Prometheus 6

ORAL HISTORY ACCOUNTS OF THE TULSA RACE RIOT OF 1921 BY BLACK SURVIVORS
Introduction by Eddie Faye Gates

The eyewitness accounts of the living black survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 are extremely significant for they are a primary source of vital riot information given by one of the most important groups in Tulsa at that time, the besieged black population of Tulsa who suffered the most during that awful holocaust May 31-June 1, 1921. Some of the accounts are compelling examples of the terror of traumatized children during the riot. Some are accounts of the black warriors of the riot ranging from 11, 12, and 13-year-old-boys who formed a "munition brigade" to hack open boxes of ammunition and to pass boxes of bullets to Greenwood s black men who were trying desperately, against all odds, to keep mob elements and militia from destroying their beloved Greenwood. One of the bravest of this group was Horace "Pegleg" Taylor whose daughter Lena Eloise Taylor Butler of Seattle, Washington told the author of Taylor s last earthly efforts on June 1, 1921. Other accounts give poignant inner-circle views of what Tulsa was like in the 1920's - two cities divided by race. Some of the testimonies of the riot are long, detailed, thorough. Others are terse, but telling. A few survivors gave no testimony at all, for they are no longer capable of sharing their thoughts due to the effects of aging or illness.

Below, in their own words, are the fascinating, compelling, passionate and powerful accounts of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 by some of the known black survivors living today.

John Melvin Alexander
Juanita Delores Burnett Arnold
Kinney I Booker
Binkley Wright
Other Eyewitness accounts

The complete list of living survivors from the 1921 riot.

I've been a little remiss with the Black History Month linkage the last few days. It's partly because there's a certain level of frustration looking at what passes for fact and what needs to be corrected.

And it's not like the things we're talking about happened that long ago. It's been fifty years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott...and maybe 45 years since the misrepresentation of it began. And it's so think you get nonsense like this

In my own experience, a black woman named Rosa Parks was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of the bus. So she refused to move, and she touched off a revolution of freedom across the American South.

from people who should know better. Nonsense like this

Initiating a protest against these conditions was not on Parks' mind as she stepped aboard a municipal bus on Thursday, December 1, 1955. She had finished her day's work at the Montgomery Fair Store and had boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus as she headed to her home in Cleveland Court. Because the bus was crowded she sat in the middle section. At the third stop, at the Empire Theater, a white male patron boarded the bus and was left standing. The "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" later affirmed that her decision to remain seated was not based on physical fatigue. Parks maintained that her action was the result of long years of anger and frustration over the treatment blacks received under Montgomery's segregationist laws and customs. She was simply tired of blacks being pushed around.

Parks' arrest set in motion long years of planning for such an event by the local civil rights organizations and civic groups.

published by Alabama, when in fact the truth is

The roots of the bus boycott in Montgomery began years before Rosa Parks' arrest. The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses in 1953. In a meeting with Mayor W.A. Gayle in March 1954, the Council's members outlined their wishes: a city law that would make it possible for blacks to sit from back toward front and whites from front toward back until the bus was filled, a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus but go to the rear to enter, and a promise that buses stop at every corner in black residential areas as they did in white communities. When little resulted from this meeting, WPC president Jo Ann Robinson reiterated the Council's requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, asking him to "Please consider this plan, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our buses."

Of course, we don't design the syllabi. What passes for the official Black history is very comforting to the average mainstreamer. We celebrate the first Black this and that, which makes heroes of those whose only desire is to get along...though many of those firsts chose to be first as an act of defiance. I've always thought Black History Month was like being blind for 11 months and trying to see a year's worth of stuff in four weeks. How much of what you see would you remember, be able to use?

How many students know that denying accusations of internal racism from Communist governments was as important (if not more important) a reason for the Brown vs. Board of Ed. decision as any consideration of justice? What would they learn if the "coincidence" by which mainstream recognition of Black American's rights only ever happened when it advanced mainstream interests as well, became common knowledge?

Why would we not teach our kids that the seminal movement of the 20th century was not an outburst keyed by one tired woman, but was instead a long-planned event executed with discipline and determination? Which do you think is the more empowering message: that white folks will listen when you make an emotional scene, or that you can see a problem, make a plan to address it and actually force change?

What do you conclude when you learn the Greatest Generation that has so much more wealth than the Black community was subsidized, and those subsidies specifically excluded Black folks through a combination of law and custom? What do you conclude when you see the numerous instances of Black advancement that were physically destroyed (Red Summer), the lives taken and destroyed...and see that it was necessary to repeat over and over because Black folks just kept overcoming?

And who do you suppose benefits most from the standard education containing only the particular facts it does?

Hi Black Conservatives from the Yahoo! group!

I got a follow up post. Enjoy.

It must be nice to be a Republican leader. You can just lie. In fact, it seems you must.

Quote of note:

"America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," [California Rep. Chris Cox] crowed. Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." Apparently, most of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped at this startling revelation.

Among the believers
At the Conservative Political Action Conference, where rabid Bush-worshippers learn that liberals hate America and that we really did find WMD in Iraq.

Feb. 19, 2005  |  WASHINGTON -- It's a good thing I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Otherwise I never would have known that, despite the findings of the authoritative David Kay report and every reputable media outlet on earth, the United States actually discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, vindicating all of George W. Bush's pre-war predictions. The revelation came not from some crank at Free Republic or hustler from Talon News, but from a congressman surrounded by men from the highest echelons of American government. No wonder the attendees all seemed to believe him.

The crowd at CPAC's Thursday night banquet, held at D.C.'s Ronald Reagan Building, was full of right-wing stars. Among those seated at the long presidential table at the head of the room were Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Dore Gold, foreign policy advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and NRA president Kayne Robinson. Vice President Dick Cheney, a regular CPAC speaker, gave the keynote address. California Rep. Chris Cox had the honor of introducing him, and he took the opportunity to mock the Democrats whose hatred of America led them to get Iraq so horribly wrong.

Solomon at Solotude

No Child Left Behind gets the BOOT!

I tried to understand. Gave it the benefit of the doubt. But what my 1st grade daughter brought home on Wednesday just took the cake. Here are some actual questions from the "take home" test:

1. Write a sentence or draw a picture describing each of the following words: consumer, producer, income, taxes, factory, and transportation.
2. The United States is trade partners with Mexico and Canada only. True or false?
3. Describe how factories help a community.
4. Which of the following workers are paid by taxes? (Pictures of various workers in different fields)
5. Draw a picture describing the consequences of stealing another person's income?
6. Descirbe how inflation affects our lives.

That's just six of the thirteen questions she had to answer. Now she is a 7 year-old, 1st grader.

The responses to Nobody's Archetype are too good to bypass, so without further ado...

Distorted View of Black Women
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page A29

I found Eugene Robinson's Feb. 8 op-ed column astounding and sad. He writes of the "distorting lenses through which African American women are viewed."

Viewed by whom?

There are many people, myself included, who don't think much of Condoleezza Rice's politics or the administration she serves. But I don't know anyone who sees Rice, or any black woman for that matter, in the stereotypical ways outlined by Robinson. It sounds to me as if Robinson has some serious issues in how he sees black women. Why is it that he can't "take [Rice] at face value," and think of someone other than an obnoxious Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, who has now finished her 15 minutes of fame? Why is it that when Robinson thinks of Josephine Baker he sees a banana skirt, not a woman who overcame racial limitations, worked with the French resistance, adopted 12 children and was a civil rights activist? I would consider her a role model for anyone.

Does Robinson really believe that people can't see Rice as a successful and powerful black woman without seeing a colored or distorted picture? It is Robinson who points out Rice's piano lessons, figure skating and doting parents, possibly making her a "Black American Princess" save for the fact that she likes football, is often escorted by a former athlete and doesn't get upset if she breaks a nail. How insulting to Rice in particular and to black women in general.

-- J. Harry Jordan

Eugene Robinson's piece was extremely offensive.

Under the guise of explaining how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defies "repellent stereotypes" of African American women, Robinson indulged in a gratuitous recitation of the very archetypes he deems "silly" and "insulting."

Rice deserves to be assessed on the basis of her intelligence, talent and record -- not on the basis of antiquated and offensive perceptions of African American women. Robinson, an African American man, may have personal experience being perceived through an "optician's kit of distorting lenses" and may feel that this experience gives him license to discuss how Rice -- and other African American women -- are similarly stereotyped. But by reciting (even while ostensibly rejecting) these offensive images, Robinson merely perpetuates them.

-- Stacy E. Beck

I'm not the media watcher...especially when the media under examination is a Rupert Murdoch property...but Oliver is. His interests coincide with mine to the degree that I'll support his effort here.

Brit Hume is the anchor of Fox News Channel's prime time news report, Special Report with Brit Hume, and he makes things up. On February 3rd, Hume intentionally manipulated the words of the 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazen falsehood. President Roosevelt's grandson, James Roosevelt Jr., describes Hume's journalistic malfeasance as an "an outrageous distortion". We agree. (read more)

To intentionally twist the words of the father of social security in order to support a political plan to destroy it is disgusting. Hume has offered no apology nor explanation for his intentional deception. For this fraudulent act, Hume should resign.

Contact Hume: [email protected]

FOX News Channel
1-888-369-4762
[email protected]
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Sign the petition

Quote of note:

"The situation is fluid, but it has the potential to blow up," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.). "I'm going to keep my mouth shut."

It would be good for all these guys to state their position, whether Republican of Democrat, even if their position is "I don't know and need more information," or "I'm going to vote the way my constituents want." Anyone in these two camps will ultimately need to explain what tipped their vote in one direction or the other.

Those who have a position should explain why any suggestion that does not directly improve the future solvency of Social Security should be added to legislation whose purpose is to improve the future solvency of Social Security. No Social Security solvency-related program activities. No five-year grants to convert missile silos into hog farms. No funding for statues of naked people made from barbed wire and tissue paper.

This is a huge issue that touches damn near every human in the country. I'm not foolish enough to think it can be fixed forever, but it needs to be done right. That means the discussion should address techniques that demonstrably, reliably impact the solvency of the program. Advancing a social agenda (something that used to leave Republicans aghast) should stand on its own, not be hidden in the shadow of real issues).

Anyway...

GOP Takes to Heartland With Social Security Plan
By Janet Hook
Times Staff Writer
February 19, 2005

WASHINGTON   Republican leaders in Congress, faced with the political reality that there is little grass-roots momentum behind President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, are planning to spread out across the country next week to try to build a constituency for change àand to take a watchful measure of voters' response.

GOP leaders are encouraging rank-and-file members to hold town hall meetings in their home states and districts during next week's congressional recess, arming them with briefing books, PowerPoint presentations and a video of Bush making the case for major changes in Social Security.

But many Republicans will not be joining their leaders in promoting Bush's proposal. Some lawmakers will be trying to have more low-key "listening sessions" with their constituents to test the political waters. Others plan to focus on other issues and address Social Security only if constituents raise it.

Quote of note:

The funding, Wheeler said, "goes to who they're speaking for."

I have no problem ceding the committee authority to examine anything legitimately in their purview, but the environment and public works don't involve any process that can be validated or disproved by the balance sheet of its champion. The Environment and Public Works Committee should have no power to examine anyone's finances or taxes at all. There's probably a committee somewhere in the Senate that I could be convinced should have the ability to make such requests. But Mr. Imhofe seems to think such demands are a perk of being a Senator or committee chairman and that's just not the case...if any committee can do anything any committee can do, the Department of Education would have the same powers as authorities as the Department of War. Defense. You know what I mean.

But I'm half inclined to accept this overreach in return for their recognizing "who they're speaking for" is a legitimate concern. In these days of organizations named specifically to mislead constituents about the organization's positions (The Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, Black America's PAC and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture leap to mind) I think probing their financial and tax records would bring all manner of fascinating things to light.

Anyway...

Opponents of 'Clear Skies' Bill Examined
The GOP sponsor of legislation championed by Bush asks two groups to turn over financial records. One official calls it intimidation.
By Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers

February 19, 2005

WASHINGTON   The chairman of a Senate committee that oversees environmental issues has directed two national organizations that oppose President Bush's major clean-air initiative to turn over their financial and tax records to the Senate.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked for the documents 10 days after a representative of the two groups criticized Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal before a Senate subcommittee. Inhofe is the leading sponsor of the administration bill, which is deadlocked in his panel.

The executive director of the two organizations, which represent state and local air pollution control agencies and officials, charged that the request was an attempt to intimidate critics of the measure.

Democratic senators on Inhofe's committee also were dismayed by his action, but declined to say so publicly because they were in the midst of sensitive negotiations with the chairman on the legislation, staffers said.

The committee's majority staff director, Andrew Wheeler, said the request for the groups' documents did not stem from their criticism of the legislation. He said the panel wanted to determine whether the groups represented only regulators' views or whether they also were subsidized by outside interests, including environmentalists or foundations.

FDA Advisors OK Disputed Pain Relievers
Medical experts acknowledge that the drugs, including Vioxx and Celebrex, pose dangers. They call for stronger warnings.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Denise Gellene
Times Staff Writers

February 19, 2005

WASHINGTON   A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted Friday to let doctors prescribe Cox-2 painkillers, including Celebrex and Vioxx, but recommended stronger warnings about the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Doctors, scientists and other experts on the 32-member panel overwhelmingly agreed that Cox-2 inhibitors   hailed as a breakthrough in treating severe arthritis pain when they first won FDA approval   all significantly increased the risk of cardiovascular problems in patients.

The panel proposed that Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra, the third Cox-2 drug cleared by the FDA, carry "black box" warnings   the strongest admonishment the FDA can give to doctors. Such warnings are likely to discourage use of the drugs.

The panel's decisions, made during three days of hearings and deliberations, sought to balance the health risks against the benefits the drugs provide to tens of millions who take them. In what amounted to a series of split verdicts, panel members divided over the risks posed by individual drugs in the Cox-2 inhibitor group.

They're saying changing the ratio between direct to guaranteed loans by 15 percent saves $12 billion. That's $800 million per percentage point. That means if we increased the direct loans by 75 percent, we'd save $60 billion over ten years.

Student Loan Math
Thursday, February 17, 2005; Page A24

WHEN A BUDGET is published, its contents invariably launch big public policy debates about taxes and spending. Last week's budget also touched off a minor storm among a much smaller audience: those who study, regulate and disburse student loans. For in just a few paragraphs -- on Page 371 of the budget, to be exact -- the Office of Management and Budget unexpectedly provided its definitive answer to a long-standing argument over whether government-guaranteed student loans, provided through subsidized private lending institutions, cost more or less than direct loans provided by the Education Department. According to the budget calculators, the answer is clear: The government-guaranteed loans are more than 10 times as expensive. More precisely, the budget numbers show that for every $100 spent on student loans, the U.S. government pays $12.09 of subsidy on government-guaranteed loans and only 84 cents for direct loans.

...At the moment, universities can choose which kind of loan to use, but they have no real incentive to use direct loans. By contrast, financial institutions lobby heavily to persuade universities to use their services. As a result, only 25 percent of universities opt for direct loans. If that number were to shift even slightly, to 40 percent, $12 billion would be saved over 10 years, according to the CBO. That could provide upward of $1,000 more apiece in Pell Grants to low-income students. By way of comparison, President Bush announced this year with great fanfare a $100 annual increase in Pell Grants.

Here you go...

Quote of note:

Many of the newspapers that we represent go back well over 100 years,  Channing said.  Most, if not all of them, were founded not for business reasons, but for social and political reasons. Because of that, for the most part, they are undercapitalized. Many of them have no means of preserving their archives. Some of them have put [the back issues] on microfilm, but unfortunately some of them are just rotting away in back rooms because the paper can't afford to do anything to preserve them. 

Channing said that the combination of all these papers represents an enormous historical pool of information that is not available anywhere else. Throughout history, the papers have covered events and issues from the viewpoint of the African American community in a way that mainstream papers haven't.

...The final, fully Internet-searchable information database will be made available to each individual paper. The hope is eventually to create a master, Internet-enabled portal database. Anyone from the merely curious to historical scholars will be able to take a tour through history from the perspective of the black newspaper.  

Companies launch historic collaboration to digitize black newspapers, create portal
By Hays Goodman

The raging tornado that clawed its way up the banks of the muddy Mississippi river on May 7, 1840, couldn't have hit at a worse possible time. River traffic was high on a Friday afternoon and the massive storm was wide enough to deal death on both sides of the water. The  official  death toll is listed at 137 to this day, but it's extremely doubtful that even one African American death was noted in the tally for the day's newspapers.

Even 50 to 80 years later, in many parts of the country, white newspaper owners did not record the deaths of African Americans.

So-called "black newspapers" have since grown up over the years to become powerful record keepers of a segment of society sometimes relegated to the sidelines by the mainstream media.

Many of these are small community newspapers, with few advanced IT resources, and very little emphasis placed on the value of their store of historical data.

That's about to change. A partnership between leading black media placement firm Amalgamated Publishers Inc. and Ninestars Information Technology Ltd. has been created to embark on the process of digitizing reams of back-issues from more than 200 black newspapers throughout the United States.

Billboard Magazine has noticed Soul-Patrol.net, AllHipHop.com, and BlueBeat.com. I'm linking to Soul-Patrol.net because Bob Davis is one of those guys I've been running into online for years. He's a good guy with good taste in music and a a bug up his ass about uncreative crap Soul-Patrol.net is his decade or so old effort to resist the overly centralized and commercialized music industry.

Okay, that's dramatic, but check out the site.

Quote of note one

O'Reilly's Web site encourages people to protest the plea bargain by e-mailing Howard's spokesman, Erik Friedly.

"We've received a lot of e-mails   a lot," Friedly said. "Many contained racial epithets and foul language. I quit looking at them. And I've gotten racial, foul, angry phone calls."

and two

"I think it raises the question about being truthful and reporting a story honestly," Howard said.

Calls, e-mails hammer DA on sterilization case
By BETH WARREN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/18/05

Fulton prosecutors are being bombarded by heated e-mails and calls after a recent plea deal that allowed a mother charged with murdering her newborn to walk away with probation.

First, Carisa Ashe, 34, who has seven other children, agreed to have a tubal ligation, which involves cutting and tying the fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy. Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes ordered Ashe to serve five years of probation for voluntary manslaughter in the 1998 death.

What the public didn't know is that the lead detective and a Fulton County medical examiner had their doubts 5-week-old Destiny was murdered.Conflicting opinions on whether Ashe killed her child surfaced as early as the autopsy and still linger.

Local and national news outlets quickly broadcast details about the unusual plea bargain   the first known criminal case in Georgia in which a woman agreed to undergo sterilization to avoid prison. Dozens of people have questioned whether the plea bargain was ethical, constitutional or too lenient.

A national morning TV show requested an interview with prosecutors, and national radio and television personality Bill O'Reilly has repeatedly criticized Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard's handling of the case.

O'Reilly's Web site encourages people to protest the plea bargain by e-mailing Howard's spokesman, Erik Friedly.

"We've received a lot of e-mails   a lot," Friedly said. "Many contained racial epithets and foul language. I quit looking at them. And I've gotten racial, foul, angry phone calls."

Howard said many don't know the facts of the case. "When people heard the tubal ligation part, they thought we forced her to do it," he said.

Others erroneously believed the woman had a history of violence and had beaten the child to death.

"I think it raises the question about being truthful and reporting a story honestly," Howard said. "People are thinking we did not fight for this child. It's difficult to imagine how hurtful that is when it's far from the truth."

Whose Cap Is It Anyway?

The math in the Social Security debate is fuzzy, but the politics are crystal clear. Everybody is going to point to the problems, and nobody is going to embrace a solution.

After refusing to face the truth about his Social Security plan for the entire election campaign, President Bush has finally acknowledged that diverting part of workers' Social Security taxes into private investment accounts will do absolutely nothing to fix the projected imbalance in the system when the baby-boom generation retires. This week, he made a very tiny gesture toward a partial solution to that problem: he declined to reject the idea of raising the current $90,000 cap on wages subject to Social Security payroll taxes.

...Sure enough, Mr. Bush's mini-concession caused an uproar. Republican House leaders instantly vetoed the idea. And Democrats declined to say anything positive for fear that Mr. Bush would stage a quick retreat, leaving them holding the bag.

Even something as modest as a bump in that $90,000 cap is impossible as long as Republicans and Democrats are both determined to make the other guy go first. The only solution, as far as we can see, would be for every elected official in the Capitol to get together in one room and yell, "Raise the cap!" - on the count of three.

Bullshit concept of note

But privatization "as a general model," he said, "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature." Nice metaphor, but what does it mean? Clearly, he was trying to create the impression of links where none exist.

Three-Card Maestro
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Alan Greenspan just did it again.

Four years ago, the Fed chairman lent crucial political support to the Bush tax cuts. He didn't specifically endorse the administration's plan, and if you read his testimony carefully, it contained caveats and cautions. But that didn't matter; the headlines trumpeted Mr. Greenspan's support, and legislation whose prospects had previously seemed dubious sailed through Congress.

On Wednesday Mr. Greenspan endorsed Social Security privatization. But there's a difference between 2001 and 2005. In 2001, Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This time, he offered no justification at all.

In 2001, some readers may recall, Mr. Greenspan argued that we needed to cut taxes to prevent the federal government from running excessively large surpluses. Even at the time it seemed obvious from his tortured logic that he was looking for some excuse, any excuse, to help out a Republican administration. His lack of sincerity was confirmed when projected surpluses turned into large deficits, and he nonetheless supported even more tax cuts.

This week, Mr. Greenspan offered no excuse for supporting privatization. In fact, he agreed with two of the main critiques of the administration's plan: that it would do nothing to improve the Social Security system's finances, and that it would lead to a dangerous increase in debt. Yet he still came out in favor of the idea.

Let me make a detour here. The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.

Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.

And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding.

But privatization "as a general model," he said, "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature." Nice metaphor, but what does it mean? Clearly, he was trying to create the impression of links where none exist.

Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail.

Privatizers claim that financial markets won't be disturbed by all that borrowing because the Bush plan prescribes offsetting cuts in guaranteed benefits for the workers who open private accounts. Mr. Greenspan, who does know a thing or two about markets, put his finger on the reason why those prospective future benefit cuts wouldn't offset current borrowing in the eyes of investors: "Well, the problem is that you cannot commit future Congresses to stay with that."

Yet the chairman managed to avoid admitting the obvious - that borrowing on the scale the Bush plan requires would substantially increase the risk of a financial crisis. And the headlines didn't emphasize his concession that crucial critiques of the Bush plan are right. As he surely intended, the headlines emphasized his support for privatization.

One last point: a disturbing thing about Wednesday's hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging Mr. Greenspan's testimony, they tried to spin it in their favor.

But Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to such deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.

Incredibly credulous comment of note:

As an ambassador, Mr. Negroponte has loyally reflected and protected the positions of whatever administration happened to be in power. As national intelligence director, he will have to hew to a more independent standard.

Why do you think he was picked?

Geez...

An Intelligence Director, Finally

John Negroponte, nominated yesterday by President Bush to be the first director of national intelligence, would bring many strong qualifications to the job: decades of diplomatic experience, a reputation for successful bureaucratic infighting and some relevant managerial experience. What he has not consistently demonstrated is the kind of bedrock commitment to democratic values, professional independence and frank relations with Congress that he will need to successfully do a job whose powers have already been dangerously diluted. We hope that after what seems likely to be a relatively smooth Senate confirmation process, Mr. Negroponte can put these doubts to rest.

The reason it's a problem

As news of the lottery idea spread, it upset parents on both sides of the issue and in all parts of the district, known for its striking contrasts in wealth and ethnic makeup, from the northern end in Harlem to the southern part near Midtown.

(emphasis added, of course)

The current process (called herein the old process, as though the process has changed already)

The old process allowed for the automatic acceptance of siblings in families that had been admitted into the sought-after schools. The proposal would end that practice after next year.

And you can't even call it busing.

According to the new proposal, students in District 3 would have access to the first lottery. Any remaining seats would be offered by lottery to students in neighboring districts, then to students citywide.

Immediate backtracking of note:

Parents said they were left with the impression that the lottery had been accepted as the new admissions policy. Dr. Salavert said a task force would be convened to study the feasibility of the lottery. Yesterday, a more senior official, Michele Cahill, said that the whole idea was merely a proposal being considered.

"There's been no decision on this," said Ms. Cahill, the chancellor's senior counselor for education policy. A decision should be made by mid-March, she said.

Delicate phrasing of note:

The old practice - widely known but not documented as official policy - let knowledgeable parents place their children in top-performing schools and avoid neighborhood schools seen as less desirable.

Insistence-that-justice-yield-to-privilege of note

Cordell Cleare, the president of the District 3 Community Education Council, said the panel had already voted to try to delay the city's decision until next year.

Of the lottery idea, she said, "In its current state we can't support it."

City Considers Lottery System for Admission to Top Schools
By SUSAN SAULNY

For decades, the principals of some of the highest performing neighborhood schools on the Upper West Side have been allowed to handpick students from outside their geographic zones to fill hundreds of coveted empty seats.

But that practice may be over. Under pressure from neighborhood residents who say the system favors wealthy white families, the Department of Education is considering a lottery system to distribute spots in those schools.

The old practice - widely known but not documented as official policy - let knowledgeable parents place their children in top-performing schools and avoid neighborhood schools seen as less desirable.

For the better part of a generation, this maneuvering has been commonplace, and often regarded as the only alternative to private school or moving out of the city. In the wealthier parts of District 3, around the Upper West Side, many schools have empty seats because of the large number of children who attend private and parochial schools.

Critics charge that the system, unregulated by the central administration, has allowed principals there to exclude families from the poor and overcrowded parts of the same district in Harlem and Manhattan Valley. Faced with increasingly heated complaints from such families, the city decided to reconsider the way extra seats would be distributed as of this spring.

"We're trying to improve a past practice," said Roser Salavert, the local instructional superintendent for the area, at a community meeting on Tuesday in Harlem, where tempers flared about the lack of information about the old practice and the new rule. Dr. Salavert tried to reassure the crowd, saying the goal was to revamp the system "and make it more fair for everybody."

Parents said they were left with the impression that the lottery had been accepted as the new admissions policy. Dr. Salavert said a task force would be convened to study the feasibility of the lottery. Yesterday, a more senior official, Michele Cahill, said that the whole idea was merely a proposal being considered.

"There's been no decision on this," said Ms. Cahill, the chancellor's senior counselor for education policy. A decision should be made by mid-March, she said.

As news of the lottery idea spread, it upset parents on both sides of the issue and in all parts of the district, known for its striking contrasts in wealth and ethnic makeup, from the northern end in Harlem to the southern part near Midtown.

Parents said the change was too abrupt, coming so close to spring, when decisions have to be made about where to send a child to school.

"We cannot accept this notion that we are somehow out of bounds for trying to find the best schools for our children," said Mark Diller, co-president of the parents association at Public School 87, on 78th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.

At P.S. 87, one of the most sought-after schools in District 3, about 44 percent of 915 students come from outside the zone.

Another parent, Tom Thompson, who enrolled his son at P.S. 87 rather than his neighborhood school, P.S. 166, said: "District 3 is proceeding with this change behind closed doors and proposes to enact it immediately."

According to the new proposal, students in District 3 would have access to the first lottery. Any remaining seats would be offered by lottery to students in neighboring districts, then to students citywide.

Last June, a nonprofit immigrants' advocacy group, the Center for Immigrant Families, presented the Education Department with two years' worth of research into what it called discriminatory practices in District 3, said Priscilla Gonzalez, an organizer for the advocacy group, which is based in Manhattan. Another official with the group, Ujju Aggarwal, said that it had been exploring legal action against the schools. "We identified many ways that school officials in this district have been keeping families out of their own schools," Ms. Gonzales said. "This district holds itself up to be one of the more progressive in the city. For this to be happening, it's shameful."

The report from the group, "Segregated and Unequal," said that the student population in District 3 was 38 percent black, 33 percent Latino, and 22.8 percent white. "However," the report states, "the racial breakdown in individual elementary schools is very different from the districtwide figures, and reflects a clear pattern of racial concentration. A number of our district's elementary schools range from 38.6 to 64.4 percent white, while other schools are over 95 percent children of color."

The schools that Ms. Gonzalez said were the "most exclusionary" to the poor and racial minorities are also the most sought-after by parents: Public Schools 9, 87, 166, 199 and 333 - all between 70th and 93rd Streets.

At the gathering in Harlem where Dr. Salavert spoke, a meeting of the District 3 Community Education Council, parents and council members expressed displeasure with the way changes to the admissions policy were being made.

"I'm a little insulted because I feel we, as parents in the community, deserve the details," said Beth DiGiandomenico, co-president of the PTA at P.S. 75.

The old process allowed for the automatic acceptance of siblings in families that had been admitted into the sought-after schools. The proposal would end that practice after next year.

Mr. Thompson, for example, said he had counted on his 4-year-old child joining an older brother at P.S. 87 in the fall. The change creates a "logistical and emotional burden" for him and similar families, he said.

Cordell Cleare, the president of the District 3 Community Education Council, said the panel had already voted to try to delay the city's decision until next year.

Of the lottery idea, she said, "In its current state we can't support it."

Israel Halts Decades-Old Practice of Demolishing Militants' Homes
By GREG MYRE
Published: February 18, 2005

JERUSALEM, Feb. 17 - Israel ordered a halt on Thursday to the policy of demolishing the homes of
Palestinian militants, a step welcomed by Palestinian and human rights groups.

The decision by Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, suspends a practice that Israel has employed on and off for decades despite harsh international criticism of it as collective punishment.

A military statement did not say why the policy was being changed, but the newspaper Haaretz reported on its Web site that Maj. Gen. Udi Shani, who headed a committee reviewing the matter, had challenged the existing military position that demolitions were an effective deterrent. It said he had concluded that the policy had caused Israel more harm than good by generating hatred among the Palestinians.

A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered a slightly different explanation, saying the demolitions were not regarded as necessary during a period of relative calm.

A New S.E.C. Rule Fails to Raise Share Prices, and Some Are Angry

IT'S a criminal conspiracy when stocks move the wrong way, and the government should do something about it.

That is the cry these days of some investors in stocks that have been heavily shorted even after a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission took effect.

Patrick Byrne, the chief executive of Overstock.com, an Internet retailer, has no doubt why his company's stock took a sudden $13 plunge, to about $53, late last month, just after the release of what he viewed as fantastic earnings.

"Someone is manipulating our stock," he said in a telephone interview. He says that is proved by the fact that Overstock has shown up on a new list mandated by the S.E.C., showing stocks in which a substantial number of shares were not delivered by sellers when the trades were supposed to be settled. To him that proves that "naked short selling" is going on. That term refers to selling shares without owning or borrowing them. That has hurt investors, he said, adding, "I don't think grandmothers should be eating dog food so a couple of hundred guys on Wall Street can be driving Mercedeses."

There may not be too many such poverty-stricken investors at Overstock. This is a stock that trades for three times what it fetched a year ago, and that had run up $9 in the three days before earnings were released. A Piper Jaffray analyst removed his buy recommendation, saying that costs were likely to rise fast enough to hold profit growth below his earlier estimates. When I asked about that report, Mr. Byrne said he had not read it.

Quote of note:

From control of oil reserves to the retention of the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, to full authority over taxation, the requested powers add up to an autonomy that is hard to distinguish from independence.

Iraqi Kurds Detail Demands for a Degree of Autonomy
By EDWARD WONG
Published: February 18, 2005

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Feb. 17 - From his snow-covered mountain fortress, Massoud Barzani sees little other than the rugged hills of Iraqi Kurdistan and green-clad militiamen posted along the serpentine road below.

The border with the Arab-dominated rest of Iraq is far off. Baghdad lies even farther off and, if Kurdish leaders like Mr. Barzani have their way, will fade almost entirely out of the picture here.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have made known their determination to retain a degree of autonomy in the territory they have dominated for more than a decade. Now, after their strong performance in the elections last month, Kurdish leaders are for the first time spelling out specific demands.

From control of oil reserves to the retention of the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, to full authority over taxation, the requested powers add up to an autonomy that is hard to distinguish from independence.

"The fact remains that we are two different nationalities in Iraq - we are Kurds and Arabs," Mr. Barzani said as he sat in a reception hall at his headquarters in Salahuddin. "If the Kurdish people agree to stay in the framework of Iraq in one form or another as a federation, then other people should be grateful to them."

Kurdish autonomy is expected to be one of the most divisive issues during the drafting of the new constitution, alongside the debate over the role of Islam in the new Iraq. The Kurds' demands are already alarming Iraq's Arabs, particularly the majority Shiites, and raising tensions with neighboring countries, where governments are trying to suppress Kurdish separatist movements within their own borders.

FDR's 'Forgotten Man' at Risk
By attacking Social Security, the 'Bush Deal' aims to finish off the New Deal.
By Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter, a political columnist for Newsweek, is at work on a book about FDR and the Great Depression.

February 18, 2005

President Bush's overhaul of Social Security isn't going well right now, but it's important to remember that he is playing a long game that is less attuned to daily or weekly news cycles than to what he hopes are the cycles of history. At issue is nothing less than the repeal of the whole idea behind the New Deal.

Peter Wehner, a key White House strategist, put it this way in a recent memo: "For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win   and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

The White House wasn't happy this leaked; it is claiming publicly, with Orwellian logic, that Bush wants simply to update the New Deal. But the debate's history says otherwise.

Tsunami Uncovers Underwater Ancient City
12:51 AM PST, February 18, 2005

MAHABALIPURAM, India   Archaeologists have begun underwater excavations of what is believed to be an ancient city and parts of a temple uncovered by the tsunami off the coast of a centuries-old pilgrimage town.

Three rocky structures with elaborate carvings of animals have emerged near the coastal town of Mahabalipuram, which was battered by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

As the waves receded, the force of the water removed sand deposits that had covered the structures, which appear to belong to a port city built in the seventh century, said T. Satyamurthy, a senior archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India.

Mahabalipuram is already well known for its ancient, intricately carved shore temples that have been declared a World Heritage site and are visited each year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims and tourists. According to descriptions by early British travel writers, the area was also home to seven pagodas, six of which were submerged by the sea.

The government-run archaeological society and navy divers began underwater excavations of the area on Thursday.

"The tsunami has exposed a bas relief which appears to be part of a temple wall or a portion of the ancient port city. Our excavations will throw more light on these," Satyamurthy told The Associated Press by telephone from Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu state.

Protester Throws Shoe at Richard Perle
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press Writer

1:08 AM PST, February 18, 2005

PORTLAND, Ore.   Howard Dean, the newly minted leader of the Democratic Party, and former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle made clear their opposing views on the war in Iraq during a debate marred by a protester who tossed a shoe at Perle.

Perle had just started his comments Thursday when a protester threw a shoe at him before being dragged away, screaming, "Liar! Liar!"

The Lure of Sex Can Drive Roaches to Their Deaths
By Karen Kaplan
Times Staff Writer

February 18, 2005

In the long and seemingly futile quest to build a better roach trap, researchers have identified the come-hither chemical of the female German cockroach and produced a synthetic version that makes males come running in fewer than nine seconds.

The search for the sex pheromone has been a top priority for cockroach scientists, but it has been an arduous process because the compound is emitted in very small quantities and is so fragile that it easily degrades during laboratory analysis.

The new synthetic version appears to work at least as well as the original, giving scientists hope that they might be able to shift the balance of power in the age-old contest between humans and cockroaches -- creatures widely believed capable of surviving nuclear war.

"Chemists have been trying to get this pheromone for decades," said Wendell Roelofs, a professor of insect biochemistry at Cornell University and one of the study's authors.

The compound that lures males to their potential mates is so powerful that cockroaches near death from starvation will forgo peanut butter for a chance to copulate, said Coby Schal, a professor of entomology at North Carolina State University who co-authored the study, published Friday in the journal Science.

Okay, I modified the trackback thing a bit. They still create comments, but they need approval before they show up. And the only trackbacks that will not be approved are those I deem to be spam or some other ridiculous source. Drupal has a single function that formats the user names, and it automatically linkifies commenter names if you pass in a homepage URL. I could have just added the nofollow thing, but I don't even want y'all to see them. I'll probably add a cron job to delete unpromoted comments that are more than like 24-48 hours old.

To begin with, I want to explain present value. Basically, it's the inverse of future value, which is the amount of money you'll have after investing money at the rate of return you expect for the period of time you're considering...present value is amount of money one would have to invest now at your expected rate of return, to get the amount of money you want to end up with at the end of the period of time you want to think about. If the present value of the net of all your cash inflows and outflows over the period of time you are considering is greater than the amount you spend to set it all up, it's a profitable arrangement. Then it's a matter of whether or not the profit is enough to satisfy your needs or expectations or whatever.

A more detailed explanation is here; and here's a net present value calculator you can play with to get a feel for the way the concept works out in real life.

Armed with that information, I ask: on what economic basis would a society set up public education?

Now I quote from Economics Explained : Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going, page 161:

No society has ever become literate solely based upon private education. Yet nothing pays off economically for a society more than having an educated work force.

The need for education on a social level is an economic enabler. It's the most important a factor in increasing productivity. It's one of the major factors in the consistant increase in the USofA's GDP. It is infrastructure. But there's no way to calculate a net present value for the money spent education.

THE NANNY STATE CHRONICLES....ChoicePoint, a credit reporting company, said yesterday that hackers had infiltrated its database and stolen personal information about thousands of consumers. California customers were urged to check their credit reports for suspicious activity

Why only California customers? Because no one else is being told:

A ChoicePoint spokesman said the number of victims nationwide could total 100,000, but the company could not be sure of the extent of the fraud and had no plans to contact people outside California.

There are about 65,000 of you elsewhere in the country who are at high risk of identify theft but don't have a clue. Your state laws don't require ChoicePoint to notify you, so they're not going to.

Remember this the next time some corporate lobbying group whines about excessive regulation. If you don't regulate them, they won't act like nice guys all on their own.

I've had trackback shut off for a while now...specifically, since the rel="nofollow" thing forced spammers began focusing on trackbacks. I haven't even looked into doing anything about it yet.

Black Press Alert!

...So all of you within earshot should note that Poynter Online has an article which merits your comments.

Do the right thing.

Bush's Barberini Faun

By MAUREEN DOWD

..."Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.

...I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, [P6: emphasis added because I didn't know that] but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, [P6: emphasis added because I didn't know that] no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

I'm starting to think Star Parker is fictitious.

Transforming moral problems into politics
Star Parker
February 15, 2005

Am I pushing the envelope too far to suggest that there is common ground between the politics of slavery and the politics of Social Security?

Not like I'm a fan of the game either...

Game Makers Sued for 'Training' Murder Suspect
By Tracy L. Scott, BET.com Staff Writer

Posted Feb. 16, 2005  Did the video games make him do it? That s what a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Alabama suggests.

Steve Strickland and Henry Mealer are suing the manufacturers of  Grand Theft Auto  citing the games influence on 19-year-old Devin Thompson, who is accused of killing relatives of Strickland and Mealer.

Seeking more than $600 million in punitive damages, the suit names Sony, makers of PlayStation 2; Take-Two Interactive Software, the game manufacturers; Wal-Mart; and Gamestop stores, where Thompson allegedly purchased the games, according to the Tuscaloosa News.

Quote of note:

The reason Gannon/Guckert matters is because this administration has mainstreamed evil, has made it a dull hum in the background.

The Rude Pundit (who I hope will forgive my lifting just about the entire post):

See, the Rude Pundit hoped beyond hope that the following would be revealed: apparently Gannon/Guckert was, really, truly a cockmonger of extraordinary appetites. Or, to put it simply, it looks like lil' J. D. Guckert was a gay male prostitute. For $1200, you could spend the weekend with Guckert, who, ya know, has got a nice body although he's got an odd, clumpy penis/balls combination. For $200, you could have an hour. And one imagines that getting access to the President of the United States would make one's price go up. Guckert could now put out an ad wherein you could pay $350 to shove your dick in the mouth that asked Bush a question. For an extra $50, you can slap him around and call him an "enabling little bitch."

'Course, the frosting, if you will, on this cake of cocksucking is the article from Raw Story that White House Press Secretary Scott "Stonewall" McClellan visits gay bars in Texas. So, like, between the potential sodomite McClellan, the outed sodomite and GOP Chair Ken Mehlman, and the whoredom of Guckert, would one be wrong to think that the vicious sexual repression of the conservative movement is actually masking a burgeoning buggering brotherhood?

With this revelation, John Aravosis at AMERICAblog claims that all this matters because of the anti-gay agenda of the Bush administration and the hypocrisy of populating the White House with gay men while pursuing this agenda (and giving the hooker access that few in the press are allowed). Aravosis is right, but that's just the surface of why this matters and why this story should be hammered on until something cracks.

Here's why it matters that the Bush administration allowed an alleged gay male prostitute with no journalistic experience into the White House on a daily basis and even allowed him to ask the President a question at one of Bush's precious little press conference debacles:
Right now, in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Thailand, there's a guy who's done nothing wrong other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time who's hanging on a wall, his wrists bleeding from the metal bracelets, his fingernails torn out from trying to, for fuck's sake, hold himself up to give his torn arm muscles some rest. He's been stripped naked, cold water has been thrown on him, electric prods have been shoved in his nuts. He's been threatened with being fucked in the ass by German shepherds and he's had bottles and broomsticks and metal rods shoved into his asshole. The beatings? Fuck, the beatings are like soft cushions compared to everything else. But he's still getting the shit beaten out of him every day. And he's there, in Egypt, in Pakistan, in Thailand, where eventually he's gonna fuckin' confess to anything, to every goddamn sin they want him to confess to, because the United States sent him there so that he could be stripped, shocked, and sodomized in a hole in the middle of some shithole building, some prison or "interrogation room" where no one will ever give a fuck about such nasty bullshit like "habeas corpus" and fuckin' "rights."

The reason Gannon/Guckert matters is because this administration has mainstreamed evil, has made it a dull hum in the background. Oh, sure, sure, we were appalled, so goddamn outraged when Abu Ghraib happened, but now, even as story after story comes out that we, the American public, elected a government that thinks it's simply part of the post-9/11 game to abuse and torture suspects, we care less and less. And like a rickety old house with termites gnawing at its foundation, we are being undermined and won't know it until the whole thing comes crashing down around us. We are draining away law and ethics through the "extraordinary renditions" of "terror suspects," as well as our own torturing. Like city dwellers who can sleep through sirens, car alarms, and street construction, we just tune it all out. But it'll crash, finally. Then we'll think, oh, shit, should've killed those termites.

You may ask how these things are connected, Guckert and Guantanamo (and elsewhere), other than through the act of sodomy. All of one's lies are entangled, ultimately. Al Capone couldn't be caught on a murder rap. Instead, the government nailed him and destroyed him because of tax evasion. If what finally brings down the Bush administration is the revelation of a secret cabal of homosexuals trying desperately to stay in the closet, then so be it.

But, you know, the Rude Pundit ain't holding his breath.

Abiola at Foreign Dispatches linked to Kurt Anderson's essay on the Iraqi Elections, the substance of which is

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush's risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de-facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless.

That is the STOOOPITEST description of the situation I have ever seen. And I'm a New Yorker too.

We are not hoping for vindication of Bush's policy, but for recovery from it. The goal is to minimize the damage. That "de-facto alliance" crap is for minds that can't handle more that two options at a time.

Ever since Rick Santorum brought up the dark spectre of man-on-dog sex, it seems the Bushstas talk about beastiality every chance they get. It seems once the thought entered their mind they couldn't get it out.

Justice Dept. Fights Ruling on Obscenity
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - In a case representing a major test of the Bush administration's campaign against pornography, the Justice Department said Wednesday that it would appeal a recent decision by a federal judge that declared federal obscenity laws unconstitutional.

The Justice Department said that if the judge's interpretation of federal law was upheld, it would undermine not only anti-obscenity prohibitions, but also laws against prostitution, bigamy, bestiality and others "based on shared views of public morality."

Come on, Republican people.You can do better than that, right?

5 Units of Military Reserve Miss Recruiting Goals

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - In a sign of continued stress on the armed forces from operations in Iraq, five of the six military reserve components have failed to meet their recruiting goals for the first four months of the current fiscal year, the military's top officer said on Wednesday.

The officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that only the Marine Corps Reserve had achieved its recruiting quota through January.

General Myers said the Army Reserve and the National Guard had been particularly hard hit because the Army was retaining more soldiers on active duty instead of letting them retire and join the reserve.

Quotes of note:

The sandwich is said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary in its grill marks. It was cooked 10 years ago by a Florida woman, who sold it in November to an Internet casino for $28,000. The casino took the sandwich on a nationwide tour, out of the goodness of its heart.

"People need to find spirituality these days,'' said Eric Amgar, the sandwich's advance man. "There's nothing wrong with helping them to do that.''

...along with the Virgin Mary statue you get to see the skull with the spike through it, and also the portrait of Rudolph Valentino made from laundry dryer lint.

S.F. takes grilled sandwich with a dab of skepticism at Believe It or Not Museum
Virgin Mary image supposedly can be seen in grill pattern
- Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2005

The possibly miraculous grilled cheese sandwich arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday, accompanied by bodyguards.

It will be here for five days only. The grilled cheese sandwich has prior commitments and cannot long remain.

"We're excited to have it,'' said Ian Iljas, manager of the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum at Fisherman's Wharf, which is hosting the sandwich during its Bay Area visit.

Banners hung from the museum entrance. The eyes of the bug-eyed wax man seemed to bug out just a bit more as the sandwich was unveiled in a prime location, next to the 2-foot-wide ball of string and the vampire-killing kit.

The sandwich is said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary in its grill marks. It was cooked 10 years ago by a Florida woman, who sold it in November to an Internet casino for $28,000. The casino took the sandwich on a nationwide tour, out of the goodness of its heart.

"People need to find spirituality these days,'' said Eric Amgar, the sandwich's advance man. "There's nothing wrong with helping them to do that.''

The sandwich was facing a spiritual tough sell in San Francisco, however, where absolutely no one thought the image was that of the Virgin Mary.

"Looks like Mae West,'' said Joyce McGregor, a visitor from Perth, Australia. "Maybe Jean Harlow.''

"That's supposed to be the Virgin Mary?'' said Daniel Garside, a visitor from Huddersfield, England. "Looks like a piece of bread to me.''

"I'm not profoundly moved,'' said Susie Swentosky, of Billings, Mont., who took time out from her honeymoon to look at the sandwich. "It looks like something. A lady, I suppose. But not the Virgin Mary.''

Quote of note:

The expanded list would feature some of California's highest-performing school districts, including Santa Monica-Malibu Unified and Cupertino Union near San Jose. Even though these districts are well regarded, they could still find themselves publicly labeled as troubled if certain groups of their students   those in special education, for example   were not making enough progress.

U.S. May Force California to Call More School Districts Failures
By Duke Helfand
Times Staff Writer

February 17, 2005

The Bush administration is pressing California to toughen its rules for identifying failing school districts   a change that could add 310 school systems to a watch list this year and eventually threaten the jobs of superintendents and school board members throughout the state.

The U.S. Department of Education warned that it could cut off money to the state if California did not change the way it classified struggling districts under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The federal law calls for states to place districts on a watch list if the number of students doing well on math and English standardized tests fails to increase enough two years in a row. Such districts can face sanctions if they continue to falter.

California, however, lets districts avoid the list if students from low-income households reach a set score on a separate measure of achievement.

Federal education officials believe the state policy amounts to an escape valve. The policy violates No Child Left Behind by reducing the number of districts identified as needing improvement, the officials have told the state Department of Education.

Only 14 of California's 1,000 school districts were placed on the state's watch list this year.

But hundreds of districts could be considered failures within two years if California yielded to Washington's demands, according to state education officials.

"D'oh!" of note:

Greenspan warned that establishing the investment accounts could have a major effect on interest rates. He did not say what that effect might be, but other economists have said that new borrowing by the government as part of creating the accounts might have the effect of driving up interest rates.

If Bush changed his position that is, indeed, headline news. Too bad he still hasn't changed to the right position. His priorities are still screwed.

We know for a fact that privatizing Social Security in and of itself does nothing to balance its books. Yet that is still the central goal in Bush's plans. And it is, shall we say, less than clear balancing Social Security is the goal...or that his position has changed more than rhetorically.

On Wednesday, Bush spokesman Trent Duffy made no attempt to clarify Bush's remarks to the regional reporters that all options but a tax rate increase were under consideration, saying the president did not necessarily contradict himself.

"Just because options are on the table doesn't mean he's endorsed anything," Duffy said. "This is just a good sign of the president's willingness to be flexible and open to ideas."

In fact, Grover "date rape" Norquist thinks Bush is lying.

Grover Norquist, a leading anti-tax activist and advisor to the White House on Social Security, said he did not believe that Bush would agree to raising the $90,000 cap, despite the apparent shift in his public negotiating position. But he acknowledged that the president's remarks would rattle some conservatives.

"Should it make us nervous when somebody says, 'I would think about cutting off your fingers,' even if you don't think he really would? Yes. It makes one nervous," Norquist said. "I understand that it's his job to say, 'Let's come to the table and have a conversation.' He's counting on the fact that once you get in the room, the American people will demand personal savings accounts, and they will not demand higher taxes."

(By the way, I know Dick Armey was the one who coined the phrase. That's kind of beside the point though, isn't it?)

If fixing Social Security forever is really the goal, then anything that doesn't approach that goal should be taken off the table. The goal is difficult enough; why add issues over which there is severe disagreement and which do not help achieve that goal?

Anyway...

Bush Shifts Pension Stance
He says he is open to a higher Social Security tax cap to fund his plan for private accounts. Greenspan endorses a cautious approach.
By Peter Wallsten and Joel Havemann
Times Staff Writers

February 17, 2005

PORTSMOUTH, N.H.   In an important shift from his hard-line stance against tax increases, President Bush has said he is open to raising taxes on wealthier Americans to cover the costs of transforming Social Security.

Bush has been promoting a plan to let workers under age 55 divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts. But he has not settled on how to replace that diverted money ænbsp; an estimated $1 trillion or more over a decade that would be needed to pay benefits to current retirees.

The president, in an interview published Wednesday in several regional newspapers, left the door open to the idea of raising the cap on wages subject to the Social Security tax as a way to help cover the transition costs of private accounts. Earnings above $90,000 are not subject to tax now.

"I've been asked this question a lot, and my answer is that I'm interested in good ideas," Bush said, according to the Birmingham (Ala.) News. "The one thing I'm not open-minded about is raising the payroll tax rate, and all the other issues are on the table, and that's important for people to know."

He was drawing a distinction between the amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax and the 12.4% tax rate, paid half by workers and half by employers, which he is opposed to raising.

Nichelle was good enough to point out this from the NY Daily News

A few employees at Condé Nast's Times Square headquarters - whose fourth-floor cafeteria offers an "International Table" menu highlighting a designated foreign cuisine - were rolling their eyes yesterday.

The International Table offering for Feb. 15?

"African-American," said signs posted around the Frank Gehry-designed lunchroom, touting "Jamaican beef patties, shrimp jambalaya, rice, okra, corn, black-eyed pea stew, deviled eggs and biscuits."

Admittedly, Si Newhouse's publishing empire - led by such slick monthlies as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Glamour and Gourmet, not to mention the weekly New Yorker - isn't famous for emphasizing people of color, either as profile subjects or subscribers.

This month, of the 18 titles listed on the Condé Nast Web site, only GQ features a black person (Oscar nominee Jamie Foxx) on the cover.

But African-Americans as foreigners?

"It's really disgraceful," an offended Condé Nast staffer told me.

I'll let yo got to the page to see what Rev. Al had to say about it...

In return, I'd like to reduce any panic I may have invoked over the F.E.C. (See What the Fuck?). I posted pretty much the same thing at The American Street, and Kevin Hayden shipped me the URL for a brand spanking new page what discusses it a bit. Says they'll be looking at bloggers that formally support candidates and raise money for them. Gets into the "Kos should fess up" permathread that I do not participate in (since I'm a Black partisan rather than a political party partisan, I got no dog in that hunt).

I need to take a break from my various obsessions. Maybe I'll grab a copy of Time Out New York and pick something to do that I've never done before. Maybe a nice restaurant that serves 18-21 year old scotch...it's been over a year since I've had good scotch.

If I'm smart I'll stay away from the bookstores...

Don't know if you'll see any postings here before this evening...I'm NOT taking the laptop. Might do an Internet cafe but I doubt it.

From United for a Fair Economy's State of the Dream 2005 (pdf)

Key Findings

President Bush’s Ownership Society goals may appear at first to be consistent with Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of economic opportunity for all races, but during the first Bush administration, the United States actually moved farther away from Dr. King’s vision.

1. The employment and income picture has gotten worse for people of color since 2000, eroding the progress made during the 1990s.
• In 2000 the African American unemployment rate reached a historic low of 7.1%. It has been 9.9% or higher since January 2002.
• Latino / Hispanic unemployment rates also dropped from 8.0% in 1988 to 5.7% in 2000, but rose again in the last four years.
• About half of the progress in the median income of people of color from 1996 to 2000 was wiped out in the following three years.
• After slowly increasing from 55% of white income in 1988 to 65% in 2000, Black median income fell again to 62% in 2003. For the first time in 15 years, the average Latino household now has an income that is less than two-thirds that of the average white household.
• Throughout the 1990s, poverty rates fell across the board, declining fastest for African Americans and Latinos. But since 2000, more than one third of that progress in reducing poverty among African-American families has been erased, as 300,000 African-American families fell below the poverty line from 2000 to 2003.

2. Private retirement income and inheritances remain scarce among people of color.
• African Americans have less in private pensions and retirement accounts, and so depend more heavily on Social Security. They would be more affected than whites by any privatization plan that made benefits uncertain.
• Previous generations of race-based discrimination leaves a legacy for people of color, who are far less likely to get inheritances than white Americans.

3. Ownership of homes, stock and businesses remains disproportionately in white hands.
• While homeownership is up for all races, most people of color still rent, while three-quarters of white families own their homes. The Bush administration’s plans to boost homeownership don’t adequately address obstacles facing potential homebuyers of color, including discrimination and affordability
• Business owners of color, who are largely small business owners, received only minor tax breaks from the four Bush tax cuts. Most tax breaks for business and investors have landed with those who are wealthy and white.

Closing the racial wealth divide will require a new “GI Bill for Everyone,” a comprehensive federal investment in low-income families and communities, with an emphasis on people of color. Progressive taxes on wealthy individuals and profitable corporations are needed to fund a real Ownership Society.

I just think that if you're willing to take human life, your ass needs to be on the ground. It should never be easy and safe to kill masses of people. It should never be easy and safe to kill even one.

There was a time that Warrior, Defender, was an honorable profession. All we got is soldiers now.

Anyway...

A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield
By TIM WEINER
Published: February 16, 2005

The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.

"They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."

The robot soldier is coming.

The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion.

Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.

The robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years. And some involved in the work say it may take at least 30 more years to realize in full. Well before then, they say, the military will have to answer tough questions if it intends to trust robots with the responsibility of distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from bystander.

Even the strongest advocates of automatons say war will always be a human endeavor, with death and disaster. And supporters like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Md., are telling the Pentagon it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's "goal is there," he said, "but the path is not totally clear."

Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may become swarms of "smart dust." The Pentagon intends for robots to haul munitions, gather intelligence, search buildings or blow them up.

Maybe it's me, but I've seen a lot of really bizarre conceptual juxtapositions this morning.

That said, I would LOVE to see these presentations. I'd like to see what the Feds are promoting.

US EMBASSY COMMEMORATES AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH IN UZBEKISTAN

Alumni of US Government-funded education and exchange programmes marked the celebration of African American History Month on 15 February at Hotel Grand-Orzu in Tashkent.

US Ambassador John Purnell hosted the event focused on the contributions of Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play professional baseball in the US major leagues. After watching a documentary about Jackie Robinson's life, Ambassador Purnell and Embassy Political Counsellor Sylvia Curran, an African American, discussed the importance of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the "colour barrier" into the US professional sports.

Throughout the rest of February, the Embassy is planning to host a series of movies that highlight different aspects of the African American experience in the United States.

The US celebrates African American History Month each February in order to recognise the vital contributions that African American have made in the US and throughout the world.

Quote of note:

"Right now people don't want to hear about politics. I don't speak about apartheid; I speak about living with those scars and being reflective about it, and trying to understand it."

Black History Month in the present
By: Joseph Galiwango
February.15.2005

South African bands seldom perform rap shows to sold-out crowds in Toronto, but after packing houses for eight straight nights throughout southern Ontario, the African Way Tour filled the Revival club on the first Friday of February.

The setting for the night, Little Italy, where socialites come to party without the messiness, isn't what you might expect from an African hip-hop extravaganza.

But once things get going, the racial mix on- and off-stage make it clear that the night is about African culture being enjoyed by all. So why not Little Italy?

"The racial makeup of the band is interesting," says Tumi of his band, Tumi and the Volume. "It is really representative of a free society and where South Africa is headed. Music is the same, but the sounds are so varied."

The Volume is made up of white- and brown-skinned Muslims and Jews. Tiago, the guitarist, Dave, the bassist, and Paulo, the drummer (they go only by their first names), are spreading a new post-apartheid South African tolerance around the world through hip-hop.

"I think we represent a dormant side of hip-hop, which is the experimental side," Tiago says. "If you need to label it, you call it hip-hop because our front man is an MC. But, foremost, I think Tumi is a poet."

Tumi is the poet, and the Volume is the sonic force behind him. The rhythm section operates organically, switching between soul, African, and hip-hop grooves, while Tumi, with his teddy bear round face and raspy voice, showers the crowd with rhymes­--rhymes not anchored in struggle or pain from apartheid, but grounded by the goal of communicating universally.

"With (regards to) South African politics, I'm not specific about it," Tumi says. "I'd rather deal with the human condition rather than the political.

"Right now people don't want to hear about politics. I don't speak about apartheid; I speak about living with those scars and being reflective about it, and trying to understand it."

The show was jointly produced by Dave Guenette, a tall, skinny, white guy, and Jesse Ohtake, a tall, round, Japanese guy. Guenette is the founder of District Six Music Management Company, and Ohtake is the founder of TheCyberKrib.com.

District Six Music Mana-gement is responsible for bringing Tumi and The Volume to Canada. Guenette, an International Development graduate from U of T, discovered their music while in South Africa.

"There was something about Tumi and the Volume that stuck with me after I saw them in Johannesburg almost two years ago," says Guenette. "Tumi was a magnet and his words affected me in a really exciting way. I wanted to do something about it."

That led to the creation of District Six music, which in turn spawned the African Way Tour, a tour of many of Africa's sounds: Hip-hop from Tumi and The Volume, hip-hop/soul from vocalist Zaki Ibrahim, choice turntable selections from DJ Nana and Afro beats from local band Ultramagnus.

Afrobeat sounds like the deepest funk but tighter and bigger, with bass lines that come from a darker soil and draw in the listener.

Ultramagnus is indicative of how African music has spread into other cultures. While Afrobeat was created in Nigeria in the '70s, pioneered by Fela Kuti, Ultramagnus have no black members. Still they look entranced while they play, devoted to each note and relentless on stage.

As I listen to them I realize that, while black history month is the background for the night, it's a distant background, because the people filling Revival didn't come for black history, they came for colourful, vibrant music.

At the same time, I realize that nights like this prove how far black history stretches into multi-cultural places like Toronto.

"One can't really help what they are compelled by," Guenette says of his love for and working relationship with African music.

"We weren't interested in defining (black history month). It just so happened that the shows were scheduled at the beginning of February. A lot of exciting things for black history month are taking place."

During their song People, People, Tumi's lyrics seem tailored to the black history month theme. "We are a proud people, a live people, Allah's people, a beautiful people, and equally foul people," he pronounces.

I have to check myself from thinking of Tumi and the Volume as ambassadors on stage, remembering what Tumi told me before the show: "We're performers, we want to communicate, and if you want to communicate then we'll get at you. If you don't, then we can't force it on you.

"For me the biggest point is really that we have dope music and not that we're African.

"Look I'm not here on some charity mission trying to say 'support African music because we need your support.' Nah. We're here to share."

Quote of note:

But in 2005 it takes an act of willful blindness not to see that the Bush plan for Social Security is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most important achievement of the New Deal. The Republicans themselves say so: the push for privatization is following the playbook laid out in a 1983 Cato Journal article titled "A 'Leninist' Strategy," and in a White House memo declaring that "for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win - and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

The Fighting Moderates
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use any means to get there," Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. "But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe."

Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House.

It was always absurd to call Mr. Dean a left-winger. Just ask the real left-wingers. During his presidential campaign, an article in the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch denounced him as a "Clintonesque Republicrat," someone who, as governor, tried "to balance the budget, even though Vermont is a state in which a balanced budget is not required."

Even on Iraq, many moderates, including moderate Republicans, quietly shared Mr. Dean's misgivings - which have been fully vindicated - about the march to war.

But Mr. Dean, of course, wasn't quiet. He frankly questioned the Bush administration's motives and honesty at a time when most Democrats believed that the prudent thing was to play along with the war party.

We'll never know whether Democrats would have done better over the past four years if they had taken a stronger stand against the right. But it's clear that the time for that sort of caution is past.

Presented without comment.

Since the "What The Fuck?" post probably makes you think I'm paranoid already, I might as well pull the tin foil hat all the way down over my ears and say this suggests a more plausible responsible party than Syria.

The Devil We Know in Lebanon
February 16, 2005

If Syria was involved in any way in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, it was a remarkably stupid move. The car bombing that killed Hariri and at least nine others on Monday has boosted support for Lebanese political groups opposed to Syria's influence over the country and increased international pressure for Syria to withdraw its 16,000 troops from the country. France and the United States, which seldom agree on Middle East policy, have found common ground over Syria, with both sharpening their rhetorical darts aimed at Damascus in the wake of the attack.

Whether Syria actually had anything to do with the killing matters less than the fact that it will be widely blamed for it. In the hundreds of car bombings over the course of a brutal civil war lasting from 1975 to 1990, few of the perpetrators were ever caught. That means we may never know who packed the explosives in Monday's murder. That may suit France and the U.S. just fine, because it keeps the pressure on Syria.

King/Drew Passes Key Inspection
Three days before a deadline to cut off federal funds, the troubled L.A. County hospital avoids the loss of $200 million.
By Charles Ornstein and Jack Leonard
Times Staff Writers

February 16, 2005

Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center passed a crucial inspection Tuesday, eliminating for now the threat that $200 million in federal money would be cut off.

The inspection came three days before the deadline the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had set to pull its funding from the troubled Los Angeles County-owned hospital.

The government reimburses hospitals for services provided to patients under Medicare and California's Medi-Cal program. If King/Drew had lost the money   more than half of its annual budget —  the hospital might have had to close.

The warning came after regulators found that King/Drew staff had relied too heavily on police officers to shoot aggressive mental patients with Taser stun guns instead of first trying less extreme methods to calm them.

The federal government's threat to cut off money was the third in less than a year. The prior incidents involved medication errors and inappropriate use of Tasers. Those threats were similarly lifted after the hospital demonstrated that it had corrected the problems.

Hell with the acronym, I just ran across a story from December on the CBSNews.com site that I had never seen or seen discussed. Self-interest requires posting about it. It's titled Blogs: New Medium, Old Politics, and I'm only quoting the second to last paragraph so no one gets distracted.

Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech.

Will Fed chief wade into Social Security debate?
Greenspan heads to Hill; investors look for hints on exit strategy
By Martin Wolk

Chief economics correspondent

MSNBC

Updated: 6:40 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2005

With less than a year left in his term as Federal Reserve chief, is Alan Greenspan thinking about an exit strategy?

Investors, taxpayers and lawmakers will be looking for any hint of one when Greenspan troops to Capitol Hill Wednesday and Thursday to offer his semiannual report on the economy.

With the economy expanding steadily, Greenspan has little reason to veer from the Fed s program of gradually raising short-term rates to prevent inflation from gaining ground. But analysts said they will be looking for any hint of milestones that would allow the central bank to move to the sidelines.

Greenspan also is certain to face questions about his views on overhauling Social Security, the No. 1 item on President Bush's domestic agenda. Several analysts said they thought Greenspan would tread lightly after the kerfuffle over his suggestion last year that benefits eventually might have to be cut.

But one key senator said Tuesday that Greenspan is taking an active role in the debate. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is writing a bill that would include private accounts to partly replace Social Security, said the Fed chief suggested a new way to calculate retirement benefits.

Lindsey said he met twice with Greenspan, who suggested protecting benefits for low-income workers, say those making $30,000 or less. But higher-income workers would be subject to a new form of inflation indexing that would cut their benefits over the long run.

"He s a real smart guy," Graham said of Greenspan. "He s been involved with entitlement reform ideas for years. ... He knows how my bill works because I explained it to him, and he said,  Why don t you look at a progressive indexing system?  And I think it s a very good idea.   

Although Graham is a key player in the Social Security debate, he is not on the Senate Banking Committee that will hear from Greenspan Wednesday. Greenspan will appear before the House Financial Services Committee Thursday.

Database giant gives access to fake firms
ChoicePoint warns more than 30,000 they may be at risk

EXCLUSIVE

By Bob Sullivan

Technology correspondent

MSNBC

Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Feb. 14, 2005

Criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed critical personal data stored by ChoicePoint Inc., a firm that maintains databases of background information on virtually every U.S. citizen, MSNBC.com has learned.

The incident involves a wide swath of consumer data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports and other information. ChoicePoint aggregates and sells such personal information to government agencies and private companies.

Last week, the company notified between 30,000 and 35,000 consumers in California that their personal data may have been accessed by "unauthorized third parties," according to ChoicePoint spokesman James Lee.

California law requires firms to disclose such incidents to the state's consumers when they are discovered. It is the only state with such a requirement but such data thefts are rarely limited to a single geographic area.

Can you guess where I got this quote from?

"In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."

In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about.

The American right today has managed to be solidly anti-leftist while adopting an ideology   even without knowing it or being entirely conscious of the change   that is also frighteningly anti-liberty.

The answer is below the fold.

This is why I haven't lost hope for small 'l' libertarians. They can think. They really do believe in freedom. And the small 'l' types are capable of recognizing reality. I don't think Rockwell carries the small 'l,' which makes this article even more striking.

The Reality of Red-State Fascism
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Year's end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine. The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.

This huge shift has not been noticed among mainstream punditry, and hence there have been few attempts to explain it   much less have libertarians thought much about what it implies. My own take is this: the Republican takeover of the presidency combined with an unrelenting state of war, has supplied all the levers necessary to convert a burgeoning libertarian movement into a statist one.

The remaining ideological justification was left to, and accomplished by, Washington's kept think tanks, who have approved the turn at every crucial step. What this implies for libertarians is a crying need to draw a clear separation between what we believe and what conservatives believe. It also requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward.

Failing Grade
Robert Gordon
Monday 9:52 AM

Just how are today's children going to earn enough money to squirrel away into their private accounts if George Bush decimates the public education system? Robert Gordon looks at Bush's education budget and sees an end to what little education reform the No Child Left Behind Act eked out, as the administration chose to fund the program at only one third its proper level. There's a vision for America: dumb, impoverished and indebted.

Quote of note:

The denial of climate change, while out of tune with the science, is consistent with, even necessary for, the outlook of almost all the world's economists. Modern economics, whether informed by Marx or Keynes or Hayek, is premised on the notion that the planet has an infinite capacity to supply us with wealth and absorb our pollution. The cure to all ills is endless growth. Yet endless growth, in a finite world, is impossible. Pull this rug from under the economic theories, and the whole system of thought collapses.

Mocking our dreams
The reality of climate change is that the engines of progress have merely accelerated our rush to the brink
George Monbiot
Tuesday February 15, 2005
The Guardian

...If climate change is to introduce horror into our lives, we would expect - because throughout our evolutionary history we survived by finding patterns in nature - to see that horror beginning to unfold. It is true that a few thousand people in the rich world have died as a result of floods and heatwaves. But the overwhelming sensation, experienced by all of us, almost every day, is that of being blessed by our pollution.

Instead, the consequences of our gluttony are visited on others. The climatologists who met at the government's conference in Exeter this month heard that a rise of just 2.1 degrees, almost certain to happen this century, will confront as many as 3 billion people with water stress. This, in turn, is likely to result in tens of millions of deaths. But the same calm voice that tells us climate change means mild winters and early springs informs us, in countries like the UK, that we will be able to buy our way out of trouble. While the price of food will soar as the world goes into deficit, those who are rich enough to have caused the problem will, for a couple of generations at least, be among the few who can afford to ignore it.

...

Another reason is that there is a well-funded industry whose purpose is to reassure us, and it is granted constant access to the media. We flatter its practitioners with the label "sceptics". If this is what they were, they would be welcome. Scepticism (the Latin word means "inquiring" or "reflective") is the means by which science advances. Without it we would still be rubbing sticks together. But most of those we call sceptics are nothing of the kind. They are PR people, the loyalists of Exxon Mobil (by whom most of them are paid), commissioned to begin with a conclusion and then devise arguments to justify it. Their presence on outlets such as the BBC's Today programme might be less objectionable if, every time Aids was discussed, someone was asked to argue that it is not caused by HIV, or, every time a rocket goes into orbit, the Flat Earth Society was invited to explain that it could not possibly have happened. As it is, our most respected media outlets give Exxon Mobil what it has paid for: they create the impression that a significant scientific debate exists when it does not.

But there's a much bigger problem here. The denial of climate change, while out of tune with the science, is consistent with, even necessary for, the outlook of almost all the world's economists. Modern economics, whether informed by Marx or Keynes or Hayek, is premised on the notion that the planet has an infinite capacity to supply us with wealth and absorb our pollution. The cure to all ills is endless growth. Yet endless growth, in a finite world, is impossible. Pull this rug from under the economic theories, and the whole system of thought collapses.

And this, of course, is beyond contemplation. It mocks the dreams of both left and right, of every child and parent and worker. It destroys all notions of progress. If the engines of progress - technology and its amplification of human endeavour - have merely accelerated our rush to the brink, then everything we thought was true is false. Brought up to believe that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, we are now discovering that it is better to curse the darkness than to burn your house down.

Our economists are exposed by climatologists as utopian fantasists, the leaders of a millenarian cult as mad as, and far more dangerous than, any religious fundamentalism. But their theories govern our lives, so those who insist that physics and biology still apply are ridiculed by a global consensus founded on wishful thinking.

Cynthia Tucker - Universal Press Syndicate

02.14.05 - At least Sonny Perdue, Georgia's governor, practices what he preaches. A conservative Christian and an opponent of abortion, Perdue and his wife have matched word with deed over the years by volunteering as foster parents who take care of abused or abandoned infants.

But there isn't much of that going around. There has long been an odd cognitive dissonance in the anti-abortion movement, a strange disconnect of values. Many family-values-loving conservative Christians are staunchly opposed to programs that would help poor children get health care or day care or decent housing. It is as if they adore the child still inside the womb, but despise him as soon as he comes screaming into the world.

I almost wish I had heard of this blog before. But I've been ignoring hot blonde Libertarians since the arrival of Hot Abercrombie Chick.

If it weren't for you meddling kids

At the end of each episode of Scooby Doo, the villain always says,  and I would have gotten away with it if it weren t for you meddling kids.  That's how I feel about the guys at Catallarchy.net.

Well I may be an unemployed man without a wife or girlfriend still living with my parents despite being over the age of 30, but at least I m not so stupid as to think that a gorgeous young girl would be the author of a popular libertarian blog. She d be too busy having fun. The kind of fun found in this post, except it would be happening every night instead of just being a one time event. You guys are so gullible!

Libertarians tend to be ugly because it s an anti-majority philosophy. People who are attractive have an easy time going through life and derive far too many advantages from the status quo to ever question it. It s only outsiders, who are usually ugly, who join up with fringe movements.

Do you KNOW how often I've been tempted to do something like this?

Well, never.

I might have to blogroll the sucker though because it ain't over.

Wanted: attractive young woman to represent me

Here's the offer: if you're an attractive woman living in the Washington, DC area, between the ages of 18 and 29, and you d like to become a famous blogger, then please email me at [email protected].

I'm certain that I have what it takes to get a blog into the A-list, so long as there s a picture of a beautiful young woman on the sidebar. Once we get into the A-list, there will be media opportunities and book deals.

All you have to do is supply photos and be available whenever a real person is needed. Otherwise, I ll run the blog and pretend to be you. But if you have an interesting personal life, a few posts along those lines would certainly increase readership.

You must be comfortable with right of center politics, but the exact political views are open to mutual agreement. The views of our joint blog can be different from the views in this blog.

I'm sure we will be able to agree on an equitable way to share the profits.

This scheme was very successful for the 80s pop group Milli Vanilli, and I'm sure it will work just as well in the blogosphere.

The blog must go on

People have told me I should just go on with the blog and pretend that nothing happened.

That seems like pretty good advice. There will be pleny of new gullible people to replace the old gullible people. And no one will have any new incentive to "out" me because I've already been outed.

So this is what will happen. In twenty-four hours, I will post a new girl picture and delete all posts, comments, and trackbacks relating to Libertarian Girl not being a girl.

U.S. Department of Justice
Celebrates
National African American History Month

Thursday, February 17, 2005
11:00 a.m.
Great Hall, Robert F. Kennedy Building

"The Niagara Movement: Black Protest Reborn, 1905-2005"

Key Presenter: Royce Kinniebrew
President and Chief Executive Officer
The Kinniebrew Group
Detroit, Michigan

Remarks:

Mary Beth Buchanan, Director
Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys

Mark Logan, Assistant Director
for Training and Professional Development
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Supervisors are encouraged to grant official time to employees to attend the Program. Assistive listening devices and sign language interpreter available.

Another one I've said nothing about. PTCruiser dropped a couple of links to Churchill-related stuff on me; this one, and links on that page, are what I base my opinion of his positions on. But my opinion of the dispute is: white folks flexing on white folks. And not necessary for me to address.

But for those who want a more...nuanced analysis, I refer you to a post by ThatColoredFella's guest blogger. You might find two good writers for the price of one.

On Alan Keyes:

I didn't think it was possible for me to have an even lower opinion of Alan Keyes than I already had. I already thought him a buffoon and a fool, and that was before he made his way to Illinois for his ill-advised, ill-fated, and just plain ill attempt to become an Illinois senator. But with what he's putting his own flesh and blood, his daughter, Maya, through, by firing her, by cutting off her tuition monies, by telling her to get lost from the Chicago apartment he let her stay in, simply because she came out as a lesbian... It reminds me of that line in A Fish Called Wanda: "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!"

Send them to read this at Sebastian Holsclaw's joint.

May I read you a few lines from Tolstoy's War and Peace?

When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. "Alright. Please wait!" he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent, which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood-what he had already guessed-that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and a more real system-the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris, Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.

In the passage I have just read from Tolstoy, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organized secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it. There are what correspond to passwords, but they too are spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks. But it is not constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the border-line. And if you come back to the same Divisional Headquarters, or Brigade Headquarters, or the same regiment or even the same company, after six weeks' absence, you may find this second hierarchy quite altered. There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called "You and Tony and me." When it is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself "we." When it has to be suddenly expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself "All the sensible people at this place." From outside, if you have despaired of getting into it, you call it "That gang" or "They" or "So-and-so and his set" or "the Caucus" or "the Inner Ring." If you are a candidate for admission you probably don't call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention it in talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness. [P6: Emphasis added...and I'd add more if I could]

Badly as I may have described it, I hope you will all have recognized the thing I am describing. Not, of course, that you have been in the Russian Army or perhaps in any army. But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the Ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the School Ring was almost in touch with a Masters' Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of the onion. And here, too, at your university-shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings-independent systems or concentric rings-present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings-what Tolstoy calls the second or unwritten systems.

Fucked up action of note:

Sen. Ronnie Chance (R-Tyrone) said the home phone numbers of the nine Republicans who had voted against the bill Thursday had been e-mailed to supporters of the legislation.

Jury award limits OK'd
Medical malpractice bill awaits governor's signature

By BILL RANKIN, SONJI JACOBS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/15/05

In an abrupt about-face, the state Senate approved legislation Monday to overhaul Georgia's civil justice system that was hailed by medical and business lobbies and condemned by trial lawyers and consumer advocates.

On Thursday, the Senate fell one vote short of approving the bill approved only moments earlier by the House to set limits on damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. But after a weekend of intense lobbying, the Senate voted 38-15 in favor of the bill.

"There's been a pent-up demand for comprehensive civil justice reform," Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said after the vote. "When push came to shove, it was time to make it happen. I don't think anybody wanted to extend the emotional debate over this issue any longer."

Senate Bill 3 imposes a cap of $350,000   or up to $1.05 million in multidefendant cases   on jury awards for malpractice victims' pain and suffering.

The legislation also will make it extremely difficult for a victim of malpractice to win damages, including lost wages and medical bills, for injuries caused by negligence in an emergency room procedure.

The bill's sponsors expect Gov. Sonny Perdue to sign it into law, but a spokeswoman for the governor said no signing date has been scheduled. Perdue will conduct a "thorough and deliberate review" of the legislation, Heather Hedrick said.

On Thursday, nine Republicans in the Senate voted against the bill, even though the Republican leadership has made overhauling civil justice a top priority this session. On Monday, the nine Republicans switched and voted for the bill. Four Democrats also changed their minds and voted in favor.

Quote of note:

Staying with the countywide average would allow districts to follow the rules despite pockets of heavy overcrowding. In Miami-Dade County, for example, the classroom-busting populations in southern and southwestern Miami-Dade are offset by underenrolled schools in the urban core.

Bush: Limit cuts in class sizes
Gov. Jeb Bush wants to set a statewide minimum for teacher salaries and perhaps give all of them a raise while limiting a voter-approved plan to reduce class sizes.
BY MATTHEW I. PINZUR AND GARY FINEOUT

Trying again to scale back Florida's plans to reduce class sizes, Gov. Jeb Bush announced a campaign Monday to dramatically ease the demands of a class-cap constitutional amendment and use the savings to boost teacher salaries.

Bush has failed in previous efforts to repeal the amendment, which voters approved in 2002, but he hopes to sell the change this time by setting a new statewide minimum teacher salary of $35,000 a year -- a small boon to South Florida rookie teachers who are already near that mark but a windfall for those in smaller, rural counties who make as little as $25,000.

Under the governor's plan -- which would need approval from voters statewide -- the state would measure only a county's average class size, blocking the amendment's transition to tougher standards: By the 2006-07 school year, the averages are supposed to be measured at each school, and in 2010-11, every classroom would have to meet the caps.

I'm not really sweating $5.5 million out of a multi-trillion dollar budget (which means I've graduated to Washington insider status, I guess).

But if PCII is being used, how would we know?

Anyway...

U.S. info-sharing initiative called a flop
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Feb 11 2005 1:55PM

Nearly a year after its launch, a federal office created as a conduit for corporate America to provide the government with sensitive information about critical vulnerabilities has been all but rejected by the technology industry that helped conceive it.

The Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) program allows corporations who run key elements of U.S. infrastructure to submit details about their physical and cyber vulnerabilities to a special office within the Department of Homeland Security, with legally-enforceable assurances that the information will not be used against them or released to the public. The effort is funded at $5.5 million in the White House's 2006 budget request.

The program implements a 2002 law that was backed by the technology industry, and intended to assuage its fears that sensitive or embarrassing information shared with the government for security purposes would be released to the press and public through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The law was opposed by environmental watchdog groups and open government advocates, who feared it would provide companies with a smokescreen for corporate negligence.

Instead, the PCII program has gone completely unused, at least by the information technology world, says Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Industry Association of America. The ITAA lobbied hard for the original legislation, but takes issue with DHS's implementation.

An astounding amount of money has been spent of rent subsidies...when the same money could have...should have...been used for mortgage subsidies.

Anyway...

Study Urges City to Require Building of Low-Cost Housing
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: February 15, 2005

A new study by researchers at New York University recommends that the city require developers to include lower-cost apartments in large apartment buildings in fast-growing neighborhoods.

Although the Bloomberg administration and the real estate industry have said such actions should be voluntary, the study says that under the right conditions it would make financial sense to have developers set aside 10 to 20 percent of their units for lower-income residents, in exchange for building larger buildings than zoning now allows. The requirement would be most effective in developing neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the study says, and in condominium buildings, not rental units.

The study, to be released today by the university's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, comes at a time when community activists have been redoubling their efforts to inject housing into the mayoral race, with many urging the city to require 40 percent of units for lower-income residents. Two weeks ago, more than 5,000 tenants, city employees, clerics and others staged the biggest housing rally in decades outside City Hall, demanding, among other issues, that the city adopt this requirement, known as inclusionary zoning.

The report does not analyze whether the zoning requirement would work on Manhattan's West Side, another developing neighborhood often mentioned in the debate over low-cost housing. But it suggests that the city use the report to analyze factors like land costs and interest rates in determining whether the requirement makes sense for a neighborhood.

Ex-Aide Questions Bush Vow To Back Faith-Based Efforts

By Alan Cooperman and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A01

A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush has failed to deliver on his promise to help religious groups serve the poor, the homeless and drug addicts because the administration lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first term, said in published remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

Analyzing Bush's failure to secure $8 billion in promised funding for the faith-based initiative during his first term, Kuo said there was "snoring indifference" among Republicans and "knee-jerk opposition" among Democrats in Congress.

"Capitol Hill gridlock could have been smashed by minimal West Wing effort," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet.com, a Web site on religion. "No administration since [Lyndon B. Johnson's] has had a more successful legislative record than this one. From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' "

Jailed Ex-Official Linked To More Defense Contracts
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page E01

Darleen A. Druyun, the former Air Force procurement official who admitted showing Boeing Co. favoritism on contracts, may have unduly influenced eight other contracts worth about $3 billion, including four awarded to other companies, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Druyun's admissions last year sparked a review of 407 contracts she dealt with during her nine-year tenure as a top Air Force procurement official. The possible irregularities were referred to the Pentagon's inspector general for further review, the officials said.

The contracting process may have been "sped up, interrupted or unduly influenced" by Druyun, Mike Wynne, the Pentagon's acting acquisition chief, told reporters at a briefing. "It pains me to find any instance where the contracts could have been manipulated for other than the best interest of the taxpayer. There is no best practice or metric that allows for anything other than zero defects in this area."

The Defense Contract Management Agency found that in some of the contracts, Druyun changed the outcome of the award decision or directed someone else to, according to a source briefed on the review. Air Force officials coined the term "DSS: Darleen Says So" as a short response to dismiss questions about Druyun's decisions, said the source, who would speak only on condition of anonymity. In some cases, the cost of the contract increased or the requirements were "watered down" or written after the contract award, the source added.

Quote of note:

Bush has said that his nominees are well qualified and deserve a vote in the Senate. "Every judicial nominee deserves a prompt hearing and an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate," he said yesterday.

Not true. If every candidate is to be presented to the full Senate no matter what, there's no point to having a nominating committee at all.

Not that I want to give anyone any ideas...

Anyway...

Bush Tries Luck Again With Judicial Nominees
12 Candidates For Federal Courts Blocked in 1st Term

By Michael A. Fletcher and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A05

Following through on a promise he has made repeatedly since his victory in November, President Bush yesterday renominated 12 candidates for federal appeals court seats whose confirmations were blocked by Senate Democrats during his first term.

The renomination of the judicial candidates promises to once again ignite an intense partisan battle with Senate Democrats. They have vowed to thwart Bush's nominees, whom they consider too conservative.

The battle over the makeup of the federal bench is also a key issue for conservative evangelicals and others at the core of the president's political base who see judges as crucial to their efforts to outlaw abortion, allow for a broader religious presence in daily life and limit the influence of the federal government.

Quote of note:

"I wish I could tell you that the Bush administration has done everything it could to detect and punish fraud in Iraq," Grayson said. "If I said that to you, though, I would be lying."

Lawmakers Told About Contract Abuse in Iraq
By Griff Witte

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A03

A government contractor defrauded the Coalition Provisional Authority of tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction funds and the Bush administration has done little to try to recover the money, an attorney for two whistle-blowers told Democratic lawmakers yesterday.

The lawyer, Alan Grayson, represents two former employees who charged in a federal lawsuit that the security firm Custer Battles LLC of Fairfax was paid approximately $15 million to provide security for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport, even though no planes flew during the contract term. Grayson said the firm received $100 million in contracts in 2003 and 2004, despite a thin track record and evidence the government was not getting its money's worth.

U.S. Urges Nations Not to Reward N. Korea

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A14

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her South Korean counterpart yesterday as the Bush administration urged North Korea's neighbors not to provide incentives to the government in Pyongyang to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear programs.

North Korea last week pulled out of the talks and officially announced it possessed nuclear weapons, leaving the United States scrambling for ways to step up pressure to get the negotiating process on track.

"We and others agree that North Korea is making a mistake by staying away. We and others agree that one should not reward that mistake," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters after Rice met with Ban Ki Moon, South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade.

"We would expect people to look at the various things they are doing and try to use them to encourage North Korea to return to the talks," Boucher said. [P6: Physician, heal thyself]

U.S. officials are still trying to determine a strategy for dealing with the unexpected North Korean announcement. Much of the diplomatic activity is aimed at ensuring unity among the five partners in the talks, which also include China, Russia and Japan. Rice also spoke by phone on Saturday with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, while Ban was in Washington on a previously scheduled visit.

Having mentioned it, and even linking to a version posted on an experimental (and now non-existant) WordPress site, I've posted Black Power Defined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at The Niggerati Network. Read it when you get a chance. And the result of the last poll (Should we have open threads?) was No - 8 votes Yes, daily - 7 votes (mine doesn't count) Yes, weekly - 3 votes That's 10 to 8 in favor, but 11 to 7 that there should be no daily open thread. So I'm going to do one open thread per week, roughly noon on Fridays.

HISTORIC FRONT PAGES FROM THE Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette

Forty years ago, conflict over integration of Little Rock Central High School captured the attention of the world. That crisis stands as the most significant news event in Little Rock's 20th century history.

The crisis of 1957 was reported in powerful detail by the two statewide newspapers of that era -- the morning Arkansas Gazette and the afternoon Arkansas Democrat. Their pages, reflecting different news cycles but equal competitive vigor, provide an objective record of those momentous times.

For 37 days in August, September and October 1997 the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette republished the front pages of both newspapers from the corresponding date 40 years ago. We offer this unprecedented window onto history as a service to our readers.

Quote of note:

The missile defense program has undergone a series of delays that forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that the system would not be operational by the start of 2005, a key campaign promise made by President Bush last year.

Missile Defense System Fails Test
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

12:25 PM PST, February 14, 2005

WASHINGTON   A test of the national missile defense system failed today, in the second expensive setback for the fledgling program in two months, Pentagon officials said.

Military analysts believe the failure of the $85-million test was due to a problem with ground support equipment and not with the interceptor itself. Technicians believe the problem occurred inside the concrete underground silo, where a variety of common and widely used sensors perform safety and environmental monitoring.

The interceptor, located at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, was supposed to target a mock ballistic missile fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska. But after the target missile was launched at 1:22 a.m. EST, the interceptor failed to launch.

The failure marked another expensive delay in testing the interceptor, but defense officials expressed relief that the problem did not appear related to the component being tested.

Defense officials considered the failure less of a setback than the Dec. 15 launch, when the so-called "kill vehicle" shut down without launching after sensors detected a problem later deemed to have been caused by a fault in the software of the interceptor.

Iran spurns European reactor deal
Iran has said it will not give up its plans to build a heavy-water nuclear reactor.

European negotiators had offered to replace a heavy-water nuclear reactor with a light-water reactor.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi dismissed the offer, saying Iran wanted to be a major player in nuclear fuel supply in 15 years.

The US fears Iran's programme could be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Sunday's Washington Post reported that the United States had been sending unmanned drones over Iran since April 2004 trying to gather evidence of any weapons programme.

Military action

European negotiators have been trying to get Iran to give guarantees about its nuclear programme and one of the major incentives on the table has been the offer of a light-water research reactor.

Mr Asefi said Iran welcomed the offer from Europe but would not give up its heavy-water plant being built at Arak, in central Iran.

"We intend to turn into an important and a major player in the nuclear fuel supply market in the next 15 years because there will be an energy shortage in the future," he said.

Mr Asefi added: "We have told the Europeans to tell their American allies not to play with fire and the Europeans received that message perfectly well."

Not so long as CNN posts a picture of a nuclear reactor in Iran on February 9 with one story...then zooms and crops for another story, claiming it's a reactor in North Korea on February 12.

Yes, they did.

The image from February 9 has been changed now, but The Brad Blog saved it.

Stanford: Mind Control in Theory and Practice

When Zimbardo was teaching a course on Mind Control, he had an assignment where he asked his students to apply what they had learned to get blacks and women to start smoking. Almost all students came back with detailed explanations, some used their personal experiences, others interviewed black friends for their input, etc. Just to make sure, he told the students that he d sent their reports to a friend at Philip Morris and they were very interested in hiring a few students over the summer; it'd only be an internship, but who would be interested? Almost everyone's hand shot up.

Zimbardo was livid. He was going to outright cancel the course until someone talked him out of it. Here were students who had spent months learning the techniques of mind control, with special emphasis on the evils of smoking, with the goal of being able to resist its power, and none of it had any effect! One simple assignment and kids were lining up to kill people.

...but he's both idealistic and terribly naïve.

No one becomes educated to become a greater person anymore. All education is essentially vocational. And few people learn anything except as a specialty. That means people who enroll in a class named Mind Control are doing so to learn how to control minds...and are heading straight for marketing or politics (not that there's any difference between the two anymore).

Honestly, if he's qualified to teach Mind Control, he would have known to name the course differently, call it something evocative of freedom.

Title:  The Ethics of Identity
Author:  Kwame Anthony Appiah
ASIN:  0691120366
Format:  Hardcover
List Price:  $29.95
Amazon.com Price:  $19.77

Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions.

The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are.

Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the clichés and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His books include two monographs in the philosophy of language as well as the widely acclaimed In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture and, with Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. He has also edited or co-edited many books, including (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience. His most recent book is Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy.

Title:  On Bullshit
Author:  Harry G. Frankfurt
ASIN:  0691122946
Format:  Hardcover
List Price:  $9.95
Amazon.com Price:  $8.96

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."

Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Harry G. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include The Reasons of Love (Princeton), Necessity, Volition, and Love, and The Importance of What We Care About.

Quote of note:

He pointed to another "bearish divergence" - an increase in the "emotional money component" measuring the first half-hour of trading and a drop in the "smart money component" of the final hour. He said he expects either an abrupt drop in the market, or "a longer period of general weakness, until no one is any longer interested in stocks."

Analyzing the I.Q. of Money

Conrad de Aenlle

EVER wonder what the smart money is doing? Walter Hertler, a technical analyst, thinks he has it figured out, and many stock market investors won't like the news.

Mr. Hertler consulted the Smart Money Indicator, a measure sometimes used to try to distinguish the activity of the wiliest professional investors from that of the less astute and less rational public. That barometer has sent one of its strongest sell signals in years, said Mr. Hertler, publisher of Hertler Market Signal Updates.

"The current sell signal appears to me to be comparable to the one that preceded the 2000 tops in the various stock indexes," he said. Followers of the index would have exited the market in early 2000, when the indicator peaked well below its old high as the market rallied to record levels. The signal came just in time to avoid the bursting of the Internet bubble.

Investors would have been able to get back into stocks fairly close to the bottom in 2002 when the reverse happened: the S.M.I. failed to reach a new low when stocks did.

The S.M.I. comes from the notion that investors who are driven by emotion, perhaps incited by the latest economic or corporate news, do much of their trading early in the day, while craftier, more deliberate investors prefer to do their buying and selling as the close approaches.

The indicator is based on work done by analysts in the 1960's who observed that activity in the final hour was a good predictor of the market's future direction.

The measure is calculated by subtracting any gain (or adding a loss) in a stock index in the first half-hour of trading - any stock index will do - and adding any gain (or subtracting a loss) in the last full hour. So if the Dow is down 30 points early and rises 50 points in the last hour, the index is deemed to have gained 80 points more than its actual movement for the day.

This arithmetic has the effect of penalizing buying done by presumed dumb money and giving extra credit to buying by smart money. If smart money is buying heavily, the S.M.I. moves ahead of the index, and when smart money is bailing out, the S.M.I. trails it. Mr. Hertler has noticed the second pattern lately.

I'm watching Washington Journal with Andrew Maner, the CFO of the Homeland Security Department, and ALL the callers are talking about eliminating illegal immigration.

The xenophobia is astounding.

A caller from Georgia said we should make illegal immigration a felony, whihc would give us a huge supply of workers for highways and such..."we should put them on a chain gang." Georgia always loved chain gangs.

Another said you don't have to patrol the borders, just show up at any laundromat and you can get all the illegals you want.

Several said "we just want them all gone." Which means they want to put Wal-Mart out of business and stop all the home construction on Staten Island, NY and North Carolina.

And Maner just said DHS has the authority to search without cause!

A transcript of the phone calls would be seriously useful.

Quote of note:

Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer presented the ministers a copy of a letter he received. The letter described Ben-Eliezer, who was born in Iraq, as "the epitome of evil, a miserable Iraqi, a Nazi with Arab blood."

"You love Arabs more than Jews," the letter said.

Ben-Eliezer then said to the ministers, "I am telling you: They will try to kill the prime minister," according to the Haaretz daily newspaper.

Sharon targets Jewish extremists
Orders crackdown after threats to Cabinet ministers

By Josef Federman, Associated Press  |  February 14, 2005

JERUSALEM -- Responding to death threats against government ministers, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered law enforcement agencies yesterday to crack down on Jewish extremists opposed to the planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Cabinet ministers said the charged climate is reminiscent of the period before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and one minister warned that Sharon could become a target.

Despite those concerns, Sharon's Cabinet approved a list of 500 Palestinian prisoners to be released in coming days, and several hundred Palestinian workers were permitted to return to jobs in Israel in line with agreements reached at a Middle East summit last week.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, is to present a new Cabinet to his Fatah movement for approval tomorrow. Abbas is expected to appoint new interior, foreign, and information ministers but retain many current government members, officials said.

Difference being there's probably more guns than people...

Quote of note:

"There were violations in Kirkuk where ballot boxes were stolen," said demonstrator Nawal Mohammed.

Hundreds of Turkmen and Arabs held a similar protest in Kirkuk on Friday condemning alleged fraud and calling for a re-run of the election there.

Turkmen protestors in Baghdad denounce  electoral fraud 

13/02/2005   AFP

BAGHDAD, Feb 13 (AFP) - 13h35 - Members of Iraq s Turkmen minority demonstrated in central Baghdad Sunday to protest alleged electoral fraud in the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk during last month's historic election.

Around 150 demonstrators crossed the Tigris river and gathered at one of the entrances to the fortified Green Zone, home to the offices of the electoral commmission.

"We want reparation for electoral violations in Turkmen areas," read one banner carried by demonstrators, who rallied just hours before the results of the January 30 vote were due to be announced.

"There were violations in Kirkuk where ballot boxes were stolen," said demonstrator Nawal Mohammed.

Hundreds of Turkmen and Arabs held a similar protest in Kirkuk on Friday condemning alleged fraud and calling for a re-run of the election there.

Iraq s Turkmen say they account for 13 percent of the population of 27 million, but the most recent census dating from 1977 puts the proportion at just two percent.

Final results from the election are expected to show a decisive advance for Iraq s Kurds who want to retake control of Kirkuk after it was Arabised by the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.

...maybe you'll believe Forbes (Capitalist Tool).

Anyway...

Kurdish Aims For A Post-Election Iraq

...The Kurds have entered the post-Saddam era as the most politically and militarily organised of Iraq's communities. As such, their key demand is to maintain the high levels of autonomy enjoyed during the 1990s and to augment them by existing in a federal Iraqi state, with the contested city of Kirkuk as the capital of the proposed Kurdistan region.

The Kurds, who number approximately 20% of Iraq's population, managed to enshrine this federal position in the Transitional Administrative Law of March 2004, which included what came to be known as "the Kurdish veto", allowing two-thirds of the population of any three governorates to block the progression of the permanent constitution to be drafted following last week's elections.

The Kurdish position, which also includes a demand that Iraq must be a secular state, ran into opposition from parties associated with the Shia religious establishment. Objections concerned the levels of autonomy demanded by the Kurds; whether Iraq should be federal or unitary in structure; the concession of the Kurdish veto; and the role of Islam in the state.

There is also perennial concern about the status of the city of Kirkuk. Keenly aware that control of the oil city would give the Kurds the wherewithal to secede from the state, the Shia (and Sunni Arab) parties have continued to oppose the attempts of the Kurds to include Kirkuk within their region's boundary. This opposition is particularly strong since a considerable proportion of the Arab population settled in Kirkuk during Saddam Hussein's Arabization policy were Shia, and the other ethnic group present in numbers in the city--the Turkmen--is also, predominantly, Shia.

98 percent of the people of South Kurdistan vote for independence

09/02/2005   KRM - International Committee
Kurdistan Referendum Movement - International Committee

PRESS RELEASE

London, 8 February 2005

During the general elections in Kurdistan on 30 January 2005, Kurdistan Referendum Movement conducted an unofficial referendum asking Kurdistani voters to choose one of these two options:

- I want Kurdistan to stay as part of Iraq
- I want Kurdistan to be independent

The Higher Committee of Referendum Movement in Kurdistan announced the results of the referendum in a press conference at Sheraton Hotel in Hewler, on Saturday 5 February 2005.

The total number of Kurdistani voters participating in the referendum was 1,998,061 people.

- 1,973412 people voted for independence.
- 19650 voted for Kurdistan to remain as part of Iraq.

Thus 98.8% of the people of Kurdistan have voted for independence.

The committee stated that the referendum was held in all Kurdish areas including Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Kurdish areas in Mosul province. But it excluded the Kurds living in Baghdad and other Arab cities and towns.

The Kurdish poet Sherco Bekas, member of the High Commission of Kurdistan Referendum Movement, stated that the Movement would take the results to the United Nation and the European Union.

A petition carrying the signatures of over 1,700,000 signatures asking for a UN-sponsored referendum on independence was delivered to the UN by the movement on 22 December 2004.

The results of all the votes in Kurdistan areas are as follows:

Province/area: Total votes / Votes for staying in Iraq / Votes for independence
Kirkuk: 131582 / 181 / 131274
Mosul: 165891 / 111 / 165780
Khanaqin: 36413 627 / 35786
Sulaymani: 656496 / 5796 / 650000
Hewler (Arbil): 636898 / 11289 / 622409
Duhok: 370781 / 2247 / 368163
Total: 1998061 / 20251 1973412
Percentage: 100% / 1.2% / 98.8%

Kurdistan Referendum Movement-International Committee
For further information and queries email:[email protected]
Telephone: 07782361435

Kurdistan Referendum Movement

Turkey expresses concern over Iraq vote
13/02/2005   Associated Press - By Susan Fraser

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey urged Iraqi electoral officials and the United Nations to examine what it claimed were skewed Iraqi elections results released Sunday, saying it was particularly concerned about vote tallies in the oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.

Turkey has long complained that Kurdish groups were illegally moving Kurds into Kirkuk, a strategic northern city, in an effort to tip the city s population balance in their favor.

Turkish officials did not make direct reference to the Kurds on Sunday, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that voter turnout in some regions was low and charged that there were "imbalanced results" in several regions, including Kirkuk.

"It has emerged that certain elements have tried to influence the voting and have made unfair gains from this," the statement said, in an apparent reference to the Kurds. "As a result the Iraqi Interim Parliament won t reflect the true proportions of Iraqi society."

Ankara fears that Kurdish domination of Kirkuk and oil fields near the city would make a Kurdish state in northern Iraq viable. Such a state, Turkish officials warn, could further inspire Turkey s own rebellious Kurds, who have been battling the Turkish army in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

To let you know how much drama is going on, consider that Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey's Prime Minister.

If Kurds are not free, Tayyip Erdogan will not be free either…
07 February 2005
KurdishMedia.com (Translated)

By Ahmet Altan

It seems as if it is very difficult for Turks to understand that they are not the only race on the face of the earth and that they do not hold the divine power to decide how life evolves.

Since they are not interested in their own recent past, they are not aware of where this chain of "unreasonable decisions" is dragging this country.

If they just read what was being said here before the Balkan war, maybe they could better understand what the curse of empty words can do to a society.

Just when it had started to look like things were improving a bit for Turkey, we faced the Kirkuk problem.

Led by the prime minister, there were such storms that even Zeus behaved more modestly compared to our guys when ruling the world from the Olympus Mountain.

Apparently, we do not want the establishment of a Kurdish state there.

Why exactly don't we want that?

They give many reasons.

We are apparently protecting the rights of our "kin" the Turkmen there.

Do our leaders ever question themselves?

Are we a society based on kinship? If that is the case, we are a nation built on the bond of blood. And anyone who is not a Turk cannot become our citizen.

But if we are to take our constitution seriously then we have to concede that what is important is not "kinship" but instead "citizenship". If citizenship is important, how does one explain our exclusionary stance taken towards millions of our Kurdish citizens and their "kin" in Northern Iraq?

Wouldn't taking the side of the "kin" of Turkish citizens, against the "kin" of Kurdish citizens, openly divide our society while trying to give some sort of an order to Northern Iraq?

Another claim that will go down as the strangest in history is that Kurds will take control of Kirkuk and become rich with the oil there.

Apparently, them becoming rich will make our "poor" Kurds want to join them.

If a Kurdish state established there can offer our citizens a richer and happier life than a country that is the inheritor of an empire of six hundred years and the owner of an eighty year old republic, then there is nothing you can do, Kurds will go there.

If you want to prevent this, the way to do it is not to prevent the Iraqi Kurds from becoming rich but to take precautions so that your own Kurdish citizens in the Southeast can live as well as your citizens in Istanbul.

The mentality, which says, "I do not possess the talents to make my own citizens have quality lives, therefore I cannot allow anyone around me to be successful" is against the course of history and cannot achieve results.

If you had the power to prevent prosperity around you, then your own citizens would already have quality lives.

But the real cursed question are not these, the real cursed question is this:

If you, through Northern Iraq, attempt to reorder the Middle East on your own and give the impression that you are tying to take control of the oil in Kirkuk, what will the Western world and the countries of the Middle East say?

Will they allow it?

If they don't allow it, do you have the power to fight and the power to come out victorious?

How will such a fight affect your economy and political stability?

I do not believe that there is a potential for victory for Turkey if it attempts intervene in Northern Iraq and against Kurds.

As far as I can see, the real aim of those who make a big thing out of the Kirkuk issue is not directly related to developments in Northern Iraq. Their real aim is for Turkey, through such an ill-advised move, to lose its bonds with the world and subsequently with the West.

Turkey will again turn inwards and diverge from the path of democracy, allowing developments to emerge so civil authorities can once more be replaced with "interim regimes".

It is easy to understand that those whose aim is to establish an inward-looking fascist government here scratch the Kirkuk and Kurdish scabs.

This is in line with their aims.

In fact, tomorrow they could go to America and secretly agree, saying, “let us take over the power and we can forget Northern Iraq.”

What is difficult to understand is Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s eagerness, through bizarre statements, to assist those who want to end his administration, in fact his political existence. Turkey’s insistence on, "I will not allow Kurds to live free and prosperous lives", will in the end change Turkey not Northern Iraq.

We will experience events worse than you can imagine.

It will be amusing to see the Prime Minister helping those who want to topple him by exaggerating the Kirkuk issue.

But if something like this takes place, there won’t be anyone left to laugh at these events.

Translated from Turkish by Welat Lezgin for KurdishMedia.com. The above article by Ahmet Altan was published on the popular Turkish political commentary website Gazetem.net. on the 7th of February.

Ahmet Altan is a journalist, political commentator and one of Turkey’s best-selling novelists.

Quote of note:

Minutes after the results became public, Massoud Barzani, speaking for the Kurdish coalition, said in an interview that Kurds would insist that the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk be incorporated into semiautonomous Kurdistan, and that the Kurdish Peshmerga militia continue to operate independent of the Iraqi military.

Those are two explosive demands in the eyes of Sunnis, who fear that Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north will squeeze them out of the central government and assert increased regional control over Iraq's oil reserves, which are mainly in Shi'ite and Kurdish regions.

I'm sure Turkey and Iran are just thrilled by the Kurdish response.

Anyway...

Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds big winners in Iraq vote
Religious coalition short on seats; Sunnis lose out
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff  |  February 14, 2005

BAGHDAD -- Catapulted by heavy turnout among Iraq's long-oppressed Shi'ite Muslim majority, an alliance of Shi'ite religious parties won nearly half the vote in the national elections and will probably capture a narrow majority of seats in the new parliament, according to a nationwide tally released yesterday.

But the Shi'ite-led coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, which won 48.2 percent of nearly 8.5 million votes cast Jan. 30 in Iraq's first competitive elections in decades, will have to reach out to other parties to build the two-thirds majority needed to form a government.

A coalition of Kurdish parties took 25.7 percent of the vote, propelled by massive turnout that topped 80 percent in all three Kurdish provinces, potentially rendering them kingmakers. A slate led by the US-backed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite, took 14 percent. No other slate cracked 2 percent of the vote.

The results heralded a dramatic power shift in favor of Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds, two groups that Saddam Hussein brutally repressed, but almost completely shut out disaffected Sunni Muslims, raising the potential for future strife as the assembly drafts Iraq's new constitution.

I have to get to a Rasta partner of mine and acknowledge he was right.

In choice of new leader, possible shift from US
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff  |  February 14, 2005

BAGHDAD -- The Shi'ite Islamist-led coalition that won the most seats by far in Iraq's new parliament is engaged in a fierce internal debate over who should be prime minister, a choice that could determine how confrontational the new government might be toward the United States and the 130,000 US troops expected to remain in Iraq.

Beaming with victory and wielding a mandate from more than 4 million voters, the leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, a collection of religious Shi'ite parties and independents endorsed by Iraq's most revered cleric, say they will insist that the post goes to one of them, not to the US-backed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

Allawi still believes he has a chance if the Shi'ite bloc cannot agree on a candidate, but the prime minister will more likely come from a pool of nominees within the Shi'ite slate -- none of whom fits the unambiguously secular, pro-American mold that US officials might have considered ideal.

The Shi'ite politicians view that as a welcome change from last June, when Allawi's government was handpicked by US and United Nations officials.

This is cooler than that.

Checking my referral logs I find that part three of The Care and Feeding of White Folks, posted at The Niggerati Network (for the record, if you can't handle satire, don't even load the page), has been included in a course called Postmodernism & American Fiction Since the Romantics at the University of Washington.

Even I am impressed by that.

The start of the class is a way off, so there's still time for the university's administrators to bug out over the whole piece...it has happened before.

Get your Quicktime plug-in ready for an inspirational message via The Republic of T.

I'm watching The Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again on Comedy Central. I've found another advantage to being Black...I get all the jokes whereas some folks seem so confused by Dave Chapelle.

Anyway, I've learned from one of the comedians why gay marriage is such a threat to the sanctity of marriage. They're confused.

If you're a man and you're sleeping in a bed with seven throw pillows and a dust ruffle, you're either gay or married.

If you're a man and you've ever gone shopping for antiques when a football game is on, you're either gay or married.

If you're a man and and you can't remember the last time you has sex with a woman, you're either gay or married.

Steroid-User Canseco Names Names
Feb. 12, 2005

"I injected them," Jose Canseco tells Mike Wallace, referring to performance-enhancing steroids he put into the bodies of some of baseball's biggest stars.

In his first interview about his controversial book on the use of such drugs in Major League Baseball, Canseco talks at length about using steroids with Mark McGwire - the first player to hit 70 homeruns in a season. The interview will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

"The first time injecting them in [McGwire's] buttocks," says Canseco with a laugh. "It wasn't like you gave it a lot of thought. It was something so common." McGwire has firmly denied using steroids.

In his book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big," Canseco writes that he and McGwire injected steroids together too many times to count. "I would often inject Mark," writes Canseco.

But in the interview, he allows he actually injected McGwire, his teammate on the Oakland Athletics, a couple times. "I injected him probably twice...I mean we would just walk in [a bathroom stall] and a lot of times [steroids] were in pill form," says Canseco. "An athlete may prepare his needle and may ask another athlete to inject him quickly and that's the way it works."

I can forgive them for publishing this crap.

For Blacks in Law School, Can Less Be More?
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 13, 2005

ONE would have thought, given the decades of ardent debate over affirmative action in higher education, that the main axes of the dispute had been established. Defenders of racial preferences say that they compensate for historical wrongs, ensure vibrant and varied campus discourse and help create minority role models and leaders. Opponents say preferences are nothing but a reverse form of discrimination that stereotypes and stigmatizes minority students.

But a recent study published in The Stanford Law Review by Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found a new way to inflame the debate. In fact, the study has ignited what may be the fiercest dispute over affirmative action since 2003, when the Supreme Court found some forms of it to be constitutional.

Professor Sander's study tests a simple, but startling, thesis: Affirmative action actually depresses the number of black lawyers, because many black students end up attending law schools that are too difficult for them, and perform badly.

Though I can't forgive them for missing how thoroughly it's already been debunked when I was able to find enough to support two long responses.

...is actually a reference to [caught In between], who has been posting links daily as I have...different links, too.

Except yesterday Lawrence posted the link I was to post today.

Via Real Deal I find the first workshop I am committing to this year. I'll be calling this week, definitely.

A Workshop for Writers New and Old
Thursday, March 3, 2005
6:00-9:00 PM
$15 (refreshments served)

At the Offices of IPA-NY

115 West 29th Street #606

Are you a writer interested in writing feature stories, opinion pieces or cultural criticism from a racial justice perspective? Come to this evening workshop to learn from editors and writers in the ethnic and alternative press how to improve your writing. The three-hour workshop will give you hands-on advice on planning, outlining, writing, and revising your writing on communities of color, racial justice issues and racism. Workshop will emphasize reporting techniques, story development, building a strong argument and good writing practices. Bring a sample story or pitch letter to the workshop for immediate feedback.

Are you a community organizer who wants to better communicate your issues in print?

Are you interested in writing effectively about communities of color?

Three sections available:

1) Feature Writing 2) Opinion Writing 3) Music & Cultural Criticism

Call Donna Hernandez at ARC to RSVP 212-513-7925.

Spaces are limited, call today! Notify us which section you are interested in.

Sponsored by the Applied Research Center &
the Independent Press Association-New York

The Applied Research Center is a public policy, educational and research institute whose work emphasizes issues of race and social change. ARC publishes Colorlines Magazine and RaceWire, a wire service for the ethnic press. Colorlines is the nation's leading magazine on race, culture, and organizing.

www.arc.org www.colorlines.com www.racewire.org

The Independent Press Association works to promote and support independent publications committed to social justice and a free press. IPA-NY publishes Many Voices, One City, a guide to the ethnic press in New York City, as well as the Voices That Must Be Heard, a compendium of the city's ethnic press in English translation.

www.indypressny.org www.indypress.org

Joe R. Hicks has an op-ed in the L.A. Times titled The Irrelevance of Black Leaders, and I'm sure the usual suspects will link approvingly. Me, I dislike articles about "Black Leaders" because those who write them have a different idea of what a "leader" is than regular people do. There's also a tendency to blame organizations you want to minimize for things outside their domain...the classic example was Minister Farrakhan, who was always challenged to do something about historical Arab slavery whenever he pointed to a problem in modern America. Mr. Hicks spins a little in both dimensions.

To begin with, simple inspections shows "Black leader" in the current political lexicon doesn't mean "people with a Black following," but "people we go through to get to Black people." This has been the case going back to Booker T. Washington and continues all the way through to Project 21. If you gather "Black leaders" defined in each context they overlap...always have...but the conjunction is significantly smaller than it has been in the past.

Mr. Hicks also presents the classic dodge:

Last October, a 14-year-old boy was gunned down in a South Los Angeles alley. He begged for his life on his knees before being shot 19 times by street thugs. The killers are believed to be black. But the fact that he was killed by other black youths meant that his brutal death was largely ignored by the same civil rights figures who are now voicing outrage over the police shooting of Devin Brown.

...disregarding entirely that murder is a criminal issue, not a civil rights issue. It's only a civil rights issue if you are addressing the lack of policing and the general assumption of criminality.

It is unfortunate that all issues of concern to the Black communities are lumped under civil rights in the media. It is unfortunate to see responsibility for policing, education et. al. dropped on those who point out no one has actually responsible has acted responsibly, for the benefit of Black people, on the issues at all.

And lines like

The leaders of these groups say they represent the interests of black Americans, yet it seems increasingly clear that their lives rarely touch the lives of those they claim to speak for and, in many cases, that they never move outside their own cloistered, out-of-touch activist circles.

are hystericalpocritical coming from people who are sitting with their cloistered, out-of-touch associates planning how to be seen as in touch with the communities.

But Black leaders, leaders in the true sense, those who would lead are in error too.

Mr. Hicks is half right in saying

But over the last three decades, the aims and goals of these groups have undergone little change — even as the racial landscape has been dramatically reconfigured.

Manifestations have changed because the material we're working with...social structures and such...have changed. But the underlying problem, that Black people are things to be manipulated in search of mainstream goals, remains. The underlying problem is the reason so many Black people feel there's been no change in the middle of all this change.

And you know what? I don't expect the underlying situation to change.

Black folks have been trying to change white people since it was decided to base the American economy on slavery. And white folks have been resisting it just as long. This isn't to say there are no white folks on the side of the angels...it is to say the angel's position isn't very convincing to a nation created solely to create wealth for a privileged few.

If you check the history you'll see Black American's rights have never...never been upheld unless that upholding advanced mainstream interests in some way. That has never changed and I doubt it ever will.

Which doesn't mean you give up. It means you rethink your tactics, you stop chasing symbols like integration and separatism. "Staying the course" has done Black folks about as much good as it has the troops in Iraq.

All the plans, economic and political, assumes the same type of perfect knowledge required by free market rhetoric and reasoning...and we don't have it. Neither do white folks, but they are being manipulated for their own benefit...even if it doesn't turn out to benefit them. White folks don't need perfect knowledge. Their best interest is supported by following orders.

Black folks' best interest is to identify our best interests, to get in position to pursue our best interests. We need to acknowledge the way this society actually operates. We may not choose to operate the same way but we must learn it, learn to take it into account in our collective and personal plans.

This is the cause a leader would take up. And it is NOT what Mr. Hicks suggests.

It's not what anyone suggests.

In Small Town, the Fight Continues for Texas Sovereignty

By SIMON ROMERO

OVERTON, Tex. - The road to the capitol winds through a landscape of pine trees, rusting pump jacks and a few tidy churches in this East Texas town. Literature in the lobby describes how citizens can apply for passports or enlist in the interim defense forces.

The building is the headquarters of the Republic of Texas, a sometimes militant organization whose members repudiate the authority of Austin and Washington and believe Texas should be a sovereign nation. The group gained notoriety eight years ago when some members took a couple hostage in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, and endured a weeklong siege by more than 100 police officers, after which a follower who fled into the mountains was killed. The leader of the faction involved in the standoff is still in prison.

But after several years of infighting and the expulsion of renegade splinter cells, the group has resurfaced here in Overton under a new leader, Daniel Miller. Mr. Miller, recently interviewed in Houston, said he wanted to distance the organization from its violent past and from its image as a white-supremacy movement. He said his new platform advocates Texas sovereignty without the use of guns or explosives.

"We are not extremists," said Mr. Miller, 31, dressed in a tailored suit and cowboy boots. "We simply believe we were illegally occupied by the United States in the 1800's."

What the Bible Shouldn't Rule
By Mary Clay Berry

Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page B07

A recent news story in The Post about weekly Bible classes for public elementary school students in Staunton, Va., and the challenge some parents have brought against the practice, reminded me of my own experiences with religious education in public school. From 1946 through 1948, I went to an elementary school in rural Kentucky. One morning a week, school began an hour late so that students could attend Bible school at local churches.

Bible school was voluntary, although, according to the town newspaper, 99 percent of the students attended. My mother, the daughter of a Congregational minister, refused permission for me to go the first year. As our family had recently moved to Kentucky, I was a newcomer at the school and young for my class. I felt uncomfortable enough not to want to be singled out; not going to Bible school did just that. At the beginning of sixth grade, I begged my mother to allow me to attend. I thought I would seem less odd if I did what my classmates did. My mother relented, and I went to Bible school one morning a week.

Bible school was innocuous, as I remember it, but toward Easter we were asked who would like to join the Christian Church. Everyone raised his or her hand except me. I looked around, then raised my hand, too. The rest of Bible school consisted of preparing us for baptism. My reasons for wishing to be baptized were similar to my feelings about Bible school: I wanted to be accepted.

U.S. Denies Patent for a Too-Human Hybrid
Scientist Sought Legal Precedent to Keep Others From Profiting From Similar 'Inventions'
By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A03

A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in American intellectual-property law.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid -- designed for use in medical research but not yet created -- would be too closely related to a human to be patentable.

Paradoxically, the rejection was a victory of sorts for the inventor, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. An opponent of patents on living things, he had no intention of making the creatures. His goal was to set a legal precedent that would keep others from profiting from any similar "inventions."

But in an age when science is increasingly melding human and animal components for research -- already the government has allowed many patents on "humanized" animals, including a mouse with a human immune system -- the decision leaves a crucial question unanswered: At what point is something too human to patent?

Quote of note:

That part of the plan, as explained to The New York Times last week by an unnamed White House official: "When people reach retirement age, they would have to put enough of the money in an annuity so that the total of their traditional benefits and their annuity payments would meet the poverty level, $12,490 for a couple in 2004."

Do The Math On Dubya's Social Security Reform
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, February 7, 2005

As the lawyers like to say, "Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus." The rest of us have to settle for "once a liar, always a liar."

We tend not to believe people who have previously lied to us, even if one of those people is the president of the United States.

President George W. Bush clearly lied to us about the need to start a war against the people of Iraq, so why should we believe him now as he barnstorms the country in an attempt to sell us on his Social Security "reform" plan?

...And what happens to your "personal" account when you reach retirement age? The government takes it. I kid you not.

That part of the plan, as explained to The New York Times last week by an unnamed White House official: "When people reach retirement age, they would have to put enough of the money in an annuity so that the total of their traditional benefits and their annuity payments would meet the poverty level, $12,490 for a couple in 2004."

So the government will tell you exactly how to spend part of your retirement account. If there's anything left over after the government takes out what it wants, you get to keep the rest and spend it as you see fit.

How are you going to build your little nest egg? Again, according to The Times, you'll be allowed to invest up to 4 percent of your wages, to a maximum of $1,000 at first. "That amount would increase by $100 each year, plus an amount corresponding to the average national growth in wages."

Do the math. After the government takes out its chunk to create your annuity, how much are you going to have left over to buy that penthouse with a Golden Gate view?

The Meathead Proposition
Another irrefutable argument against privatizing Social Security.
Michael Kinsley
February 13, 2005

Try to forgive my obsession, but here is another proof that President Bush's designs for Social Security cannot work. This one's not mine. I first heard it from the actor/director and liberal activist, Rob Reiner. Like the argument I have been hawking (see latimes.com/proof), this one doesn't merely suggest that Bush is making bad policy, it demonstrates with near-mathematical certainty that the idea he endorses cannot work. Period.

...Privatization schemes assume that this will have no effect on how much interest the government will have to pay, or what kind of long-term return you can expect on investments in the private economy. For example, the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a major thumper for privatization, assumes that private accounts can earn a long-term, risk-free return of 4.7% after inflation, which it says is based on history.

But if free markets work the way they are supposed to —  and I would like to hear the Heritage Foundation say that they do not —  the effect of the government announcing that government bonds are a bad investment and pushing people to put their money elsewhere will be to make it more expensive for the government to borrow money. So even if private stocks and bonds are a better long-term investment than government bonds (after factoring in risk, and so on), they won't stay that way for long.

Meanwhile, in their latest report, the Social Security trustees assume that growth in the nation's gross domestic product will slow from 4.4% to 1.8% in 2015 and will stay there for the next six decades. They predict productivity growth of 1.6% and average unemployment of 5.5%. From this and other data, the trustees predict that the trust fund will earn 3% a year (5.8% interest minus 2.8% inflation). This is their "intermediate" assumption, from which Bush concludes that shortfall will hit the fan in 2042.

These assumptions about the unknowable are not unreasonable. Nor are the assumptions of the Heritage Foundation. What is unreasonable is using both sets of assumptions at the same time. Can a conservative investment in stocks and bonds grow by 4.7% a year, for decades, while productivity is growing by 1.6% and the economy is growing by 1.8%? Theoretically possible, perhaps. But probable? On average? For everyone with a Social Security number?

If you start by assuming that one investment pays better than another, it's not very surprising (or persuasive) if this is also your conclusion. A dollar a year invested for the next 37 years (until 2042) at 3% interest produces $66. At 4.7%, it's $95. If the Heritage Foundation is right, there is no crisis to fix. And if the Social Security trustees are right, the Heritage fix won't work.

A Personal Burden
Chile switched to a privatized pension system nearly 25 years ago, and millions of workers still fall through the cracks
By Marla Dickerson
Times Staff Writer

February 13, 2005

Weary from decades of working nights and weekends at a public hospital, nursing assistant Inelia Pardo Acevedo recently retired.

But the 64-year-old plans to look for a part-time job to pad the nest egg in her personal retirement account. The $225 a month she draws under Chile's privatized system doesn't stretch far. And what galls her is that colleagues who stuck with traditional pension plans get three times as much, guaranteed for the rest of their lives.

The government "painted this wonderful picture of private accounts," Pardo said. "They fooled me. They fooled us all."

As the Social Security debate heats up in the United States, many are looking south to Chile, where nearly a quarter century of experience with privatization hasn't settled the question of how to best construct an old-age safety net.

Ads Amplify the Voices of Race Hatred
White supremacists are using mainstream media to gain new followers, and legitimacy. Watchdogs fear violence if such groups grow.
By Stephanie Simon
Times Staff Writer

February 13, 2005

ST. LOUIS   White supremacist groups around the country are moving aggressively to recruit new members by promoting their violent, racist ideologies on billboards, in radio commercials and in leaflets tossed on suburban driveways.

Watching with mounting alarm, civil rights monitors say these tactics stake out a much bolder, more public role for many hate groups, which are trying to shed their image as shadowy extremists and claim more mainstream support.

Watchdog groups fear increased violence from these organizations if they grow. But perhaps an even greater fear is that the new public relations strategy will let neo-Nazis recast themselves as just another voice in the political spectrum   even when that voice may be advocating genocide.

"The concern is that this will bring them new members and money, and that they will get some real traction in mainstream politics," said Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "We are completely in favor of the 1st Amendment. [But] they poison the public discourse with ideas like 'Jews are behind it all and need killing.' "

The National Alliance, which calls for ridding the U.S. of minorities, has led the drive to raise the profile of white supremacists.

The local chapter spent $1,500 on MetroLink ads here in St. Louis last month, plastering nearly every commuter train car in the city with a blue-and-white placard that declares "The Future belongs to us!" and lists the group's website and phone number. The same chapter bought airtime on local talk radio last fall, urging whites to unite and fight for the survival of "white America." One member of the chapter, Frank Weltner, has long hosted a radio show that advocates a white supremacist viewpoint.

"We want to use mainstream advertising to say to the public: We're not a shadowy group. This is what we believe in, and we're proud of it," said chapter leader Aaron Collins. "We're trying to give people courage. We want to show them, if you stand up for what you believe in, you're not going to be crucified."

With that goal in mind, other chapters of the National Alliance have posted billboards in Utah, Nevada and Florida. The group has also coordinated massive leaflet drops, distributing 100,000 racist fliers in a single night in states as diverse as New Jersey, Alabama and Nebraska.

The National Alliance even bought a membership list and mailing labels from the Florida Bar Assn. last year so it could send an eight-page recruitment letter   complete with anti-Semitic cartoons   to 2,500 criminal defense lawyers.

"If we had the money to advertise during the Super Bowl, we'd try that too," said Shaun Walker, the organization's chief operating officer.