[S]ince 2001, the administration had been pursuing a peace deal between southern Sudanese rebels and the regime in Khartoum -- a deal aimed at placating U.S. Christian groups that had long demanded action on behalf of Christian minorities in southern Sudan. The administration didn't want to undermine that process by hammering Khartoum over Darfur.
Early in his first term, President Bush received a National Security Council memo outlining the world's inaction regarding the genocide in Rwanda. In what may have been a burst of indignation and bravado, the president wrote in the margin of the memo, "Not on my watch."
Five years later, and nearly four years into what Bush himself has repeatedly called genocide, the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region is intensifying without a meaningful response from the White House. Perhaps Harvard professor Samantha Power's tongue-in-cheek theory is correct: The memo was inadvertently placed on top of the president's wristwatch, and he didn't want it to happen again. But if Bush's expressions of concern for the victims in Darfur are genuine, then why isn't his administration taking real action?
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 18, 2006 - 7:37pm. on War
From a black partisan perspective , Pelosi's desire to withdraw ASAP smacks very deeply of white liberal sentiment. It is not the effect on the people she worries about so much as it is the virtue of her liberal character. Pelosi cares more that the US not be seen as bullies and baddies, and if the Iraqis must suffer their own fate as we disengage with flowers and niceness, well - too bad. In fact, by taking this position, she cosigns the intent of the death squads that will arise in Iraq if we depart too soon.
Were Martin Luther King’s passionate extra-marital affairs with a legion of his white female admirers an act of betrayal and “racial treason” or were they, in fact, an integral psycho-sexual component of his campaign of “civil disobedience” against White American racism, the most insidious and psychotic of which has long manifested itself in the feverish and depraved angst over sexual relations between Black men and White women - a psychosis which recently reared its ugly head during the Tennessean mid-term senatorial campaign battle between Bob Corker and Harold Ford, Jr.?
Former boxing champion Mike Tyson is to become a male escort after agreeing to work at legendary Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss' new legalized brothel for women. Fleiss bought 60 acres of land in Nevada, and his work is scheduled to begin on Heidi's Stud Farm.
She has high hopes for Tyson, once heavyweight champion of the world - despite the fact he is a convicted rapist.
She says, "I told him, 'You're going to be my big stallion.' It's every man's fear that their girlfriend will go for Mike Tyson."
Tyson, 40, adds, "I don't care what any man says, it's every man's dream to please every woman - and get paid for it."
Ruling: Classes divided by race At Preston Hollow, principal tried to appease affluent parents, halt white flight, judge says 09:14 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006 By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 18, 2006 - 2:56pm. on Seen online | Tech
I'm going to try out Ubuntu Linux, so I doubt I'll actually use this joint, but if I had found it a couple of months ago...
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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 18, 2006 - 2:34pm. on Justice
This case is an example of why, on the whole, I trust the judiciary's judgement. The laws themselves are often screwed...
In its filings, The Times has suggested that Mr. Kristof had numerous sources for the columns. Of those, Mr. Kristof initially refused to identify five, saying he had promised them confidentiality. He has since disclosed the identities of three, saying those sources recently released him from his pledge.
In issuing the ruling, Judge O’Grady rejected a series of harsher sanctions sought by Mr. Hatfill’s lawyers, including a request that the court impose a $25,000-a-day fine on The Times until it named the two F.B.I. officials.
This is about the best decision that can be made in this case. Respect for the privacy of the reporter's sources, and recognition that you can't accept "testimony" when you have no idea who is giving it.
The momentum of the Republican Revolution stalled in late 1995 and early 1996 as a result of a budget fight between Congressional Republicans and President Bill Clinton. Without enough votes to override President Clinton's veto, Gingrich led the Republicans to not submit a revised budget, allowing the previously-approved appropriations to expire on schedule, and causing parts of the Federal government to shut down for lack of funds.
The second strange thing of the evening was the total absence of any black people. Except for the black receptionist and the Hispanic janitor we met downstairs my husband and I were the only people of color in the building. The folks in the meeting room were all white and mostly middle aged to elderly. If we were any where else I wouldn't have noticed but this was downtown DC! Washington or Chocolate City as it is also known, is home to some of the most educated, well-to-do and conservative blacks in the nation....
A tall, regal looking woman with a frosted helmet of red hair and a St. John suit leaned over me to air kiss a wizened old man sitting behind me. "Ward is a dear friend of mine," she told him, "I wouldn't have missed this for anything!" A youngish woman in a Chanel suit and fierce Prada shoes cooed, "I just love Ward. He speaks for us!" I glanced at my husband who raised his eyebrow. The question we were both thinking was "Us?"...
At the end of the book he talks about the birth of his granddaughter and exults because her tiny little fist next to his brown skin was as "white as snow." I almost quit reading at that point but kept on. On the final page of the book he asks bookstore owners and librarians not to put his book in the African American section.
An Evening With Ward Connerly 04-17-00 By Kimberley Lindsay Wilson
Several weeks ago I, along with my husband attended a book signing for Ward Connerly and his new book Creating Equal. For those, who don't know Ward Connerly is the black University of California Regent who agitated for the abolishment of affirmative action in the university's enrollment policies.
After winning that fight he went on the become the chairman of the infamous Proposition 209 committee. Proposition 209 struck down affirmative action for the entire state. He then took his show on the road landing in Washington State and now in Florida. Needless to say, Connerly has made a lot of enemies. He's been publicly denounced as an Uncle Tom, and Oreo and basically everything but a child of God.
I've said and written some harsh things about Connerly so when one of the several women's organizations I belong to announced that they were sponsoring a book signing for him at their DC headquarters I was extremely curious to see the man in person to hear what he'd say.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 18, 2006 - 9:53am. on Race and Identity
‘‘I questioned him when I could expect payment,” Owen-Williams said. ‘‘He said, ‘Listen, son, you don’t need to bring that topic up to me.’ I said, ‘I’m not your son,’ and he said, ‘Listen, boy.’ Then he charged up the stairs at me and when he got to the top of the stairs, he squeezed his hands around my neck. I yelled at him, ‘Have you lost your mind?’”...
‘‘I’ll do what is in my best interest and the best interest in the party,” Owen-Williams said. ‘‘If it’s going to call undue negative attention to the party, I’ll just let it go.”
...On Oct. 2, the last day for a candidate to be replaced on the ballot, Owen-Williams bowed out of the council race, and Abrams filed to enter it.
Owen-Williams said he withdrew to keep county GOP Chairman and at-large council candidate Tom Reinheimer from stepping aside to make room for Abrams.
...Abrams and the rest of the GOP council candidates lost last week.
Owen-Williams also said he and Abrams had a ‘‘handshake agreement” that Abrams would reimburse him for the $5,000 campaign expenses he had accrued during the primary campaign.
‘‘I trusted his word and didn’t get a written contract,” Owen-Williams said. ‘‘I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was a decent, honorable human being even though I’d been warned he wasn’t.”
This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the "Contract with America" Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize.
Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do.
I'm not talking about the policies of the Contract for America crowd, but the character. I'm confident that 99 percent of the population — if they could see these politicians up close, if they watched their speeches and looked at their biographies — would agree, no matter what their politics or predilections.
I'm confident that if historians ever spend the time on it, they'll confirm my thesis. Same with forensic psychiatrists. I have discussed this with scores of politicians, staffers, consultants and reporters since 1994 and have found few dissenters.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 1:55pm. on Seen online
People who think, even subconsciously, about money are also less helpful than others, the researchers say....Just being reminded of the concept of money "transforms people to capitalist individuals," says Drazen Prelec, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study. And, Vohs notes, "their behavior was not something they realized they were doing."
Money is an incentive to work hard, but it also promotes selfish behavior. Those conclusions may not be surprising, but now researchers find that merely thinking of money makes people less likely to give help to others.
"Self-sufficient people are more diligent in their own goals," says Kathleen D. Vohs, a consumer psychologist at the University of Minnesota. "Money is cognitively and mentally linked to personal goals. It allows people to do things efficiently and not need other people."
Vohs and her colleagues performed a series of experiments to determine how money affects people's behavior. In a lab, they subconsciously reminded volunteers of money in different ways, either by showing them money-related words such as "salary," or by revealing a poster or screensaver with currency on it. The researchers primed other participants with play money or neutral stimuli, such as fish. After priming, the participants performed different tasks that were unrelated to money but that assessed their behavior in social situations.
When money is on the brain, people become disinclined to ask for help when faced with a difficult or even an impossible puzzle, Vohs and her colleagues report in this week's issue of Science. They tried to work on the task by themselves, she explains. Eventually most did ask for help--it just took them longer to come around.
Thirty villagers were reported killed this week in Sirba, but no outside investigators have been able to enter the town to confirm the reports.
Sudanese rebels accused government troops and militias Thursday of killing more than 50 people in another attack. Two weeks ago, 63 people were reported killed in Jebel Moon, and their bodies buried in the desert...
Journalists able to secure a visa face a bewildering array of permits and paperwork; the Sudanese government must be informed in advance of any travel in Darfur. Officials insist on listening to interviews; they intimidate interviewees, and have attempted to confiscate notebooks.
"I can take any of [your permits] I want ... you're going to hell," one official hissed at this reporter. "Do you think this is a free country?" Last week, all permits for journalists to travel to the region were being denied.
Sudan closing off Darfur to outside world International observers, journalists, and humanitarian organizations are being forced out by the government. By Katharine Houreld | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Haven't been to church recently? You might have missed something.
Church pastors last year had a chance to win a free trip to London and $1,000 cash -- if they mentioned Disney's film "The Chronicles of Narnia" in their sermons. Chrysler, hoping to target affluent African Americans with its new luxury SUV, is currently sponsoring a Patti LaBelle gospel music tour through African-American megachurches nationwide.
Advertising has begun to seep into churches, and the phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down, say academic, religious and marketing experts. Among the wave of early adopters: the Republican Party, which successfully sold its platform to church-goers in the 2000 and 2004 elections; Hollywood, which discovered the economic power of faith when Mel Gibson's church-marketed film "The Passion of the Christ" became a blockbuster; and publishing, with Rick Warren's best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, heavily marketed by a Christian publishing house.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 10:42am. on War
The problem is, I don't believe it it is wrong. They got played by Iraqi ex-patriots, so it's not a stretch to believe they were set up by Al-Qaida.
Asked whether he thought Libi had deliberately planted information to get the US to fight Iraq, Nasiri said: "Exactly".
Nasiri said Libi "needed the conflict in Iraq because months before I heard him telling us when a question was asked in the mosque after the prayer in the evening, where is the best country to fight the jihad?" Libi said Iraq was chosen because it was the "weakest" Muslim country.
It is known that under interrogation, Libi misled Washington. His claims were seized on by George Bush, vice-president, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell, secretary of state, in his address to the security council in February, 2003, which argued the case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq.
A senior al-Qaida operative deliberately planted information to encourage the US to invade Iraq, a double agent who infiltrated the network and spied for western intelligence agencies claimed last night.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 10:28am. on War
Asked why it would require housing for 800 to 1,200 personnel and a dining facility for up to 800 people, Whitman said the idea is to hold multiple trials -- and house "any number of people -- legal and administrative personnel, media, . . . security . . . attorneys."
Pentagon wants to build mini-city for terror trials The Pentagon wants to build a compound costing up to $125 million for upcoming war crimes trials at Guantánamo. The proposal has yet to be presented to Congress, which must OK funding. BY CAROL ROSENBERG
The Pentagon plans to build a military commissions compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, costing up to $125 million, a major undertaking meant to accommodate up to 1,200 people for the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II, The Miami Herald learned Thursday.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 10:13am. on People of the Word
The real Way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment. If you say a word, there arises choice and attachment or there may arise clarity.
Seppo addressed the assembly and said, "All the great world, if I pick it up with my fingertips, is found to be like a grain of rice. I throw it in front of your face, but you do not see it. Beat the drum, telling the monks to come out to work, and search for it."
Basho Osho said to his disciples, "If you have a staff I will give you a staff. If you have no staff I will take it from you."
A monk said to Kempo Osho, "It is written, 'Bhagavats in the ten directions. One straight road to Nirvana.' I still wonder where that road can be." Kempo lifted his staff, drew a line, and said, "Here it is."
The voters sent a clear message last week that they do not want the far right of the Republican Party calling the shots in Washington. But President Bush has ignored the message, resubmitting a group of archconservative, underqualified judicial nominees that Senate Democrats have already said are unacceptable. With the Democrats about to take control of the Senate, it is highly unlikely that these men will be confirmed. But the renominations suggest that when it comes to filling judgeships, Mr. Bush is still not looking for either excellence or common ground.
The four most controversial nominees that President Bush resubmitted are ideological in the extreme. William Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for mining and timber interests, would no doubt use his position on the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to gut environmental laws. William Haynes II, who helped develop the administration’s torture and “enemy combatant” policies as the top lawyer for the Pentagon, could be counted on to undermine both civil liberties and reasonable limits on executive power.
"The measure in Michigan, as did the measure in California, passed along very clearly racial lines," Cose said, showing that "even though jurists see a legitimate state interest in diversity voters, at least white voters don't."
Opponents to last week's ballot measure promise a legal battle, as do proponents. Although the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of affirmative action programs, the court's written opinions have signaled for years that the programs' end may be near.
The question, the California report says, is whether Americans, decades after Jim Crow, still feel legally obligated to help boost people whose race puts them at an economic and educational disadvantage. Affirmative action opponents say special treatment based on race implies lesser treatment of others based on their majority status. So by addressing one injustice, they say, the programs commit another.
So the answer, of course, is not to address the first injustice.
That IS what they're saying, you know. They are choosing to let remaining injusticesstand.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 7:28am. on Health | Politics
Mark Conrad, president of A Woman's Concern, said Keroack would be able to make the transition to leading a federal program in which provision of birth control is an integral part. "I don't think it's going to be an issue for him," he said.
The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women."
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 17, 2006 - 7:23am.
Given that we're talking about a population of over 60,600,000 people, the fourth largest religion in the United Kingdom can should be written off as the lunatic fringe.
Indeed, more than 390,000 Brits are practising Jedi, according to the 2001 census. Brighton is the country's principal centre of Jedi activity, with 6,480 professing to follow the faith.
Two Jedi this morning turned up at the UN's London HQ to demand official recognition of their religion, The Sun reports.
"Umada" and "Yunyun" - aka 27-year-old John Wilkinson and 24-year-old Charlotte Law - timed their "protest" to coincide with today's UN International Day of Tolerance, which they'd like renamed "Interstellar Day of Tolerance".
“White rednecks” who “didn’t show up to vote for us” partly cost GOPers their cong. majorities, Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) told fellow Republicans today. And Putnam, seeking the post of GOP conference chair, chided ex-Chair J.C. Watts (R-OK) for ruining the conference’s ability to serve its members.
Three Republicans in the room independently confirmed to the Hotline the substance and context of Putnam’s remarks. But Putnam’s chief of staff insists that the remarks were taken out of context.
Republicans in general have been spinning the election as though losing were a victory. Black Republicans have it even worse. If they are to be of any use to the Republican Party they can't lose all credibility with the Black communities; yet as a result of the election they've lost any pretense at community support,
They have only one option left, and it's an option that will doom them within the party.
I consider it urgent to inform you that it is in your interest to purge your state-level organizations of operatives who engage in underhanded tactics to suppress Democratic votes...
Rep. John Conyers, for instance, with his "reparations" posturing, does not generally demonstrate a civil-rights leadership that makes any sense to me. However, his report, "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio," presents too imposing a mountain of factual observations to ignore. A degree of electoral chicanery went on in Ohio two years ago that almost recalls Zimbabwe...
...Look's story of the Till murder in Mississippi carries the material covering the alleged remarks and acts of the dead boy as "facts"...Who stands behind these "facts"?
Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The enclosed editorial... appeared in the Jackson State Times... Northern as well as Southern newsmen at the trial were generally agreed that the 'not guilty' verdict was the only one possible under the law where a man is assumed innocent until proved otherwise. Yet Mr. Huie makes the blanket assertment that the majority of Mississippi white people either approve of Big Milam's actions or else they don't disapprove enough to risk giving their enemies the satisfaction of a conviction. By this example of opinionated, baseless reporting, Look itself pays scant recognition to the traditions of American Justice it claims were ignored by Mississippians..."
Robert E. Webb State Times Jackson, Mississippi
...If this case is not reopened and the guilty punished, I shall laugh at the word "justice."
William T. Bates Folsom, Pennsylvania
...I want to cancel my subscription to your magazine at once. I will not have my home contaminated with...filthy, dishonest articles...
Editors Note: In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point. The editors of Look are convinced that they are presenting here, for the first time, the real story of that killing -- the story no jury heard and no newspaper reader saw.
Disclosed here is the true account of the slaying in Mississippi of a Negro youth named Emmett Till.
Last September in Sumner, Miss., a petit jury found the youth's admitted abductors not guilty of murder. In November, in Greenwood, a grand jury declined to indict them for kidnapping.
Of the murder trial, the Mephis Commercial Appeal said: "Evidence necessary for convicting on a murder charge was lacking." But with truth absent, hypocrisy and myth have flourished. Now, hypocrisy can be exposed; myth dispelled. Here are the facts.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 16, 2006 - 9:51pm. on News
I am actually grateful that some white folks had this indominatable sense of entitlement. If all those white college students hadn't joined the Freedom Rides, those buses would have just vanished. If Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner hadn't been killed, James Chaney would have been another missing nigger.
That link is not work safe, though not because there's anything sexual on the other side...it's because there is narration of things no one wants to remember.
Anyway, I am grateful, but I've long been of the opinion that the equality everyone lauds will come together at the low end. I think this has finally come to pass, as this poor kid tries to talk to the cops like he was a white guy in a Dave Chapelle skit. You see how it turned out...
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 16, 2006 - 8:33pm. on Religion
Though claims of religious discrimination are growing in number, they were only a tiny segment -- just 3.1 percent -- of the slightly more than 75,000 complaints filed last year with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
SAVANNAH, Mo. --Three years after she was fired for refusing to work on Sundays, Connie Rehm has won back her job on the staff of this small town's public library, and her employers have received a costly education in employment rights law.
No less a legal team than the same Florida attorneys who represented the parents of Terri Schiavo -- the brain-damaged woman at the center of last year's right-to-die case -- took up Rehm's cause, suing Rolling Hills Consolidated Library on a claim of religious discrimination.
We are commissioning articles on a diverse range of African Americans in all fields, from all periods of North American history, and from all stations of life—activists, writers and journalists, slaves, sharecroppers, domestic workers, musicians, performers, singers, politicians, government workers, judges, lawyers, ministers, preachers, and other religious workers, educators, athletes, sports figures, actors, directors, filmmakers, doctors, nurses, artists, photographers, business people, entrepreneurs, military personnel, scientists, philanthropists, dancers, frontiersmen, cowboys, legendary figures, inventors, aviators, explorers, astronauts, and more.
AANB entries are typically 1,000 words in length, with an honorarium of $100. Each article will be signed by the author and will include a brief bibliography.
Submitted by Prometheus 6 on November 16, 2006 - 12:29pm. on Justice | News
What would you have the USofA do if, say, five countries decided to treat a couple of Americans this way at the same time?
When the question of whether the international tribunal’s ruling must be followed reached the United States Supreme Court last year, President Bush issued a memorandum to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal.
At the same time, the State Department announced that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is the United Nations’ principal judicial organ.
More realistically, it seems Texas' brief history as an independent country has caused its court to mistake the relationship between the POTUS and the SCOTUS for that between the POTUS and itself.
Texas can proceed with the execution of a death row inmate notwithstanding a ruling by an international tribunal and a memorandum from President Bush directing state courts to comply with the tribunal’s decision, Texas’ highest court for criminal matters ruled yesterday.
“We hold that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority by intruding into the independent powers of the judiciary,” Judge Michael Keasler wrote for the court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
