NEW YORK'S 'DIGNITY FOR ALL STUDENTS' ACT: Bill Addresses Tension Between Asian & Black Students.
Violence rises between Asian and African American Students in NY Schools

(May. 14, 2004) Civil Rights laws are kicking up in New York with the rising tension between Asian and African American students in New York's public high schools. A proposed state law focusing on prohibiting discrimination and harassment of students in public schools on the basis of race, color and sexual orientation will now probably pick up in its progress.

The Dignity for All Students Act was passed by the New York State Assembly. In order to become law it still has to be passed by the State Senate and Governor George Pataki must sign the bill into law.

The bill sets guidelines and policies for how schools can best remedy incidents of harassment or discrimination and incidents must be reported. Some New York City school authorities have denied that Asians are targeted for more bullying and harassment than students of other ethnicities.

But at a recent public hearing, parents and students from the Korean and Chinese American community said Asian students are becoming the target of physical attacks and verbal harassment, particularly by African American students, and that they were being picked on because of their ethnicity.

And I remember enough high school French to understand what this says.

Next weekend, to watch With All Deliberate Speed. It's only playing in five cities, and (of course) NYC is one of them.

Here's the trailer. You'll need RealOne or some variant.

New Limits On Tactics At Prisons
U.S. Commander Bans Some Interrogation Methods
By Bradley Graham

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, May 15, 2004; Page A01

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has barred military interrogators from using the most coercive techniques potentially available to them in the past, declaring that requests to employ the measures against detainees will no longer even be considered, officials said yesterday.

The directive from Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez comes in the face of a political uproar over disclosure earlier this week that U.S. interrogators had been allowed to request permission from Sanchez to use a range of tough interrogation tactics on a case-by-case basis.

Since October, officials said, Sanchez has approved 25 such requests, all involving prolonged isolation of detainees, the officials said. But interrogators were free under the previous policy to seek authorization for other, more severe measures, including sleep deprivation, diet manipulation, stress positions and the use of dogs to threaten detainees.

Three requests to place detainees in stressful positions to get them to talk were submitted but denied at the brigade level, the officials said without disclosing the reasons for the rejections.

The noise over Movable Type 3.0 is amazing. I've already given my position, which is basically that I'll switch if I need to, but I don't need to now.

I've read a lot of opinions that really struck me like some people are unwilling to pay under any circumstances. Liz Lawley at Many-to-Many has read the many complaints and discusses the repercussions of the shock to the system so many MT users feel:

What seems clear is that this announcement has created a significant change in how people perceive the blogging tools playing field. The folks over at pMachine have started a “Make the Switch” campaign; they’re offering free copies of their new ExpressionEngine software to the first 1000 “switchers,” and promise a competitive upgrade price to follow. Shelley Powers, Slashdot and MeFi have pointed a slew of users to WordPress and TextPattern.

On top of those “install it yourself” options, SixApart is also now facing competition on the hosting front from a much-improved new Blogger (complete with integrated comments!), and the final release of Tucows’ BlogWare.

I think we’re watching a significant moment in weblog history. Justified or not, the anger among MovableType’s users will push many of them to new tools, and has permanently changed the perception of SixApart by its customers. The users have spoken, and the landscape has shifted.

Tough. Real tough. I have to admit that free ExpressionEngine thing made my ears come to a point. When I was looking at blogging software, Wordpress was a serious contender. I've also looked at Textpattern and it has serious potential. And it will be the basis for even more competition for Typepad. Blogware looks…well, a lot like Typepad, except I can't find anything about remote posting via XML-RPC or Ato m, and you only get one type of syndication feed (though you can choose from any of the major existing types). You can expect them to pick up on it, I'm sure. The vast majority of potential bloggers have neither the knowledge to maintain their own site nor the interest in learning. They just want to USE stuff. Blogware is a hosting platform. Textpattern will be the basis of one. Typepad has a serious running start but everyone is duplicating their functions. For personal blogging, the future is hosted services and I'm willing to bet that was an element in the corporate pricing thing.

It's not Movable Type that has competition so much as SixApart (I'm not one of those folks that get to say "Ben and Mena"). MT already has a solid reputation and is obviously going corporate, to which I respond "What did you expect with Joi Ito involved?" Movable Type is angling to be the most reasonable content management system available…I've seen more than a few commercial sites that look like they could be run on MT, and the clarification of terms posted this morning makes that especially clear (you can charge for supporting MT 3.0, whereas that was against the terms of the 2.x license).

They ARE trying to clean it up. In case you don't feel clicky today:

No. For anyone who is complying with the license of 2.661 or below, there is no requirement to upgrade to 3.0 or any future version of Movable Type. The license which was in effect when you downloaded your version of Movable Type is the one that applies to your copy.

The single CPU usage statement was not intended to be in the license. It has been struck from the license, and everyone who has downloaded Movable Type 3.0 thus far can officially consider this change retroactive.

However, we have heard a number of criticisms that personal users feel they are locked out of using Movable Type, or forced into using a commercial license, if they have more than 10 weblogs. We created volume licenses to address these cases but they didn't sufficiently address a number of scenarios.

To address this, we're doing 3 things:

• We're adding a new "Personal Edition Add-On" package that gives someone who has purchased a Personal Edition license the ability to buy 1 new weblog and 1 new author for $10. You can purchase as many additional author/weblog packs as you want, each for $10.
• For the Personal Edition, we're increasing the number of allowed authors from 3 to 5. The number of allowed weblogs will still be 5.
• We're clarifying what we consider a weblog (see the next question)

And a "weblog" is whatever is addressable from a single URL, so all you folks with sideblogs and such are safe.

Bush is vowing again…

Bush Vows to Prevent Further Prison Abuses in Iraq
Sat May 15, 2004 04:03 PM ET

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Saturday he was determined that Iraqi prison abuses will never happen again, as he took stock of a difficult week in Iraq.

In his weekly radio address, Bush again suggested the abuse scandal was limited to those directly involved at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. He pointed out that charges have been filed against seven soldiers and the first trial is set to begin next week.

"My administration and our military are determined that such abuses never happen again," Bush said. "All Americans know that the actions of a few do not reflect the true character of the United States armed forces."

And you know what happens when Bush makes a vow, right?

Though horror stories may be more appropriate than comedy…
Campaign Provides Fertile Ground for Comics
Sat May 15, 2004 04:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the U.S. presidential election approaching, late night television comics are poking fun at the candidates. Here are some of the lines broadcast on Friday:
NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno":

Leno, taping his show from Las Vegas, said it was hard to do topical humor in America's leisure capital: "In Las Vegas ... you don't read the newspapers, you don't follow the news," Leno said. "After five days here I feel like President Bush."

Leno said Bush, asked why the troops in Iraq didn't follow the Geneva Conventions in their treatment of prisoners, replied: "We're not in Geneva, we're in Iraq."

ABC's "Late Show" with David Letterman:

Letterman, who taped his show at 4 a.m. in New York City, talked about what various people might be doing at that hour:

"And down in Washington, President Bush is resting comfortably at home in bed," he said, "just like he did in the National Guard."

U.S. Protests at Mexico Jail Torture, Murder
Fri May 14, 2004 07:28 PM ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The United States, under fire internationally for abusing Iraqi prisoners, complained on Friday about the treatment of a U.S. murder suspect in Mexico who it said was tortured then stabbed to death in jail.
Texan Mario Medina, held on suspicion of killing a newspaper editor in the violent border city of Nuevo Laredo, was murdered by a fellow prisoner in the city's Cereso II jail on Thursday night.

The State Department had complained to Mexican officials in April that Medina had been tortured to make him confess to the murder of the journalist, who campaigned against drug traffickers and government corruption.

"The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has sent a strongly worded diplomatic note to the government of Mexico asking for a full investigation into the murder of Mr. Medina," U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Tamaulipas state prosecutor's office, said a prisoner stabbed Medina to death with a makeshift knife for carrying out a sexual assault on him.

"I imagine that the assault by this person was such that the other one could not contain himself," spokesman Ruben Dario Rios told Reuters.

Top U.S. Court Denies Bid to Block Gay Marriage
Fri May 14, 2004 07:52 PM ET

By Mark Wilkinson
BOSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a last-ditch challenge to block the scheduled start of gay marriages on Monday in Massachusetts, but conservative opponents vowed to continue fighting.

Massachusetts moved one step closer to becoming the only state in the nation where gay couples may legally marry as the Supreme Court denied without comment an emergency request for injunctive relief filed by conservative groups.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a similar rejection earlier in the day but said it would hear arguments in the case next month -- by which time hundreds, possibly thousands, of gay couples are expected to be legally married.

The last-minute legal challenge to gay marriage in Massachusetts was brought by a number of conservative groups and lawmakers from across the country. One of the plaintiffs, the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, said it would press for a halt to gay marriages at next month's hearing.

"The battle over same-sex marriage is far from over. In fact, it is just beginning," said Liberty Counsel President Mathew Staver. "The circumstances in Massachusetts underscore the need for a federal constitutional amendment to preserve marriage between one man and one woman."

Gaza Pullout Rally Draws 100,000 in Israel
Sat May 15, 2004 04:01 PM ET

By Gwen Ackerman
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Mounting the Israeli peace camp's biggest protest in years, more than 100,000 people rallied Saturday demanding a Gaza pullout after Palestinian militants dealt Israel's army its deadliest blow since 2002.

Crowds packing Tel Aviv's main square added to a growing public clamor for withdrawal from the war-torn territory, which Israelis increasingly see as a quagmire like Lebanon before troops moved out in 2000 amid mounting casualties.

The killing of 13 soldiers by militants in the Gaza Strip this week has deepened already strong support in Israel for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan, stalled by hard-liners in his right-wing Likud party.

The rally evoked memories of fierce public protest that led to Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon after a 22-year occupation that cost the lives of hundreds of troops in fighting against Hizbollah guerrillas.

Israel's top brass are concerned that Palestinian militants may have adopted Hizbollah tactics in their latest ambushes in Gaza, where 7,500 Jews live in hard-to-defend settlements amid 1.3 million mostly impoverished Palestinians.

The rally, mounted by a peace camp that has been largely dormant since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000, began hours after Israeli helicopters hit Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza in apparent retaliation for the soldiers' deaths.

Rumsfeld Approved Iraq Interrogation Plan -Report

43 minutes ago

By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a plan that brought unconventional interrogation methods to Iraq (news - web sites) to gain intelligence about the growing insurgency, ultimately leading to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the New Yorker magazine reported on Saturday.

Rumsfeld, who has been under fire for the prisoner abuse scandal, gave the green light to methods previously used in Afghanistan (news - web sites) for gathering intelligence on members of al Qaeda, which the United States blames for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the magazine reported on its Web site.

Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman Jim Turner said he had not seen the story and could not comment. The article hits newsstands on Monday.

Here's proof:

FINDING HONOR IN ABU GHRAIB (William F. Buckley)

William F. Buckley - Several voices, trying to sway the public temper -- if not exactly to overlook the grim events, at least to put them in an anesthetic perspective -- are saying: "So's your old man." And there is no questioning the truth of it, which is that the people to whom President Bush has extended an apology are people who have spent very little time deploring the atrocities of the enemy we have faced and continue to face. They are, then, hypocrites.

My position is simple and straightforward-every event that affects Black people affects me. Therefore there is a connection between myself and other Black people that I must respond to in some fashion. What the mainstream thinks of Black people in general becomes my starting point in any new situation. My feelings of kinship with Black folks represents my recognition that my fate is linked to that of everyone else of visible African descent and my feelings of loyalty represents my recognition that the fate of everyone else of visible African descent is linked to mine.

What problem can anyone have with this that's not based on the desire to be considered first?

Support'

Later, Moore revealed he had smuggled three camera crews into Iraq to film disillusioned US soldiers for his new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Moore's film will have its world premiere on Monday.

He was speaking for the first time since his public row with Disney, who had refused to distribute the film in the US because of its anti-Bush message.

Fahrenheit 9/11 looks at life in the US in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the onset of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Moore sent the crews into Iraq after disaffected soldiers wrote to him, he said.

"I was able to sneak three different freelance crews into Iraq," he said.

The soldiers had "express disillusionment that they had been lied to", said Moore.

Same view as from the inside. It's just that foreign newspapers can just say it without nasty letters coming in.

---

A promise not kept

In 1954, the US supreme court outlawed segregated schools in a landmark case that gave rise to the civil rights movement. Fifty years on, Gary Younge visits Milwaukee, the most divided city in the US, to examine its legacy

Saturday May 15, 2004
The Guardian

Where Martin Luther King Drive meets Brown Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, things suddenly get dark. Not dark as in bleak, but dark as in skin. Heading north, past one of the city's three black newspapers and the country's only Black Holocaust museum, the only white faces you see for miles are the handful who stop to fill up their cars. And then, as quickly as they vanished, they will reappear as you approach deepest suburbia, a place called River Hills.

"It's like a foreign country to most whites," says Dennis Conta, 64, a public policy consultant and former state legislator, who is white, referring to the city's north side. "Most whites have never been in those neighbourhoods. They don't need to. With the freeways, they can just drive right past. You could spend three hours walking the streets before you saw any white people there, if you saw any at all."

Turn your car around, heading south towards the city centre and the huge sign for Usinger's sausages, and things lighten up. Not light as in mood, but light as in skin. At Walnut, a few streets down from Brown, Martin Luther King Drive disappears, changing its name to Old World Street. "White people weren't at all ashamed or embarrassed to say, 'We don't want this part of the street to be named after Martin Luther King,'" says Carla Allison, who runs People's Choice, a black bookshop on the street. White people visit the shop occasionally, she says. "Usually, it's a student who's required to read a book for class or a white person who's got a black friend."

I mean, other than all the blood.

U.S. Troops Battle Militiamen in Iraq
U.S. Troops Battle Militiamen in Najaf, Karbala, but on Smaller Scale Than Previous Days

The Associated Press

KARBALA, Iraq May 15, 2004 — American troops fought militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday in Najaf and Karbala, though the confrontations in the two holy cities in Iraq's southern Shiite heartland were less intense than in previous days.

The U.S. military also announced the deaths of five soldiers, including three killed by rebel attacks.

They start calling their enemies "militiamen" instead of "gunmen."

So, Kevin Drum is startled by the Allies all saying they'll leave after June 30^th "if we're asked to."

SOVEREIGNTY UPDATE....On Wednesday I mentioned that the UK foreign secretary had told a talk show host that if the Iraqis wanted us to leave after June 30, then we'd leave. I was....surprised.

Then, on Thursday, a State Department lackey said that was our policy too. However he was contradicted shortly afterward by Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, the policy and plans director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On Friday, Paul Bremer contradicted Sharp's contradiction: we'll leave if the Iraqis ask us to, he said. Finally, later on Friday, Colin Powell, echoed by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy and Japan, confirmed that this was everyone's policy: the Iraqis are in charge after June 30. If they want us to leave, we'll leave.

What do you think are the odds they'll ask us to leave? Pretty small, I'd say. It'll be a demand.

People are getting all confused about this. Apparently the people who've been supporting this drop dead date only did so because they didn't really believe the troops would be gone. The point was to be able to claim no responsibility for any grief that arose after that date…hopefully that would give folks enough time to forget about it by the time November came around.

Kevin pointed to a TNR article which says:

It's not like Bush hasn't put his political interests ahead of the nation's. Remember when Bush signed on to the November 15 Agreement, which locked us into this June 30 deadline for transferring power? He didn't do that because Iraqis had significantly increased demands for political authority--he did it because the U.S. took several weeks of pronounced, dramatic casualties in the insurgency, such as the downing of Black Hawk helicopters, and he saw what images like those would mean in an election year.

Now an election year is here, and the images aren't getting any better. Bush needs to say whether he agrees with Powell and Bremer. (And if he says he doesn't think Iraqis would tell us to leave, that's playing with fire, as the post below argues.)

So why the surprise?

I'll tell you what surprises me: Powell getting his mouth to fit around another talking point. I'm more interested in whether Powell agrees with Bush

Well, I guess I'm not surprised. He's the closest thing the Bushistas have to a trustworthy entity. And he is, after all, a Good German Soldier.

I saw this at Hullabaloo.

You can't see the writing on the base, but it says, "We are living American democracy," and was completed two months ago.

Print on demand makes packaging specific to any demographic possible,

MaxSpeaks is having a contest.

EXCITING CONTEST
Submit your entries here for the most vicious thing posted by someone on the Instapundit blogroll. (Naturally, IP posts are eligible too.) Please limit your verbatim entry quotation to one hundred words. Don't forget to include the link. Comments are excluded, unless posted by the blogger hosting the site. Make sure the quote is true to the context. We want the really bad stuff, not the stuff that just looks bad. We want to expose the pulsating, putrescent, black heart of jingoist wingnuttery. Please insert asterisks in words of profanity, racial/ethnic abuse, and the like (i.e., sh*t).

The MaxSpeak management will select the five best (worst) entries and put them up for a vote. The winner will receive the princely sum of $50. (PayPal registration required.) Deadline for entries is June 15, 2004.

One of his readers kicked in for a second and third prize.

Since I stole Josh Marshall's whole post the other day I'm just going to tell you this is his reaction to yet another insider account of the Bush presidency:

Now, certainly no one is perfect when it comes to subjecting and then resubjecting their viewpoints to fresh facts or challenging their assumptions with intelligently stated contrary views. I can't claim to be. But it's one thing to fall short of the mark and another to work out a system of self-rationalization and denial to ensure you come nowhere near the mark. And this is it in spades.

He doesn't even need the yes-men who "extract" the "facts" from the news articles. He's his own built-in yes-man.

How could we have ignored so many warnings, so much expert advice, so many facts staring us in the face? The president just gave you the answer

All you folks burning up the net looking at decapitations and such aren't helping support the notion that America isn't like that.

Are you?

A LITTLE LATER: Oliver hit it:

It's voyeurism, pure and simple. Yes, there is outrage when people see the video, but people want to see it because it's a version of splatter porn. I wish that weren't the case, but it is.

I have to admit some of those new Blogger templates look pretty damn good.

Speaking of blogging, I've been reading a lot of complaints about the new licensing plan from SixApart. Me, I have no complaints. P6 fits nicely within the guidelines for the free version (I'm going to plead ignorance on the number of CPUs my host runs) and I have little need for tech support.

You know, I could see folks getting upset if they really, really had plans to blow up. But you know, this version ain't bad. Honestly, between the base product and all the plug-ins, what do you want to do that you can't already? And whenever I read something like, "I should have known better to go closed source," I'm like hey, it wasn't a problem last week. I'll be honest, free was HELLA more important than open source.

I'm not biased because I wrote MTClient. It would take me a day or two to optimize it to post to Wordpress. And though I've been seriously delayed I'm still thinking community site, and at this point that requires another package; Scoop, PHP-Nuke, something. I'm just saying that what we've had up until now is a lot like that computer you bought last year. There may be newer stuff, but it still has everything you're comfortable with.

of why you don't want to see Ashcroft with P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act powers

But here's where it starts getting weird: More than a year after the ship boarding, the Justice Department indicted Greenpeace itself. According to the group's attorneys, it's the first time an organization has been prosecuted for "the speech-related activities of its supporters."

How far did the government have to stretch to make its case? The law it cited against boarding ships about to enter ports was passed in 1872 and aimed at the proprietors of boardinghouses who used liquor and prostitutes to lure crews to their establishments. The last prosecution under the "sailor-mongering" act took place in 1890. The new case could be like something straight out of "Master and Commander."

The matter goes to trial next week in a federal district court in Miami, and if Greenpeace loses, the organization could be fined $20,000 and placed on probation. The money's no big deal; outraged supporters would probably turn such a verdict into a fundraising bonanza. But the probation would be. The group might well be prevented from engaging in any acts of civil disobedience for years to come. If it crossed the line, the group's officers might be jailed and its assets seized. Since civil disobedience is what Greenpeace does best, the Justice Department might in effect be shutting the group down.
That would be too bad, and not just for Greenpeace. The potential precedent here — that the government can choke off protest by shutting down those who organize it — undermines one of the most important safety valves of our political life.

During the civil rights era, Southern sheriffs used every law they could think of to jail protesters — loitering was a favorite charge. Imagine some group being put on probation because it had helped organize sit-ins. But even J. Edgar Hoover didn't try to criminalize the NAACP. As the veteran civil rights campaigner Julian Bond said recently, "If John Ashcroft had done this in the 1960s, black Americans would not be voting today, eating at formerly all-white lunch counters, or sitting on bus front seats."

I did mention Watching Justice before, right? That where I got this press release.

In a letter to President Bush, the American Civil Liberties Union called the prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq a "predictable result" of American detention policies that have deliberately skirted the rule of law and American values. The ACLU demanded in the letter that the government immediately comply with its seven-month-old Freedom of Information Act request for information on the reported torture of detainees held in the war on terrorism.

"Abu Ghraib wasn't the result of a couple of lone sadists in the military - it was a direct and easily foreseen consequence of detention policies that lack transparency and safeguards against this type of abuse," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. The ACLU also notes that the revelations at Abu Ghraib also shine new light on the 9/11 detainee abuses by the Justice Department, detailed in two internal reports by the department's own inspector general.

The American Civil Liberties Union's website features a collection of materials that focus on the nation's policies for detention of enemy combatants abroad - and the disturbingly similar conditions at many American prisons.

To view the materials on American detention policy on enemy combatants, including at the controversial Abu Ghraib prison, please click here.

To view materials on conditions in U.S. prisons, please click here.

Nearly 10% of U.S. Prisoners Are Serving Life Terms

A report released by the Sentencing Project on May 11, 2004 reveals that nearly 10% of state and federal inmates are serving life sentences, an increase of 83% since 1992. The report blames the increase on punitive laws adopted by Congress and the state legislatures in the 1980s and 1990s, and not to the crime rate, which actually fell 35% from 1992 to 2002. The report – entitled "The Meaning of 'Life': Long Prison Sentences in Context," can be found on the Sentencing Project's website at http://www.sentencingproject.org/pubs_10.cfm.

Higher incarceration rates and longer sentences have vastly increased the cost of prison systems at a time when states are struggling under record budget shortfalls, the report says. The Sentencing Project estimates the cost of incarcerating an inmate who serves a full life term at $1 million. According to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, "the very broad application of life sentences has blurred the distinction between what is a really serious crime deserving a life sentence and some crimes where there is less culpability."

Three people came here after searching for "scott mcclellan beheading video"

Okay, I admit he's annoying and no where near as clever as Ari was. Come Black English Month I'm not going to have nearly as much fun with Scott as I did with Ari.

But even I think beheading is a little much for him. Maybe they were looking for the origin of that bald spot…

John, the actual guy who runs Discriminations, pointed to an article about Auburn University's very successful program for recruiting women and minorities into the Computer Science field.

AUBURN - Auburn University is the unlikely home of the nation's highest concentration of black computer science faculty and graduate students in the country.

Additionally, it has a greater concentration of women in its graduate computer science program than just about anywhere else.

That's not just trivia, according to Juan Gilbert, one of those black faculty members and the director of the Human-Centered Computing Lab. The ability to recruit women and minorities into the field of computer science and engineering may turn out to be key to keeping the nation's technological edge, he said.

The National Science Foundation has taken notice. The foundation has approved a four-year, $1 million grant to study Auburn's success at bringing women and minorities into the field and design a way to duplicate it at other universities.

John's snide comments make it apparent he doesn't like the idea of this program.

Objective proof the Bushistas just make shit up? Let's see. The FBI and CIA are broken and don't communicate anyway.

Our humint is insufficient and even that which we have is provided by ex-patriots with an axe to grind and a nose for personal power.

Extra! Read Nothing About It
By William Powers
William Powers is the media critic for the National Journal.

May 14, 2004

"I've stopped reading the newspapers," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday in Baghdad to a gathering of soldiers, who broke out in rousing applause.

It was a joke. Or was it? After all, this is not exactly an administration of news junkies. The president himself admitted last year he "rarely" reads news stories, relying instead on the more "objective sources" on his staff to tell him what's happening in the world. (Truth be told, White House staffers often outshine real journalists. That story they did about the African uranium was unforgettable, like a great novel.)

And our government officials don't read the newspaper.

No wonder things are so munged up.

They ain't taking it down. It's been up there for over a year. That's as long as I've known about it.

Question of note:

My question is, for whom is this photo gallery intended? Does anybody seriously think blacks are going to be swayed by one staged photo op after another, in which time and again their confederates are cast as the pitiable recipients of an ostentatious display of kingly compassion?

No. Black people are so not Republican that the only Black folks on their radar screen are the ones that promise to deliver the Black vote and the occasional symbolic gesture sitting by the door.

Maybe it's for the president's white supporters, anxious lest they be visited by tinges of self-doubt over their own arguable racism in continuing to support such a state of affairs.

Yup. It's for folks like the guy who left this brutally racist comment left here…that's the Discriminations blog, in case you already saw it the other day. Remember?

And, yes, blacks do have things to give in return. The ability to combine the spiritual and the sensual so characteristic of the black church is something that whites desparately need.

Anyway:

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He's the Picture of Racial Compassion
The president's website is chock-full of nifty photographs. But does Bush think that images of him hanging out with black people is enough?
By Lawrence Weschler
Lawrence Weschler, author of the forthcoming book "Vermeer in Bosnia," heads the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.

May 13, 2004

Quick. Before they take it down. Go to your computer, log on to http://www.georgewbush.com — the official Bush/Cheney '04 reelection website.

OK, now notice how running horizontally along the top there's a row of file tabs: Economy, Compassion, Health Care, Education, Homeland Security and so forth.

So, hmmm: Compassion. What could that mean? What might that involve, thematically speaking? Click the tab, and there you are on the Compassion page.

Nice big picture of Bush merrily shooting the breeze with two black teenage girls. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll find a quadrant labeled Compassion Photos, with the invitation, "Click here for the Compassion Photo Album." Do so.

Californians, you may have participated in an historic event.

But you may have made yourselves history too.

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Deal-Cutting Schwarzenegger Opts to Put Off the Pain
By Peter Nicholas
Times Staff Writer

May 14, 2004

SACRAMENTO — In crafting a budget at a time when the state faces whopping shortfalls, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced a clear choice.

He could have tried to fix all the structural failings in the state budget now. That would have required a tax increase — breaking a key campaign promise — along with deep spending cuts that would have angered supporters of public schools, local government officials and recipients of social services. While he might have been able to force such a budget through, the effort would have been long, arduous and damaging to his credibility, political analysts said.

The alternative was to come up with a spending plan that stood a good chance of passing on time with minimal rancor. The governor hoped that would enhance a growing public perception that the paralysis in Sacramento was lifting and bolster public confidence that state government could resolve its problems.

Schwarzenegger chose the smoother road.

Under his revised budget, the gap between what the state spends and what it takes in may persist in future years. In fact, the deficit may be tougher to eliminate down the road because of some of the spending commitments Schwarzenegger is making now.

But he is betting that government reforms will produce savings and that the economy will pick up, boosting revenues to a level where the deficits can be wiped out with minimal pain. Moreover, the governor said that producing a budget that kept his major promises, reduced partisan acrimony and restored public confidence was a crucial first step toward confronting the state's stubborn problems.

Californians, you may have participated in an historic event.

But you may have made yourselves history too.

---

Deal-Cutting Schwarzenegger Opts to Put Off the Pain
By Peter Nicholas
Times Staff Writer

May 14, 2004

SACRAMENTO — In crafting a budget at a time when the state faces whopping shortfalls, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced a clear choice.

He could have tried to fix all the structural failings in the state budget now. That would have required a tax increase — breaking a key campaign promise — along with deep spending cuts that would have angered supporters of public schools, local government officials and recipients of social services. While he might have been able to force such a budget through, the effort would have been long, arduous and damaging to his credibility, political analysts said.

The alternative was to come up with a spending plan that stood a good chance of passing on time with minimal rancor. The governor hoped that would enhance a growing public perception that the paralysis in Sacramento was lifting and bolster public confidence that state government could resolve its problems.

Schwarzenegger chose the smoother road.

Under his revised budget, the gap between what the state spends and what it takes in may persist in future years. In fact, the deficit may be tougher to eliminate down the road because of some of the spending commitments Schwarzenegger is making now.

But he is betting that government reforms will produce savings and that the economy will pick up, boosting revenues to a level where the deficits can be wiped out with minimal pain. Moreover, the governor said that producing a budget that kept his major promises, reduced partisan acrimony and restored public confidence was a crucial first step toward confronting the state's stubborn problems.

Quote of note:

The election commission's 6-0 decision to postpone action for three months ostensibly means Democratic-leaning groups such as the Media Fund, America Coming Together and MoveOn.org Voter Fund can continue spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising and political activities opposing President Bush.

FEC commissioners made clear Thursday that even if they take action later this year to rein in the groups, new rules would have no bearing on the November election.

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Panel Won't Restrict Unlimited Political Spending by Groups
By Lisa Getter
Times Staff Writer

May 14, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission stepped aside Thursday from regulating the unlimited contributions that have been flowing into the 2004 presidential race from the Democratic side, setting the stage for an outpouring of money from Republican donors who have mostly remained on the sidelines.

In a closely watched decision, the FEC voted not to restrict the so-called 527 groups that have been spending unlimited money aimed at helping presumed Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. The commissioners said they needed more time to review their options.

FEC Commissioner Michael Toner, a Republican who had urged his colleagues to take action, said he was disappointed and predicted the competition for dollars would grow even more feverish in a year when fundraising records are already being routinely shattered.

"We're going to see a dramatic escalation of spending by 527 organizations on both sides of the aisle. It's inevitable," Toner said. "The 2004 election is going to be the Wild West."

A pattern of culpability in Iraq
By Helena Cobban

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – Almost every day, additional details have emerged about the serious abuses committed by personnel in US-run prisons in Iraq. These reports are deeply disturbing. But the abuses they tell of form only the tip of an iceberg of culpable mismanagement that has characterized the Bush administration's Middle East policy for many months.

…The April events combined for a "perfect storm" of anti-US hostility. All that was before the pictures of the Abu Ghraib tortures started to appear.

The essence of any democracy is the accountability of officials to the citizens they claim to serve. The decisions this administration has made regarding key aspects of its Middle East policy have significantly harmed the interests of the US citizenry along with those of Iraqis and Palestinians. Things may still get much worse for the US - in Iraq and elsewhere. But it didn't have to be this way: There were several points in the past 15 months where culpably faulty decisions were made. Who made them? Who will be held accountable?

And how many more people - Americans and others - will be killed before the US reverses this disastrous course?

If I were one of those super-villains that ran around in a costume but didn't have no powers? Those guys that always escape while the henchmen get their heads handed to them? The ones with the secret hollowed out mountain to hide out in when shit gets all stank? The guys who have secret organizations that infiltrate the government, perverting its mechanisms toward their own dastardly* ends? If I was one of those guys?

I'd just smash all those Middle Eastern countries. Fuck trying to rebuild them.

If I was evil.

Turn 'em over to the UN after their good and screwed. I got my fabulous wealth and secret hideaways, being pronounced a failure in this regard would mean nothing to me.

Because, you see, the UN only knows how to build one kind of nation, one kind of economy. They very kind that will fall right into my lap via the various international organizations at my command.

BWAAAAAHahahah!

If I were evil, that what I would do.

Wolfowitz: Iraq, Afghan costs could top $50B
Lawmakers, official tangle over control of spending

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost more than $50 billion next year, a top Defense Department official told Congress Thursday in the Bush administration's clearest description yet of the conflicts' price tags.

The remarks by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's edged the administration toward critics' estimates that combat will cost closer to $75 billion in the budget year that starts October 1. White House budget chief Joshua Bolten earlier this year had said that next year's spending would probably be $50 billion.

Wolfowitz also seemed to open the door to compromise over the White House's unusual request for full control over the first $25 billion for the wars. Congress is expected to provide the money, but members of the Senate Armed Services Committee lambasted the unfettered flexibility the proposal would give the president.

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Look what happened last time you trusted him with a bag of money. Instead of spending it where he promised…Afghanistan…he used it to prepare for the invasion of Iraq.

Bizarre New Link In Berg Murder

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports on what is turning into a bizarre mystery with a connection to 9/11.

U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before 9/11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.

But in the wake of Berg's gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger than fiction coincidence -- an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one notorious al Qaeda operative is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative.

Rights of gene-altered kids, clones spill from TV plot - to reality
By Lori B. Andrews
CHICAGO - A new television series on CBS, "Century City," portrays the challenges facing lawyers in the year 2030: criminal cases about human cloning, malpractice cases about genetic testing, and domestic disputes over uploading an ex-lover's personality into electronic appliances.

While the plots sound like outrageous flights of fancy, they resemble current legal controversies and highlight the need for action now to regulate our Brave New World.

I've seen firsthand the far-reaching impacts of new technologies. When Dolly the sheep was cloned, the government of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, asked me to help create a legal framework for cloning men (and only men). When adult siblings publicly battled over one's decision to have their late father's head placed in cryogenic storage, I was called for a legal opinion on the rights of severed heads. When a fertility doctor refused to give back a woman's frozen embryo, I handled the case, obtaining the return of her potential child. When the federal government decided to finance the Human Genome Project, I headed the national advisory commission on ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding this scientific odyssey.

I'm hoping "Century City" will inspire people to demand appropriate legal policies about the genetic technologies, reproductive technologies, and nanotechnologies that are reshaping our lives. Congress is now considering whether insurance companies may deny coverage to healthy women who carry a gene believed linked to increased risk of breast cancer. [P6: We interrupt this paragraph to focus your attention correctly on the previous two sentances. Thank you.]Courts are determining whether a couple can sue a sperm bank because their healthy baby was not as attractive as they wished - and whether a girl born with a disability can sue her parents for not aborting her when prenatal tests revealed the problem.

So I got off my last comments at Blogcritics yesterday and OSP today. I got comments and feedback and support, but you know I could just stay on the topic (don't worry, I won't). I read all the trackbacks and such and I have to say that S-Train is to be congratulated in running his place such that he can post something titled I'm A Black Partisan! and have a couple of white folks come back like this:

Why? Why is it wrong to be proud of your racial identity?

In our PC world, it's not wrong for you but it is wrong for me. Racial pride I mean, not ethnic pride like Big Swain. I'm proud of my Polish heritage and I celebrate that.

I cannot walk around and proclaim the awesomeness that is my whiteness - because I'd look like a flipping racist. I'd be called a racist and I'd feel like one.

It doesn't matter one bit that my family historically had NOTHING to do with slavery or the suppression of civil rights felt by blacks in America. My whiteness makes me guilty - on sight.

I've been beat down a few times because of my whiteness and nobody gave a good goddamn that I was the first "American born" person in my entire family. My whiteness alone was proof of my guilt.

It's just different for black folks. Just like it's different for Mexicans or Asians. Your physical appearance is a part of your ethnicity. And you know what? That's okay. I wish it could be different but it's not. We will never erase the sin of slavery in this country nor should we. White skin is a symbol of that evil.

That's Rosemary, The Queen of All Evil by the way.

See? No screams, no hysterics…no lack of indication of her opinion of the situation.

I love this stuff.

I found Radiomax, a Hungarian site that serves up several flavors of music. I am currently hooked on their Chillout station, which is more of a world-beat thing than anything else.

The next music purchase, in fact, is Arabica II - Voyages Into North African Sound. Rachid Taha got a thing called Barra Barra on there, and I don't know what the hell he's saying, but it's been like that with American music for like YEARS anyway so I can just feel the beat. Human voice as musical instrument.

Then there's Mystic Radio, all New Age all the time. I find I like Celtic music, go figure. They got this really soothing cute-chicks-in-heaven sound going. And SomaFM is like the San Francisco version of Radiomax. Okay, SomaFM has been around much longer, but they don't have a classical channel. Still, they were my first regular net station and I still get my tchno fix there. The jazz thang is SwissGroove. Yup. Switzerland.

It would probably be bad to tell Windows users about Stationripper. Linux types tend to keep up and so probably know about Streamripper already so I could probably mention that. But it's probably safer not to mention either of them.

I don't buy Nike shoes, by the way. Reebok is it. Since there's no fundamental difference between the two I get to pick my own standards of choice between them.

---

Gap Seeks Better Conditions at Global Garment Factories
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
May 13, 2004

Gap Inc. reported Wednesday that many overseas workers making the retailer's clothes are mistreated and vowed to improve conditions by cracking down on unrepentant manufacturers.

The San Francisco-based owner of the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores made the comments in its first ever "social responsibility" report — a 40-page document that mixed contrition about the past with promises to do better in the future.

"We feel strongly that commerce and social responsibility don't have to be at odds," Gap Chief Executive Paul Pressler told a small gathering of shareholders Wednesday at the company's annual meeting.

Gap's report comes after nearly a decade of wrangling with labor rights groups and other organizations over the company's alleged mistreatment of workers around the world. Although labor activists praised the company for making its findings public, others noted that Gap's efforts come much later than — and, in some cases, fall short of — other apparel companies such as Reebok International Ltd.

"It's positive that they're coming out with a report that moves this issue of social responsibility forward, but the reality is that the Gap produces in countries where workers don't have basic rights and they leave countries where workers do have basic rights," said Medea Benjamin, the founding director of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization that organized protests and boycotts of Gap in the 1990s over what it said was Gap's use of "sweatshop" labor. "They're coming late to it, definitely, and they came kicking and screaming."

Wisconsin paper begs readers for pro-Bush letters
May 12, 2004

MADISON, Wis. -- Faced with a scarcity of letters praising the president, a newspaper in a Republican-leaning district appealed for pro-Bush letters, then backed off the request Tuesday amid complaints of blatant politics.

Last week in an editorial, the Post-Crescent said most of its letters had been coming from one side and asked readers ''to help us 'balance' things out.''

On Tuesday, the newspaper, located in Appleton, Wis., with a daily circulation of just over 56,000, stepped back from the appeal. Executive editor Andrew Oppmann said the paper's intentions had been misinterpreted.

---

Misinterpreted? I hardly think so.

Doesn't this kind of blatantly expose the bizarre concept of "balanced reporting?" Sometimes there is no other side to speak of.

This about says it all.

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And Gary Trudeau, as usual, cuts to the heart of the matter.

CBS News just played a bit of an interview with a guy who was a contractor…truck driver, actually…in Iraq for Halliburton.

He was paid $10,000 per month, tax free.

How much are the regular army and reservists getting per month?

Email potna sent it, complete with URL

Quote of note:

For what is taking place in Iraq is child's play compared to what we did in the Philippines a century ago. Only there, they did not have digital cameras, videocams and the Internet.

Somehow that's not making me feel a lot better.

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A time for truth
Posted: May 12, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Patrick J. Buchanan
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

With pictures of the sadistic sexual abuse of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison still spilling out onto the front pages, it is not too early to draw some conclusions.

The neoconservative hour is over. All the blather about "empire," our "unipolar moment," "Pax Americana" and "benevolent global hegemony" will be quietly put on a shelf and forgotten as infantile prattle.

America is not going to fight a five- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will we be launching any new invasions soon. The retreat of American empire, begun at Fallujah, is underway.

With a $500 billion deficit, we do not have the money for new wars. With an Army of 480,000 stretched thin, we do not have the troops. With April-May costing us a battalion of dead and wounded, we are not going to pay the price. With the squalid photos from Abu Ghraib, we no longer have the moral authority to impose our "values" on Iraq.

Bush's "world democratic revolution" is history.

Given the hatred of the United States and Bush in the Arab world, as attested to by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, it is almost delusional to think Arab peoples are going to follow America's lead.

It is a time for truth. In any guerrilla war we fight, there is going to be a steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded. There is going to be collateral damage – i.e., women and children slain and maimed. There will be prisoners abused. And inevitably, there will be outrages by U.S. troops enraged at the killing of comrades and the jeering of hostile populations. If you would have an empire, this goes with the territory. And if you are unprepared to pay the price, give it up.

Quote of note:

lawyers familiar with the cases say the justices cannot help but be affected by a scandal that has disturbed the nation.

"It depends on how Abu Ghraib is perceived" at the court, said David B. Rivkin Jr., a former Justice Department official who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of former State Department and military lawyers who back the administration. "If it's seen as individual abuses, and the system is working -- the military moved quite swiftly to investigate, punished those responsible -- that should reassure the justices…If it is perceived as indicative of a deep, systemic flaw, of the fact that the executive cannot be trusted, then it clearly would not be helpful."

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Iraq Prison Abuse May Hurt Administration in Court
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A22

U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners has undercut the Bush administration's legal rationale for key components of its anti-terrorism policies, with some officials privately worrying that the scandal may hurt the administration's chances of winning three test cases before the Supreme Court, lawyers close to the Bush legal team said.

At the court, the administration has maintained that military and intelligence officials engaged in the fight against terrorism should generally not be accountable to the judiciary for their conduct of military operations in wartime.

But the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison illustrate the potential for abuse when the executive branch exercises unchecked authority over its prisoners, said the lawyers, who described their conversations with administration colleagues on the condition of anonymity.

"Of course it hurts us like hell," said one private lawyer who has advised administration officials on terrorism-related legal issues. "I spoke to several people at Justice in the last several days . . . and they said it is clearly going to impact the justices."

The absurdity of this is, the material the ACLU was forced to remove is all on the public record.

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ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit
Justice Dept. Cited Secrecy Rules

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A27

When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.

But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules.

One paragraph described the type of information that FBI agents could request under the law[P6: Why wouldn't they want you to know that? Never mind…], while another merely listed the briefing schedule in the case, according to court documents and the original news release.

The dispute set off a furious round of court filings in a case that serves as both a challenge to, and an illustration of, the far-reaching power of the Patriot Act. Approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law gives the government greater latitude and secrecy in counterterrorism investigations and includes a provision allowing the FBI to secretly demand customer records from Internet providers and other businesses without a court order.

'Bush Link' Hurting Blair on Home Front
Polls Show Serious Damage to Standing, Fueling Speculation About Premier's Future

By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A20

LONDON, May 12 -- Tony Blair's unswerving support for President Bush over Iraq is doing extensive damage to the British prime minister's standing at home and could even lead to his resignation, according to politicians, analysts and polls.

Opposition politicians and critics within his ruling Labor Party are hammering away at the government over allegations that it failed both to properly investigate accusations that British troops have mistreated Iraqi prisoners and civilians and to raise with its U.S. allies accusations about American misconduct.

Blair's cabinet ministers have contradicted one another over how the government dealt with a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross about the abuses. And new polls indicate that the government could sustain big losses in elections for local government and the European Parliament next month as voters punish Blair over Iraq.

All of these problems have helped fuel a new round of speculation about Blair's future, with some colleagues in the House of Commons suggesting that he may feel compelled to step down this summer and turn over the reins to the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown. Blair's closest political intimates insist that will not happen.

Some politicians have advised Blair to distance himself publicly from President Bush, whose policies have never been popular here and who is now considered anathema to a broad cross-section of the British public. But people who know Blair well say there is no chance the prime minister will do so.

Lemurs Aren't So Dumb After All, Study Finds
Thu May 13, 2004 09:20 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lemurs, once believed to be cute but basically stupid, show startling intelligence when given a chance to win treats by playing a computer game, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

The study will help shed light on how humans became sophisticated mathematically, the Duke University team said.

So far, it suggests primitive animals such as lemurs need a good reason, such as a treat, to bother trying to count. Humans and monkeys, in contrast, will stretch their minds simply out of curiosity.

On the one hand, you have to be a bit disgusted with people need this kind of sexual outlet. At least grownups, you know? On the other hand, one would think the very act of selling, or selling access to, such pictures is enough justification to just line people up and slap the shit out of them. But on the next hand…

Wait a minute. I only have two hands.

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Cell-Phone Camera Snoop Ban Advances in Congress
Wed May 12, 2004 01:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that would outlaw "upskirt" photos and other forms of video voyeurism made possible by cell-phone cameras and other miniaturized technology.

The bill, which passed the Senate last September, would prohibit taking covert pictures in locker rooms, bedrooms and other places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Violators would face fines and up to a year in prison under the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, which passed the committee by voice vote.

Lawmakers say cell-phone cameras and tiny surveillance devices allow peeping toms to secretly take pictures in compromising situations.

S.Africa Grants Temporary Asylum to Aristide
Thu May 13, 2004 08:39 AM ET

PRETORIA (Reuters) - The South African government has approved temporary asylum for deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and will foot the bill for his stay, a government statement said on Thursday.

The decision will offer a welcome relief to both the United States and Haiti's Caribbean neighbors facing a major diplomatic problem over Aristide's sanctuary since he lost power in March in the face of a rebel uprising and U.S. pressure.

The offer of asylum also underlines the South African government's implicit view that the elected Aristide was unconstitutionally removed from power in a "regime change" sanctioned by President Bush.

The government statement repeated South Africa's call for a United Nations inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Aristide's fall from power.

India's Gandhi Sweeps Hindu Nationalists from Power

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's Gandhi dynasty swept back to power on Thursday on a shock wave of anger among millions of rural poor, who felt left behind by the country's economic boom and voted out the Hindu nationalist government.

U.S. Missile Shield Won't Work: Scientist Group
Thu May 13, 2004 10:02 AM ET

By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.

A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled Technical Realities.

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency rejected the report.

"It will provide a defense against incoming missiles for the first time in this country's history," said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman.

Lawyer Says Accused U.S. Spy May Have Abuse Proof
Tue May 11, 2004 09:33 PM ET

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) - A lawyer for a Syrian-born U.S. airman accused of espionage said on Tuesday that potentially damaging evidence of how detainees were treated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba may surface during his client's court-martial hearing.

Attorney Donald Rehkopf also said he is confident many remaining charges against U.S. Air Force translator Ahmad Al Halabi will be dropped. Thirteen charges were dropped or withdrawn by prosecutors during previous pretrial hearings under Judge Col. Barbara Brand.

Halabi faces charges of spying and misusing classified information while serving as a translator at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military base where the United States has imprisoned suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

"He complained how the detainees were being treated," Rehkopf said, declining to provide details.

Natalie At All Facts and Opinions (http://fando.blogs.com/fando/) is now Natalie At All Facts and Opinions (http://gratefuldread.net/).

A little history: Those who have been with us for eons may recall that AF&O started as the Grateful Dread Bulletin Board back in 1996. From there, it morphed into Grateful Dread on the Web (which still exists on Blogger) in '98, and then expanded to include The Armchair Activist and the news/commentary site Facts and Opinions (on various webhosts). FANDO became a blog on Blogger, then became All Facts and Opinions in 2001. Last year, AF&O and ARMACT, along with my Kynd Life lifestyle-and-recipe blog, found homes on Typepad. Now, as one unit (and before long, parts of Grateful Dread will be absorbed into this entity as well), we reside at Bloghosts using the Movable Type interface. I imagine the look will evolve over the next month, but for now, I am trying this blue and white face.

My goals remain the same: To inform, to inspire folks to get involved with making a better world, to create a little beauty in an increasingly ugly world, to have a little fun from time to time, and to express myself on a variety of subjects. My hopes have not changed either: I want equality for myself and all people. I want the planet protected and violence stopped. I want to see my kids and yours grow up in a peaceful, loving world that will nurture them.

This is a big deal. I changed my RSS feed and everything.

Check her if you're not familiar. She's as anti-race as I am anti-racist. This means we'll make many of the same points but some of you might be more…comfortable with the way she makes them.

About blackfeminism.org
What it is
A group weblog and discussion space for issues of gender, race, class and culture.

Why the site?
There has not been a comprehensive resource for black feminism on the web. Because it is a growing area of study and social analysis, resources — particularly online — have been very dispersed.

Okay, but what is black feminism? How is it different from feminism?
Feminism examines relationships and inequalities between men and women. But the history of the movement has been rooted in the white, middle and upper-middle class experience.

Black feminism looks at how race affects gender relations and how gender affects race relations. And because so many black women are also affected by poverty, many black feminists add class to the equation.

Black feminism is also inherently activist. But at the same time, it is very personal.

Want to gain a greater understanding of black feminism? Start with these resources (this is obviously NOT a comprehensive list):

HELL, naw I'm not giving you the links. Check the site.

Jason at Negro, Please with a remix of the Joe Taylor Debacle.

To the beat, now. Ya don't stop. Let's rock, rock, rock da house!

I'm checking people more than media this week. I'd like to believe the issues we have now are enough, that the news is on the resolution of currently open issues…but the last time I said something like that Mr. Berg got beheaded that day.

Anyway, Mike at Move The Crowd has issues with a post at WizBang.

I'll say right now, anyone who opens with "I'm going to use some racially insensitive language" has to tread carefully. Particularly if they are of the persuasion that is so rarely on the receiving end of it.

Having read Michael's post and Jay Tea's response to it at Move the Crowd, I conclude that Jay Tea was not intending to be offensive to Black folks, but he was generally offensive to folks who work against racism. There was no reason for "little darkies" or "sand niggers" other than to invoke a gut reaction.

Congratulations on a well executed plan.

The real problem with Jay Tea' s post is he perpetuates the Bushista meme "only racists oppose the invasion." This is a race hustler's position…a blatant playing of the race card. Jay wasn't the first, won't be the last, but if the mainstream doesn't see this as race baiting don't ever look to convince minorities that simply pursuing our own interests should be seen as such.

I'm hoping Josh Marshall doesn't mind me nailing the whole post. It's below the fold to save bandwidth for the many folks who will be reading Mr. Marshall's site anyway. And here's the crux of the matter:

I've been hearing for days that the State Department at the highest levels (i.e., not a few lefty FSOs in the bureaucracy, but authorized at the highest levels) has been leaking like crazy against the civilian leadership of the Pentagon on this story.

And here we have it right out in the open. Powell isn't exactly saying the White House or the president is lying. What he's doing might fairly be described as walking up to the black board, writing out "2+2=" and then letting us draw our own conclusions.

Between Poppy Bush's advisors appearing all over the place talking down the "logic" of invasion before the invasion and the number of folks cheered by Republicans writing books that infuriate the Bushista true believers, there's an outside possibility that the real Republicans are trying to take out the trash as hard as progressives are.

Of course, one would have to subscribe to some sort of conspiracy theory to accept that possibility.

Support a Renewable Electricity Standard for New York

New York State is considering the adoption of a renewable electricity standard to ensure that at least 25 percent of the state’s electricity comes from clean energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower by 2013. The N.Y. Public Service Commission, which is responsible for investigating and implementing the renewable standard, is currently accepting public comments on a recently released environmental impact statement detailing the environmental and economic costs and benefits of the standard. Please send the Commission a comment that describes the benefits of clean, homegrown renewable energy and calls for a strong renewable electricity standard for New York.

You know, it looks like the only way out of Iraq that will preserve our image and position in the world is to fund an independent U.N. mission to set up a national infrastructure for Iraq.

Hal is da bomb, yo. Compare this to that lame Limbaugh wimpering downpage.

So the next time you think you can come up with any justification of torture, just think about this. We all have to die sometime. And if living another 20 to 40 years means that I have to apply unbearable pressure to another human being to maybe, probably not, kinda, coulda, possibly get some pertinent information which may save a hundred thousand lives. . . Well, you're just going to have to count me out. It's not worth it. I'll look at you right in the eyes and wish you good bye as the bomb goes off. I'd rather die a human than have that crap on my soul before I leave.

And if you think that this is the easy choice - the wimpy choice - then I just have two words for you: Fuck You. Bite me and bite me hard, you undisciplined and pathetically weak thing. You've been given a large brain by mistake. The use you make of it can be easily accommodated by a spinal cord. Evolve for goodness sake.

For three years we've done nothing but take the easy way out. The way of least pain. We've let a sociopathic administration screw us over more than the last 10 administrations combined. And why? Because we're scared? Because we're lashing out in frustration?

Well get with the program. This isn't a game. We are over extended or depleted in pretty much every category that matters. Don't talk to me of repainted schools, or the occasional Afghanistan capitalist success story. Get a scale, dude, and make use of it. Start looking at the bigger picture where we're faced with the uncomfortable choice between another three decades of living hell or a long, hard slog of doing it the right way (or whatever approximation we can achieve).

LIMBAUGH: And there's this new website that the Libs have set up out there, and one of the things they have is a couple of guys that transcribe this program, and they select certain out -- outtakes or excerpts, and they put them on the Website, and it's become a clearinghouse for Lib propaganda.

LIMBAUGH: And never once have I been asked for detail, context, explanation. No one has asked me anything about -- and just because they don't want to know anymore than -- because that quote is just fine for their agenda-driven purposes.

LIMBAUGH: Here I am. Who -- who am I? I am a radio talk show host. I am a kid from Missouri who wanted to be on the radio. And now, all -- that's all I've ever wanted to do. I've wanted to be the best at what I am and the best at what I do. True. But on the radio.

LIMBAUGH: Now, all of a sudden, I have to be discredited in order for the Left to win. I have to be discredited for their agenda to gain primacy in this whole story. And so that Skull and Bones quote is everywhere. And it's being asked of everybody. "Do you condemn Limbaugh?" Not one of the people who has been asked to condemn me has bothered to get hold of me to say, "What the hell?"

You do hear it, don't you?

Heh. This whine is so cheesy, it's damn near a complete meal.

Ezra at Pandagon makes a pretty good point:

Al-Qaeda hardened our hearts yesterday. Abu Ghraib had dealt us a severe psychic blow, destroying the faith we held in our moral righteousness. The vicious and brutal murder of Nick Berg gave us the antidote to that doubt, reasserting who the true monsters were. Given the arc of this war, Bush's inability to prosecute it, the clear damage he was suffering from the torture, and his reliance on foils of pure evil to explain his case for reelection, I fear that Al-Qaeda wasn't strategically inept but quite savvy. Every day we're in Iraq we look weaker, every month with Bush at the helm we grow more separated from our allies. Reelecting the President would look to the world like an affirmation of the unilateralism and arrogance he represents, further widening the growing divide between us and them and separating us from those who add to our strength.

When attempting to divine Al-Qaeda's motives we must keep in mind that they're not focused on this war, they're focused on our eventual downfall. They want to destroy our country, not make us vacate Iraq's premises. Yesterday they struck a blow that blunted the impact of Abu Ghraib, hardened our resolve, and proved the President's "Us vs. Evil" rhetoric. Unlike Andrew, I'm not ready to call that stupid.

The Art of War teaches one to confront a powerful enemy by fight on ground they did not prepare for. And as much as the whole Iraqi invasion fits that description there are other battlefields the Bushistas are not only unprepared for but unwilling to see as being at risk.

What would it take for the Euro to become the preferred currency for oil trading?

What would happen in the US economy if that happened?

With every other reason having proved wrong, we're back to the war for oil speculation, but let's pretend oil had nothing to do with this war.

It will, sooner or later. Because it's the only weapon they have.

Saw this at Uppity Negro and had to share:

Your Negro Tour Guide
Who You Are

By Kathy Y. Wilson

You are eavesdropping. If we all spoke honestly to an unseen documentarian about gender, race and class, our diatribes would be manipulated by the seer's conceptualization of us. But it'd be little more than a schizophrenic filmstrip of whom we are when no one's looking and whom we assume we're projecting when we're certain someone is.

Is the gaze half full or half empty? Regardless, does it depend on the truth for fulfillment? Whose: the looker, subject or recorder?

Una-Kariim Cross opens shutters, presses "record," leaves nothing but residue in [P6: Okay, check the name] Prometheas' Visual Inversion: A Life Less Ordinary, her master thesis show currently in ArtWorks' Time Warner Cable Gallery downtown. (The show closes Friday with a reception at 6-9 p.m.)

[P6: Now check the purpose]"It's an examination of what it would be like if people communicated without the filters of stereotypes, materialism and fear," says Cross, a Lansing, Mich., native getting a master's degree in fine art from UC's College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning.

Man, even the title of the article fits my week so far.

That comment below that I lifted from a very erudite blog named Discriminations has been lurking in my subconscious because it may be the most blindingly racist statement I've ever read.

If you are white, demand real social interaction from blacks and demand something in return. This will produce positive change.

Understand what this says. It says we own him for the honor of his presence. That the way to end racism is for Black people to give white folks what little we have. This would indeed be a positive change for him.

And look at what he sees as the benefits of associating with Black people:

The ability to combine the spiritual and the sensual so characteristic of the black church is something that whites desparately need. The machismo and athleticism of black men is something that whites men should emulate. (And black men can learn to soften the machismo a bit.)

I haven't had to extenuate, modify or extract anything to show how brutally racist the statement is. And everyone in the thread cheered. Or banged rocks, or some shit.

It's time for the Racial Discrimination Licensing Act.

Well, Pat Oliphant is on the military chain of command.

And Ben Sargent is on the new sherrif in town.

While Tom Toles is on Rummy on responsibilty (among other things), with a critically funny second punch line.

Fear and technology

Agricultural giant Monsanto has announced that it is halting plans to sell the world's first genetically engineered wheat.

In a statement, the company blamed a 25 percent drop in demand for wheat. (The Atkin's diet strikes again?) But industry observers speculate the company was bowing to pressure from American farmers who fretted that wheat buyers in Europe and Japan wouldn't buy the wheat because of heated consumer opposition to genetically modified foods. Even worse, some buyers threatened not to buy any U.S. wheat over concerns that the GM-wheat might get mixed in with nongenetically modified wheat. That intermingling is hardly an idle worry. Recently, there have been reports from Mexico that modified corn from the U.S. has somehow appeared in cornfields there.

---

Of course, Monsanto's concern is their precious monstrosity falling into the public domain.

Man, 290 hits already. at 11:am.

In a way, I am taking advantage; Sitemeter says my page views per visit have remained constant during this surge, and I got a really flattering email from someone who, I suspect, was on that search. Given that most folks who come in looking for a video of the poor unfortunate look at one page and go, that means people who came and found it interesting here really found it interesting.

And I was already having one of those temporary surges based on referrals from OSP, Blogcritrics and the folks in the "My Heroes" list that blogged about it (to which I have to add Don at Nightcrawler, sorry dude, but not even a Chaos Lord is perfect). It may be largely those who came in by that method who read 5-10 pages at a clip.

Looks like Joe's plan to shame me into silence backfired. But it never works on people who have no self-doubt.

Meanwhile, someone spent five minutes trying to find out "which christian values does Prometheus uphold." I can't picture what inspired such a search, but I can answer it for the sixth reification.

None.

Christians don't own the values.

Now, if the question were "which values do both christian and Prometheus uphold" I'd consider responding in detail.

The Abu Ghraib Spin

appear to have settled on a way to deflect attention from the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: accuse Democrats and the news media of overreacting, then pile all of the remaining responsibility onto officers in the battlefield, far away from President Bush and his political team. That cynical approach was on display yesterday morning in the second Abu Ghraib hearing in the Senate, a body that finally seemed to be assuming its responsibility for overseeing the executive branch after a year of silently watching the bungled Iraq occupation.

The senators called one witness for the morning session, the courageous and forthright Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who ran the Army's major investigation into Abu Ghraib. But the Defense Department also sent Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, to upstage him. Mr. Cambone read an opening statement that said Donald Rumsfeld was deeply committed to the Geneva Conventions protecting the rights of prisoners, that everyone knew it and that any deviation had to come from "the command level." A few Republican senators loyally followed the script, like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who offered the astounding comment that he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the treatment of prisoners. After all, he said, they were probably guilty of something.

These silly arguments not only obscure the despicable treatment of the prisoners, most of whom are not guilty of anything, but also ignore the evidence so far. While some of the particularly sick examples of sexual degradation may turn out to be isolated events, General Taguba's testimony, and a Red Cross report from Iraq, made it plain that the abuse of prisoners by the American military and intelligence agencies was systemic. The Red Cross said prisoners of military intelligence were routinely stripped, with their hands bound behind their backs, and posed with women's underwear over their heads. It said they were "sometimes photographed in this position."

The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners — 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong — were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened. The Iraqi police, who operate under American control and are eventually supposed to help replace the occupation forces, are even worse — sending those who won't pay bribes to prison camps, and beating and burning prisoners, according to the report.

An Afghan Gives His Own Account of U.S. Abuse
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, Wednesday, May 12 — A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody in Afghanistan last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked.

"I swear to God, those photos shown on television of the prison in Iraq — those things happened to me as well," the former officer, Sayed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, said in the interview on Sunday at his home in the village of Sheikho, on the edge of the eastern town of Gardez.

His account could not be independently verified, but members of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission accompanied a reporter during the interview and said his story matched the one given to them last fall, shortly after his release and long before the abuse at the Abu Ghraib near Baghdad came to light.

On the subtle opposition tip, check this comment to a post at a blog most aptly called Discriminations:

This woman has it exactly backwards. The real problem now is for blacks to extend themselves and the resources of their communities to whites.

Any respectful relationship involves reciprocity. That means each side needs to give and take. I don't mean this as a negative, but blacks have been taking from the white community for 40 years in the form of quotas, income redistribution, etc. Blacks need to start giving to the white community. Blacks need this for their own spiritual and emotional growth.

The author of this article is just dead wrong, and her actions hurt blacks.

If whites really want to change things, here's what they can do. Play sports with blacks and demand to be treated fairly. Go to black churches and expect to be valued. If you are a musician or artist, walk into the spaces that blacks want to segregate and demand that they integrate those spaces.

This is really what is needed. The author of this article is lost in the past, she's dead wrong, and her input is not positive... it's dead negative.

It's time for whites to demand from blacks. This is a sign of respect. The one way relationship of blacks demanding from whites, and whites bowing their heads in shame and giving, is now the dilemma.

If you are white, demand real social interaction from blacks and demand something in return. This will produce positive change.

And, yes, blacks do have things to give in return. The ability to combine the spiritual and the sensual so characteristic of the black church is something that whites desparately need. The machismo and athleticism of black men is something that whites men should emulate. (And black men can learn to soften the machismo a bit.)

Don't patronize blacks. Offer them a positive relationship, and demand something in return. This is the way.

Posted by: Stephen on May 5, 2004 03:37 PM

Some things you say anywhere and some things you say in your own space.

During yesterday's Blogcritics conversation Eric suggested giving one's American aspect ascendancy over one's "other" aspects is the best move, and that he truly feels America is past the half-way point to accepting Black folks…that the mainstream would find Black folks acceptable if we stop being Black.

P6, to answer your question: yes, I do think the USA acknowledges Black Americans as full members IF THEY CHOOSE TO BE SO ACKNOWLEDGED, but a part of the bargain is demonstrating an adherence to certain shared values, one of which is that they see themselves as an individual and an American ahead of seeing themselves as Black. It does not appear that you are willing to make this "trade," which has been requested of every other subgroup in America also.

Senseless. Just senseless.

This man was partly responsible for a whole bag of partying and fun during my wayward misspent youth.

---

R&B Artist John Whitehead Shot Dead

1 hour, 34 minutes ago
PHILADELPHIA - John Whitehead, a prominent R&B artist best known for the 1979 hit song "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now," was shot dead Tuesday, police said.

Whitehead, 55, and another man were working on a vehicle when they were shot by two gunmen, police said. The assailants fled.

Whitehead was shot in the neck and collapsed. Ohmed Johnson, who was shot in the buttocks, was in good condition early Wednesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Workers' scant spoils

The government report last Friday that the economy created a higher-than-expected 288,000 jobs in April was news that everyone could cheer. Coming on top of a strong gain of 337,000 jobs in March, the latest figures suggest long-cautious employers are finally confident enough about the brightening economic climate to begin replacing some of the 2.3 million jobs shed from 2001 through 2003.

Still, the encouraging, if belated, growth in employment masks a worrisome trend that suggests the economic expansion is not fully on track. Buried in the Labor Department report was new evidence that wages for those with jobs are barely rising. It said average hourly wages in April rose a mere nickel from March to $15.59. The 2% increase from April 2003 was only enough to keep up with inflation. The pay data follow an April 29 government report that said wages and salaries grew an anemic 2.5% in the past year, the slowest pace since the government began tracking such figures in 1982.

While strong job creation certainly is a vital component for a healthy economy, the recovery can't be considered complete until the 131 million Americans already employed are ensured their fair share of the growing economic pie.

Docs Populi
Raging against the Republican machine
May 11th, 2004 9:30 AM

Richard Clark, Jon Stewart, and Air America are about to get some company in the media assault on George W. Bush. From Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, an incendiary attack on U.S. foreign policy and the Bush-bin Laden connection (premiering in Cannes this week and, as of press time, blocked for release by Disney), to the moveon.org-co-produced Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (opening during the Republican National Convention), politically charged documentaries are showing up in theaters and on television over the next several months. Along with anti-corporate works such as The Corporation, Super Size Me, The Yes Men, and Go Further, an unprecedented surge of activist documentaries is poised to join the election-year debate.

"There seems to be a groundswell of activists who are willing to challenge the information we've been force-fed," says Eamonn Bowles, a New York-based distributor (Magnolia Films) who launches the documentary invasion next week with Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, an inquiry into the media coverage of the current Iraq war as related by Al Jazeera journalists. "Not too long ago, it seemed obvious to me that Bush would get re-elected easily," continues Bowles, "but there really has been this incredible mobilization of the dissatisfied exercising their voice."

Slate has an article subtitled The best Prince songs you haven't heard that gives brief clips of the songs under discussion (.asf files, about 30 seconds per).

I don't know…

I almost installed Radio.blog just to have Prince's Seven and Sexy Motherfucker at hand. That last one sounds like Fred Wesley and the JBs all grown up.

Prince is brilliant, but I have to admit some of his more eclectic stuff gets on my nerves.

Opinion: Attack on cartoonists no laughing matter (11 May 04)
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS
Toronto Star

…Some U.S. papers yanked the strip — which wouldn't be the first time for Doonesbury — supposedly because, when he discovers his leg is gone, B.D. yells "Son of a bitch!"

I say "supposedly" because, judging from the reaction of Fox News windbag Bill O'Reilly, the cartoon was offensive not only because of its penny-ante profanity but because of its — what else? — politics.

Calling Trudeau "a committed leftist" and "a rabid anti-Bush partisan" in the Los Angeles Times, O'Reilly opined he was exploiting tragedy to further his political agenda.

"A case can be made that Trudeau is attempting to sap the morale of Americans vis-à-vis Iraq by using a long-running, somewhat beloved cartoon character to create pathos," O'Reilly railed. "Dissent in a time of war can be noble, but it also can be irresponsible."[P6: That "a case can be made" (wimpy weasel words are annoying, aren't they?) doesn't mean the case would be valid…probably why he only implied the case instead of actually making it. And blindness to reality is never noble.]

In other words, you're either with us, or with the terrorists.

…Since 9/11, many cartoonists have been targeted for attack, particularly Aaron McGruder's Boondocks (http://www.boondocks.net), David Rees' Get Your War On (http://www.mnftiu.cc) and Dan (Tom Tomorrow) Perkins' This Modern World (http://www.thismodernworld.com).

But probably none of them has invoked greater ire — or attracted more death threats — than Ted Rall (http://www.rall.com) who gets more strident by the strip. Last week, he infuriated both sides of the political spectrum with one about pro football player Pat Tillman. Tillman was killed last month in Afghanistan, after turning down a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the war on terror. Rall's strip called him an "idiot" and "sap" instead of a "hero."

You can imagine the outrage.

But isn't freedom, such as the freedom to draw comics, what Bush's war is supposed to be about? Isn't it about preserving liberty and bringing it to Afghanistan, Iraq and the world?

You wouldn't know it from reading some of the comments on these cartoonists' Web sites.

Perhaps their critics prefer to believe that good old Beetle Bailey, who is more likely to drop a broom than a bomb, is what war-making is about.

Talk about having a funny view of the real world.

More Iraqis accept their US-trained forces
By Scott Peterson

BAGHDAD - Accused of being collaborators with American occupation forces, Iraqi policemen, guards, and soldiers have endured ridicule, threats, and targeted violence that have left hundreds dead over the past year.

But there are signs that hard-nosed attitudes toward the country's embattled, US-trained security forces are beginning to soften.

There is no way to tell the breadth of this apparent change in popular thinking. But some dozen security personnel in Baghdad and the flash point of Fallujah report that the views of their fellow Iraqis - tired of the continual burn of insecurity, car bombs, and kidnappings - are shifting.

"It is beginning to change," says Emad Abbas Qassem, a lieutenant in the Facility Protection Service (FPS), at his post outside a central Baghdad education ministry office. "It's not only the people, but my wife, my family and brothers tell me: 'Go to work and do your duty.' They used to be so afraid."

Indeed, the number of targeted attacks and casualties against security forces has dropped in recent weeks, relative to previous months. At least 350 Iraqi police were killed in the first year of occupation; that rate dropped dramatically to roughly a dozen killed during April. Lieutenant Qassem estimates a 50 percent drop in the past month alone. "Because we were trained by the Americans, [Iraqis] dealt with us like we were Americans," he says.

This time it's Islam. Just as the Religious Right, by its politicizing and intolerance, makes something of a mockery of the Christian faith, Taliban types make a mockery of the teachings of Muhammad.

from the May 12, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0512/p09s01-coop.html

More than 1,400 years ago, Islam honored women. The Koran repeatedly emphasizes equality between the sexes, stating "and for women are rights over men similar to those of men over women."

Islam gave women equal rights to engage in commerce, earn an income, and own property. Women also have the right to divorce their husbands. They can ask for divorce if physically, mentally, or emotionally abused. They can even divorce husbands who cannot fulfill their sexual needs.

The prophet Muhammad told his followers to take half of their religion from his wife Aisha. He taught that women are the twin halves of men. These were progressive ideas at a time when women were considered such socioeconomic burdens that girls were often buried alive at birth. Islam prohibited this savage practice, restoring women's honor and place in humanity.

Sadly, parts of the Middle East have regressed to pre-Islamic times.

So, if Islam is not the cause of such mistreatment, what is?

Cultural practices and overly patriarchal societies - which vary from one country to another - are what dictate a woman's place in this region.

This is the real deal, people. What you're bitching about and blaming Islam for is actually pre-Islamic. Like the fire-breathing, bible-thumping Old Testament proselytizers are actually pre-Christian types.

US slaps trade sanctions on Syria
The US has imposed economic sanctions on Syria after long accusing the Arab state of supporting terror and failing to stop militants entering Iraq.
President George W Bush ordered a freeze on certain Syrian assets in the US and a halt to all American exports apart from humanitarian items.

He accused Syria of continuing to occupy Lebanon and pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

Syria has denied wrongdoing and says sanctions will only harm US interests.

The sanctions were authorised under the Syria Accountability Act, signed into law by President Bush in December.

They include a ban on flights between Syria and the US but exports of US food, medicines and aircraft parts - for safety reasons - are not affected.

The BBC's Jon Leyne reports from Washington that the announcement had been expected but still marks a significant worsening of relations between the two countries.

Washington has effectively decided to isolate Syria in the hope that tough action will finally produce a change in behaviour, our correspondent says.

I'm getting around to the story about Neil Berg. And I really don't want to write about it at all. I don't like writing about topics where it's not possible to be rational. I know what senseless death in the family feels like, and regardless of how it came about I choose not to add to that.

When everyone was going on and on about Tillman, I wrote only one post, which most people probably failed to realize was on the subject.

It's just that the other day I posted what an Iraqi blogger said was the reason the insurgents lynched and mutilated those four security men working as contractors. It's said they were complicit in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. If that is the case, I can raise as little anger toward them as I can toward a friend's uncle who, I am told, joined the Army in the late 50s to avoid prosecution for killing the person that raped his daughter.

I don't know why Berg chose to stay in Iraq after being advised to leave. It could have been any combination of nobility, greed, stupidity…All I know for sure is, he shouldn't have even have had the opportunity to be there to begin with.

Warning Signals
Could the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Scandal Hamper Future Intelligence-Gathering?
By Andrew Chang

…The powers that interrogators have to elicit information have long been as subtle and shadowy as the techniques of a secretive martial arts school, but their practices are coming under extreme scrutiny in the wake of torture and abuse allegations at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at several other sites across the country.

The alleged abuse could be defended as a necessary element of interrogation: Because many of the Iraq prisoners had already been exposed to the brutality of the previous regime, U.S. interrogators had to resort to harsher and more unusual treatment.

Some former interrogators are now worried that the outrage generated by the photographs from Abu Ghraib — in which U.S. military police are seen smiling as they subject Iraqi prisoners to abuses — could lead to new restrictions on interrogation procedures, hampering U.S. intelligence-gathering in the fight against insurgents in Iraq and terrorist groups around the world.

Hartley, the professional interrogator, says his job is as much of an art as it is a science.

Now a consultant at Team Delta, a Pennsylvania-based program that runs interrogation workshops for law enforcement officers, he says: "It will curtail and rail in everything."

My traffic figures went through the roof yesterday. Not like a link from Atrios or Calpundit (yes, I know he's Political Animal nowadays) would cause; like my brand name sharing a word with the name of the company (which i do not name only to avoid drawing in more false hits) the unfortunately beheaded man (who I do not name only to avoid drawing in more false hits) would cause. Sitemeter stopped clocking my hits at 9:30 last night at a shade over 900.

Florida town changes MLK street name
Sixth Avenue will still keep commemorative MLK signs

ZEPHYRHILLS, Florida (AP) -- The city council of this central Florida town tried to settle a bitter, monthslong dispute by voting Monday to change Martin Luther King Avenue back to its original name of Sixth Avenue, while keeping up street signs with both names.

The 4-1 decision followed almost two hours of public testimony over an issue that turned neighbor against neighbor and exposed racial tensions in this town of 11,000 founded by Union veterans of the Civil War.

"In my opinion, it's just pure evil that has come to the citizens of this town," Donna Church, a white resident, told the city council as she tried not to choke up. "I know people who have known each other 20 years who won't speak to each other anymore."

Sallie Stewart, a white resident who is married to a black man, said the debate that erupted over renaming Sixth Avenue last October to honor the slain civil rights leader had exposed the state of race relations in Zephyrhills, about 25 miles northeast of Tampa.

"Thank God the cover has been pulled off Zephyrhills," Stewart said.

Some opponents said they didn't want to change their addresses and weren't consulted. Others said renaming a street after King could hurt the town's economy, as streets named after him elsewhere frequently run through poor neighborhoods.

---

That is the most lame excuse I've ever heard.

The economic fortunes of the street has little to do with its name. It's like expecting Bill Gates to go bankrupt because you know some guy named Bill who's broke.

I don't think I need to link to it again

But it's a wonderful object lesson. Anyone that believes Black people should just get over it should read the thread with a careful eye for evasions, false accusations and denial. And recognize that when you argue that point you will look like Joe.

Tomorrow morning your regularly scheduled excess verbosity will continue as scheduled.

This time it's folkbum.

My GHOD, when will it end?

LATER: I guess I should have been more obviously joking. No, there's no racists on the other side of that link.

Iron Blog, a blog debating society. They got a book of rules and everything.

What interests me about this is, the debaters write posts and the audience comments. I want to see how the feedback is incorporated into each round.

A commenter just mentioned a video showing an American being beheading by an Iraqi militant. I hadn't heard of it; but then I haven't been reading the news today, as I said earlier. This one came to me by email, this url

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/international/middleeast/11CND-BEHE.html?hp

And I still ain't reading the news.

But I'm expecting this to be given as justification for the widespread torture of Iraqi prisoners whose involvement in terrorism was so doubtful half of them could be released immediately.

The whole thing reminds me of a Taoist saying along the lines of "The superior man in indestructible because he knows better than to place himself in unnecessary danger."

No matter how you look at it, the repercussions for this elective war…for which every single supporting reason, including moral superiority, has proven false…must be laid at the doorstep of those who elected to do it. They placed thousands in unnecessary danger. Without that decision, none of the atrocities would have come about.

Quote of note:

God damn it. You know, I'm not sure if the flip tone of this post is appropriate, but the truth is I'm trembling with fury about this, and if I try to write about it without being flip I'd just end up posting a string of swear words, so deal with it.

I did a nexus search; no major paper in Oregon even reported on the rather astounding fact that the DAs put an expert witness for the defense in front of the grand jury.

There's no way a white person would have been shot the way James Perez (or Kendra James before him, or Jose Poot before her) was shot. And if by some miracle a white person was shot on a pretext pull-over, there's no way the Portland DA's office would cheat the grand jury system to make sure that the cops were spared the discomfort of a trial. And if that did happen, the mainstream papers would at least report it.

---

Kill a negro? We'll get you off!, say racist Portland DAs John Bradley and Mike Schrunk
posted by ampersand

So here's how it works: Let's imagine two cops spot a negro driving a flashy car (one of the cops later testified that he was made suspicious by seeing a "luxury" car which "stood out a great deal in the area"). The negro then made a turn but activated his turn signal only 30 feet in advance, rather than 100 feet, so the cops decided to pull him over. (I'm sure white people get pulled over for things like that all the time.)

Once pulled over, the negro (who may have been on drugs, which justifies everything the cops did) is acting weird and is slow to respond to orders. One cop opens the car door and grabs him. Then, the negro jams his hand into his pocket. The other cop orders him to take his hand out of his pocket. But when the negro starts taking his hand out of his pocket, the cop panics and shoots. From Willamette Week:

"I remember starting to scream, 'I'm going to shoot I'm going to shoot. Get your hand out. I'm going to shoot.'

"I remember seeing the top of his hand come out of his pocket," recalled Sery, adding that it appeared clenched, "and that's when I made the decision to shoot."

So he shot the negro three times in the chest from six feet away, and then his partner tasered the corpse. But then it turns out that the now-dead negro was unarmed.

…

Orcinus has an update on his Media Manifesto. It seems we're going a bit deeper than just fact-checking. Interestingly enough, Lambert's Open Source blogging tool thing would specifically disinclude Movable Type and Blogger…I get ahead of myself, but I may not be the only one.

I will definitely be watching, because the bare outlines presented so far aren't impossible. The major effect of the Internet on activism seems to be greasing the skids when setting up organizations.

I haven't gotten to all the links Orcinus provides, but I will. I am frankly skeptical about design-by-committee efforts. The Media Mini-Monolith created by a formal effort would have to make choices about what to present, like any other media service…which seems to be what is being suggested. So I'd need to be clear on what would make this one different from IndyMedia before committing to such a thing.

I've spent much of the time I normally spend checking the news in responding to the discussion Joe Taylor initiated with his flame. That's gotten me all thoughtful and shit. That plus the fact that the news for the next few days will be pure momentum effects inclines me to share a few developing thoughts and concerns.

I want to start with Open Source Politics. I was one of the original members. I dealt in detail with many of them, read maybe four of each five member blogs. This flame is not a reflection on the site, its outlook, approach or philosophy. Don't consider it as such.

I've also noticed a couple of folks who find it a problem that his attitudes are held by a progressive. Well, yeah.

But you know what? Had he kept it to himself or simply expressed them to me, it would be exactly the sort of thing I don't give a shit about.

I would not like to see any sort of ostracism; numbers count, and as long as he supports positions that I benefit from I want his number counted as regards those positions. I can handle the ones where we disagree just fine…I will not forget them, trust me.

I do feel he would benefit from associating with a more open-minded sort. No, that's wrong. He needs to hang with a more experienced sort…someone who's managed to navigate between the Scylla of liberal guilt and the Charybdis of conservative anger to an actually humane position.

Given the way he's approached this, that someone ain't gonna be me. But I would not dissociate myself from any position or organization we coincidentally support because of his presence.

Well, I've gotten myself hip-deep in conversational shit over at Blogcritics. The post itself I duplicated here. The comments are great, though. Eric Olsen is my primary conversational partner…we're disagreeing on certain levels, but I can't even call him a conversational opponent.

Everything looks different from the inside and I can appreciate that. And I have no problem with reasonable pride and identification with one's background, whether it be racial, religious, ethnic, linguistic, etc.

You just resolved some 30% or more of all the problems you could have with a person.

But I see all those things as secondary to being a person and to being an American, which is a unifying, voluntary (since 1865 or so) construct, and as such has more meaning than simply the way one's genes happened to come together.

We know that the social concept "race" has no biological basis. Therefore we know being Black isn't simply about the way one's genes happened together.

There's a book, The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte (<--Click, please-- it's that I'm one degree of seperation from her). A "Quote of note" from the NY Times review:

In ''The Black Notebooks'' a light-skinned black woman, Toi Derricotte, examines in journal form her recurring longings for ''escape from blackness'' -- and her indulgence of those longings during intervals of ''passing'' for white. The book's achievement lies in the telling light it casts on how white skin functions in a multiracial world, what whiteness sees and can't see and why whites harm themselves as well as blacks when they dismiss black claims that white vision is defective.

This isn't about meaning so much as practical, day-to-day experience and fulfilling human requirements. You're familiar with Maslow? You realize after the primary need of physical survival comes the need to belong? That it comes prior to self-esteem? And that pursuit of each level requires practical mastery of the prior one?

That belonging is all Black people have looked for from day 1…those that feel absolutely rejected notwithstanding. And we cannot force the mainstream to accept us. Membership is always granted by the members. Ask the German immigrant wave, if you can find them...they've assimilated into unity. Ask the Irish wave, and the Italian wave, and the current Eastern Bloc wave.

Can you honestly say that, to this day, America has made Black people collectively feel at home?

But we have to belong. Second level need.

(is White also captialized?)

If you like. I don't believe I've used the term yet. I note you respect my choice so I'll respect yours.

I am curious what the practical ramifications are of your Black partisanship. Do you relate to me differently because I am White because of it?

Fair question. I'm assuming you mean on a personal level.

As I see it, it makes no difference. It doesn't take much conversation to pick an initial mental model of a person. I modify that model as I learn about the individual.

However, relativity is a bitch and I could see you concluding I do.

I need to be a bit picky-precise here. People who self-identify as White tend to get assigned one of the models that have never experienced effective prejudice, while people who self-identify as Black tend to get assigned one of the models that has. That experience has repercussions…there are there are experiences I share with people who self-identify as Black that must, with the White models (can I just say that? the self-identity part is implied) must be an equivalent discussion that I do not expect you to understand right away…like this one.

What I do about that depends on other characteristics I've assigned as I've individuated the mental model. If I've assigned the Fuckwad attrribute…

Politically, all it means is I make noise when an issue of interest to Black folks in particular is given short shrift. See, each of our human needs are the same, physical and psychological. Each culture provides for some of those needs by their existance, makes some possible and even likely. Each culture is the material we build our lives from. And since each culture is different, each provides different things and we each as a result need different things. There are things I would offer Black folks because they need it that I would not offer you because you don't.

Make sense?

"ICRC (Red Cross) delegates directly witnessed and documented a variety of methods used to secure the cooperation of the persons deprived of their liberty with their interrogators," according to the confidential report. The 24-page document was confirmed as authentic by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) after it was published today by the Wall Street Journal.

The Red Cross report says its delegates saw how detainees at Abu Ghraib were kept "completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness." It said it found evidence supporting prisoners' allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation.

Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said.

The report cites abuses – some "tantamount to torture" – including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."

U.S. to Reopen Investigation of Emmett Till's Murder in 1955
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 10, 2004

Filed at 11:32 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department said Monday it is reopening the investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager whose death while visiting Mississippi was an early catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Till was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955. The mutilated body of the 14-year-old from Chicago was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.

Pictures of the slaying shocked the world. Two white men charged with murder -- Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam -- were acquitted by an all-white jury. Both men have since died.

Justice Department officials did not say what prompted them to reopen the case. Details of the renewed investigation, which also involves officials in Mississippi, were to be announced Monday by R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

In 1956, Look magazine published an account of the slaying in which Milam admitted to the killing, which occurred a few days after Till purportedly whistled at a white girl in a store.

``'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of them sending your kind down here to stir up trouble,''' Milam was quoted as saying. ``I'm going to make an example of you, just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.''

Milam said he beat Till and shot him in the head with a .45-caliber pistol, then tied a heavy metal fan to the body and dumped it in the river.

I've decided to make an example of Mr. Taylor, both in the comments to his little rant and in the following, which also appears on Open Source Politics. I should post this shit on Blogcritics, too.

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You want reasons?

Why am I proud of being Black?

I'm proud of the history of Black people. The myth of African acquiescence to slavery is exactly that-a myth. I'm proud of the way emancipated Black folks never abandoned their enslaved brethren. They worked the legal and literary channels…never mind that they were ignored. To this day Black people give more of their income to charity than anyone else. Even though we're brokest. That's noble.

I'm proud of the creativity we've mustered; we were forced into it by exclusion from mainstream but our response has still been robust. All that is unique in the USofA came about through a kind of feedback loop: American Indian and African influences were absorbed into the mainstream until America's culture is as African as it is European. Watch the loa come down on a couple dozen old ladies at Billy Graham's Crusade if you doubt me.

I'm proud because my people survived. Because even with the obstacles we face we still compete in numbers that are pretty amazing when you consider we're only three generations from chattel. We produced W.E.B. DuBois. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Lou Hamer, Carter Godwin Woodson, Booker T. Washington, David Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, just to name a few.

And yes, Malcolm X.

"I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment." Speech, Dec. 12 1964, New York City

"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom."

"You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being."

"Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom."

"I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King." ...in a conversation with Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

Try exchanging every instance of "Black" and "white" in that shit.

It's true we had no more choice in having the dire concept of race inflicted on us. But we did not have to respond as well as we have. Given the conscious decision to shape us into mere tools and the forces still arrayed against us we should have been destroyed. We weren't. I'm proud of how we responded and declare myself the inheritor of that history and tradition.

Why am I a Black partisan?

Because the alternative is absurd.

Definitely read that last link. It's an essay I wrote in 1997 and posted at Prometheus 6 in February 2004 that explicitly spells out what I mean by "Black partisan." If there's any confusion.

disclaimer: I'm not the child care expert.

If the problem of actually securing a job one can live on is solved, I don't see a problem with the child care being provided by a relative or friend. That relationship connection can offset the lack of inspections and such…it is significant that children be cared about, as well as cared for.

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Women Who Leave Welfare Find Few Day Care Options
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Since the nation's welfare system was overhauled in 1996, New York City has received hundreds of millions of additional state and federal dollars intended to help women leave welfare for work and to greatly expand the city's low-income child care system.

But the money has not significantly increased the number of licensed day care slots, for which the waiting list is now over 36,000. Instead, more than two-thirds of the 14,400 slots created in the last five years are in so-called informal care, the lowest-cost, unlicensed form of child care, which is not inspected or regulated by the state.

There are many reasons for the growth of informal care: it costs the government about one third less per child, it is flexible enough to meet the unconventional hours many poor parents work, and because it is usually provided by a relative or a friend who receives checks directly from the government, women coming off welfare often prefer it to other choices.

But the explosion of informal care in New York and in other parts of the country has been met with concern by advocates for welfare recipients. They cite studies showing that informal care is less stable than licensed care based in centers and homes, and its safety and educational value are unknown.

Worse, they argue, parents leaving welfare do not really have a choice in care, as federal law demands, because they are given a limited time to find child care, and because center-based day care is so oversubscribed.

This is a good concept.

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A Proposal for Incentive Pay at Low-Performing Schools
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

The president of the city teachers' union yesterday proposed a 15 percent salary incentive for teachers willing to work in the city's 200 lowest-performing schools. But she said the differential must be tied to across-the-board raises to make teachers' pay more competitive with that of the suburbs and the private sector.

In a speech at her union's spring conference at the New York Hilton in Midtown, Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, outlined the plan as part of an intensive push to turn around failing schools in impoverished neighborhoods. It would include smaller classes, a longer school day and an array of health and social services.

Ms. Weingarten said the city could pay for the program, which she called a School Enterprise Zone of the 200 failing schools, and for the salary increases using $1.5 billion of the additional state money that is expected as a result of a court decision last year ordering Albany to increase aid to New York City schools.

She said the differential should apply not just to teachers but to all personnel, including secretaries and aides, "to encourage and reward those who volunteer to take on the toughest assignments and work in our hardest-to-staff schools."

"With such an incentive," Ms. Weingarten said, "those schools can establish the most rigorous qualifications for experience and expertise and staff their classrooms with teachers who are not only highly qualified, but also want to be there."

War and Abuse Do Little to Harm U.S. Brands
By SIMON ROMERO

FRANKFURT, May 8 — When American troops moved into Iraq last year, European executives at the Ford Motor Company braced for an adverse consumer reaction.

"Our sales and image and market share are things we monitor extremely closely," said Niel Golightly, a Ford spokesman in Cologne, Germany. "So the potential fallout risk from Ford being perceived as a symbol of America's foreign policy is something we're always looking at."

But aside from a single incident at a dealership in Italy last year, the company has seen no evidence that widespread anti-Americanism abroad has been aimed at the well-known Ford brand. In Europe, Mr. Golightly said, Ford's market share has remained steady, and sales are expected to improve slightly this quarter. And the business outlook remains upbeat despite recent developments in Iraq, including the revelation of photographs depicting the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

For a variety of reasons, American companies that sell globally say that they have so far experienced little if any disruption from discontent over the war in Iraq. For the most part, consumers around the world seem as likely to be influenced by economic conditions as by politics. And, in a display of the growing sophistication in marketing big American brands in global markets, many people see products originating from the United States as firmly rooted in their own home nations.

He caught the whole of an excellent description of our plight by Fareed Zakaria on ABC News' This Week that went by before I could recover from stunned appreciation:

"Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world."

This would definitely save Nader's reputation.

At least Joe Taylor seems to think so.

Oh, well…

Blunted at Blunted on Reality actually responded as well as I could, and Tomato Observer gets blogrolled immediately, but here are my specific responses:

Actually blunted, this is an old, old gripe that has no basis.

Joe, read my site. Find something you consider racist other than my partisanship for Black issues. In fact, read Where we stand, published right here on OSP.

I wonder if you consider women's rights activists to be sexist. Is Abe Foxman racist? How about all the people that march in St. Patricks Day or Columbus Day parades?

On Abu Gharab:

Pat Buchanan: This is a PR reversal…

Tony Blankley: The president's political opponents have already politicized this. And he likes Lieberman.

Pat Buchanan: The whole problem is the pictures. Before the pictures, if you said prisoners are being abused, prisoners are being killed, no one would have complained.

Mort Zuckerman is so full of shit when he talks about not understanding that part of the world because he's one of the poster children for the problem. And John McLaughlin is an absolute pisser this morning. I need a transcript. His body language has him sitting twisted, with his back to apologists Blankley and Buchanan.

McLaughlin:
(on blame)- I don't see how they could stop short of Rumsfeld or someone next to Rumsfeld.
(to Buchanan)- You worked for Nixon, you know how deniability is preserved.

Buchanan:
George Bush will not be reelected if he gives up international control of the problem.
(McLaughlin asked how successful could an interim Iraqi government be if they're seen as a puppet government)- They're going to be a puppet government right up through January.
Do you think he's going to give control of American forces to a bunch of Iraqi?? [P6: emphasis transcribed]

Cheney Defends Rumsfeld, Says 'Get Off His Case'
Sun May 9, 2004 07:20 AM ET

By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney rushed to the aid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- under fire over Iraqi prison abuses -- by saying people should "get off his case" and let Rumsfeld do his job.

"Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," Cheney said in a statement from his office late on Saturday. The statement appeared to signal a White House push to rally Republicans behind the embattled Rumsfeld.

"People ought to get off his case and let him do his job," said Cheney, a Republican.

Nancy Reagan Calls for Stem Cell Research
Sun May 9, 2004 08:43 AM ET

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Reuters) - Former First Lady Nancy Reagan made an impassioned call for taking controversial stem cell research out of the political arena, saying it could help cure illnesses like Alzheimer's, which so sorely afflicts her husband.
With the Bush administration and anti-abortion groups strongly opposing stem cell research, Mrs. Reagan at a celebrity-packed dinner in Beverly on Saturday night lent a powerful conservative Republican voice to the debate.

Speaking to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mrs. Reagan noted that Alzheimer's had taken her husband Ronald Reagan "to a distant place where I can no longer reach him and share our 52 years."

She added after accepting the group's "Care Giver's Award," "Science has presented us with a hope called stem cell research, which may provide our scientists with many answers that for so long have been beyond our grasp. I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this.

"We have lost so much time already. I just really can't bear to lose any more."

Letters from former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton supporting Mrs. Reagan's efforts on embryonic stem cell research were read to the dinner by actors Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Absent was any comment from the Bush administration which has placed severe restrictions on stem cell research because it can involve using cells from human embryos.

Fareed Zakaria just rocked the folks on This Week. He pointed out how the Administration took steps to place "war on terrorism" prisoners outside the reach of law and said there had to be a reason.

Sen Leahy is making the same point I have: that no one is smiling and taking such pictures unless they were confident of official support.

When you have no penalty for failure you get a lot of failure, and this administration has had a lot of failure- George Will(!!!!)