Rice Tries to Calm Cuba’s Fear of Invasion
By ANTHONY DePALMA

In a televised message beamed into Cuba, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered the full support of the United States in a transition to democracy while promising to respect the sovereignty of the Cuban people.

Carried on TV Martí, the government-financed service that broadcasts to Cuba from the United States, Ms. Rice tried to calm fears that Washington planned to intervene directly in Cuba in the wake of President Fidel Castro’s illness and his decision to hand off power provisionally to his brother Raúl, who is 75.

First the story about how white guys get disheartened by not being able to find suitable work (just like Black folks).

Next the story about all those white guys on the down-low (which was supposed to be all Black guys).

And now, this.

About 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates. That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages 35 to 39, the portion jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time...

For men without higher education, though, dwindling prospects in the labor market have made a growing percentage either unwilling to marry or unable to find someone to marry them...

Robert Kagan calls Sen. Lieberman The Last Honest Man.

The question of the day is, what makes Joe Lieberman different? What makes him now anathema to a Democratic Party and to liberal columnists who once supported both him and the war? Why is there now a chance he will lose the Democratic primary in Connecticut after so many years of faithfully serving that state and his own party?...

How about because he no longer represents tho positions of his constituency?

The Ethicist at the New York Times:

My father always told us kids that we were “part Indian.” After his parents died, his stories grew even grander. My brother took them seriously enough to apply and get in to grad school as an American Indian. As time has passed, this has proved to be untrue. Does he have an obligation to repay any grants or other privileges received? Name Withheld, Portland, Ore.

Or to put it another way: should the sins of the fathers be visited on their very pale children? Your brother cannot be faulted morally for believing what his father repeated throughout your brother’s childhood. It is your father who did wrong, in a small way, by indulging in a kind of ethnic boasting.

Israel contends that Hezbollah gets almost all of its weaponry from Syria and by extension Iran, including its anti-tank missiles.

Missiles neutralizing Israeli tanks
Posted 8/5/2006 2:16 AM ET

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hezbollah's sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group's deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel's most advanced tanks.

Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a ragtag militia.

Hezbollah has fired Russian-made Metis-M anti-tank missiles [P6: Russia is supplying Hezbollah!] and owns European-made Milan missiles [P6: Europe is supplying Hezbollah!], the army confirmed on Friday.

The ISIS report, described in a July 24 Washington Post report, was based on an assessment of satellite photos of the reactor, which is inside a Pakistani nuclear complex that already has a small reactor for producing plutonium. The scale of the facility under construction suggests a powerful heavy-water reactor with a capacity of at least 1,000 megawatts thermal and a maximum annual plutonium output of 200 kilograms, enough for 40 to 50 warheads, ISIS said.

The report warned of the possibility of a new round of nuclear competition between Pakistan and India, which both possess the bomb.

Pakistani Reactor Not as Significant As Was Reported, Administration Says
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 5, 2006; A14

These differences notwithstanding, CRS, CBO, and GAO did agree on one thing: DOD’s data on the costs of the wars cannot be trusted.

Defense Budget Tutorial: So, You Think You Know the Cost of the Wars?

In a seemingly welcome exercise of congressional oversight, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., held hearings on the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He’s the chairman of the subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.  He required testimony by all three congressional research agencies (the Congressional Research Service [CRS], the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], and the Government Accountability Office [GAO]) and by the departments of State and Defense.

Bluffton, he says, was no doubt a sundown town. So are 65% of all incorporated municipalities in neighboring Illinois, according to his research.

That's why Bluffton's decision to put up signs stating that it's building an inclusive community is full of symbolism. The city plans to put up signs at the three state highway entrances to the city and two at each of the town's eight schools, Ellis says.

"It's very important," Loewen says. "Every sundown town and every sundown city in America should take steps."

Small Indiana town singing tune of racial, ethnic harmony
Updated 8/4/2006 2:10 AM ET
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

Local folklore has it that the small town of Bluffton, Ind., once had an ordinance to keep blacks out, Mayor Ted Ellis says. He never found proof but says he wondered why Bluffton remained 96% white while many other cities became more diverse.

"I always thought that Bluffton was no more hostile than other communities around," Ellis says. [P6: You were right.]

Then came an anonymous letter about 18 months ago. It was a photocopy of a newspaper clipping about the opening of a restaurant in this town of 10,000 people about 25 minutes south of Fort Wayne. A hand-printed message above the photo of the restaurant owner, a college professor who is a Sikh, read, "We don't wear turbans in Bluffton ... we speak English."

Ellis was appalled. "I just felt I had been hit in the gut when I got that," he says.

There are twenty-one categories in this year's Black Weblog Awards -- over twice as many as last year! There are twelve new categories; the following two categories were phased out for this year's Awards:

• Blogger of the Year
• Best Entertainment Blog

To add to this, *Carla Gervin* is donating the following prize to category winners who have free-hosted accounts at sites like Blogspot.com and Wordpress.com:

I want to donate 2GB of space, 250 GB of bandwidth and a domain for two years. If there are two winners, I want to donate 1GB space and 175 of bandwidth with domain for two years each. More information can be found at this post.

Here is the full list (with descriptions) of this year's categories:

I want a nomination. Someone else can win, I just hate being left out.

On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz directed the military to prepare for an even more aggressive push that would reach 18 miles into southern Lebanon in a bid to drive Hezbollah north of the Litani River. That would put Israeli soldiers in control of 200 square miles of Lebanon where about 1 million people, many of them Shiite Muslims loyal or sympathetic to Hezbollah, live.

THE MIDDLE EAST
Israel looks to retake up to 20% of Lebanon
Israeli officials concede that the bombing has failed to stop Hezbollah's rockets and that tougher measures, including reoccupying southern Lebanon, are being considered.
BY DION NISSENBAUM AND MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
McClatchy News Service

Once a progressive blogger wrote up your basic exposition of the flaws of Republican Party policy. He ran it past me before posting it because he was working in Uncle Remus mode and he was worried it might offend Black folks.

My advice was simple. If you're worried about that, find another way to say it. You shouldn't even have to ask me.

Israel hopes that by gaining control of a major swath of the south, even wider than the strip Israel occupied until 2000 as part of its "security zone," it can "clean out" the Hizbullah guerrillas and make way for a still-to-be-formed international peacekeeping force...

"In the last few weeks, we've seen that the government had rolling objectives which would change every day," says Michael B. Oren, a military historian and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. "They went from saying we have to defeat Hizbullah to we can't defeat Hizbullah. They wanted help from the Lebanese Army until they realized that half the Lebanese Army is Shiite and is helping Hizbullah."

Israel begins carving buffer zone
Hizbullah rockets landed deeper in Israel Wednesday as fighting intensified in Lebanon.
By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
KIRYAT SHEMONA, ISRAEL

The DOWN-low, the CLO-set...

THE specter of AIDS has led to a formal and presumably safe way for gay married men to have it all, known as a Closed-Loop Relationship. Instead of risky promiscuous sex, a married man has two “monogamous’’ relationships, one with his wife and one with another man, usually married. Done according to the rules, enumerated on Web sites and online support groups, all four parties agree to this setup.

“It’s an approach which people hoped would be a compromise solution,’’ said Michael, the Web master of www.marriedgay.org, a site based in Manchester, England, who declined to give his last name out of deference to his wife, whom he no longer lives with. “But it’s easier said than done.’’

When the Beard Is Too Painful to Remove
By JANE GROSS

THEY spend decades denying their sexual confusion to themselves and others. They generally limit their encounters with men to anonymous one-night stands and tell all manner of lies if their wives suspect.

They consider themselves to be devoted husbands, conscientious fathers and suburban homeowners, and what typically brings them to the point of crisis in their 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s is their first emotional connection with another man.

It's sad that op-eds like [TS] Centrism Is for Suckers are still necessary.

Given both the radicalism of the majority party’s leadership and the ruthlessness with which it exercises its control of the Senate, Mr. Chafee’s personal environmentalism is nearly irrelevant when it comes to actual policy outcomes; the only thing that really matters for the issues the Sierra Club cares about is the “R” after his name.

Sounds bitter? Sounds correct. 

Put it this way: If the Democrats gain only five rather than six Senate seats this November, Senator James Inhofe, who says that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will remain in his current position as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

(I'm not sure that's really a good suggestion...)

MINUSTAH took over peacekeeping duties in Haiti from a U.S.-led Multinational Interim Force (MIF) in June 2004, following the February 2004 ouster of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide amidst an armed revolt and street protests against his rule.

In recent days, hundreds of residents have been forced to flee warring gangs across the capital's southern Martissant district, their homes torched and abandoned, in violence that has killed at least 30 people and depopulated once-bustling neighbourhoods. On Monday, fierce gunbattles between gang members and UN troops near the capital's airport sent motorists careening at top speed the wrong way down main thoroughfares, and two alleged thieves were killed by police in a shoot-out as they robbed merchants in the capital's Rues du Centre district. Last week, a Haitian policeman was gunned down in the city's commercial centre.

HAITI:
As Annan Visits, UN Mission Seeks Reinforcements
Michael Deibert

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 3 (IPS) - Faced with a rising tide of violence, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan paid a visit Thursday to Haiti, where he announced that the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) will seek to extend its mandate in this this impoverished Caribbean nation for another 12 months and request reinforcements at a UN Security Council meeting in New York next week.

HAITI:
Storm of Killing in Neighbourhood Has Wide Implications for Nation
Michael Deibert

"They were shooting a lot of people and everybody had to run," says Marie Julien, a 44-year-old who fled Grand-Ravine with her six children and now sits under the blazing sun in the mission's parking lot. "They burned our house. I don't know why they are doing this."

Some residents say that gangs operating from the neighbouring zones of Ti Bois and Déscartes have launched a campaign to purge the area of supporters of Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted amidst armed revolt and street protests in February 2004.

After a period of calm following the February election of President René Préval, a one-time Aristide ally who also served as Haiti's president from 1996 until 2001 and has since become estranged from the former priest, the violence that often wracks the impoverished Caribbean nation of eight million appears to have returned.

Neither Haiti's Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH) police force, nor the 6,500 strong United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) peacekeeping force seem able or willing to stop it. At least 30 people have been reported killed in the past two weeks, though the true total could be higher.

And see if you can guess who he's talking about.

Elton Corbitt, a white businessman whose family has lived here since the 1800’s, said [it] threatened everything that matters — the quality of schools, health facilities, neighborhoods, even the serene rhythms of small-town life. And he fears that white Southerners here may ultimately become outnumbered or irrelevant.

“The way [they] have children, they’re going to have a majority here soon,” Mr. Corbitt, 76, said.

“I have children and grandchildren,” he said. “They’re going to become second-class citizens. And we’re going to be a third world country here if we don’t do something about it.”

Give up?

In Georgia, Immigrants Unsettle Old Sense of Place
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Study: Diversity rises in suburbs
Updated 8/3/2006 11:08 PM ET
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

Suburban counties, once the bastion of white America, are becoming multiethnic tapestries, and white populations are inching up in some urban areas after big losses in the 1990s, according to new Census estimates out Friday.

"Suburbs and especially fast-growing outer suburbs are not just attracting whites anymore," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. "All minority groups are coming. They're a magnet for blacks as well as Hispanics and Asians."

The changes are dramatic in the South. About 74% of the growth in the U.S. black population happened there from 2000 to 2005. The region also generated about 71% of the national growth in whites, 42% of the Hispanic growth and 27% of the Asian growth.

Racial Profiling  with Google

1) First I entered the following phrases into Google's search engine: "white people are known for", "black people are known for", "Asian people are known for", etc... 
2) Next I recorded what came after the "are know for" [sic] in Google's search results*. 
3) Lastly I took note of the top eight Images that appeared when I searched Google's Image data-base for "black people", "white people", etc... Just for the heck of it, I also did the same for "humans" and "orcs" (see below).

* For the most part I did NOT change the content of what I found. Regardless if it was stupid, hateful, clever, racist, inaccurate or even misspelled - I would list it as I found it. Please read my F.A.Q. (frequently asked questions) page first - before writing me, or Google, a nasty email about the evils of racial profiling or mailing me articles on racism in America.

Like I said, You copy American tactics, you get American results.

Doubling Two Bad Bets?
By David S. Broder
Thursday, August 3, 2006; Page A27

If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you're not hearing things. In both cases the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."

CBS's Schieffer Forwards Idea Israel in Lebanon Just Like 'Mistake' U.S. Made in Iraq
Posted by Brent Baker on July 28, 2006 - 20:12.

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer on Friday night forwarded the idea that the Israeli situation in Lebanon matches the U.S. miscalculation in Iraq. “Despite this heavy bombing that Hezbollah's been getting from the Israelis,” Schieffer told reporter David Martin, “they continue to attack and some critics are saying the Israelis may have made the same mistake that the United States made in Iraq, and that is underestimated what they were up against.” Martin didn't address Schieffer's comparison of the Israel-Hezbollah war with the Iraq war, but he did confirm that “Pentagon officials say both U.S. and Israeli intelligence have underestimated the strength, capabilities, and resilience of Hezbollah.” (Transcript follows)

The exchange, on the July 28 CBS Evening News, from just after Schieffer talked with Lara Logan in Israel

You know that bullshit lawsuit that was just filed against Rep. Murtha? Check this from Glen Greenwald . He was on the Alan Colmes Show last night debating the attorney who filed suit.

The lawsuit filed yesterday against Murtha based on his comments about the shootings of 24 civilians at Haditha is frivolous for multiple reasons. But worse than its legal inanities is the fact that its goal is so clearly to punish Murtha not for any supposed defamation, but because he is a prominent and effective political critic of the administration and of the war. He must therefore be smeared and punished, and that is clearly what this lawsuit is intended to accomplish.

The most damning fact about the motives behind lawsuit is that it is Rep. Murtha -- and only Rep. Murtha -- who is being sued for the alleged defamation, despite the fact that countless other public figures, including a sitting Republican Congressman, Bush loyalist Rep. John Kline, voiced similar and even more extreme accusations about the Marines in Haditha. And yet none of them has been named in this lawsuit. That's because, plainly, this lawsuit is about punishing Murtha for his political views and attempting to deter anyone from publicly criticizing the war and the Bush administration.

I was on the Alan Colmes Show last night to debate Mark Zaid, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Haditha staff sergeant against Murtha, and I made this point repeatedly, as did Colmes. In response, this is the commitment Zaid made:

I'll tell you what. I'm not aware of those other comments. If you e-mail them to me, I will be so happy to add those other Congressmen to the lawsuit as defendants, as I have the right to do. I will be more than happy. . .

[NOTE: *Mike Stark has sent me an audio recording of the debate. If you can host the audio file for the whole radio debate (about 20 minutes in duration), please email me and I will send it to you and then link to it once it's up].

In anticipation that Mr. Zaid will adhere to the commitment he made, I have sent him this morning the following e-mail:

In [TS] Bye Bye Bootstraps, he goes off on wiggers.

Through some screw-up in the moral superstructure, we now have a plutocratic upper class infused with the staid industriousness of Ben Franklin, while we are apparently seeing the emergence of a Wal-Mart leisure class — devil-may-care middle-age slackers who live off home-equity loans and disability payments so they can surf the History Channel and enjoy fantasy football leagues.

For the first time in human history, the rich work longer hours than the proletariat.

I'm tempted to lift the whole op-ed.

Sometimes when I'm especially clever the NY Times will link a post of mine to the inspiring op-ed or article.

Last of a series; Collect and save them all, kids!

To recap, For the record, Grant at Properwinston is an ass that used to try to goad me on occasion. Sent me an email once notifying me of a post he made about me, title of the email was 'Why you hate Jews." This series held the only links I ever made to said ass, and those linked are redacted here...I don't know if his blog yet lives and have no real interest in finding out.

Anyway, he was this guy:

I just got that email from an asshole blogger the other week that said "Why you hate Jews"…apparently he wrote something describing me as an anti-semite, like I give a fuck about anyone stupid enough to read his stuff. Heads bleed, walls don't.

So let's see how I finally responded to what got him so hot a bothered.

From rants & raves on Philly Craig's List.

I found it by visiting a referring search page. I think the thread is funny, but I had to assemble it here due to the lack of navigational assistance over there.

To all the black ass mother fuckers who ride on I95 in the morning

---

Date: 2006-06-22, 11:29AM EDT

This message goes out to all those fucking asshole niggars who ride I95. The next time I fucking look in my rearview mirror (while I'm driving in the right lane doing 70 which still isnt' fast enough for you black bitches), and I see you riding my ass in the right lane, I'm literally going to jam on my brakes, get out of my car in the middle of I95, and get my niggar beater baseball bat, and smash in not only your windows of your piece of shit drug dealing crack ass smoking car, but I will also smash your fucking teeth in. I'm sick and fucking tired of dealing with you fucking niggars every god dam morning I drive to work. FUCK ALL YOU NIGGARS THAT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH EVERY FUCKING MORNING.

I need to bring this bit to your attention.

He also said Israel would reserve the right to respond to any aggression, even after the force had been deployed.

This is the sort of thing that makes me say the peacekeepers will have two fronts to deal with. 

Israel calls for international Lebanon force
By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem, Roula Khalaf in London and William Wallis in Beirut
Published: August 2 2006 22:02 | Last updated: August 3 2006 10:39

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, said on Wednesday that Israel would require a 15,000-strong international fighting force deployed in south Lebanon before its troops would loosen their grip on border territory wrested from Hizbollah control.

He also said Israel would reserve the right to respond to any aggression, even after the force had been deployed.

Iraq will remain "messy and difficult" for the next five to 10 years.

Civil war warning blow to Blair
James Sturcke and agencies
Thursday August 3, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Britain's outgoing ambassador to Baghdad has warned that civil war is the most likely outcome in Iraq, according to a leaked report.

In a confidential memo to ministers, William Patey also predicted the break-up of Iraq along ethnic lines.

The grim assessment from Britain's most senior civil servant in Iraq will have come as a blow to Tony Blair and his attempts to portray Iraq as "at a new beginning" on the road to a stable democracy.

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

ONE IN 3 AMERICANS SAY U.S. AIDED 9/11
By THOMAS HARGROVE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III

August 3, 2006 -- More than one-third of Americans suspect federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new poll.