Edward Carpenter, The Examiner
SAN FRANCISCO - The success in Stockholm of a program to charge drivers fees for heading into the highly congested heart of the city could bode well for a similar proposal in San Francisco, according to officials. Since being implemented on Jan. 6, downtown traffic in Sweden’s capital has plunged 25 percent and transit usage has increased by about 40,000 riders per day, dramatically decreasing rush-hour travel times, data released today shows.
“It’s fabulous,” said San Francisco County Transportation Authority Executive Director Jose Luis Moscovich, who hopes a similar system might be implemented in The City. The transit authority in January won a $1 million federal grant and has contributed another $200,000 toward studying the feasibility of so-called congestion pricing over an 18-month period. While the financial benefits to Stockholm aren’t known yet, London — which began operating a flat-fee system in 2002 — takes in about $350 million a year using congestion pricing, $175 million of which goes directly into public transportation.
“The idea is to put [the money from the fees] right back into public transportation,” Moscovich said. “If we make it more expensive to take a car then we have to provide [people] other choices, or else we’re imposing a hardship and we don’t want to do that.”
Article...
Saturday, March 11, 2006
BUSH REGIME BACKS OFF HARASSMENT OF INVESTIGATIVE WEB SITE
DOUG THOMPSON, CAPITOL HILL BLUE - One of the questions frequently raised by critics of this web site is "how can you guys have sources the mainstream media doesn't have?" Good question. We often quote confidential sources in our stories. We have a choice of depending on such sources or not publishing the story. If I'm satisfied the sources are accurate I go with the story.
It's a question of trust and, during my 23 years in Washington as both a journalist and a political operative, I built up a network of sources I trust and who trust me to protect their identity and not put them in harm's way. More than 40 years in journalism taught me to protect such sources at all cost.
Many of those same sources don't trust the so-called "mainstream media" outlets because they've been burned by journalists who put the story ahead of protecting those who provide them with the information. Even worse, the mainstreamers can be downright sloppy when it comes to protecting those who have such information.
On Monday, I outlined how the Bush Administration has launched an all-out war on the press, directing attorney general Alberto Gonzales to go after reporters with subpoenas, wiretaps, monitoring of emails and surveillance to try and stop leaks about the many questionable activities of the White House. I learned about the efforts because the FBI made the incredibly stupid mistake of sending one of their "National Security Letters" to a company I own demanding information on one of its clients - me.
Then I confirmed the story with my administration sources and ran with it on Monday, knowing that even acknowledging receipt of a National Security Letter could lead to trouble. The letter was withdrawn after my attorney negotiated a deal.
On Tuesday, an email arrived from Dan Eggen, Justice Department correspondent for The Washington Post. Dan wanted a copy of the letter and more information on the story.
That's right. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring the email of journalists and a journalist fires off an email asking me to violate the USA Patriot Act and risk certain jail time by providing him with a copy of a letter that I'm not even supposed to admit I have. . .
Then I checked my voice mail to find a call from Robert O'Harrow Jr., another Post reporter, wanting information on my sources. Hmmm. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring phone calls of reporters and a reporter calls me on the phone to obtain information on my confidential sources. Anyone see a pattern here?
Next, I get both a phone call and an email from David Armstrong of the National Security News Service saying he is working with 60 Minutes on a story about domestic spying by the National Security Agency. He wants info on my sources.
Let's see. A reporter uses both the telephone and email to request the names of confidential sources on a story about how the National Security Agency monitors telephone and email use of, you guessed it, reporters.
Sorry guys. I'm not about to burn my sources when you take so little precaution in seeking information from me. . .
Article...
It's a question of trust and, during my 23 years in Washington as both a journalist and a political operative, I built up a network of sources I trust and who trust me to protect their identity and not put them in harm's way. More than 40 years in journalism taught me to protect such sources at all cost.
Many of those same sources don't trust the so-called "mainstream media" outlets because they've been burned by journalists who put the story ahead of protecting those who provide them with the information. Even worse, the mainstreamers can be downright sloppy when it comes to protecting those who have such information.
On Monday, I outlined how the Bush Administration has launched an all-out war on the press, directing attorney general Alberto Gonzales to go after reporters with subpoenas, wiretaps, monitoring of emails and surveillance to try and stop leaks about the many questionable activities of the White House. I learned about the efforts because the FBI made the incredibly stupid mistake of sending one of their "National Security Letters" to a company I own demanding information on one of its clients - me.
Then I confirmed the story with my administration sources and ran with it on Monday, knowing that even acknowledging receipt of a National Security Letter could lead to trouble. The letter was withdrawn after my attorney negotiated a deal.
On Tuesday, an email arrived from Dan Eggen, Justice Department correspondent for The Washington Post. Dan wanted a copy of the letter and more information on the story.
That's right. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring the email of journalists and a journalist fires off an email asking me to violate the USA Patriot Act and risk certain jail time by providing him with a copy of a letter that I'm not even supposed to admit I have. . .
Then I checked my voice mail to find a call from Robert O'Harrow Jr., another Post reporter, wanting information on my sources. Hmmm. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring phone calls of reporters and a reporter calls me on the phone to obtain information on my confidential sources. Anyone see a pattern here?
Next, I get both a phone call and an email from David Armstrong of the National Security News Service saying he is working with 60 Minutes on a story about domestic spying by the National Security Agency. He wants info on my sources.
Let's see. A reporter uses both the telephone and email to request the names of confidential sources on a story about how the National Security Agency monitors telephone and email use of, you guessed it, reporters.
Sorry guys. I'm not about to burn my sources when you take so little precaution in seeking information from me. . .
Article...
Afghanistan: The Other War
by CHRISTIAN PARENTI, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/parenti
[from the March 27, 2006 issue]
Our Humvee jolts and sways against another cold dirt track in Parwan Province, an hour north of Kabul. On the road thin shadows from barren winter orchards lie like dark lacework and flicker across the Humvee's hood and windshield.
A landscape of adobe-walled villages, empty fields, horse carts and dramatic sharp mountains slides by. Inside the armored Humvee we listen to music on a dusty iPod and two speakers that are jacked into the vehicle's nervous system. Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" rolls up on the iPod. The lyrics, though older than most of the soldiers on this patrol, capture the squad's mix of homesickness and political cynicism: "Now Watergate does not bother me/Does your conscience bother you?" No one talks much about Afghanistan.
I am riding along with these two Humvees from the 164th Military Police Company to observe the American effort at keeping a lid on the Afghan caldron. I also want to compare US methods with those of the European troops who are taking over an ever larger part of the military mission here.
Specialist Willie Stacey stands in the gun turret on the SAW-249 machine gun. He taps his foot to the music's rhythm, and to the slight twinge of fear that animates us all. Four nights ago this unit was sprayed down with small arms fire, and earlier one of their number lost his leg to a landmine.
Only ninety-eight US troops died in Afghanistan last year; but the ratio of US casualties to overall troop levels makes Afghanistan as dangerous as Iraq. While Iraq's violent disintegration dominates the headlines, Bush touts Afghanistan as a success. During his recent visit, the President told Afghans that their country was "inspiring others...to demand their freedom."
But many features of the political landscape here are not so inspiring--for example, the deteriorating security situation. Taliban attacks are up; their tactics have become more aggressive and nihilistic. They have detonated at least twenty-three suicide bombs in the past six months, killing foreign and Afghan troops, a Canadian diplomat, local police and in some cases crowds of civilians. Kidnapping is on the rise. American contractors are being targeted. Some 200 schools have been burned or closed down. And Lieut. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the senior American military officer here, expects the violence to get worse over the spring and summer.
More...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/parenti
[from the March 27, 2006 issue]
Our Humvee jolts and sways against another cold dirt track in Parwan Province, an hour north of Kabul. On the road thin shadows from barren winter orchards lie like dark lacework and flicker across the Humvee's hood and windshield.
A landscape of adobe-walled villages, empty fields, horse carts and dramatic sharp mountains slides by. Inside the armored Humvee we listen to music on a dusty iPod and two speakers that are jacked into the vehicle's nervous system. Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" rolls up on the iPod. The lyrics, though older than most of the soldiers on this patrol, capture the squad's mix of homesickness and political cynicism: "Now Watergate does not bother me/Does your conscience bother you?" No one talks much about Afghanistan.
I am riding along with these two Humvees from the 164th Military Police Company to observe the American effort at keeping a lid on the Afghan caldron. I also want to compare US methods with those of the European troops who are taking over an ever larger part of the military mission here.
Specialist Willie Stacey stands in the gun turret on the SAW-249 machine gun. He taps his foot to the music's rhythm, and to the slight twinge of fear that animates us all. Four nights ago this unit was sprayed down with small arms fire, and earlier one of their number lost his leg to a landmine.
Only ninety-eight US troops died in Afghanistan last year; but the ratio of US casualties to overall troop levels makes Afghanistan as dangerous as Iraq. While Iraq's violent disintegration dominates the headlines, Bush touts Afghanistan as a success. During his recent visit, the President told Afghans that their country was "inspiring others...to demand their freedom."
But many features of the political landscape here are not so inspiring--for example, the deteriorating security situation. Taliban attacks are up; their tactics have become more aggressive and nihilistic. They have detonated at least twenty-three suicide bombs in the past six months, killing foreign and Afghan troops, a Canadian diplomat, local police and in some cases crowds of civilians. Kidnapping is on the rise. American contractors are being targeted. Some 200 schools have been burned or closed down. And Lieut. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the senior American military officer here, expects the violence to get worse over the spring and summer.
More...
Thursday, March 09, 2006
The nattering nabobs of ... patriotism?
By Paul Lewis, Philedelphia Inquirer
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14042962.htm
Declaration of Independence: The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations.
Samuel Adams: If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
Thomas Paine:What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.
Press briefing, St. James's Palace
Scott McClellan, Esq.: Following a brief comment on criticism of the administration from across the Atlantic, I'll take your questions. I need hardly remind you that these are perilous times. Times when Indian uprisings in the colonies and challenges to commerce on the high seas make security concerns paramount. In this context, we welcome constructive ideas, but, alas, hear nothing but negativity from our critics. Do they have any ideas, any positive agenda? I don't think so.
The McLaughlin Group, PBS
John McLaughlin: Look, there are many leaders in America, but you've got to wonder if they are ever going to get their act together. Watch this clip. [Shows Jefferson, Adams and Paine making the comments above.] OK, so we've heard the latest round of potshots fired by these so-called revolutionaries. I ask YOU, Pat Buchanan, what you make of these comments.
Eleanor Clift: Now, John, am I ever going to ...
Pat Buchanan: John, it's the same mean-spirited attack we've been hearing for decades from places like Boston and Richmond. How much easier it is to call the King's appointees "vain and aspiring" than it is to advance a positive agenda.
Tony Blankley: Pat's right, John. It's easier to whine about supporting "parasites" than to see how the monarchy stimulates economic growth by employing throne builders and gourmet chefs.
Eleanor Clift: But, John, John ...
John McLaughlin: Bye, bye!
Royal press conference, St. James's Palace:
Q: Your Majesty, would you care to comment on the recent pointless and purely negative attacks by the Americans?
King George III: I'm glad you put that question on the table, Wolf, where it can be carved up and batted around. There are those who say that when it comes to the development of agendas, negativityness, or negativitude, or negativitality will never convince those who are themselves not as negative as the agenda developers. And I think I'll just leave it there, heh, heh. Now, where are my parasites?
Fox News crawl: King George decries "negativitude" ... Britannia continues to rule waves ... Music reviewer Lord Slumber calls "Yankee Doodle" a "stupid song," others agree ... Philadelphia overrated as tourist attraction ... George Washington flatulent ...
The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News
Tom Paine: These are the times that try men's ...
Bill O'Reilly: Will you just shut up! Look, I have one question for you. First, it's the King you smear with your negativity, calling his court a "band of parasites," then it's God. Did or didn't you say that Jesus was a "virtuous and amiable man"? A man, is that all? When are you liberals going to end your war on ... No positive agenda. No positive agenda. Shut up!
Scrappleface.com - Top Stories
Americans Surprise Themselves by Having an Original Idea
"Positive Agenda" Ranges from Insult to Invective
Paine's Latest Line of Attack: "Rich people suck"
The Rush Limbaugh Show, EIB Network
Rush Limbaugh: My friends, we've been hearing this for years and years from these witless Americans. Hating the rich, cryin' crocodile tears over the poor, why it's nothing but class warfare. Do they have a positive agenda or is their best shot whining about vague "injuries and usurpations"?
anncoulter.com: Recent attack lines from American liberals are all too familiar. Usually the nonsense they spout is kind of cute, but in times of danger their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening. And, as for threatening lives, maybe it's time to dump some of them in Boston Harbour. And where, I for one would ask, is their positive agenda?
Paul Lewis (lewisp@bc.edu) is a professor of English at Boston College and the author of "Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict," to be published this fall by the University of Chicago Press.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14042962.htm
Declaration of Independence: The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations.
Samuel Adams: If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
Thomas Paine:What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.
Press briefing, St. James's Palace
Scott McClellan, Esq.: Following a brief comment on criticism of the administration from across the Atlantic, I'll take your questions. I need hardly remind you that these are perilous times. Times when Indian uprisings in the colonies and challenges to commerce on the high seas make security concerns paramount. In this context, we welcome constructive ideas, but, alas, hear nothing but negativity from our critics. Do they have any ideas, any positive agenda? I don't think so.
The McLaughlin Group, PBS
John McLaughlin: Look, there are many leaders in America, but you've got to wonder if they are ever going to get their act together. Watch this clip. [Shows Jefferson, Adams and Paine making the comments above.] OK, so we've heard the latest round of potshots fired by these so-called revolutionaries. I ask YOU, Pat Buchanan, what you make of these comments.
Eleanor Clift: Now, John, am I ever going to ...
Pat Buchanan: John, it's the same mean-spirited attack we've been hearing for decades from places like Boston and Richmond. How much easier it is to call the King's appointees "vain and aspiring" than it is to advance a positive agenda.
Tony Blankley: Pat's right, John. It's easier to whine about supporting "parasites" than to see how the monarchy stimulates economic growth by employing throne builders and gourmet chefs.
Eleanor Clift: But, John, John ...
John McLaughlin: Bye, bye!
Royal press conference, St. James's Palace:
Q: Your Majesty, would you care to comment on the recent pointless and purely negative attacks by the Americans?
King George III: I'm glad you put that question on the table, Wolf, where it can be carved up and batted around. There are those who say that when it comes to the development of agendas, negativityness, or negativitude, or negativitality will never convince those who are themselves not as negative as the agenda developers. And I think I'll just leave it there, heh, heh. Now, where are my parasites?
Fox News crawl: King George decries "negativitude" ... Britannia continues to rule waves ... Music reviewer Lord Slumber calls "Yankee Doodle" a "stupid song," others agree ... Philadelphia overrated as tourist attraction ... George Washington flatulent ...
The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News
Tom Paine: These are the times that try men's ...
Bill O'Reilly: Will you just shut up! Look, I have one question for you. First, it's the King you smear with your negativity, calling his court a "band of parasites," then it's God. Did or didn't you say that Jesus was a "virtuous and amiable man"? A man, is that all? When are you liberals going to end your war on ... No positive agenda. No positive agenda. Shut up!
Scrappleface.com - Top Stories
Americans Surprise Themselves by Having an Original Idea
"Positive Agenda" Ranges from Insult to Invective
Paine's Latest Line of Attack: "Rich people suck"
The Rush Limbaugh Show, EIB Network
Rush Limbaugh: My friends, we've been hearing this for years and years from these witless Americans. Hating the rich, cryin' crocodile tears over the poor, why it's nothing but class warfare. Do they have a positive agenda or is their best shot whining about vague "injuries and usurpations"?
anncoulter.com: Recent attack lines from American liberals are all too familiar. Usually the nonsense they spout is kind of cute, but in times of danger their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening. And, as for threatening lives, maybe it's time to dump some of them in Boston Harbour. And where, I for one would ask, is their positive agenda?
Paul Lewis (lewisp@bc.edu) is a professor of English at Boston College and the author of "Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict," to be published this fall by the University of Chicago Press.
Andrew Young: Shameless Son
By Bruce Dixon, The Black Commentator
Posted on March 6, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/33068/
Black History Month 2006 ended on a jarring note. Andrew Young, a former member of Dr. King's inner circle at SCLC, who went on to serve three terms in Congress, a stint as U.N. ambassador and two terms as mayor of Atlanta before cashing out his Freedom Movement chips for a lucrative career as an international "business consultant," decisively spat upon the movement for human rights and economic justice that he spent his early career helping to build.
Young announced on Feb. 27, 2006, that he would chair Working Families for Wal-Mart, a media sock-puppet for the ruthless multinational firm. The cynical misuse of his stature as an icon of the Freedom Movement, preacher, former elected official, and honored elder in black America to mask and obscure the crimes of his corporate client marks Mr. Young as nothing more nor less than a corporate whore.
When Atlanta's WAOK-AM radio gave Young several minutes of live air time the morning of the 27th to justify himself to an African-American hometown crowd, the response was overwhelmingly negative. How could he do this, one caller after another wondered incredulously. Wal-Mart does more to depress the wages of working people on both sides of the Pacific than any other single player in the game, listeners called in to say.
Other callers reminded each other that Wal-Mart relentlessly discriminates against women and minorities, ruthlessly crushes unions, and dumps its health care costs onto the public sector while receiving millions in local government subsides and tax abatements for each of its thousands of U.S. stores. Andy Young used to walk with Dr. King. He used to be on our side, more than one observed. Why, they asked, is this happening?
More...
Posted on March 6, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/33068/
Black History Month 2006 ended on a jarring note. Andrew Young, a former member of Dr. King's inner circle at SCLC, who went on to serve three terms in Congress, a stint as U.N. ambassador and two terms as mayor of Atlanta before cashing out his Freedom Movement chips for a lucrative career as an international "business consultant," decisively spat upon the movement for human rights and economic justice that he spent his early career helping to build.
Young announced on Feb. 27, 2006, that he would chair Working Families for Wal-Mart, a media sock-puppet for the ruthless multinational firm. The cynical misuse of his stature as an icon of the Freedom Movement, preacher, former elected official, and honored elder in black America to mask and obscure the crimes of his corporate client marks Mr. Young as nothing more nor less than a corporate whore.
When Atlanta's WAOK-AM radio gave Young several minutes of live air time the morning of the 27th to justify himself to an African-American hometown crowd, the response was overwhelmingly negative. How could he do this, one caller after another wondered incredulously. Wal-Mart does more to depress the wages of working people on both sides of the Pacific than any other single player in the game, listeners called in to say.
Other callers reminded each other that Wal-Mart relentlessly discriminates against women and minorities, ruthlessly crushes unions, and dumps its health care costs onto the public sector while receiving millions in local government subsides and tax abatements for each of its thousands of U.S. stores. Andy Young used to walk with Dr. King. He used to be on our side, more than one observed. Why, they asked, is this happening?
More...
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
VERMONT MAYOR TO BE ELECTED BY INSTANT RUNOFF
AP - Runoff elections are typically cumbersome processes, taking weeks and sometimes months to determine a winner. Burlington is going to do it all instantly. In an innovation known as instant-runoff voting, the results of Tuesday's five-candidate election for mayor and whatever runoffs are needed to settle it will all be known soon after polls close. For the first time in a mayoral election in the United States, voters will mark their ballots for their favorite candidate, along with their second, third, fourth and fifth choices. If none of the five gets 50 percent of the vote on the first round, the candidate with the lowest vote total would be eliminated. Then the second choice of the voters who made that candidate their initial pick would be counted, and so on. "As soon as somebody gets to 50 percent, it stops," said Jo LaMarche, the city's election director.
Article...
Article...
Monday, March 06, 2006
Murtha calls Pentagon's top general a liar
March 5, 2006 04:55 PM / Capitol Hillbillies
Rep. John Murtha, the decorated ex-Marine turned Iraq war critic, Sunday called the Pentagon's chairman of the Joint Chiefs a liar for his rosy view of the war. The general acknowledged Sunday that "anything can happen" in Iraq, but he said things aren't as bad as some say. "I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at."
The comments drew criticism that Gen. Peter Pace is glossing over problems in the three-year-old U.S. campaign.
"Why would I believe him?" asked Rep. Murtha, D-Pa., a major critic of the Bush administration's handling of the war. "This administration, including the president, (has) mischaracterized this war for the last two years."
Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited political progress such as holding elections and writing a constitution as well as military progress like training Iraqi security forces.
"No matter where you look _ at their military, their police, their society _ things are much better this year than they were last," Pace said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Murtha, responding to Pace in an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," said that Iraq has 60 percent unemployment, oil production below prewar levels, and water service to only 30 percent of the population.
American troops are doing everything they can militarily but "are caught in a civil war," said Murtha, a former Marine who has called on the administration to bring U.S. troops home.
"There's two participants fighting for survival and fighting for supremacy inside that country," he said of ethnic divisions. "And that's my definition of a civil war."
Murtha added: "The rhetoric is so frustrating _ when they keep making statements which are very optimistic, and then it turns out to be the opposite. ... And the public has caught on to that, and they're very pessimistic about the outcome."
Pace and Murtha spoke as Iraqis continued a stalemate over forming a new government, a delay that has prevented parliament from meeting since it was elected Dec. 15.
Pressure mounted Sunday on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to give up his bid for a new term amid anger over the recent surge in sectarian killings that has complicated already snarled negotiations on a new Iraqi government.
Pace said the violent firestorm that followed the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque two weeks ago had forced Iraqis to look into "that abyss" and realize "that's not where they want to go."
"Anything can happen, I agree," Pace said, then added: "I believe the Iraqi people have shown in the last week to 10 days that they do not want civil war."
Ending the insurgency depends not only on military efforts but also on whether the Iraqi government can give the people what they want, Pace said. He said the number of people in the insurgency will drop if people see that the new government can come through with jobs and services.
"If you have an opportunity to get a job and feed your family, you're much less likely to accept $100 to go plant a bomb inside a road," Pace said.
Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. must stick with the Iraqis.
"They're talking about putting their act together," Lugar, R-Ind., said on CBS. "Now, the fact is that they may or may not be successful, but we better hope that they are, because the consequences for our country and the war against terror are very fateful if they are not."
© 2006 The Associated Press
Rep. John Murtha, the decorated ex-Marine turned Iraq war critic, Sunday called the Pentagon's chairman of the Joint Chiefs a liar for his rosy view of the war. The general acknowledged Sunday that "anything can happen" in Iraq, but he said things aren't as bad as some say. "I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at."
The comments drew criticism that Gen. Peter Pace is glossing over problems in the three-year-old U.S. campaign.
"Why would I believe him?" asked Rep. Murtha, D-Pa., a major critic of the Bush administration's handling of the war. "This administration, including the president, (has) mischaracterized this war for the last two years."
Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited political progress such as holding elections and writing a constitution as well as military progress like training Iraqi security forces.
"No matter where you look _ at their military, their police, their society _ things are much better this year than they were last," Pace said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Murtha, responding to Pace in an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," said that Iraq has 60 percent unemployment, oil production below prewar levels, and water service to only 30 percent of the population.
American troops are doing everything they can militarily but "are caught in a civil war," said Murtha, a former Marine who has called on the administration to bring U.S. troops home.
"There's two participants fighting for survival and fighting for supremacy inside that country," he said of ethnic divisions. "And that's my definition of a civil war."
Murtha added: "The rhetoric is so frustrating _ when they keep making statements which are very optimistic, and then it turns out to be the opposite. ... And the public has caught on to that, and they're very pessimistic about the outcome."
Pace and Murtha spoke as Iraqis continued a stalemate over forming a new government, a delay that has prevented parliament from meeting since it was elected Dec. 15.
Pressure mounted Sunday on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to give up his bid for a new term amid anger over the recent surge in sectarian killings that has complicated already snarled negotiations on a new Iraqi government.
Pace said the violent firestorm that followed the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque two weeks ago had forced Iraqis to look into "that abyss" and realize "that's not where they want to go."
"Anything can happen, I agree," Pace said, then added: "I believe the Iraqi people have shown in the last week to 10 days that they do not want civil war."
Ending the insurgency depends not only on military efforts but also on whether the Iraqi government can give the people what they want, Pace said. He said the number of people in the insurgency will drop if people see that the new government can come through with jobs and services.
"If you have an opportunity to get a job and feed your family, you're much less likely to accept $100 to go plant a bomb inside a road," Pace said.
Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. must stick with the Iraqis.
"They're talking about putting their act together," Lugar, R-Ind., said on CBS. "Now, the fact is that they may or may not be successful, but we better hope that they are, because the consequences for our country and the war against terror are very fateful if they are not."
© 2006 The Associated Press
Sunday, March 05, 2006
New Orleans Public Housing Residents Set to Fight Off Developers
by Kari Lydersen, NewStandard
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2868
For local real-estate tycoons who dreamed of wrecking New Orleans housing projects and gentrifying neighborhoods long before the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina’s floodwaters brought a blessing soaked in misery.
New Orleans; Feb. 27 – "Am I glad to be home!" exclaimed Gloria Irving as she set her plate of red beans and rice on the dashboard and opened the van door to let in the cool New Orleans air after a long drive from Texas.
But she had come back only as a visitor; after fleeing Hurricane Katrina to Houston, her journey home had just begun. Like many other public housing residents, Irving is waiting for the city to decide the fate of her apartment in the long-running battle over affordable housing in New Orleans.
Even though the St. Bernard housing projects, where Irving has spent most of her 70 years, sustained what residents consider survivable damage, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has not yet allowed residents back in.
First floor apartments like Irving's filled with water during the flood, but Dr. Marty Rowland, a civil engineer who toured the project, has told reporters all of the units could be livable again with rewiring and the restoration of utilities. Second- and third-floor apartments were hardly damaged at all, he said.
The Housing Authority has not announced what it plans to do with the approximately 1,300-unit development, but it did say it would put a fence around the site -- a move many see as a sign of impending demolition or redevelopment.
What the Housing Authority doesn't seem to understand, Irving says, is that she and her former neighbors have nowhere else to go. Even before Katrina, the number of public housing units in the city had fallen from about 14,000, sheltering about 60,000 people in the 1980s to 7,379 units.
That number could dwindle further in the coming months. Several housing developments, including the Desire and Florida projects in the Upper Ninth Ward, sustained heavy damage from Katrina's flooding and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said they may be demolished.
The fate of three other public housing developments – LaFitte, B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete – is less clear. Each sustained at least some storm damage, and the federal government has announced intentions to "redevelop" them. In the meantime, according to HANO, residents are slowly and "strategically" being allowed to return to select units.
But many residents and public-housing advocates are skeptical of the city's assessments, suspecting that municipal and federal officials are using the disaster as an excuse to accelerate a trend to raze or alter public housing for private development in New Orleans and throughout the nation.
History supports their fears. In 2000, the city demolished the St. Thomas housing projects – home to nearly 1,700 people – under a deal to re-develop the area for "mixed-use" homes and retail space. The plan was blessed and paid for by the federal government under the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI program, which was designed to rehabilitate distressed public housing into so-called "mixed-income" developments.
Read More Here...
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2868
For local real-estate tycoons who dreamed of wrecking New Orleans housing projects and gentrifying neighborhoods long before the 2005 hurricane season, Katrina’s floodwaters brought a blessing soaked in misery.
New Orleans; Feb. 27 – "Am I glad to be home!" exclaimed Gloria Irving as she set her plate of red beans and rice on the dashboard and opened the van door to let in the cool New Orleans air after a long drive from Texas.
But she had come back only as a visitor; after fleeing Hurricane Katrina to Houston, her journey home had just begun. Like many other public housing residents, Irving is waiting for the city to decide the fate of her apartment in the long-running battle over affordable housing in New Orleans.
Even though the St. Bernard housing projects, where Irving has spent most of her 70 years, sustained what residents consider survivable damage, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) has not yet allowed residents back in.
First floor apartments like Irving's filled with water during the flood, but Dr. Marty Rowland, a civil engineer who toured the project, has told reporters all of the units could be livable again with rewiring and the restoration of utilities. Second- and third-floor apartments were hardly damaged at all, he said.
The Housing Authority has not announced what it plans to do with the approximately 1,300-unit development, but it did say it would put a fence around the site -- a move many see as a sign of impending demolition or redevelopment.
What the Housing Authority doesn't seem to understand, Irving says, is that she and her former neighbors have nowhere else to go. Even before Katrina, the number of public housing units in the city had fallen from about 14,000, sheltering about 60,000 people in the 1980s to 7,379 units.
That number could dwindle further in the coming months. Several housing developments, including the Desire and Florida projects in the Upper Ninth Ward, sustained heavy damage from Katrina's flooding and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said they may be demolished.
The fate of three other public housing developments – LaFitte, B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete – is less clear. Each sustained at least some storm damage, and the federal government has announced intentions to "redevelop" them. In the meantime, according to HANO, residents are slowly and "strategically" being allowed to return to select units.
But many residents and public-housing advocates are skeptical of the city's assessments, suspecting that municipal and federal officials are using the disaster as an excuse to accelerate a trend to raze or alter public housing for private development in New Orleans and throughout the nation.
History supports their fears. In 2000, the city demolished the St. Thomas housing projects – home to nearly 1,700 people – under a deal to re-develop the area for "mixed-use" homes and retail space. The plan was blessed and paid for by the federal government under the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI program, which was designed to rehabilitate distressed public housing into so-called "mixed-income" developments.
Read More Here...
Poor Pay Biggest Share of State, Local Taxes
by Michelle Chen, NewStandard
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2879
Antipoverty activists say that America's poor, saddled with a disproportionally high state and local tax burden, are getting hit from both sides on all levels of government.
Mar. 1 – Federal program cuts, tax breaks for the wealthy and state budget crises are not the only forces squeezing the working poor. According to a study by a progressive think tank, low-income households are getting pinched yet again by state income-tax policies that turn what little they have into even less.
Of the 42 states levying income taxes in 2005, nineteen taxed two-parent families of four living in poverty, and sixteen taxed impoverished single-parent families of three, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which has tracked state income-tax data since the early 1990s.
Antipoverty groups say such tax policies add a perverse twist to an already tattered social safety net, and are demanding tax relief for the poor through redistributive fiscal policies.
"This is an especially harsh time to be taxing families deeper into poverty," said Kimble Forrister, executive director of the low-income advocacy coalition Alabama Arise, noting that families in his state are still reeling from the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and skyrocketing fuel costs.
According to the CBPP, while some states have recently reformed their tax codes to relieve the lower income brackets, others have simply let their income-tax thresholds stagnate. This has allowed inflation to drive the tax floor below the federal poverty line – about $16,600 for a family of three in the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia. The study also found that 31 states taxed families with incomes just above the official poverty line, pulling them back toward financial insecurity.
In Alabama, the basic tax exemptions are essentially held over from Depression-era statutes. In 2005, the state culled income taxes from families of four earning as little as $4,600. A single-parent family of three making the minimum wage – that's under $11,000 per year – paid nearly $220. The state charged four-person families with two parents living at the poverty line, which hovers just below $20,000, about $540.
Angela, a 30-year-old single mother in Auburn County, sees income taxes are just one more hurdle in her struggle to keep her two children, ages 9 and 12, housed and fed.
"It's just hard from day to day," she said. In her view, the government seems to be discouraging her efforts toward economic self-sufficiency. The more she works –stringing together low-skill, temporary jobs paying as little as $6.10 an hour – the less she receives in food-stamps assistance, and the closer she moves toward the income threshold at which the government saps her earnings.
"It's just kinda messed up," she said. "If you go out and get a job, you're still hurting yourself, 'cause now, I gotta worry about feeding my family out of my pocket."
Read More Here...
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2879
Antipoverty activists say that America's poor, saddled with a disproportionally high state and local tax burden, are getting hit from both sides on all levels of government.
Mar. 1 – Federal program cuts, tax breaks for the wealthy and state budget crises are not the only forces squeezing the working poor. According to a study by a progressive think tank, low-income households are getting pinched yet again by state income-tax policies that turn what little they have into even less.
Of the 42 states levying income taxes in 2005, nineteen taxed two-parent families of four living in poverty, and sixteen taxed impoverished single-parent families of three, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which has tracked state income-tax data since the early 1990s.
Antipoverty groups say such tax policies add a perverse twist to an already tattered social safety net, and are demanding tax relief for the poor through redistributive fiscal policies.
"This is an especially harsh time to be taxing families deeper into poverty," said Kimble Forrister, executive director of the low-income advocacy coalition Alabama Arise, noting that families in his state are still reeling from the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and skyrocketing fuel costs.
According to the CBPP, while some states have recently reformed their tax codes to relieve the lower income brackets, others have simply let their income-tax thresholds stagnate. This has allowed inflation to drive the tax floor below the federal poverty line – about $16,600 for a family of three in the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia. The study also found that 31 states taxed families with incomes just above the official poverty line, pulling them back toward financial insecurity.
In Alabama, the basic tax exemptions are essentially held over from Depression-era statutes. In 2005, the state culled income taxes from families of four earning as little as $4,600. A single-parent family of three making the minimum wage – that's under $11,000 per year – paid nearly $220. The state charged four-person families with two parents living at the poverty line, which hovers just below $20,000, about $540.
Angela, a 30-year-old single mother in Auburn County, sees income taxes are just one more hurdle in her struggle to keep her two children, ages 9 and 12, housed and fed.
"It's just hard from day to day," she said. In her view, the government seems to be discouraging her efforts toward economic self-sufficiency. The more she works –stringing together low-skill, temporary jobs paying as little as $6.10 an hour – the less she receives in food-stamps assistance, and the closer she moves toward the income threshold at which the government saps her earnings.
"It's just kinda messed up," she said. "If you go out and get a job, you're still hurting yourself, 'cause now, I gotta worry about feeding my family out of my pocket."
Read More Here...
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Venezuela's Threat
ZNet Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet. To learn more, consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org
March 04, 2006
By Gary Olson
Here is today's multiple choice question: Who recently provided 1.15 million gallons of low-cost heating oil to thousands of poor and working class families in seven East Coast states, including 25,000 people in Philadelphia, and did so with the words,"No one should be forced to sacrifice food, shelter, or medicine to stay warm" ?
a.) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
b.) Felix Rodriquez
c.) George W. Bush
d.) Oprah Winfrey
e.) 10 major U.S. oil companies.
The correct answer is "b" and Rodriquez is the CEO of Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). On behalf of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he also distributed free heating oil to dozens of homeless shelters from Maine to Delaware.
Venezuela, with the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East and the world's fifth largest oil producer, also sold oil at far lower costs to fifteen poor nations in the Caribbean and Central America. Even Native Americans in Maine were recipients, and Chief Bill Philips of the Micmac tribe thanked Pres. Chavez: "He is a fellow Native from the Americas, and we appreciate Chavez trying to bring low-cost heating oil for our elderly."
The 10 U.S. oil companies did not respond to requests to help the poor. Just one of them, Exxon, reported record profits of $36 billion in 2005.
Can the twice democratically-elected Chavez be the same fellow that Pat Robertson wants the CIA to assassinate, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has likened to Adolf Hitler; and official and semi-official types have placed on the White House "enemies list," labeled a "red devil," as "lethal as Osama bin Laden," and a "madman"? Further, the U.S. supported a unsuccessful military coup against Chavez in 2002 and Condoleeza Rice has called the Venezuelan government a "major threat to the region."
Assuming for the moment that preventing Pennsylvanians from freezing to death hasn't prompted this venomous rhetoric, what could account for it? Perhaps the answer lies in some evil deeds done by Pres. Chavez back in Venezuela. What mischief has he been up to there?
The challenges are daunting in Venezuela where 80% of the population is poor and some 1 million children scratch out a bare subsistance in the major cities. After four decades of indifferent upper-class rule, Chavez, a 51-year-old former army paratrooper, was elected president in 1998 and again in 2004.
According to Washington-based economist Mark Weisbrot, "The tangible improvements for those living in Caracus' poor barrios have been noticed in the rest of Latin America, a region with the most outrageously unequal income distribution in the world." Here are a few highlights of his tenure:
Venezuelan elites, who despise Chavez and call him a "monkey," have tried mightily to sabotage the economy for eight years but it grew at a respectable nine percent in 2005, the highest in the hemisphere.
Venezuelan oil has made this possible but only Chavez acted on the clearly subversive and radical notion that his country's vast resources should be used to benefit the country's people and even those beyond its borders.
Oil was nationalized in 1976, but according to all accounts the oil bureaucracy operated as a "state within a state," refusing to function on behalf of the citizens. The system remains imperfect but Chavez finally excercised effective control over PSVSA in 2001. State oil profits were over $25 billion last year and the petrodollars are now staying home in the form of high social spending, faithfully reflecting social ownership of this natural resource. Something must be working because his approval rating stands at 77%, the highest in the Americas.
And of course this begins to explain why Chavez is viewed as a threat, as a "virus" that might "infect" others. An alternative development model where the citizens, not private U.S. foreign investors, are the primary beneficiaries of government policy is feared by U.S. elites. As Latin American expert Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros observes, from Washington's perspective the real threat is that if Chavez succeeds, he may "create an eqalitarian society that has the power to resist United States hegemony."
Who knows where this virus may appear next. To help it spread, I'm filling my tank at the Citgo station from now on.
Gary Olson, Ph.D. is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem,PA. Contact:olson@moravian.edu
March 04, 2006
By Gary Olson
Here is today's multiple choice question: Who recently provided 1.15 million gallons of low-cost heating oil to thousands of poor and working class families in seven East Coast states, including 25,000 people in Philadelphia, and did so with the words,"No one should be forced to sacrifice food, shelter, or medicine to stay warm" ?
a.) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
b.) Felix Rodriquez
c.) George W. Bush
d.) Oprah Winfrey
e.) 10 major U.S. oil companies.
The correct answer is "b" and Rodriquez is the CEO of Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). On behalf of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he also distributed free heating oil to dozens of homeless shelters from Maine to Delaware.
Venezuela, with the largest oil deposits outside the Middle East and the world's fifth largest oil producer, also sold oil at far lower costs to fifteen poor nations in the Caribbean and Central America. Even Native Americans in Maine were recipients, and Chief Bill Philips of the Micmac tribe thanked Pres. Chavez: "He is a fellow Native from the Americas, and we appreciate Chavez trying to bring low-cost heating oil for our elderly."
The 10 U.S. oil companies did not respond to requests to help the poor. Just one of them, Exxon, reported record profits of $36 billion in 2005.
Can the twice democratically-elected Chavez be the same fellow that Pat Robertson wants the CIA to assassinate, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has likened to Adolf Hitler; and official and semi-official types have placed on the White House "enemies list," labeled a "red devil," as "lethal as Osama bin Laden," and a "madman"? Further, the U.S. supported a unsuccessful military coup against Chavez in 2002 and Condoleeza Rice has called the Venezuelan government a "major threat to the region."
Assuming for the moment that preventing Pennsylvanians from freezing to death hasn't prompted this venomous rhetoric, what could account for it? Perhaps the answer lies in some evil deeds done by Pres. Chavez back in Venezuela. What mischief has he been up to there?
The challenges are daunting in Venezuela where 80% of the population is poor and some 1 million children scratch out a bare subsistance in the major cities. After four decades of indifferent upper-class rule, Chavez, a 51-year-old former army paratrooper, was elected president in 1998 and again in 2004.
According to Washington-based economist Mark Weisbrot, "The tangible improvements for those living in Caracus' poor barrios have been noticed in the rest of Latin America, a region with the most outrageously unequal income distribution in the world." Here are a few highlights of his tenure:
* For the first time time, universal health care is official state policy and peasants are living longer due to accessible health care.
* Elementary schools are providing three free meals a day to all students, drawing some million new students to school.
* misiones (missions/government projects) are extending vital social services like literacy training, food subsidies, and rudimentary health care to the poor.
* Indigenous Venezuealans, homosexuals and women are now protected in the constitution.
* Land reform is redistributing idle land to landless peasants.
* Operation milegro (miracle), a joint venture with Cuban doctors, has restored eyesight to thousands of blind people in the region.
Venezuelan elites, who despise Chavez and call him a "monkey," have tried mightily to sabotage the economy for eight years but it grew at a respectable nine percent in 2005, the highest in the hemisphere.
Venezuelan oil has made this possible but only Chavez acted on the clearly subversive and radical notion that his country's vast resources should be used to benefit the country's people and even those beyond its borders.
Oil was nationalized in 1976, but according to all accounts the oil bureaucracy operated as a "state within a state," refusing to function on behalf of the citizens. The system remains imperfect but Chavez finally excercised effective control over PSVSA in 2001. State oil profits were over $25 billion last year and the petrodollars are now staying home in the form of high social spending, faithfully reflecting social ownership of this natural resource. Something must be working because his approval rating stands at 77%, the highest in the Americas.
And of course this begins to explain why Chavez is viewed as a threat, as a "virus" that might "infect" others. An alternative development model where the citizens, not private U.S. foreign investors, are the primary beneficiaries of government policy is feared by U.S. elites. As Latin American expert Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros observes, from Washington's perspective the real threat is that if Chavez succeeds, he may "create an eqalitarian society that has the power to resist United States hegemony."
Who knows where this virus may appear next. To help it spread, I'm filling my tank at the Citgo station from now on.
Gary Olson, Ph.D. is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem,PA. Contact:olson@moravian.edu
PREMATURE AGING
Sam Smith
One of the most striking changes in Washington culture over recent decades has been the disappearance of radical youth and their replacement by a culture of elite, young, right libertarians coming to the capital intent on increasing their own capital, financial and political. The recently jailed graffiti artist Borf is a rare exception to the rule, but the weekly paper and many local blogs, for example, rarely break out of a culture of self absorption and when they do it is often with a snobbery and contempt - which they mistakenly regard as hip - towards those portions of the city not yet blessed by their gentrification.
Thus, reading that Harvard students supported the lately departed Lawrence Summers comes as no surprise. After all, the students are at Harvard to do as well as Summers did until confronted by some declasse groups such as blacks and women. And as the author of a forthcoming book on Harvard students put it, "There is not a speck of irony on the campus."
And now we learn from Donald MacLeod in the Guardian that things are no better in Britain: "Universities have appealed to lecturers to call off industrial action over pay as a student union broke ranks and condemned the strike and boycott of exam marking. Bristol students' union said it strongly condemned the tactics used by the lecturers' unions. . . in pursuit of their 20% pay claim. . . 'We will put pressure on [the unions] to resolve their pay dispute before targeting students at their most vulnerable time of their academic year.' But the unions look set to go ahead with a one-day strike on Tuesday, followed by a boycott of setting and marking exams and coursework."
Consider in contrast some of the slogans of an earlier young constituency, the French student rebels of 1968:
- Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
- No replastering, the structure is rotten.
- We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom.
- The boss needs you, you don't need him.
- Your happiness is being bought. Steal it.
From such thoughts, so odd today, we have come to student bodies that can't even tolerate a one day strike for better teacher pay. One need no better warning of the collapse of the west than that its elite young have become so, and even gloatingly, conservative. It now seems a race as to which will do us in first: the unprecedented warming of the earth or the unprecedented aging of its youth
One of the most striking changes in Washington culture over recent decades has been the disappearance of radical youth and their replacement by a culture of elite, young, right libertarians coming to the capital intent on increasing their own capital, financial and political. The recently jailed graffiti artist Borf is a rare exception to the rule, but the weekly paper and many local blogs, for example, rarely break out of a culture of self absorption and when they do it is often with a snobbery and contempt - which they mistakenly regard as hip - towards those portions of the city not yet blessed by their gentrification.
Thus, reading that Harvard students supported the lately departed Lawrence Summers comes as no surprise. After all, the students are at Harvard to do as well as Summers did until confronted by some declasse groups such as blacks and women. And as the author of a forthcoming book on Harvard students put it, "There is not a speck of irony on the campus."
And now we learn from Donald MacLeod in the Guardian that things are no better in Britain: "Universities have appealed to lecturers to call off industrial action over pay as a student union broke ranks and condemned the strike and boycott of exam marking. Bristol students' union said it strongly condemned the tactics used by the lecturers' unions. . . in pursuit of their 20% pay claim. . . 'We will put pressure on [the unions] to resolve their pay dispute before targeting students at their most vulnerable time of their academic year.' But the unions look set to go ahead with a one-day strike on Tuesday, followed by a boycott of setting and marking exams and coursework."
Consider in contrast some of the slogans of an earlier young constituency, the French student rebels of 1968:
- Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
- No replastering, the structure is rotten.
- We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom.
- The boss needs you, you don't need him.
- Your happiness is being bought. Steal it.
From such thoughts, so odd today, we have come to student bodies that can't even tolerate a one day strike for better teacher pay. One need no better warning of the collapse of the west than that its elite young have become so, and even gloatingly, conservative. It now seems a race as to which will do us in first: the unprecedented warming of the earth or the unprecedented aging of its youth
Friday, March 03, 2006
O'Reilly threatened radio show caller with "a little visit" from "Fox security" for mentioning Olbermann's name on the air
Summary: On his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly threatened to turn over the personal information of a caller to "Fox security" because the caller mentioned MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. As Media Matters has noted, in recent weeks, Olbermann has repeatedly awarded O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" designation during his show, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
On the March 2 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor, host Bill O'Reilly threatened to turn over the personal information of a caller to "Fox security" because the caller mentioned MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. As Media Matters for America has noted, in recent weeks, Olbermann has repeatedly awarded O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" designation during his show, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. O'Reilly has responded, on several occasions, by asserting that MSNBC "is a true ratings disaster." The caller began by telling O'Reilly, "I like to listen to you during the day." Continuing, the caller stated, "I think Keith Olbermann's show," at which point O'Reilly disconnected the call, proclaiming: "Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit."
Co-host E.D. Hill -- who also co-hosts Fox News' Fox & Friends -- chimed in: "Maybe Mike is from the mothership." O'Reilly responded that the caller was "going to get into big trouble, because we're not going to play around." Warning his listeners, O'Reilly continued: "When you call us, ladies and gentleman, just so you know, we do have your phone number, and if you say anything untoward, obscene, or anything like that, Fox security will then contact your local authorities, and you will be held accountable. Fair?"
Apparently, O'Reilly decided that mentioning Olbermann's name was "untoward" or "obscene." After Hill agreed with O'Reilly's apparent policy of turning over a caller's personal information to the authorities as being "fair," O'Reilly warned again that callers making "untoward" and "obscene" statements "will be held accountable. Believe it."
On the February 23 edition of his Fox News television program, The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly announced the launch of a petition on his website, www.BillO'Reilly.com, calling for the reinstatement of Phil Donahue, who previously hosted a show on MSNBC in the same 8 p.m. ET time slot as Olbermann's show. During the February 24 edition of Countdown, in response to O'Reilly's campaign, Olbermann aired a number of video clips from past Countdown editions and commented on several of the claims in O'Reilly's petition.
The weblog Crooks & Liars noted that the caller apparently was blogger Mike Stark, who has suggested on his Calling All Wingnuts blog that he is engaged in a campaign to call in to The Radio Factor to irritate O'Reilly.
From the March 2 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
On the March 2 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor, host Bill O'Reilly threatened to turn over the personal information of a caller to "Fox security" because the caller mentioned MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. As Media Matters for America has noted, in recent weeks, Olbermann has repeatedly awarded O'Reilly the "Worst Person in the World" designation during his show, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. O'Reilly has responded, on several occasions, by asserting that MSNBC "is a true ratings disaster." The caller began by telling O'Reilly, "I like to listen to you during the day." Continuing, the caller stated, "I think Keith Olbermann's show," at which point O'Reilly disconnected the call, proclaiming: "Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit."
Co-host E.D. Hill -- who also co-hosts Fox News' Fox & Friends -- chimed in: "Maybe Mike is from the mothership." O'Reilly responded that the caller was "going to get into big trouble, because we're not going to play around." Warning his listeners, O'Reilly continued: "When you call us, ladies and gentleman, just so you know, we do have your phone number, and if you say anything untoward, obscene, or anything like that, Fox security will then contact your local authorities, and you will be held accountable. Fair?"
Apparently, O'Reilly decided that mentioning Olbermann's name was "untoward" or "obscene." After Hill agreed with O'Reilly's apparent policy of turning over a caller's personal information to the authorities as being "fair," O'Reilly warned again that callers making "untoward" and "obscene" statements "will be held accountable. Believe it."
On the February 23 edition of his Fox News television program, The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly announced the launch of a petition on his website, www.BillO'Reilly.com, calling for the reinstatement of Phil Donahue, who previously hosted a show on MSNBC in the same 8 p.m. ET time slot as Olbermann's show. During the February 24 edition of Countdown, in response to O'Reilly's campaign, Olbermann aired a number of video clips from past Countdown editions and commented on several of the claims in O'Reilly's petition.
The weblog Crooks & Liars noted that the caller apparently was blogger Mike Stark, who has suggested on his Calling All Wingnuts blog that he is engaged in a campaign to call in to The Radio Factor to irritate O'Reilly.
From the March 2 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: Orlando, Florida, Mike, go.
CALLER: Hey Bill, I appreciate you taking my call.
O'REILLY: Sure.
CALLER: I like to listen to you during the day, I think Keith Olbermann's show --
O'REILLY: There ya go, Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit.
HILL: Maybe Mike is from the mothership.
O'REILLY: No, Maybe Mike is going to get into big trouble, because we're not going to play around. When you call us, ladies and gentleman, just so you know, we do have your phone number, and if you say anything untoward, obscene, or anything like that, Fox security then will contact your local authorities, and you will be held accountable. Fair?
HILL: That's fair.
O'REILLY: So, just -- all you guys who do this kind of a thing, you know, I know some shock jocks. Whatever. You will be held accountable. Believe it.
We'll be right back.
Scum-sucking traitors to their country
Posted at March 3, 2006 07:04 AM in
The Rant
Article here...
By DOUG THOMPSON
The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I'm going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday's Senate session and ram it down his lying throat.
Where was his party when it came time to take a stand for freedom in this country? Hiding like a coward, that's where. Only nine Democrats and one independent - former Republican Jim Jeffords - had guts enough to vote against reauthorizing the fascist piece of crap called the Patriot Act.
The rest, including Harry Reid, that scum-sucking capitulator who claims to be the Senate Democratic leader, dropped their pants, bent over, grabbed their ankles and handed George W. Bush the k-y jelly and said "bung-hole me all you want sir. I like getting screwed by dictators."
What about the leading contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, the so-called "gentle lady from New York," Hillary Rodham Clinton? Oh, she let Bush and the rest of the Republican party gang bang her like frat boys in a horny drunken brawl. Too late to cry rape Hillary. You proved yourself a political slut like most of the rest of your party.
This is the opposition party? This is the party that partisans claim will save this country from the abuses and excesses of too many years of Republican domination? Christ, these losers couldn't lead a Cub Scout pack on an overnight camping trip in a suburban back yard.
I expected Republicans to fall in lockstep behind their power-mad President and sell out their country. That's what Republicans do in the name of control, even though a few made a token show of resistance last year by joining Democratic efforts to filibuster passage of the act. But I held out faint hope that the Dems wouldn't cave and join in the feeding frenzy on the Constitution. Serves me right, I guess, for trusting any politician -- Democrat or Republican.
Only these 10 voted against the act: Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), James Jeffords (I-VT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV). The rest voted with Bush and against freedom.
Oh those who voted for the act will give us some propagandistic pap about adding protections for civil rights but those canges are just cosmetic crap. The act itself is a Constitution-evading invasion of basic American rights to privacy, and an abandonment of long-standing protections against illegal search and seizure.
If you think Bush was an out-of-control despot before, just see what he will do with the expanded wiretapping, surveillance and seizure powers granted him and his Gestapo-like Department of Homeland Security in the reauthorized act. Don't expect the House of Representatives to do anything to stop this act. The real battleground was the Senate and that battle was lost when Democrats joined with Republicans to sell out the Constitution of the United States.
Where I come from, that's called treason and everyone who voted for the USA Patriot Act should be considered a traitor to their country and treated as such.
And the next Democrat who gets in my face to tell me how much better things would be with his party in charge had better have a good dental insurance plan.
The Rant
Article here...
By DOUG THOMPSON
The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I'm going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday's Senate session and ram it down his lying throat.
Where was his party when it came time to take a stand for freedom in this country? Hiding like a coward, that's where. Only nine Democrats and one independent - former Republican Jim Jeffords - had guts enough to vote against reauthorizing the fascist piece of crap called the Patriot Act.
The rest, including Harry Reid, that scum-sucking capitulator who claims to be the Senate Democratic leader, dropped their pants, bent over, grabbed their ankles and handed George W. Bush the k-y jelly and said "bung-hole me all you want sir. I like getting screwed by dictators."
What about the leading contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, the so-called "gentle lady from New York," Hillary Rodham Clinton? Oh, she let Bush and the rest of the Republican party gang bang her like frat boys in a horny drunken brawl. Too late to cry rape Hillary. You proved yourself a political slut like most of the rest of your party.
This is the opposition party? This is the party that partisans claim will save this country from the abuses and excesses of too many years of Republican domination? Christ, these losers couldn't lead a Cub Scout pack on an overnight camping trip in a suburban back yard.
I expected Republicans to fall in lockstep behind their power-mad President and sell out their country. That's what Republicans do in the name of control, even though a few made a token show of resistance last year by joining Democratic efforts to filibuster passage of the act. But I held out faint hope that the Dems wouldn't cave and join in the feeding frenzy on the Constitution. Serves me right, I guess, for trusting any politician -- Democrat or Republican.
Only these 10 voted against the act: Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), James Jeffords (I-VT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV). The rest voted with Bush and against freedom.
Oh those who voted for the act will give us some propagandistic pap about adding protections for civil rights but those canges are just cosmetic crap. The act itself is a Constitution-evading invasion of basic American rights to privacy, and an abandonment of long-standing protections against illegal search and seizure.
If you think Bush was an out-of-control despot before, just see what he will do with the expanded wiretapping, surveillance and seizure powers granted him and his Gestapo-like Department of Homeland Security in the reauthorized act. Don't expect the House of Representatives to do anything to stop this act. The real battleground was the Senate and that battle was lost when Democrats joined with Republicans to sell out the Constitution of the United States.
Where I come from, that's called treason and everyone who voted for the USA Patriot Act should be considered a traitor to their country and treated as such.
And the next Democrat who gets in my face to tell me how much better things would be with his party in charge had better have a good dental insurance plan.
Don Knotts Has Passed...
Don Knotts died last Friday night, at 81 years of age.
I want to say something more, something about comic sensibilities, about the court jester, about the absolute need for the clown in the very serious business of life, but eloquence fails me.
Barney Fife is dead. Long may he reign!
The less said about Three's Company, the better.
I want to say something more, something about comic sensibilities, about the court jester, about the absolute need for the clown in the very serious business of life, but eloquence fails me.
Barney Fife is dead. Long may he reign!
The less said about Three's Company, the better.
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
I tend to eschew poll information as a rule, due to creative questioning. Call me guilty of "poll mining" on this one...--Pete
Released: February 28, 2006
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
* Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
* While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
* Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
* Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
* Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
* Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.
The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed.”
Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.
The troops have drawn different conclusions about fellow citizens back home. Asked why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, 37% of troops serving there said those Americans are unpatriotic, while 20% believe people back home don’t believe a continued occupation will work. Another 16% said they believe those favoring a quick withdrawal do so because they oppose the use of the military in a pre-emptive war, while 15% said they do not believe those Americans understand the need for the U.S. troops in Iraq.
The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
“Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there,” said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. “Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.” Just 24% said that “establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a major reason for the war. Only small percentages see the mission there as securing oil supplies (11%) or to provide long-term bases for US troops in the region (6%).
The continuing insurgent attacks have not turned U.S. troops against the Iraqi population, the survey shows. More than 80% said they did not hold a negative view of Iraqis because of those attacks. About two in five see the insurgency as being comprised of discontented Sunnis with very few non-Iraqi helpers. “There appears to be confusion on this,” Zogby said. But, he noted, less than a third think that if non-Iraqi terrorists could be prevented from crossing the border into Iraq, the insurgency would end. A majority of troops (53%) said the U.S. should double both the number of troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.
The survey shows that most U.S. military personnel in-country have a clear sense of right and wrong when it comes to using banned weapons against the enemy, and in interrogation of prisoners. Four in five said they oppose the use of such internationally banned weapons as napalm and white phosphorous. And, even as more photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq surface around the world, 55% said it is not appropriate or standard military conduct to use harsh and threatening methods against insurgent prisoners in order to gain information of military value.
Three quarters of the troops had served multiple tours and had a longer exposure to the conflict: 26% were on their first tour of duty, 45% were on their second tour, and 29% were in Iraq for a third time or more.
A majority of the troops serving in Iraq said they were satisfied with the war provisions from Washington. Just 30% of troops said they think the Department of Defense has failed to provide adequate troop protections, such as body armor, munitions, and armor plating for vehicles like HumVees. Only 35% said basic civil infrastructure in Iraq, including roads, electricity, water service, and health care, has not improved over the past year. Three of every four were male respondents, with 63% under the age of 30.
The survey included 944 military respondents interviewed at several undisclosed locations throughout Iraq. The names of the specific locations and specific personnel who conducted the survey are being withheld for security purposes. Surveys were conducted face-to-face using random sampling techniques. The margin of error for the survey, conducted Jan. 18 through Feb. 14, 2006, is +/- 3.3 percentage points.
(2/28/2006)
Released: February 28, 2006
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
* Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
* While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
* Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
* Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
* Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
* Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.
The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed.”
Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.
The troops have drawn different conclusions about fellow citizens back home. Asked why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, 37% of troops serving there said those Americans are unpatriotic, while 20% believe people back home don’t believe a continued occupation will work. Another 16% said they believe those favoring a quick withdrawal do so because they oppose the use of the military in a pre-emptive war, while 15% said they do not believe those Americans understand the need for the U.S. troops in Iraq.
The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”
“Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there,” said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. “Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.” Just 24% said that “establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a major reason for the war. Only small percentages see the mission there as securing oil supplies (11%) or to provide long-term bases for US troops in the region (6%).
The continuing insurgent attacks have not turned U.S. troops against the Iraqi population, the survey shows. More than 80% said they did not hold a negative view of Iraqis because of those attacks. About two in five see the insurgency as being comprised of discontented Sunnis with very few non-Iraqi helpers. “There appears to be confusion on this,” Zogby said. But, he noted, less than a third think that if non-Iraqi terrorists could be prevented from crossing the border into Iraq, the insurgency would end. A majority of troops (53%) said the U.S. should double both the number of troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.
The survey shows that most U.S. military personnel in-country have a clear sense of right and wrong when it comes to using banned weapons against the enemy, and in interrogation of prisoners. Four in five said they oppose the use of such internationally banned weapons as napalm and white phosphorous. And, even as more photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq surface around the world, 55% said it is not appropriate or standard military conduct to use harsh and threatening methods against insurgent prisoners in order to gain information of military value.
Three quarters of the troops had served multiple tours and had a longer exposure to the conflict: 26% were on their first tour of duty, 45% were on their second tour, and 29% were in Iraq for a third time or more.
A majority of the troops serving in Iraq said they were satisfied with the war provisions from Washington. Just 30% of troops said they think the Department of Defense has failed to provide adequate troop protections, such as body armor, munitions, and armor plating for vehicles like HumVees. Only 35% said basic civil infrastructure in Iraq, including roads, electricity, water service, and health care, has not improved over the past year. Three of every four were male respondents, with 63% under the age of 30.
The survey included 944 military respondents interviewed at several undisclosed locations throughout Iraq. The names of the specific locations and specific personnel who conducted the survey are being withheld for security purposes. Surveys were conducted face-to-face using random sampling techniques. The margin of error for the survey, conducted Jan. 18 through Feb. 14, 2006, is +/- 3.3 percentage points.
(2/28/2006)
Bush in India: Just Not Welcome
by ARUNDHATI ROY, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060313/roy
On his triumphalist tour of India and Pakistan, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush has an itinerary that's getting curiouser and curiouser.
For Bush's March 2 pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have him address our parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was to have Bush address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort, where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare. So now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.
Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort?
Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings, who in India go under the category of "eminent persons." They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.
So what's going to happen to George W. Bush? Will the gorillas cheer him on? Will the gibbons curl their lips? Will the brow-antlered deer sneer? Will the chimps make rude noises? Will the owls hoot? Will the lions yawn and the giraffes bat their beautiful eyelashes? Will the crocs recognize a kindred soul? Will the quails give thanks that Bush isn't traveling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?
Oh, and on March 2, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet himself.) But when Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.
We really would prefer that he didn't.
It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimize the extent of our outrage. Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060313/roy
On his triumphalist tour of India and Pakistan, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush has an itinerary that's getting curiouser and curiouser.
For Bush's March 2 pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have him address our parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was to have Bush address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort, where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare. So now we're into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.
Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort?
Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo, George Bush's audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of caged human beings, who in India go under the category of "eminent persons." They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically dispossessed over the centuries.
So what's going to happen to George W. Bush? Will the gorillas cheer him on? Will the gibbons curl their lips? Will the brow-antlered deer sneer? Will the chimps make rude noises? Will the owls hoot? Will the lions yawn and the giraffes bat their beautiful eyelashes? Will the crocs recognize a kindred soul? Will the quails give thanks that Bush isn't traveling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?
Oh, and on March 2, Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet himself.) But when Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.
We really would prefer that he didn't.
It is not in our power to stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate press will do everything they can to minimize the extent of our outrage. Nothing the happy newspapers say can change the fact that all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in public places and private homes, George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not welcome.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Bush is hemorrhaging support of the big boys...
By Evan Derkacz
Posted on February 27, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/32862/
In the past week, the Bush administration and the neocons have been hemorrhaging bigtime supporters so badly you'd be forgiven for assuming there's another Cheney hunting party in the works.
First, in an upcoming book, Project for a New American Century signatory Francis "the End of History" Fukuyama declares that neoconservatism "should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies."
Wow. The Alex Massie article also notes that "Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Strike one.
Then Bill O'Reilly advocated for withdrawal from Iraq on his radio show due to Crazy People Underestimation -- the idea that we couldn't have known just how crazy "these people" really were.
Strike two.
Now, National Review editor at large William F. Buckley believes that "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed... and the administration has, now, to cope with failure."
Strike three.
Each has, of course, found a way to remain at the president's side and to actually, with a presumably straight face, blame the very outcome predicted by progressives well before the fighting started as the result of one or two unforseeable hitches in an otherwise noble and practical plan. But the war? On that the con, the former neo-con and the con-man agree... it's over.
But what will the reaction be? Well, Glenn Greenwald has the "tar and feather him" catalogue of Right Wing reactions to Howard Dean's relatively tame statement from two months ago that the war was a failure. Will Michelle Malkin, Ben Shapiro, the Jawa Report ("Howard Dean Traitor and Ally to Zaqueery") and the, uh, National Review be so unkind to these three "traitors"? (Unclaimed Territory)
Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/32862/
Posted on February 27, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/32862/
In the past week, the Bush administration and the neocons have been hemorrhaging bigtime supporters so badly you'd be forgiven for assuming there's another Cheney hunting party in the works.
First, in an upcoming book, Project for a New American Century signatory Francis "the End of History" Fukuyama declares that neoconservatism "should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies."
Wow. The Alex Massie article also notes that "Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Strike one.
Then Bill O'Reilly advocated for withdrawal from Iraq on his radio show due to Crazy People Underestimation -- the idea that we couldn't have known just how crazy "these people" really were.
Strike two.
Now, National Review editor at large William F. Buckley believes that "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed... and the administration has, now, to cope with failure."
Strike three.
Each has, of course, found a way to remain at the president's side and to actually, with a presumably straight face, blame the very outcome predicted by progressives well before the fighting started as the result of one or two unforseeable hitches in an otherwise noble and practical plan. But the war? On that the con, the former neo-con and the con-man agree... it's over.
But what will the reaction be? Well, Glenn Greenwald has the "tar and feather him" catalogue of Right Wing reactions to Howard Dean's relatively tame statement from two months ago that the war was a failure. Will Michelle Malkin, Ben Shapiro, the Jawa Report ("Howard Dean Traitor and Ally to Zaqueery") and the, uh, National Review be so unkind to these three "traitors"? (Unclaimed Territory)
Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/32862/
Monday, February 27, 2006
Framing an election: U.S. media avoids tough questions on interference in Palestine
Media analysis by Dane Baker
From NewStandard
Presenting a startling example of the Bush administration’s warm embrace of democracy, a February 14 New York Times article begins: “The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats” (Steven Erlanger, “U.S and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster”).
To its credit, the Times presents important information up front, eschewing the tendency to bury crucial details deep within stories: a tactic common at the “Newspaper of Record” and elsewhere. The problem lies in the editors’ insistence that only “official” voices be heard: in this case, information attributed to unnamed “officials and diplomats,” including one who said: “The point is to put this choice on Hamas’s shoulders. If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction.”
The Times, for its part, makes sure to ignore dissent that may interfere with official proclamations while using careful language to describe efforts to strangle a Hamas-led Palestinian government before it has even been set up. So we read in Erlanger’s account that the current effort to undermine the elected Hamas government is a “strategy [that] has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.” These being the only “risks” that apply for the Times, the story quickly moves on. Reporter and editors taking it upon themselves to peer into their crystal ball, noting that “[Hamas] will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles.”
An Associated Press article that ran the same day (Amy Teibel, “Hamas Assails U.S., Israeli ‘interference’”) played a similar game, with all the correct characterizations included. The lead notes that “Hamas protested ‘interference’ by the United States and Israel,” putting the crucial word in quotes to further undermine its validity, even though there can be no doubt that both parties have admittedly interfered. The implications follow as the AP describes the alleged efforts as a “plot,” noting that “the State Department said it was reviewing US aid to the Palestinians and would make a decision within two weeks” – surely the only serious matter at hand.
The AP account also reports only “official” voices, since only those who -- to borrow Erlanger’s phrase from the Times account -- have the “levers on the Palestinian authority” are quotable. They quoted White House spokesman Scott McClellan as saying, “There’s no plot,” using the magic phrase echoed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who insisted, “There is no plan, there is no plot.”
Official denouncements are, as usual, treated with the reverence and weight they supposedly deserve, as editors know their place and quickly move the narrative along. Interestingly enough, recent developments – whether they prove to be “plots” or not – suggest nothing to journalists about the legitimacy of Bush administration efforts to spread “democracy” to the Middle East… perhaps because current efforts to deny Palestinian self-determination are too obvious.
The Palestinians have made their choice at the ballot box, and now, to borrow a phrase from an unidentified Western diplomat quoted by the Times’ Erlanger, they must prepare to face a possibly grimmer future where “all the options lead in a bad direction,” assisted by a willing “free press” corps and their editors in the United States.
Dane Baker lives in Knoxville, Tenn.
From NewStandard
Presenting a startling example of the Bush administration’s warm embrace of democracy, a February 14 New York Times article begins: “The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats” (Steven Erlanger, “U.S and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster”).
To its credit, the Times presents important information up front, eschewing the tendency to bury crucial details deep within stories: a tactic common at the “Newspaper of Record” and elsewhere. The problem lies in the editors’ insistence that only “official” voices be heard: in this case, information attributed to unnamed “officials and diplomats,” including one who said: “The point is to put this choice on Hamas’s shoulders. If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction.”
The Times, for its part, makes sure to ignore dissent that may interfere with official proclamations while using careful language to describe efforts to strangle a Hamas-led Palestinian government before it has even been set up. So we read in Erlanger’s account that the current effort to undermine the elected Hamas government is a “strategy [that] has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.” These being the only “risks” that apply for the Times, the story quickly moves on. Reporter and editors taking it upon themselves to peer into their crystal ball, noting that “[Hamas] will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles.”
An Associated Press article that ran the same day (Amy Teibel, “Hamas Assails U.S., Israeli ‘interference’”) played a similar game, with all the correct characterizations included. The lead notes that “Hamas protested ‘interference’ by the United States and Israel,” putting the crucial word in quotes to further undermine its validity, even though there can be no doubt that both parties have admittedly interfered. The implications follow as the AP describes the alleged efforts as a “plot,” noting that “the State Department said it was reviewing US aid to the Palestinians and would make a decision within two weeks” – surely the only serious matter at hand.
The AP account also reports only “official” voices, since only those who -- to borrow Erlanger’s phrase from the Times account -- have the “levers on the Palestinian authority” are quotable. They quoted White House spokesman Scott McClellan as saying, “There’s no plot,” using the magic phrase echoed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who insisted, “There is no plan, there is no plot.”
Official denouncements are, as usual, treated with the reverence and weight they supposedly deserve, as editors know their place and quickly move the narrative along. Interestingly enough, recent developments – whether they prove to be “plots” or not – suggest nothing to journalists about the legitimacy of Bush administration efforts to spread “democracy” to the Middle East… perhaps because current efforts to deny Palestinian self-determination are too obvious.
The Palestinians have made their choice at the ballot box, and now, to borrow a phrase from an unidentified Western diplomat quoted by the Times’ Erlanger, they must prepare to face a possibly grimmer future where “all the options lead in a bad direction,” assisted by a willing “free press” corps and their editors in the United States.
Dane Baker lives in Knoxville, Tenn.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Frist Attempts to Protect Big Pharma From Its Victims
BILL THEOBALD, TENNESSEAN - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play. The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member. In an interview, Frist, a doctor and Tennessee Republican, denied that the wording was added that way.
Trial lawyers and other groups condemn the law, saying it could make it nearly impossible for people harmed by a vaccine to force the drug maker to pay for their injuries. . . The legislation, called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, allows the secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency, which then provides immunity for companies that develop vaccines and other "countermeasures." Beyond the issue of vaccine liability protection, some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees' working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy. "It is a travesty of the legislative process," said Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Article...
Trial lawyers and other groups condemn the law, saying it could make it nearly impossible for people harmed by a vaccine to force the drug maker to pay for their injuries. . . The legislation, called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, allows the secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency, which then provides immunity for companies that develop vaccines and other "countermeasures." Beyond the issue of vaccine liability protection, some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees' working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy. "It is a travesty of the legislative process," said Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Article...
Sen. Graham Calls For Action Against Citizens Who Disagree With BushCo
NAT PARRY, CONSORTIUM NEWS - Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy. "The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements," Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.
"I stand by this President's ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat. "Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the President already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."
ConsortiumNews Article...
"I stand by this President's ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that," Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat. "Senator," a smiling Gonzales responded, "the President already said we'd be happy to listen to your ideas."
ConsortiumNews Article...
History, redacted...
SCOTT SHANE, NY TIMES In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
NYT Article...
The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.
But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.
NYT Article...
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The Sweet Taste of Success
Wed, 22 Feb 2006
By Frances Moore Lappé, GNN
Former WTC workers turn grief into a dream: a new employee-owned restaurant.
What do a Virgin Islands perfume shop, a Utah dog boutique, and dozens of Dunkin’ Donuts have in common? All got help from 9/11 terrorism recovery funds.
And who didn’t get help? Workers at what was the Twin Towers’ Windows on the World restaurant. Losing 73 colleagues and their jobs on Sept. 11, 34 mostly immigrant workers turned their grief into a new dream: Colors, a tony art-deco restaurant owned by the workers themselves. It opened in January in Greenwich Village – but not without a lot more grief from their should’ve-been helpers.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘No, no, no’ when we went for financing,” remembers former Windows on the World employee Feddak Mamdouh, as I waited for my “asparagus with truffle sauce” appetizer in a booth at Colors recently.
“Colors received no assistance from the very organizations created to support recovery from 9/11, like the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the NYC Partnership’s Investment Fund,” said Bruce Herman, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
Mamdouh, originally from Morocco, is a founder and assistant director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) set up to help restaurant workers displaced by 9/11. His chagrin at the resistance they faced boils over: “It’s like they didn’t think the immigrant workers – including waiters and dishwashers – could do it.”
The “it” required $2.2 million to renovate and equip 4,000 square feet that, ironically, had most recently been a restaurant locked in a bitter labor dispute, in which ROC-NY had supported the workers. When the place shut down, ROC-NY realized this well-placed site – beside the Public Theater on Lafayette Street – was just right for launching what it hopes will be only the first of its worker-owned eateries.
“Restaurants have always been known as places where immigrants go for work, but many of them are abused; there is a lot of discrimination. We want to show that we can improve conditions,” Mamdouh told the Associated Press when Colors opened.
Commercial banks weren’t interested, Saru Jayaraman, executive director of ROC-NY, told NewYorkBusiness.com, “because no one could provide personal backing for the loans.”
In my book, Democracy’s Edge, I argue that our thin democracy will continue to fray unless we extend democracy’s values of inclusion, mutual accountability and fairness to ever wider circles. In the book, I use the Colors story to help make my case for the democracy-strengthening potential of worker ownership. So what better place than Colors, I thought recently, to celebrate my birthday with friends?
Little did I know that one of my guests, sustainability educator Hilary Baum, was the daughter of Windows on the World founder, Joe Baum. So the royal tour was ours, led by general manager Stefan Mailvaganam. We learned about the wall fixtures from the 1939 World Fair and visited the kitchen, which was designed ergonomically to protect the sous-chefs, runners and dishwashers from the burns and injuries common in the industry.
In the kitchen, a flyer taped to the wall announced: “Today’s Mexican Seafood Soup, inspired by Oscar’s family recipe.” Many of the menus, we learned, were inspired by family favorites of worker/owners who hail from more than 22 countries. On the frequently changing menu, I identified dishes from Bangladesh, Colombia, Peru and Thailand. The staff buys from local farmers and from those using sustainable farming practices.
When my dinner guest, Anne Ferrell (herself a farmer) asked our waiter where the grass-fed beef came from, his response was immediate: “Wolfe Neck Farms, upstate New York.” Later, Mailvaganam explained that the workers are learning about ecological and health consequences of how the food they serve is produced.
My entreé, “organic seitan with apricot, basil and yellow split-pea chutney with parsnip frisee salad,” was exotic—and stunningly delicious.
As a worker cooperative, Colors owner/workers make decisions by consensus and provide vacation and overtime. Ultimately, they plan to offer pensions to workers, something rare in the restaurant business. Everyone working the line, serving and dishwashing, makes $13.50 an hour—double New York’s standard minimum wage—and the wait staff split tips.
ROC-NY hopes to do more with its money than help create one business. Toward that end, it attached a special condition to its $500,000 investment: that Colors’ worker/owners put in 100 hours of “sweat equity” teaching other restaurant employees how to build their own worker-owned restaurant.
For another $500,000, Colors’ founders had to cross the ocean. Good Italian Food, a consortium of Italian cooperatives anchored by the CIR Food Group, came through. Apparently, Italians find it easier to view worker cooperatives as bankable. In Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region alone, more than 80,000 people are employed by cooperatives contributing 20 percent to 35 percent of the GDP. (The International Cooperative Alliance estimates there are 800 million members of cooperatives around the world, suggesting more individuals hold shares in cooperatives than hold shares in companies via stock markets.)
So that workers at Colors could start out as owners, equity partners contributed 20 percent of their stake to the employees. Over time, the workers are expected to buy out the Good Italian Food shares at their original value and eventually own 51 percent to 60 percent of the equity. ROC-NY will keep 40 percent of the equity to use in creating a multiplier: The goal is that returns will seed other restaurant cooperatives.
The 20-year-old Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) provided a $210,500 term loan and put together the remaining $1.2 million needed from 15 lenders, including community development financial institutions, foundations and a credit union. Modest funds came from Roman Catholic nuns in California, Michigan and Ohio.
As I enjoyed my first Colors dining experience, the restaurant’s name grew on me. I absorbed the richness around me, from the elegant cartography motif to the luscious chocolate pudding cake, knowing the people serving us were earning dignified wages and that the people who grew our food were caring for the earth. Now, that’s dining in full color.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of fifteen books including the just-released Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life.
By Frances Moore Lappé, GNN
Former WTC workers turn grief into a dream: a new employee-owned restaurant.
What do a Virgin Islands perfume shop, a Utah dog boutique, and dozens of Dunkin’ Donuts have in common? All got help from 9/11 terrorism recovery funds.
And who didn’t get help? Workers at what was the Twin Towers’ Windows on the World restaurant. Losing 73 colleagues and their jobs on Sept. 11, 34 mostly immigrant workers turned their grief into a new dream: Colors, a tony art-deco restaurant owned by the workers themselves. It opened in January in Greenwich Village – but not without a lot more grief from their should’ve-been helpers.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘No, no, no’ when we went for financing,” remembers former Windows on the World employee Feddak Mamdouh, as I waited for my “asparagus with truffle sauce” appetizer in a booth at Colors recently.
“Colors received no assistance from the very organizations created to support recovery from 9/11, like the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and the NYC Partnership’s Investment Fund,” said Bruce Herman, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
Mamdouh, originally from Morocco, is a founder and assistant director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) set up to help restaurant workers displaced by 9/11. His chagrin at the resistance they faced boils over: “It’s like they didn’t think the immigrant workers – including waiters and dishwashers – could do it.”
The “it” required $2.2 million to renovate and equip 4,000 square feet that, ironically, had most recently been a restaurant locked in a bitter labor dispute, in which ROC-NY had supported the workers. When the place shut down, ROC-NY realized this well-placed site – beside the Public Theater on Lafayette Street – was just right for launching what it hopes will be only the first of its worker-owned eateries.
“Restaurants have always been known as places where immigrants go for work, but many of them are abused; there is a lot of discrimination. We want to show that we can improve conditions,” Mamdouh told the Associated Press when Colors opened.
Commercial banks weren’t interested, Saru Jayaraman, executive director of ROC-NY, told NewYorkBusiness.com, “because no one could provide personal backing for the loans.”
In my book, Democracy’s Edge, I argue that our thin democracy will continue to fray unless we extend democracy’s values of inclusion, mutual accountability and fairness to ever wider circles. In the book, I use the Colors story to help make my case for the democracy-strengthening potential of worker ownership. So what better place than Colors, I thought recently, to celebrate my birthday with friends?
Little did I know that one of my guests, sustainability educator Hilary Baum, was the daughter of Windows on the World founder, Joe Baum. So the royal tour was ours, led by general manager Stefan Mailvaganam. We learned about the wall fixtures from the 1939 World Fair and visited the kitchen, which was designed ergonomically to protect the sous-chefs, runners and dishwashers from the burns and injuries common in the industry.
In the kitchen, a flyer taped to the wall announced: “Today’s Mexican Seafood Soup, inspired by Oscar’s family recipe.” Many of the menus, we learned, were inspired by family favorites of worker/owners who hail from more than 22 countries. On the frequently changing menu, I identified dishes from Bangladesh, Colombia, Peru and Thailand. The staff buys from local farmers and from those using sustainable farming practices.
When my dinner guest, Anne Ferrell (herself a farmer) asked our waiter where the grass-fed beef came from, his response was immediate: “Wolfe Neck Farms, upstate New York.” Later, Mailvaganam explained that the workers are learning about ecological and health consequences of how the food they serve is produced.
My entreé, “organic seitan with apricot, basil and yellow split-pea chutney with parsnip frisee salad,” was exotic—and stunningly delicious.
As a worker cooperative, Colors owner/workers make decisions by consensus and provide vacation and overtime. Ultimately, they plan to offer pensions to workers, something rare in the restaurant business. Everyone working the line, serving and dishwashing, makes $13.50 an hour—double New York’s standard minimum wage—and the wait staff split tips.
ROC-NY hopes to do more with its money than help create one business. Toward that end, it attached a special condition to its $500,000 investment: that Colors’ worker/owners put in 100 hours of “sweat equity” teaching other restaurant employees how to build their own worker-owned restaurant.
For another $500,000, Colors’ founders had to cross the ocean. Good Italian Food, a consortium of Italian cooperatives anchored by the CIR Food Group, came through. Apparently, Italians find it easier to view worker cooperatives as bankable. In Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region alone, more than 80,000 people are employed by cooperatives contributing 20 percent to 35 percent of the GDP. (The International Cooperative Alliance estimates there are 800 million members of cooperatives around the world, suggesting more individuals hold shares in cooperatives than hold shares in companies via stock markets.)
So that workers at Colors could start out as owners, equity partners contributed 20 percent of their stake to the employees. Over time, the workers are expected to buy out the Good Italian Food shares at their original value and eventually own 51 percent to 60 percent of the equity. ROC-NY will keep 40 percent of the equity to use in creating a multiplier: The goal is that returns will seed other restaurant cooperatives.
The 20-year-old Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) provided a $210,500 term loan and put together the remaining $1.2 million needed from 15 lenders, including community development financial institutions, foundations and a credit union. Modest funds came from Roman Catholic nuns in California, Michigan and Ohio.
As I enjoyed my first Colors dining experience, the restaurant’s name grew on me. I absorbed the richness around me, from the elegant cartography motif to the luscious chocolate pudding cake, knowing the people serving us were earning dignified wages and that the people who grew our food were caring for the earth. Now, that’s dining in full color.
Frances Moore Lappé is the author of fifteen books including the just-released Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
The Climate Scientist That Nasa Tried To Gag Tells It Like It Is
JIM HANSEN, INDEPENDENT, UK - A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic. Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a NASA climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the NASA public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. . .
We are seeing for the first time the detailed behavior of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometers of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance. . .
Our understanding of what is going on is very new. Today's forecasts of sea-level rise use climate models of the ice sheets that say they can only disintegrate over a thousand years or more. But we can now see that the models are almost worthless. They treat the ice sheets like a single block of ice that will slowly melt. But what is happening is much more dynamic.
Once the ice starts to melt at the surface, it forms lakes that empty down crevasses to the bottom of the ice. You get rivers of water underneath the ice. And the ice slides towards the ocean. . .
And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid. . .
How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25 [meters] higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself. . .
We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. . . . We don't have much time left.
We are seeing for the first time the detailed behavior of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometers of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance. . .
Our understanding of what is going on is very new. Today's forecasts of sea-level rise use climate models of the ice sheets that say they can only disintegrate over a thousand years or more. But we can now see that the models are almost worthless. They treat the ice sheets like a single block of ice that will slowly melt. But what is happening is much more dynamic.
Once the ice starts to melt at the surface, it forms lakes that empty down crevasses to the bottom of the ice. You get rivers of water underneath the ice. And the ice slides towards the ocean. . .
And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid. . .
How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25 [meters] higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself. . .
We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. . . . We don't have much time left.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Disturbing Screen Grab
From Talking Points Memo:
Let's put this headline in amber and pack it into the time capsule. Let folks know what it was like.
Sic Transit.
Let's put this headline in amber and pack it into the time capsule. Let folks know what it was like.
Sic Transit.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Time to wake up!
I'm too sick to joke about the Vice President's cavalier dismissal of his near manslaughter. I am furious at the unbelievable level of horror being perpetrated in our name in sovereign nations around the world, but most especially in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Here is a link to the newly released photos as well as to a video that I can't watch.
How is it that the citizens of these Relatively United States don't rise up en masse and demand immediate resignations before criminal proceedings against the entire administration begin in earnest? How can we sit idly by, staring at American Idol, while the nation we have made is ground into the shit and the mud by wealthy industrialists whose disregard for life is plainly evident?
It is time to gather together in our towns and cities and formulate plans to exercise true democracy. It is long past time to raise the black flags, Patriots!
How is it that the citizens of these Relatively United States don't rise up en masse and demand immediate resignations before criminal proceedings against the entire administration begin in earnest? How can we sit idly by, staring at American Idol, while the nation we have made is ground into the shit and the mud by wealthy industrialists whose disregard for life is plainly evident?
It is time to gather together in our towns and cities and formulate plans to exercise true democracy. It is long past time to raise the black flags, Patriots!
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
U.S. AND ISRAEL REPORTED PLANNING TO STARVE PALESTINIANS TO GET THEIR WAY
HAARETZ, ISRAEL - Hamas derided the U.S. and Israel on Tuesday following reports they were exploring ways to topple the militants' incoming government. Israeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power, and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamor for the return of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ousted Fatah Party. The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. and Israeli officials, reported Tuesday that United States and Israel were considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned with Hamas and bring down a Hamas government. . .
Since Hamas' electoral victory, the West has been threatening to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to the Palestinians, though Russia's recent invitation to Hamas to visit Moscow, and France's support for the Russian approach, have cracked the united front. Israel has also threatened to cut off monthly transfers to the Palestinians of about $50 million (-40 million) from taxes and customs it collects for them, once Hamas takes power. . .
The strategy of bringing Palestinians to their knees by cutting off cash could easily backfire, however, with Palestinians blaming the U.S. and Israel - not Hamas - for their growing misery. Morever, Hamas would certainly turn to the Muslim world and private donors to try to make up at least some of the Western shortfall.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/682668.html
Since Hamas' electoral victory, the West has been threatening to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to the Palestinians, though Russia's recent invitation to Hamas to visit Moscow, and France's support for the Russian approach, have cracked the united front. Israel has also threatened to cut off monthly transfers to the Palestinians of about $50 million (-40 million) from taxes and customs it collects for them, once Hamas takes power. . .
The strategy of bringing Palestinians to their knees by cutting off cash could easily backfire, however, with Palestinians blaming the U.S. and Israel - not Hamas - for their growing misery. Morever, Hamas would certainly turn to the Muslim world and private donors to try to make up at least some of the Western shortfall.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/682668.html
Vice President mistakes 78-year-old friend for bird, part deux
From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.
And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."
Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"
Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.".
Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.
And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."
Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"
Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.".
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE SECURE IN IRAQ
RIVERBEND, BAGHDAD - We were collected at my aunts house for my cousins birthday party a few days ago. J. just turned 16 and my aunt invited us for a late lunch and some cake. It was a very small gathering- three cousins- including myself- my parents, and J.'s best friend, who also happened to be a neighbor. . . By 8 pm, my parents and J.'s neighbor were gone. They had left me and T., our 24-year-old female cousin, to spend a night. It was 2 am and we had just gotten J.'s little brother into bed. He had eaten more than his share of cake and the sugar had made him wild for a couple of hours.
We were gathered in the living room and my aunt and her husband, Ammoo S. [Ammoo = uncle] were asleep. T., J. and I were speaking softly and looking for songs on the radio, having sworn not to sleep before the cake was all gone. T. was playing idly with her mobile phone, trying to send a message to a friend. "Hey- there's no coverage here. . . is it just my phone?" She asked. J. and I both took out our phones and checked, "Mine isn't working either. . . " J. answered, shaking her head. They both turned to me and I told them that I couldn't get a signal either. J. suddenly looked alert and made a sort of "Uh-oh" sound as she remembered something. "R.- will you check the telephone next to you?" I picked up the ordinary telephone next to me and held my breath, waiting for a dial tone. Nothing. . .
T. suddenly sat up straight, "Do you hear that?" She asked, wide-eyed. At first I couldn't hear anything and then I caught it- it was the sound of cars or vehicles- moving slowly. "I can hear it!" I called back to T., standing up and moving towards the window. I looked out into the darkness and couldn't see anything beyond the dim glow of lamps behind windows here and there. . .
Meanwhile, the sound of cars had gotten louder and I remembered that one could see some of the neighborhood from a window on the second floor. T. and I crept upstairs quietly. We heard Ammoo S. unlocking 5 different locks on the kitchen door. "What's he doing?" T. asked, "Shouldn't he keep the doors locked?" . . .
I stood awkwardly, watching them make preparations. J. was already in her room changing- she called out for us to do the same, "They'll come in the house- you don't want to be wearing pajamas. . . "
"Why, will they have camera crews with them?" T. smiled wanly, attempting some humor. No, J. replied, her voice muffled as she put on a sweater, "Last time they made us wait outside in the cold." I listened for Ammoo S. and heard him outside, taking the big padlock off of the gate in the driveway. "Why are you unlocking everything J.?" I called out in the dark.
"The animals will break down the doors if they aren't open in three seconds and then they'll be all over the garden and house. . . last time they pushed the door open on poor Abu H. three houses down and broke his shoulder. . . " J. was fully changed, and over her jeans and sweater she was wearing her robe. It was cold. . .
Twenty minutes later, we were all assembled in the living room. The house was dark except for the warm glow of the kerosene heater and a small lamp in the corner. We were all dressed and waiting nervously, wrapped in blankets. . .
"There will be no problem," My aunt said sternly, looking at each of us, thin-lipped. "You will not say anything improper and they will come in, look around and go." Her eyes lingered on Ammoo S. He was silent. He had lit a cigarette and was inhaling deeply. J. said he'd begun smoking again a couple of months ago after having quit for ten years. "Are your papers ready?" She asked him, referring to his identification papers which would be requested. He didn't answer, but nodded his head silently. . .
We waited. And waited. . . I began nodding off and my dreams were interspersed with troops and cars and hooded men. I woke to the sound of T. saying, "They're almost here. . . " And lifted my head, groggy with what I thought was at least three hours of sleep. I squinted down at my watch and noted it was not yet 5 am. "Haven't they gotten to us yet?" I asked. . .
A big clanging sound on the garden gate and voices yelling "Ifta'u [OPEN UP]". I heard my uncle outside, calling out, "We're opening the gate, we're opening. . . " It was moments and they were inside the house. Suddenly, the house was filled with strange men, yelling out orders and stomping into rooms. It was chaotic. We could see flashing lights in the garden and lights coming from the hallways. . .
Suddenly, two of them were in the living room. We were all sitting on the sofa, near my aunt. My cousin B. was by then awake, eyes wide with fear. They were holding large lights or ‘torches' and one of them pointed a Klashnikov at us. "Is there anyone here but you and them?" One of them barked at my aunt. "No- it's only us and my husband outside with you- you can check the house." T.'s hands went up to block the glaring light of the torch and one of the men yelled at her to put her hands down, they fell limply in her lap. . .
I listened for Ammoo S., hoping to hear him outside but I could only distinguish the harsh voices of the troops. The minutes we sat in the living room seemed to last forever. . .
Suddenly, someone called out something from outside and it was over. They began rushing to leave the house, almost as fast as they'd invaded it. Doors slamming, lights dimming. We were left in the dark once more, not daring to move from the sofa we were sitting on, listening as the men disappeared, leaving only a couple to stand at our gate.
"Where's baba?" J. asked, panicking for a moment before we heard his slippered feet in the driveway. "Did they take him?" Her voice was getting higher. Ammoo S. finally walked into the house, looking weary and drained. I could tell his face was pale even in the relative dark of the house. My aunt sat sobbing quietly in the living room, T. comforting her. "Houses are no longer sacred. . . We can't sleep. . . We can't live. . . If you can't be safe in your own house, where can you be safe? The animals. . . the bastards. . . "
They took at least a dozen men from my aunts area alone- their ages between 19 and 40. The street behind us doesn't have a single house with a male under the age of 50- lawyers, engineers, students, ordinary laborers- all hauled away by the ‘security forces' of the New Iraq.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com
We were gathered in the living room and my aunt and her husband, Ammoo S. [Ammoo = uncle] were asleep. T., J. and I were speaking softly and looking for songs on the radio, having sworn not to sleep before the cake was all gone. T. was playing idly with her mobile phone, trying to send a message to a friend. "Hey- there's no coverage here. . . is it just my phone?" She asked. J. and I both took out our phones and checked, "Mine isn't working either. . . " J. answered, shaking her head. They both turned to me and I told them that I couldn't get a signal either. J. suddenly looked alert and made a sort of "Uh-oh" sound as she remembered something. "R.- will you check the telephone next to you?" I picked up the ordinary telephone next to me and held my breath, waiting for a dial tone. Nothing. . .
T. suddenly sat up straight, "Do you hear that?" She asked, wide-eyed. At first I couldn't hear anything and then I caught it- it was the sound of cars or vehicles- moving slowly. "I can hear it!" I called back to T., standing up and moving towards the window. I looked out into the darkness and couldn't see anything beyond the dim glow of lamps behind windows here and there. . .
Meanwhile, the sound of cars had gotten louder and I remembered that one could see some of the neighborhood from a window on the second floor. T. and I crept upstairs quietly. We heard Ammoo S. unlocking 5 different locks on the kitchen door. "What's he doing?" T. asked, "Shouldn't he keep the doors locked?" . . .
I stood awkwardly, watching them make preparations. J. was already in her room changing- she called out for us to do the same, "They'll come in the house- you don't want to be wearing pajamas. . . "
"Why, will they have camera crews with them?" T. smiled wanly, attempting some humor. No, J. replied, her voice muffled as she put on a sweater, "Last time they made us wait outside in the cold." I listened for Ammoo S. and heard him outside, taking the big padlock off of the gate in the driveway. "Why are you unlocking everything J.?" I called out in the dark.
"The animals will break down the doors if they aren't open in three seconds and then they'll be all over the garden and house. . . last time they pushed the door open on poor Abu H. three houses down and broke his shoulder. . . " J. was fully changed, and over her jeans and sweater she was wearing her robe. It was cold. . .
Twenty minutes later, we were all assembled in the living room. The house was dark except for the warm glow of the kerosene heater and a small lamp in the corner. We were all dressed and waiting nervously, wrapped in blankets. . .
"There will be no problem," My aunt said sternly, looking at each of us, thin-lipped. "You will not say anything improper and they will come in, look around and go." Her eyes lingered on Ammoo S. He was silent. He had lit a cigarette and was inhaling deeply. J. said he'd begun smoking again a couple of months ago after having quit for ten years. "Are your papers ready?" She asked him, referring to his identification papers which would be requested. He didn't answer, but nodded his head silently. . .
We waited. And waited. . . I began nodding off and my dreams were interspersed with troops and cars and hooded men. I woke to the sound of T. saying, "They're almost here. . . " And lifted my head, groggy with what I thought was at least three hours of sleep. I squinted down at my watch and noted it was not yet 5 am. "Haven't they gotten to us yet?" I asked. . .
A big clanging sound on the garden gate and voices yelling "Ifta'u [OPEN UP]". I heard my uncle outside, calling out, "We're opening the gate, we're opening. . . " It was moments and they were inside the house. Suddenly, the house was filled with strange men, yelling out orders and stomping into rooms. It was chaotic. We could see flashing lights in the garden and lights coming from the hallways. . .
Suddenly, two of them were in the living room. We were all sitting on the sofa, near my aunt. My cousin B. was by then awake, eyes wide with fear. They were holding large lights or ‘torches' and one of them pointed a Klashnikov at us. "Is there anyone here but you and them?" One of them barked at my aunt. "No- it's only us and my husband outside with you- you can check the house." T.'s hands went up to block the glaring light of the torch and one of the men yelled at her to put her hands down, they fell limply in her lap. . .
I listened for Ammoo S., hoping to hear him outside but I could only distinguish the harsh voices of the troops. The minutes we sat in the living room seemed to last forever. . .
Suddenly, someone called out something from outside and it was over. They began rushing to leave the house, almost as fast as they'd invaded it. Doors slamming, lights dimming. We were left in the dark once more, not daring to move from the sofa we were sitting on, listening as the men disappeared, leaving only a couple to stand at our gate.
"Where's baba?" J. asked, panicking for a moment before we heard his slippered feet in the driveway. "Did they take him?" Her voice was getting higher. Ammoo S. finally walked into the house, looking weary and drained. I could tell his face was pale even in the relative dark of the house. My aunt sat sobbing quietly in the living room, T. comforting her. "Houses are no longer sacred. . . We can't sleep. . . We can't live. . . If you can't be safe in your own house, where can you be safe? The animals. . . the bastards. . . "
They took at least a dozen men from my aunts area alone- their ages between 19 and 40. The street behind us doesn't have a single house with a male under the age of 50- lawyers, engineers, students, ordinary laborers- all hauled away by the ‘security forces' of the New Iraq.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com
Look, he got between me and my quail - waddaya want me to do?
From Capitol Hill Blue
Let's see.
The Vice President of the United States, hunting without a proper license and in a red-haze firing frenzy, shoots someone and it's the victim's fault because he happened to be in the line of fire?
I suppose that if the Bush White House can plunge the nation into a war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist and a non-existent threat from Iraq and then use those lies to justify the killing of more than 2,000 American soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqi civilians, then blaming a hunting accident on the guy that got shot is second nature.
Monday, February 13, 2006
California conservatives to governator: Terminate lesbian!
By Melissa McEwan
Posted on February 13, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/mcewan/32180/
By way of 429 News comes the news that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is facing a potential Republican Party rift, and risks losing the state GOP's endorsement for reelection, if he doesn't shitcan his lesbian--and Democratic--chief of staff.
Kennedy, who served as a top adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis, was hired by Schwarzenegger in an attempt to mollify the LGBT community and many moderate voters who were irked by his decision to support a state bill seeking to prohibit gay marriage. Now the wingers are pissed off. Poor guy--I just feel so sorry for him that his flaccid attempt to pander has only enraged his wingnut, gay-hating base.
(429 News)
Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.
Posted on February 13, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/mcewan/32180/
By way of 429 News comes the news that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is facing a potential Republican Party rift, and risks losing the state GOP's endorsement for reelection, if he doesn't shitcan his lesbian--and Democratic--chief of staff.
Conservative Republicans are threatening to withhold the party's endorsement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid for re-election unless he fires LGBT activist Susan Kennedy, Democrat, as his chief of staff.
The group is demanding a vote on what it calls its "Susan Kennedy Resolution" at the Republican Party winter convention in San Jose…
The resolution says Kennedy "has spent most of her adult life pursuing a partisan Democratic agenda for higher taxes, greater government spending, gay rights, abortion rights ... and other anti-Republican policy issues."
The measure calls on the party to withdraw its endorsement of Schwarzenegger, effective March 15, unless the governor fires her.
Kennedy, who served as a top adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis, was hired by Schwarzenegger in an attempt to mollify the LGBT community and many moderate voters who were irked by his decision to support a state bill seeking to prohibit gay marriage. Now the wingers are pissed off. Poor guy--I just feel so sorry for him that his flaccid attempt to pander has only enraged his wingnut, gay-hating base.
(429 News)
Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.
The Night the Lights Went Out
By Maya Schenwar, AlterNet
Posted on February 13, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31982/
In the middle of February, while most people are dialing their thermostats up to the max, microwaving multiple cups of hot chocolate and huddling around their television sets, a few dedicated Chicagoans will give up electricity in order to draw attention to the electricity shortage in Iraq. These folks really mean it: Their electricity fast, "Lights Out Chicago," starts Feb. 15 and will last to March 20. They seek to experience some of the hardships and confront the difficulties that Iraqis are experiencing since their power has been cut short.
"My hopes for this fast are simply that many conversations will be sparked, and that people will stop and think for a moment about how their actions affect such crucial elements of Iraqis' daily life," said Laura Gardiner, one of the fast's organizers. "When I tell friends, family and acquaintances that I will be participating in an electricity fast, they are often dumbfounded as to how that is possible. This is exactly the response that I hope to challenge; to show others that what we see as difficult or nearly impossible is the reality for many people."
The electricity fast forms a part of the Winter of Our Discontent, a 33-day food fast taking place in Washington, D.C., organized by the Chicago-based group Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV). The fasters will call for an end to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, reparations for the damage done by the war, and full funding for the reconstruction of Iraq, among other demands, according to Jeff Leys, one of the action's coordinators. In addition to fasting, VCNV activists will participate in civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance at the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol and the World Bank, with quite a few risking arrest.
"Through creative actions, both the Winter of Our Discontent and Lights Out Chicago will press for the payment of war reparations by the U.S. to Iraq, for the damage inflicted by the past 15 years of economic and military warfare," said Joel Gulledge, an organizer with VCNV who will participate in both fasts.
As the Voices crowd abstains from food to call attention to the widespread hunger in Iraq, Gardiner and her co-organizers hope that Lights Out Chicago will provide the American public with a glimpse of the grim physical realities caused by Iraq's electricity shortage, which the Bush administration has no plans to alleviate.
Electricity shortages have increased dramatically since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which critically damaged at least four power plants. The closure of a major oil refinery this past December has caused conditions to deteriorate further. Before the war, Baghdad residents had access to electricity 24 hours a day, while most rural areas followed a consistent schedule of four hours with electricity, then four hours without, says Gardiner. Today, according to IRIN, a U.N. humanitarian news service, people in Baghdad have power for less than eight hours a day. Moreover, access is fickle; Iraqis don't know when electricity will come on or shut off. In 14-degree Fahrenheit weather, that unpredictability is no small matter.
U.S. officials originally decided to build Iraq's new electricity plan on a foundation of natural gas, installing gas generators in many Iraqi power plants. However, according to a December report in the Los Angeles Times, the pipelines to transport that gas power were never built.
The United States has made clear that filling the electricity gap is not a priority. Of the 425 projects originally planned to improve Iraq's power situation, only 300 will be completed, according to a report in late January by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"Even though it may seem like there have been gains in Iraq's power supply, those gains are not reliable," Gardiner said. She noted that many hospitals cannot function for lack of the electricity needed to power essential equipment.
The month of Lights Out Chicago will include several workshops to encourage those not participating in the fast to try out the electricity-free lifestyle in smaller doses. Mehmet Ak, chef and proprietor of the Chicago raw-food restaurant, Cousins Incredible Vitality, will lead a workshop on cooking sans electricity. Gardiner, Gulledge and others will also host a series of community-building get-togethers featuring electricity-free activities for fasters and non-fasters alike.
"I hope that both those who choose to abstain from electricity and others who find out about our project can't help but empathize with the millions of ordinary people in Iraq who are unable to rely on electricity," Gulledge said. "I also hope that people living in Iraq will learn of what we are doing, and know that the problems they face aren't going completely unnoticed."
Maya Schenwar is a Chicago-based freelance writer and an editor for Publications International.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31982/
Posted on February 13, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31982/
In the middle of February, while most people are dialing their thermostats up to the max, microwaving multiple cups of hot chocolate and huddling around their television sets, a few dedicated Chicagoans will give up electricity in order to draw attention to the electricity shortage in Iraq. These folks really mean it: Their electricity fast, "Lights Out Chicago," starts Feb. 15 and will last to March 20. They seek to experience some of the hardships and confront the difficulties that Iraqis are experiencing since their power has been cut short.
"My hopes for this fast are simply that many conversations will be sparked, and that people will stop and think for a moment about how their actions affect such crucial elements of Iraqis' daily life," said Laura Gardiner, one of the fast's organizers. "When I tell friends, family and acquaintances that I will be participating in an electricity fast, they are often dumbfounded as to how that is possible. This is exactly the response that I hope to challenge; to show others that what we see as difficult or nearly impossible is the reality for many people."
The electricity fast forms a part of the Winter of Our Discontent, a 33-day food fast taking place in Washington, D.C., organized by the Chicago-based group Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV). The fasters will call for an end to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, reparations for the damage done by the war, and full funding for the reconstruction of Iraq, among other demands, according to Jeff Leys, one of the action's coordinators. In addition to fasting, VCNV activists will participate in civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance at the Pentagon, the White House, the Capitol and the World Bank, with quite a few risking arrest.
"Through creative actions, both the Winter of Our Discontent and Lights Out Chicago will press for the payment of war reparations by the U.S. to Iraq, for the damage inflicted by the past 15 years of economic and military warfare," said Joel Gulledge, an organizer with VCNV who will participate in both fasts.
As the Voices crowd abstains from food to call attention to the widespread hunger in Iraq, Gardiner and her co-organizers hope that Lights Out Chicago will provide the American public with a glimpse of the grim physical realities caused by Iraq's electricity shortage, which the Bush administration has no plans to alleviate.
Electricity shortages have increased dramatically since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which critically damaged at least four power plants. The closure of a major oil refinery this past December has caused conditions to deteriorate further. Before the war, Baghdad residents had access to electricity 24 hours a day, while most rural areas followed a consistent schedule of four hours with electricity, then four hours without, says Gardiner. Today, according to IRIN, a U.N. humanitarian news service, people in Baghdad have power for less than eight hours a day. Moreover, access is fickle; Iraqis don't know when electricity will come on or shut off. In 14-degree Fahrenheit weather, that unpredictability is no small matter.
U.S. officials originally decided to build Iraq's new electricity plan on a foundation of natural gas, installing gas generators in many Iraqi power plants. However, according to a December report in the Los Angeles Times, the pipelines to transport that gas power were never built.
The United States has made clear that filling the electricity gap is not a priority. Of the 425 projects originally planned to improve Iraq's power situation, only 300 will be completed, according to a report in late January by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"Even though it may seem like there have been gains in Iraq's power supply, those gains are not reliable," Gardiner said. She noted that many hospitals cannot function for lack of the electricity needed to power essential equipment.
The month of Lights Out Chicago will include several workshops to encourage those not participating in the fast to try out the electricity-free lifestyle in smaller doses. Mehmet Ak, chef and proprietor of the Chicago raw-food restaurant, Cousins Incredible Vitality, will lead a workshop on cooking sans electricity. Gardiner, Gulledge and others will also host a series of community-building get-togethers featuring electricity-free activities for fasters and non-fasters alike.
"I hope that both those who choose to abstain from electricity and others who find out about our project can't help but empathize with the millions of ordinary people in Iraq who are unable to rely on electricity," Gulledge said. "I also hope that people living in Iraq will learn of what we are doing, and know that the problems they face aren't going completely unnoticed."
Maya Schenwar is a Chicago-based freelance writer and an editor for Publications International.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31982/
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Bushit!
From the Disinfo.com Newsletter
US President Bush's has announced that the Administration's counter-terrorism experts foiled an Al Qaeda plot in 2002 on the West Coast. Bush's announcement follows a pattern of revealing counter-terrorism operations at politically convenient times.
As Lee Clarke observes in Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (2005), the propaganda battle for 'hearts and minds' in the Global War on Terror has diffused from policymaking circles into the popular cultural imagination. If you accept Clarke's analysis, this climate requires the Administration to make operations announcements in order to convince the public about Al Qaeda's status as an enemy.
Consequently, the break-up of terrorist cells and clandestine groups has a similar status in the GWOT that fears of nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction had in the Cold War.
Stay tuned.
US President Bush's has announced that the Administration's counter-terrorism experts foiled an Al Qaeda plot in 2002 on the West Coast. Bush's announcement follows a pattern of revealing counter-terrorism operations at politically convenient times.
As Lee Clarke observes in Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (2005), the propaganda battle for 'hearts and minds' in the Global War on Terror has diffused from policymaking circles into the popular cultural imagination. If you accept Clarke's analysis, this climate requires the Administration to make operations announcements in order to convince the public about Al Qaeda's status as an enemy.
Consequently, the break-up of terrorist cells and clandestine groups has a similar status in the GWOT that fears of nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction had in the Cold War.
Stay tuned.
Muslim Cartoon Controversy: What the Media Isn't Telling You
by Soj
Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 11:01:49 AM PDT
Cross-posted from Daily Kos
I had a friend over today who lives out of town and we switched on the traditional news media television and saw what most of you have probably seen - angry rioters protesting, burning flags and attacking various Danish embassies around the world.
Despite the spectaculor footage and a bevy of experts "weighing in" on the issue, I did not one single mention of what's actually going on. And so therefore, by my duty as a citizen journalist, I will now share it with all of you.
The issue has been framed by the traditional media as "Free Expression/Speech" in contrast with "Sensitivity to Religion". Do newspapers in democratic societies have the right to publish offensive images? Well that's something definitely worth debating, but it's overlooking an important step.
12 cartoons were published in the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, which you can see here. Some were very bland, others seem to be unquestionably offensive. Yet these cartons were published on September 30, 2005. What the traditional media has failed to explain is why the protests are occuring now.
Soj's diary :: ::
But before we explain that, it's time to address a few other issues. The first issue is whether or not it is inflammatory or offensive to Islam to depict the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) at all. Traditionally, the answer is the Qur'an (the Muslim equivalent to the Christian Bible) does not forbid it, it only forbids "idolatry", which would imply worshipping a statue or other representation of Mohammed (PBUH). The Hadith, which has no equivalent in Christianity but is equivalent to Judaism's Talmud, and is somewhat of a secondary literary source of the Muslim faith, prohibits any pictures or drawings of sacred figures, including Mohammed (PBUH). That being said, in practical terms, it occurs quite regularly.
There are images similar to Orthodox Christian ikons that are commonplace in Shi'ite communities, especially in Iran. There are also Muslim works of art depicting Mohammed (PBUH) in Central Asia, and neither these nor those in Iran are considered inflammatory and neither are they censored.
There are a number of depictions of Mohammed (PBUH), some in very unflattering situations, in Christian churches in Europe, especially Italy. The famous book/poem "Inferno" by Dante makes a very unflattering reference to Mohammed (PBUH) and there are several pieces of artwork depicting Dante's descriptions.
There have been several derogatory or potentially inflammatory usages of Mohammed (PBUH) in American entertainment vehicles, perhaps the most famous being South Park. And last but not least, there is an actual sculpture of Mohammed (PBUH) on the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.
The point I'm trying to make here is that Mohammed (PBUH) has been depicted, painted or made appearances in animated cartoons on many, many occasions and yet there's been no rioting, storming of embassies and CNN coverage. The question becomes, not why were the Danish cartoons offensive or inappropriate, but why is there such a strong reaction now?
Denmark has a long history of multi-cultural tolerance, including their famous solidarity stand with Jewish citizens during World War 2. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten itself was surprised by the strong reaction to their cartoons and even apologized publically for any offense they may have caused. And for 2 months, there was hardly a peep from any Muslim group outside a small protest in Denmark itself and somewhat larger protests in Pakistan.
So what triggered this? Well it takes a blog to explain it. What CNN and the other traditional media failed to tell you is that the thousand gallons of fuel added to the fire of outrage came from none other than our old pals Saudi Arabia.
While it was a minor side story in the western press, the most important of Muslim religious festivals recently took place in Saudi Arabia - called the Hajj. Every able-bodied Muslim is obligated to make a pilgrimage once in their lifetime to Mecca, which is in modern-day Saudi Arabia. This pilgrimage can be done at any time of the year but most pilgrims arrive during the Muslim month known as Dhu al-Hijjah, which follows a lunar calendar that does not exactly match the western Gregorian calendar.
The most recent Hajj occurred during the first half of January 2006, precisely when the "outrage" over the Danish cartoons began in earnest. There were a number of stampedes, called "tragedies" in the press, during the Hajj which killed several hundred pilgrims. I say "tragedies" in quotation marks because there have been similar "tragedies" during the Hajj and each time, the Saudi government promises to improve security and facilitation of movement to avoid these. Over 251 pilgrims were killed during the 2004 Hajj alone in the same area as the one that killed 350 pilgrims in 2006. These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.
And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.
Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.
Many European papers, including the right-wing German Springer media group, fanned the flames by reprinting the cartoons. And now you have the situation we are in today, with lots of video footage of angry crowds and the storming of embassies and calls for boycotts of Danish and European products.
Saudi Arabia's influence on the Sunni Muslim world is incalculable. The sermons from high-ranking Muslim clerics are read and studied by Muslims around the world, who in turn give sermons to their local congregations. While the Saudis do not have direct control of the world's Sunni flocks, their influence is similar somewhat to the Pope's pronouncements and the sermons that Catholic priests give to their flocks the following Sundays. Saudi Arabia also finances a number of Muslim "study centers", where all the literature and material is provided by the Saudi government, filled with hatred for Jews and other extremely racist material. For them to promote an idea based on religion, including "outrage" at some cartoons published months earlier, is standard operating procedure.
Of course there is more than Saudi Arabia's hand at play here. The issue has metamorphed from religious outrage at a dozen cartoons to a clash of those who feel they are oppressed and downtrodded by the Christian world and those they consider their oppressors. That's why there was anti-Christian rioting in Lebanon, where the two religious groups have a long and tumultous co-existance.
As I sat there watching CNN (International) with my friend today, I could not help but note the number of Saudi flags that the various rioters were waving in Lebanon and Syria. Coincidence? I think not. Look for yourself - they are green with a large expanse of Arabic writing in white above a sword.
Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 11:01:49 AM PDT
Cross-posted from Daily Kos
I had a friend over today who lives out of town and we switched on the traditional news media television and saw what most of you have probably seen - angry rioters protesting, burning flags and attacking various Danish embassies around the world.
Despite the spectaculor footage and a bevy of experts "weighing in" on the issue, I did not one single mention of what's actually going on. And so therefore, by my duty as a citizen journalist, I will now share it with all of you.
The issue has been framed by the traditional media as "Free Expression/Speech" in contrast with "Sensitivity to Religion". Do newspapers in democratic societies have the right to publish offensive images? Well that's something definitely worth debating, but it's overlooking an important step.
12 cartoons were published in the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, which you can see here. Some were very bland, others seem to be unquestionably offensive. Yet these cartons were published on September 30, 2005. What the traditional media has failed to explain is why the protests are occuring now.
Soj's diary :: ::
But before we explain that, it's time to address a few other issues. The first issue is whether or not it is inflammatory or offensive to Islam to depict the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) at all. Traditionally, the answer is the Qur'an (the Muslim equivalent to the Christian Bible) does not forbid it, it only forbids "idolatry", which would imply worshipping a statue or other representation of Mohammed (PBUH). The Hadith, which has no equivalent in Christianity but is equivalent to Judaism's Talmud, and is somewhat of a secondary literary source of the Muslim faith, prohibits any pictures or drawings of sacred figures, including Mohammed (PBUH). That being said, in practical terms, it occurs quite regularly.
There are images similar to Orthodox Christian ikons that are commonplace in Shi'ite communities, especially in Iran. There are also Muslim works of art depicting Mohammed (PBUH) in Central Asia, and neither these nor those in Iran are considered inflammatory and neither are they censored.
There are a number of depictions of Mohammed (PBUH), some in very unflattering situations, in Christian churches in Europe, especially Italy. The famous book/poem "Inferno" by Dante makes a very unflattering reference to Mohammed (PBUH) and there are several pieces of artwork depicting Dante's descriptions.
There have been several derogatory or potentially inflammatory usages of Mohammed (PBUH) in American entertainment vehicles, perhaps the most famous being South Park. And last but not least, there is an actual sculpture of Mohammed (PBUH) on the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.
The point I'm trying to make here is that Mohammed (PBUH) has been depicted, painted or made appearances in animated cartoons on many, many occasions and yet there's been no rioting, storming of embassies and CNN coverage. The question becomes, not why were the Danish cartoons offensive or inappropriate, but why is there such a strong reaction now?
Denmark has a long history of multi-cultural tolerance, including their famous solidarity stand with Jewish citizens during World War 2. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten itself was surprised by the strong reaction to their cartoons and even apologized publically for any offense they may have caused. And for 2 months, there was hardly a peep from any Muslim group outside a small protest in Denmark itself and somewhat larger protests in Pakistan.
So what triggered this? Well it takes a blog to explain it. What CNN and the other traditional media failed to tell you is that the thousand gallons of fuel added to the fire of outrage came from none other than our old pals Saudi Arabia.
While it was a minor side story in the western press, the most important of Muslim religious festivals recently took place in Saudi Arabia - called the Hajj. Every able-bodied Muslim is obligated to make a pilgrimage once in their lifetime to Mecca, which is in modern-day Saudi Arabia. This pilgrimage can be done at any time of the year but most pilgrims arrive during the Muslim month known as Dhu al-Hijjah, which follows a lunar calendar that does not exactly match the western Gregorian calendar.
The most recent Hajj occurred during the first half of January 2006, precisely when the "outrage" over the Danish cartoons began in earnest. There were a number of stampedes, called "tragedies" in the press, during the Hajj which killed several hundred pilgrims. I say "tragedies" in quotation marks because there have been similar "tragedies" during the Hajj and each time, the Saudi government promises to improve security and facilitation of movement to avoid these. Over 251 pilgrims were killed during the 2004 Hajj alone in the same area as the one that killed 350 pilgrims in 2006. These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.
And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.
Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons. The Saudi government asked for a formal apology from Denmark. When that was not forthcoming, they began calling for world-wide protests. After two weeks of this, the Libyans decided to close their embassy in Denmark. Then there was an attack on the Danish embassy in Indonesia. And that was followed by attacks on the embassies in Syria and then Lebanon.
Many European papers, including the right-wing German Springer media group, fanned the flames by reprinting the cartoons. And now you have the situation we are in today, with lots of video footage of angry crowds and the storming of embassies and calls for boycotts of Danish and European products.
Saudi Arabia's influence on the Sunni Muslim world is incalculable. The sermons from high-ranking Muslim clerics are read and studied by Muslims around the world, who in turn give sermons to their local congregations. While the Saudis do not have direct control of the world's Sunni flocks, their influence is similar somewhat to the Pope's pronouncements and the sermons that Catholic priests give to their flocks the following Sundays. Saudi Arabia also finances a number of Muslim "study centers", where all the literature and material is provided by the Saudi government, filled with hatred for Jews and other extremely racist material. For them to promote an idea based on religion, including "outrage" at some cartoons published months earlier, is standard operating procedure.
Of course there is more than Saudi Arabia's hand at play here. The issue has metamorphed from religious outrage at a dozen cartoons to a clash of those who feel they are oppressed and downtrodded by the Christian world and those they consider their oppressors. That's why there was anti-Christian rioting in Lebanon, where the two religious groups have a long and tumultous co-existance.
As I sat there watching CNN (International) with my friend today, I could not help but note the number of Saudi flags that the various rioters were waving in Lebanon and Syria. Coincidence? I think not. Look for yourself - they are green with a large expanse of Arabic writing in white above a sword.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Just Like Hitler!
In what appears to be preparation for war in support of the capitalist profit motive and waged upon another largely poor, indigenous people, Donald Rumsfeld has berated Venezuela for spending on military hardware rather than provide for people's needs.
Honest, he actually did. Really.
(Be advised that the U.S. has again significantly increased its military budget for 2006 while making deep cuts in social programs.)
Honest, he actually did. Really.
(Be advised that the U.S. has again significantly increased its military budget for 2006 while making deep cuts in social programs.)
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