard Kahn of the American Diabetes Association. "I think patients will be confused. I think doctors will be confused. So I think the message is: 'Don't do anything until we get this sorted out.' "

George Bush Visits Africa to promote the US Africa Command
Horace Cambell (2008-02-14)

Horace Campbell look at Bush's visit as an attempt to further militarize the continent and consolidate US holding.

One year after the announcement that he United States government was going to accelerate the militarization of Africa, President George Bush is embarking on a journey to Africa to coerce African societies to align themselves with the neo-conservative agenda of the present US administration. President George Bush will visit five African countries between February 15 -21. The countries are Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. George Bush is a lame-duck President who cannot visit real global players so this visit to Africa is an effort to shore up the credentials of the neo-liberal forces in Africa while promoting the conservative ideas of abstinence as the basis of the fight against the HIV –AIDS pandemic.

Exactly one year ago, in February 2007, President Bush of the United States of America announced that the Defense Department would create a new Africa Command to coordinate U.S. government interests on the continent. Under this plan all governmental agencies of the US would fall under the military, i.e, USAID, State Department, US Department of Energy, Treasury, and Department of Education etc. Already within the US academic community, the interests of the Pentagon has been placed before all other interests.

In pursuance of the plans for the militarization of Africa, the US Department of Defense announced the appointment of General William “Kip” Ward (an African American) as Head of this new Military command. On September 28, 2007, Ward as confirmed as the head of this new imperial military structure and on October 1 2007, the new command was launched in Stuttgart, Germany. The major question that is being posed by African peace activists and by concerned citizens is, why now? Why is a lame duck President seeking to gain more support in Africa?