Monday, February 23, 2009

Karzai is US stooge says Afghan deputy president

Afghanistan's president and vice-president accused each other of being US stooges during a recent cabinet meeting which degenerated into a furious row, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul and Dean Nelson

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has fallen out of favour with Britain and the US

In a clash which showed how fragile the Western-backed government has become, President Hamid Karzai was labelled a corrupt incompetent by his own understudy, Ahmad Zia Massoud. He responded in kind, saying Mr Massoud was part of an American conspiracy to oust him.

The ferocity of the infighting reflects a collapse in support for the Afghan president - both within the Afghan coalitions who have supported him since his election in 2004, and among his backers in Britain, the United States, the European Union and NATO. During a visit to Kabul last week, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that British financial and military support for the Afghanistan would only continue if Mr Karzai's government raised its game.

Tensions erupted after Mr Massoud made a speech blaming greed and corruption in the Karzai administration for the hunger and poverty in the country. He also said that Mr Karzai's plan to delay the May election until August 20 and extend his term until then was unconstitutional.

The row lasted for ten minutes and had to be broken up by cabinet colleagues, who eventually moved the men onto the meeting's business agenda.

In launching such a public attack, Mr Massoud has joined a growing chorus of senior Afghan politicians questioning the legitimacy of President Karzai's intention to remain in power after his term formally ends in May. As the leader of the most powerful family in northern Afghanistan, and the brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud, a legendary Mujahideen general, Mr Massoud's comments are not to be lightly dismissed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4742641/Karzai-is-US-stooge-says-Afghan-deputy-president.html

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Celebration orgy

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75% of ex-Bush officials can't get hired

By GottaLaff

Gee, who wouldn't want to hire someone who was connected to known liars, frauds, and criminals?

While the market for job-seekers in the United States might be sour, for most it isn't as impenetrable as it is for the nearly 3,000 former members of the Bush administration.

Between 70-75 percent who are looking for full-time work still haven't found new jobs, according to a Saturday report by the Wall St. Journal.

"That 'is much, much worse' than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House," Carlos M. Gutierrez, who served as Bush's commerce secretary, told the paper. [...]

The think tanks "lack interest in hiring high-profile Republicans when Democrats control the White House and Congress," said the Journal. "Mr. Bush's low approval ratings at the end of his term don't help, said Leonard Pfeiffer IV, a Washington recruiter for nonprofits."

In that case, I'm sure that the former Bushies will more than appreciate, support, and take full advantage of, President Obama's tax cuts. In the meantime, maybe they can spend some of their spare time volunteering at homeless shelters before, say, enlisting in the military.

http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/02/75-of-ex-bush-officials-cant-get-hired.html

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Exxon Valdez Spill Approaches 20th Anniversary

The Tragic Saga Began Long Before the Accident

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

This is the first in a series addressing the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The 20th anniversary of the biggest, deadliest oil spill in our nation's history is coming up next month. It will no doubt be a somber occasion. But for those who were most affected, remembering what came before and after the Exxon Valdez oil spill may be more painful than the anniversary of the disaster itself.

The captain of the Exxon Valdez, a man described in later court documents as a "relapsed alcoholic," was in his quarters when he should have been piloting the ship, and the men he assigned to take his place weren't properly rested. The ship obtained special permission to exit the Prince Williams Sound through the inbound shipping lane. The ship came too close to shore and was grounded on the Bligh Reef, a well-known obstacle in the area, just after midnight on March 24, 1989.

Immediately after the spill, delays and mishaps interfered with the clean-up. The fishermen and the townspeople of Cordova, Alaska, who relied on the waters for their very existence, were worried. But the president of Exxon assured them they would all be taken care of. He even called the incident a blessing in disguise for Alaskans.

"You won't have a problem. I don't care if you believe that or not. That's the truth. You have had some good luck and you don't realize it. You have Exxon and we do business straight. We will consider whatever it takes to keep you whole. Now that's -- you have my word on that," Exxon President Dan Cornett told a crowd of Cordovans gathered in concern after the disaster (watch a video excerpt of that meeting here).

The opposite turned out to be the case; in reality it was more of a fleecing in the disguise of disaster. For the past two decades, Exxon has dragged its corporate feet in court while Alaskans have struggled to cope with the aftereffects of the spill. Communities such as Cordova still report cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome, along with continuing increases in divorce, bankruptcy, and suicide rates.

The situation is sad and frustrating. But perhaps the most difficult part of all is that the fishermen, along with environmentalists and other community members, saw it coming all along.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/635

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I survived the bush administration

$16

You're still here and he's Gone! Show the world you are still alive! Black ink printed on a white unisex American apparel tee.

http://printliberation.com/store.php?id=110

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Change over time

http://www.mikero.com/blog/2009/02/20/more-darwin

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LA Times: More Unverified "War Crimes"

Many allegations and accusations, including "war crimes", have been leveled at Israel as a result of its Gaza operation. The LA Times publishes a report from Gaza that is symptomatic of some of the skewed and potentially faulty information being fed to the foreign media as part of widespread efforts to have Israel condemned in the court of public opinion.

Ashraf Khalil writes about "charges of indiscriminate firing on civilians and ambulances and what one international weapons expert called the heaviest use of controversial white phosphorus munitions in the 22-day offensive."

Importantly, he also states that "It is impossible to fully confirm many of the details of what happened here." Indeed, many of the most egregious charges against Israel, subsequently proven to be false, have come from so-called Palestinian "eyewitnesses" or officials with a vested interest in attacking Israel. (See HR's Big Lies interactive feature for some of the worst cases.)

So is it any wonder that Khalil's report is not necessarily an open and shut case?

Khalil states that "Under cover of darkness and phosphorus smoke, ground forces took up positions throughout the neighborhood". At the same time as implying that Israel has deployed phosphorus shells against Gaza's civilian population, Khalil, whether intentionally or not, makes it clear that the phosphorus has been used in the way in which the IDF intended - providing a smokescreen to protect its troops. Khalil cannot have it both ways by accusing Israel of a "war crime" at the same time as describing its use in a perfectly lawful way.

Khalil writes about the alleged shooting of Palestinian Rawhiya Najar:

When it grew light outside, Rawhiya Najar urged her neighbors to crowd onto the roofs of their homes, hoping the sight of civilians would deter the barrage, neighbors said.

The 47-year-old, who had returned from the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca just days before the Israeli offensive began, was known as a forceful and generous personality. She was also a staunch supporter of the local militant groups, and would often leave tea and cakes on her windowsill at night for the fighters who operated in the area.

Using civilians as human shields, including gathering on rooftops, is a well-rehearsed Hamas tactic. Did Rawhiya Najar's support for terror extend beyond tea and cakes on her windowsill? In any case, it is clear that terrorists were present in the area during the alleged incident.

In addition, Khalil describes the efforts of a Palestinian ambulanceman to retreive Najar's body:

before he could approach Rawhiya's body, gunfire from a nearby home forced him to abandon the ambulance and take shelter with residents.

Having established that terrorists regularly operated from that particular area, Khalil fails to establish the source of the gunfire leaving more unanswered questions.

http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/LA_Times_More_Unverified_War_Crimes.asp

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Was George Washington a gay pot smoker?

by Harvey Wasserman

Did George Washington raise hemp? Did he smoke it? Was he gay?

The easy answers are definitely, probably, and maybe.

The questions arise with pre-publication of the shocking satire PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by "Thomas Paine," which opens with Le General in the hemp-filled embrace of his beloved Marquis de Lafayette.

As Washington's February 22 birthday approaches, his personal habits say much about today's America.

Like virtually every Revolutionary farmer, the Father of Our Country grew prodigious quantities of hemp. It was (is) a profitable cash crop, easy to grow, with scant demands for cultivation, watering or fertilizing. As a hardy perennial, it needs no year-after-year replanting, nor pesticides or herbicides.

Early American farmers used cannabis for cloth, rope, sails, paper and much more. At various times its cultivation has been mandatory. Kansas was virtually carpeted with it during World War Two. In today's conversion to a Solartopian economy, the cellulose of its stems and leaves, and the oil from its seeds, could be essential for green ethanol and bio-diesel fuels.

Washington and his fellow planter/presidents Tom Jefferson and James Madison would be astonished to hear that hemp is illegal. These early chief executives would certainly have told President Obama that a re-legalized cannabis crop would mean billions of dollars in desperately needed farm revenue throughout the United States.

As for smoking, I know of no significant communication among the Founders extolling their "great weed."

But in one of his meticulous agricultural journals, dated 1765, Washington regrets being late to separate his male hemp plants from his females. For a master farmer like George, there would be little reason to do this except to make the females ripe for smoking.

The medicinal uses of cannabis were known to the ancient Chinese. Thousands of years later, it's inconceivable American growers would not indulge in its recreational powers.

As for Washington's sexual preferences, his marriage to Martha was sometimes suspect. Historians joke that he did not marry her for her money, but rather for her stocks, bonds, land and slaves. In a letter to a friend, he complained that there was "not much fire between the sheets."

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1725

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Somnambulism in the Internet Age

Woman emailed party invites in her sleep

By David Sutton

A new form of somnambulism for the Internet age has been identified by doctors and reported in the latest edition of the medical journal Sleep Medicine. Sleep researchers from the University of Toledo, Ohio, reported the first ever case of someone using the Internet while asleep, even sending emails inviting people over for drinks and caviar.

The 44-year-old woman had gone to bed at about 10pm, but rose a couple of hours later, walked to the next room and sat down at her computer. She turned the machine on, connected to the Internet and successfully logged on with her user name and password, before composing three emails and sending them to friends. She only found out what she had done when one of them telephoned the next day to reply to the email and accept the invitation.

The mails themselves were perhaps not up to the woman's waking standard; each was in a random mix of upper and lower case characters, badly formatted and containing odd expressions. One read: "Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only." Another said simply: "What the…"

The writers of the report have dubbed this new variation of sleepwalking 'zzz-mailing'. They say: "We believe writing an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password displayed by our patient is novel. To our knowledge this type of complex behaviour requiring coordinated movements has not been reported before in sleepwalking. She was shocked when she saw these emails, as she did not recall writing them. She did not have any history of night terrors or sleepwalking as a child."

Unlike simple sleepwalking, they argue, the activities the woman engaged in required complex behaviour and coordinated movement, as well being able to remember her login details. She had no memory of the events next day.

http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/misc/1543/somnambulism-in-the-internet-age.html

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Time to say goodbye to print newspapers

Even those with printer's ink in our veins need to face e-reality

By Bill Richards

I yield to no one in my love of newspapers. After more than four decades of pounding keyboards for various dailies, and, before that, tossing the now long-gone Yonkers, N.Y., Herald Statesman into the bushes and, occasionally, through front windows of subscribers on my newspaper route, a lot of ink has rubbed off on my psyche. But the time has come to say goodbye to the daily newspaper, a delivery system that should have found its place onto the museum shelf a decade ago, when the Internet shouldered its way into the news business.

Like most goodbyes, parting isn't easy. And like most, the best way is quick and clean. But that isn't what is happening in my trade. In the news business we like to write about the next best thing, but when it shows up on our doorstep we shift gears into denial and foot-dragging. Take the announcement Feb. 15 by the Post Register, in Idaho Falls, that it is dropping its Monday print paper because of mounting financial pressure.

"In this changing economic environment," Post Register Publisher Roger Plothow wrote in a statement to the Idaho paper's readers, "businesses that don't stay nimble will be left in the dust." And then, for a dollop of good news, Plothow said his paper was "moving forward" by installing a state-of-the-art printing press.

Think about that. So many readers and advertisers are bailing out of print that the Post Register can't afford to publish a newspaper every day. And the paper's solution: keep publishing — and spend tens of millions of dollars on a new press to crank out more print papers. That is nimble the way Sonny Liston was a ballerina.

http://crosscut.com/2009/02/18/seattle-newspapers/18855/

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Stimulus

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Getting Well

by William Rivers Pitt

In the beginning there is the stem cell; it is the origin of an organism's life. It is a single cell that can give rise to progeny that differentiate into any of the specialized cells of embryonic or adult tissues.
- Stewart Sell, M.D., Senior Scientist, Ordway Research Institute

The Obama administration won its way through to passage of the economic stimulus package, and President Obama will sign the thing on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he's going to Phoenix to kick off a big national push for fixing the foreclosure crisis. There is still a war going on in Afghanistan, and there is still a war going on in Iraq. The White House has wisely decided to stay away from the question of Karl Rove's subpoena and the limits of Bush-era executive privilege claims; the issue is one of separation of powers, and therefore must be handled by the legislative and judicial branches, so the executive branch doesn't wind up getting to determine the limits of its own power.

So there's a lot of galactically heavy stuff going on right now, with more sure to come.

But there's also this, from The Associated Press on Sunday afternoon:

President Barack Obama will soon issue an executive order lifting an eight-year ban on embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, a senior adviser said on Sunday. "We're going to be doing something on that soon, I think. The president is considering that right now," Obama adviser David Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday."

In 2001, Bush limited federal funding for stem cell research only to human embryonic stem cell lines that already existed. It was a gesture to his conservative Christian supporters who regard embryonic stem cell research as destroying potential life, because the cells must be extracted from human embryos. Embryonic stem cells are the most basic human cells which can develop into any type of cell in the body.

Scientists believe the research could eventually produce cures for a variety of diseases, including Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease and spinal cord injuries. Obama vowed to reverse Bush's ban during his presidential campaign, and in his inaugural address last month promised to return science to its proper place in the United States.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes cells this way: "Stem cells have two important characteristics that distinguish them from other types of cells. First, they are unspecialized cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division. The second is that under certain physiologic or experimental conditions, they can be induced to become cells with special functions such as the beating cells of the heart muscle or the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Stem cells are important for living organisms for many reasons. In the 3- to 5-day-old embryo, called a blastocyst, stem cells in developing tissues give rise to the multiple specialized cell types that make up the heart, lung, skin and other tissues. In some adult tissues, such as bone marrow, muscle and brain, discrete populations of adult stem cells generate replacements for cells that are lost through normal wear and tear, injury or disease."

http://www.truthout.org/021709A

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The Hard Cases

Will Obama institute a new kind of preventive detention for terrorist suspects?

by Jane Mayer

The last "enemy combatant" being detained in America is incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina—a tan, low-slung building situated amid acres of grassy swampland. The prisoner, known internally as EC#2, is an alleged Al Qaeda sleeper agent named Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He has been held in isolation in the brig for more than five years, although he has never stood trial or been convicted of any crime. Under rules established by the Bush Administration, suspected terrorists such as Marri were denied the legal protections traditionally afforded by the Constitution. Unless the Obama Administration overhauls the nation's terrorism policies, Marri—who claims that he is innocent—will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

On September 10, 2001, Marri, a citizen of Qatar, who is now forty-three, came to America with his family. He had a student visa, and his ostensible purpose was to study computer programming at a small university in Peoria, Illinois. That December, he was arrested as a material witness in an investigation of the September 11th attacks. However, when Marri was on the verge of standing trial, in June, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the military to seize him and hold him indefinitely. The Bush Administration contended that America was in a full-fledged war against terrorists, and that the President could therefore invoke extraordinary executive powers to detain Marri until the end of hostilities, on the basis of still secret evidence. That day, Marri was put on a military jet to Charleston, and since then he has been living as the only prisoner in an eighty-bed high-security wing of the brig, with no visits from family, friends, or the media.

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who has taken the lead role in Marri's legal defense, says that the Bush Administration's decision to leave him in sustained isolation was akin to stranding him on a desert island. "It's a Robinson Crusoe-like situation," he told me. In 2005, Hafetz challenged the constitutionality of Marri's imprisonment. A lower court affirmed the government's right to detain him indefinitely. After several appeals, the case is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in April. Hafetz calls the Marri case a pivotal test of "the most far-reaching use of detention powers" ever asserted by an American President.

The Court's calendar requires the Obama Administration to file a reply to the challenge by March 23rd. Unless some kind of diversionary action is taken—such as sending Marri home to Qatar, or working out a plea agreement—the Court's schedule will likely force the Obama Administration to offer quick answers to a host of complicated questions about its approach to fighting terrorism.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_mayer

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Google Earth reveals secret history of US base in Pakistan

Shamsi airbase in Pakistan in 2006

The Shamsi airbase in 2006 with three drones apparently visible

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Stimulus Provides Preview Of Health Battles Ahead

by Julie Rovner

A newly controversial provision in the stimulus bill calls for funding to study medical drugs, devices and procedures.

Prescription pills All Things Considered, February 16, 2009 · In Washington, Republicans are already warming up their arguments against what they anticipate will be President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health care system.

At issue is a heretofore bipartisan — and relatively noncontroversial — provision included in the massive economic stimulus bill about to clear Congress. It calls for $1.1 billion to study, in essence, how well various medical drugs, devices and procedures work.

Currently, prescription drugs and medical devices must show they are safe and effective before they can be marketed. But they don't have to prove they are better or more cost-effective than other treatments already available. Currently, there is little research in this country to compare whether drugs work better than surgery or other types of treatments.

Many experts say that finding out what works best could help both improve care and cut down on expensive care that doesn't work — as well as less expensive alternatives.

"More research on what works and what doesn't, tied to financial incentives to provide the higher-value care, could help to reduce costs without harming quality," said health economist Peter Orszag, who at the time of the comment was director of the Congressional Budget Office. Orszag is now President Obama's budget director. "We currently have a set of financial incentives just for more care. And we need a set of financial incentives for better care. And part of that requires knowing what better care is," Orszag said.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100671453

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McCollum Urges DoD to Rescind Contract to KBR

Contractor Under Criminal Probe for Negligent Electrocution Deaths of U.S. Troops Should Be Denied Future Pentagon Contracts

Washington, DC – Amid reports that the Department of Defense has recently awarded a multimillion dollar contract to a company under investigation for the electrocution deaths of soldiers, Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-04) today joined Congressional colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Robert Gates requesting an explanation for the latest award to Kellogg Brown and Root, Inc (KBR), in light of the existing criminal probes against them for the fatality of several U.S. soldiers in Iraq due to faulty electrical work. The 2004 electrocution death of Congresswoman McCollum's constituent, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class David A. Cedergren, was recently placed under review by military officials, though a direct link to KBR has not yet been determined.

"Secretary Gates should immediately rescind any new awards to KBR. It is irresponsible and negligent for the Department of Defense to grant additional contracts to a company facing such serious allegations. We recently learned, after five years of scrutiny, that a Minnesota sailor was electrocuted to death by faulty wiring. Who can trust KBR's work?" Congresswoman McCollum said.

Last year, as a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Congresswoman McCollum took part in an in-depth hearing into the problem of electrocutions in U.S. facilities in Iraq. The Committee's findings showed that KBR was alerted to deficiencies in several cases, but failed to take corrective action. In a Pentagon correspondence from last September, David J. Graff, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency, wrote, "Many within DOD (Department of Defense) have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR's ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq."

http://mccollum.house.gov/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={638D6471-5086-4EE8-B778-1DF1727C3F02}&DE={FA0666E3-5C9C-429B-8FE0-53F502B76602}

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The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis.

By Jonathan Jarvis.

Crisisofcredit.com

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jdjarvis.com.

Part One

Part Two

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Welcome to Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com

Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com is unlike any other dating site. It has been created for people who are living with a terminal illness--and who realize that the quality of life is profoundly affected by how we choose to face the inevitable.

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http://till-death-do-us-part.com/

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Jobless Hit With Bank Fees on Benefits

More pain for unemployed as banks turn profit on new debit card jobless benefits

By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD

First, Arthur Santa-Maria called Bank of America to ask how to check the balance of his new unemployment benefits debit card. The bank charged him 50 cents.

He chose not to complain. That would have cost another 50 cents.

So he took out some of the money and then decided to pull out the rest. But that made two withdrawals on the same day, and that was $1.50.

For hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs during the recession, there's a new twist to their financial pain: Even when they're collecting unemployment benefits, they're paying the bank just to get the money — or even to call customer service to complain about it.

Thirty states have struck such deals with banks that include Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., JP Morgan Chase and US Bancorp, an Associated Press review of the agreements found. All the programs carry fees, and in several states the unemployed have no choice but to use the debit cards. Some banks even charge overdraft fees of up to $20 — even though they could decline charges for more than what's on the card.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=6917758

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Obama sushi

This Japanese sushi chef has developed a fantastic Obama sushi: "Obama's skin is Amis (small shrimp) TSUKUDA煮use. 髪は黒ゴマで、歯はかまぼこ。 Hair is black sesame, fish paste teeth."

The site contains instructions on how to make it.

すし業界の常識を「CHANGE！」した職人 - MSNスキルアップ

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/19/obama-sushi.html

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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Hey, it's been a few weeks...

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The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position

by Glenn Greenwald

From the Obama/Biden campaign website, mybarackobama.com, here was what the Obama campaign was saying -- back then -- about the State Secrets privilege:

Apparently, the operative word in that highlighted paragraph -- unbeknownst to most people at the time -- was "the Bush administration," since the Obama administration is now doing exactly that which, during the campaign, it defined as "The Problem," the only difference being that it is now Obama, and not Bush, doing it. For journalists who haven't bothered to learn the first thing about this issue even as they hold themselves out as experts on it, and for Obama followers eager to find an excuse to justify what was done, a brief review of the State Secrets privilege controversy is in order.

Nobody -- not the ACLU or anyone else -- argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid. Nobody contests that there is such a thing as a legitimate state secret. Nobody believes that Obama should declassify every last secret and never classify anything else ever again. Nor does anyone even assert that this particular lawsuit clearly involves no specific documents or portions of documents that might be legitimately subject to the privilege. Those are all transparent, moronic strawmen advanced by people who have no idea what they're talking about.

What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration's version of the States Secret privilege -- just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out -- was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn't be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ -- because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny -- and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama).

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/10/obama/

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GOP's new pledge

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Trial begins: Iraqi says he threw shoes at Bush to protest war

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush failed to apologize as his trial began today, and instead appealed defiantly to the pride of his war-ravaged country.

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush failed to apologize as his trial began today, and instead appealed defiantly to the pride of his war-ravaged country.

In his first public appearance since he was taken into custody on Dec. 14, Muntadhar al-Zeidi said he did not intend to harm Bush or to embarrass Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"What made me do it was the humiliation Iraq has been subjected to due to the U.S. occupation and the murder of innocent people," al-Zeidi said. "I wanted to restore the pride of the Iraqis in any way possible, apart from using weapons."

The 30-year-old journalist also alleged during his testimony to the three-judge panel that he was tortured while in jail - something the Iraqi government has denied.

Al-Zeidi, who's become a folk hero in Iraq and the rest of Middle East, was greeted by applause and cheers from supporters as he entered the courtroom in western Baghdad. His aunt handed him a scarf imprinted with a red, black and green Iraqi flag, which he kissed and draped around his neck.

The chief judge then threatened to order everybody out of the room if they didn't calm down. The trial was later adjourned until March 12.

Al-Zeidi has been in Iraqi custody since he was wrestled to the ground by guards and dragged away after the Dec. 14 outburst at Bush's joint news conference with al-Maliki in Baghdad.

When he threw the shoes, he shouted at Bush in Arabic: "This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008744543_apmliraq.html

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Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm: Day 3, the King Kong defense

Posted by Cory Doctorow

In Stockholm, the trial of The Pirate Bay continues to go well for Our Heroes. TorrentFreak has an account of Day 3, which included a motion to dismiss and the "King Kong" defense:

"EU directive 2000/31/EG says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don't initiate transfers. It's the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong," Samuelsson told the court.
"According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia," the lawyer added.

After the King Kong defense the court decided to adjourn the court case, which will continue tomorrow on day 4. Thus far, the trial is ahead of schedule.

Peter said that after today's proceedings they all went for some pizza, where they met the whole opposing side. He asked if they could pick up the check. "They refused," he said.

Day 3 - The Pirate Bay's 'King Kong' Defense

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Cheney and the goat devil

By MAUREEN DOWD

I was dubious about Will Ferrell doing his Bush impersonation one more time on Broadway.

As we lurch through the disasters bequeathed by W. -- the economy tanking, 17,000 more troops going to Afghanistan, Chrysler pleading for $9 billion -- would audiences still laugh at Ferrell's lovable fool of a president?

I was wrong. The audience for the Sunday matinee of "You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W Bush" howled in delight.

I asked Adam McKay, the former head writer of "Saturday Night Live" who directed and co-wrote the show with Ferrell, why people respond this way to one of the worst presidents ever.

"He's so clearly a neglected 13-year-old that there's something really kind of heartbreaking about him," McKay said, calling him "a good-time Charlie" who was "just used his whole life to front questionable business endeavors, and in a way that's what his presidency was.

"He doesn't have Cheney's cartoonish need for power and greed that's so off the charts you don't even understand how Cheney got that way. W. may have some awareness, deep down inside, sort of like a petulant teenager who just flunked the trig quiz and knows he screwed up. I think Cheney not only knows but is delighted with everything he did, as is Rumsfeld."

In the show, the former president dismisses waterboarding as a spa treatment at Bliss, and reveals that he did walk in on Cheney once in the basement of the White House locked in the amorous arms of a giant goat devil in a room full of pentagrams.

"He looked at me with solid silver glowing orb-like eyes, and his breath had a strong ammonia scent to it," Ferrell's W. said. "And he told me in a language that I knew in my heart hadn't been spoken in a thousand years 'Pariff Go Lanerff!' And I just ran."

One of the great mysteries of the Bush presidency is whether W. ever had an epiphany when he realized that he had been manipulated by Dick Cheney, whether it ever hit him that he had trusted the wrong father figure.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/400592_dowd19.html

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Judge Refuses to Dismiss Charges Against Blackwater Guards

By Del Quentin Wilber

A federal judge yesterday refused to throw out charges against five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in a busy Baghdad square in 2007.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina came in an early legal challenge brought by lawyers representing the guards, who worked at the time for Blackwater Worldwide. The guards' attorneys had argued that the government did not have jurisdiction to bring the charges.

The guards were indicted in December on federal charges of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using a firearm in a crime of violence in the controversial shooting in bustling Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. The government says the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians that day, killing 14 and wounding 20 in a blaze of bullets and grenade explosions.

The charges were brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, which allows U.S. prosecutors to charge American service members, their family members and those employed by the military for illegal acts committed overseas.

A 2004 amendment expanded the act to cover those working "in support" of Defense Department missions, a provision that prosecutors argue covers security contractors, such as Blackwater.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021701938.html

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US backtracks on pay caps to stop Wall Street exodus

by Tim Reid in Washington

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Downsizing

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Is Barack Obama A Free Thinker?

A REAL Wellness Take

By Donald B. Ardell

A recent Wall Street Journal article gave me reason to wonder if Barack Obama might be a closet free thinker, as I suspect was the case with JFK and even Abraham Lincoln. (There are a few articles and books that speculate on these two possibilities.) Like my above-mentioned suspected secret secular heroes, Obama seemingly goes along with traditional Christianity. He makes a practice, now and then, of exhibiting the requisite ritual piety (e.g., taking the oath of office with one hand resting on a famous bible, ending speeches with God bless America, attending prayer breakfasts and so on). After all, failure to do so would risk giving Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson and other deranged blasphemy law enthusiasts (who might welcome a new Inquisition) enough bait for a feeding frenzy of holy umbrage.

The author of the Wall Street article (Mark Tooley, "Where Will Obama Worship?" January 18, 2009, page W11), certainly did not portray Obama as a non-believer, let alone (to use a phrase coined by Sam Harris) a "fundamentalist atheist rationalist neo-humanistic secular militant," which I would prefer in a president. But, reading between the lines, my hopes were raised that he might be quite a skeptic if not a free thinker, even a personal god scoffer, like me. Here are excerpts from the Tooley piece, with a few added notes of my own, that relate to my suspicions about Obama as a closet free thinker.

* Mr. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, was a spiritual seeker drawn to many religions, thus she had to know that all of them could not be true. She was looking around, trying to sort out the BS and find something that made sense. Maybe her son observed some of this questioning.

* Mr. Obama's maternal grandparents were Unitarians. I don't have to tell you that these people have more in common with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens than Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson or Ted Haggart.

* Mr. Obama's early Chicago activism took him to Trinity, a black congregation within the United Church of Christ. The UCC is arguably America's most liberal mainline Protestant denomination.

* Trinity is known for its social liberalism -- on issues of gay rights and abortion rights.

* Mr. Obama seems to share the cool rationalism of the UCC's liberal New England roots...Talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about his faith in 2004, he cited his "suspicion of dogma" and of "the hazards of having too much certainty" and said he preferred "a dose of doubt in religion."

* Mr. Obama has deflected questions about prayer, Jesus and the afterlife.

* Mr. Obama has defined sin as being out of alignment with my values.

* Mr. Obama seems accustomed to the UCC's minimal use of ritual.

And far from least but for now last of my points supporting Obama's skepticism about orthodox religion was the revolutionary phrase in his Inaugural Address that Paul Levinson called "the single most daring words in that speech." That, of course, was the reference to "Americans of all faiths and no faith." (Paul Levinson, "The Most Revolutionary Phrase of Obama's Inaugural Address," Open Salon.com, January 20, 2009.) Levinson saw this statement as reflecting a "profound inclusionary quality in President Obama's vision, a revolutionary acknowledgement by an American president that non-believers are citizens, too."

http://tpjmagazine.us/ardell15

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Study: Bio-fuels may actually be accelerating global warming

by Agence France-Presse

CHICAGO (AFP) – The use of crop-based biofuels could speed up rather than slow down global warming by fueling the destruction of rainforests, scientists warned Saturday.

Once heralded as the answer to oil, biofuels have become increasingly controversial because of their impact on food prices and the amount of energy it takes to produce them.

They could also be responsible for pumping far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they could possibly save as a replacement for fossil fuels, according to a study released Saturday.

"If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks," warned Holly Gibbs, of Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

Gibbs studied satellite photos of the tropics from 1980 to 2000 and found that half of new cropland came from intact rainforests and another 30 percent from disturbed forests.

"When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide," Gibbs said.

For high-yield crops like sugar cane it would take 40 to 120 years to pay back this carbon debt.

For lower yield crops like corn or soybeans it would take 300 to 1,500 years, she told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Biofuels have caused alarm because of how quickly production has been growing: Global ethanol production increased by four times and biodiesel by 10 times between 2000 and 2007," Gibbs said.

"Moreover, agricultural subsidies in Indonesia and in the United States are providing added incentives to increase production of these crops."

Gibbs estimates that anywhere from a third to two thirds of recent deforestation could be as a result of the increased demand for biofuels, but said an increased demand for food and feed also play a major role.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Study_Biofuels_may_actually_be_accelerating_0214.html

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Obama's top-shelf tastes

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Obama follows some of Bush's footsteps

By HELEN THOMAS

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is already back-tracking on some of his high-road campaign stands and is copying some of former President George Bush's dubious policies.

A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration invoked the controversial state secrets act in the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian native, and four other detainees. They claimed they were victims of the Bush administration's rendition program under which terrorism suspects were secretly taken to other countries where, they say, they were tortured.

The Bush administration's position has been that the case should be dismissed because even courtroom discussion of their treatment could threaten national security.

When the case was heard earlier this month before a panel of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges sitting in San Francisco, the Obama administration made the same argument.

One judge asked the Justice Department lawyer if the change in administrations had any bearing on the case.

"No, your honor," came the reply.

According to The New York Times, "even the judges on the panel seemed surprised by the administration's decision to go forward" with the same argument.

That's not "change," the theme of the Obama presidential election campaign. It's more of the same.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/400555_thomasonline19.html

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Obama’s Afghan Trap

President Barack Obama on Monday night held his first prime-time news conference. When questioned on Afghanistan, he replied, "This is going to be a big challenge." He also was asked whether he would change the Pentagon policy banning the filming and photographing of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he was reviewing it. The journalist who asked the question pointed out that it was Joe Biden several years ago who accused the Bush administration of suppressing the images to avoid public furor over the deaths of U.S. service members. Now Vice President Joe Biden predicts that a surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan will mean more U.S. casualties: "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be. There will be an uptick."

Meanwhile, the Associated Press recently cited a classified report drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommending a shift in strategy from democracy-building in Afghanistan to attacking alleged Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

And the campaign has clearly begun. Days after his inauguration, Obama's first (known) military actions were two missile strikes inside Pakistan's frontier province, reportedly killing 22 people, including women and children.

Cherif Bassiouni has spent years going back and forth to Afghanistan. He is a professor of law at DePaul University and the former United Nations human rights investigator in Afghanistan. In 2005, he was forced out of the United Nations under pressure from the Bush administration, days after he released a report accusing the U.S. military and private contractors of committing human rights abuses. I asked Bassiouni about Obama's approach to Afghanistan. He told me: "There is no military solution in Afghanistan. There is an economic-development solution, but I don't see that coming. ... Right now, the population has nothing to gain by supporting the U.S. and NATO. It has everything to gain by being supportive of the Taliban."

Bassiouni's scathing 2005 U.N. report accused the U.S. military and private military contractors of "forced entry into homes, arrest and detention of nationals and foreigners without legal authority or judicial review, sometimes for extended periods of time, forced nudity, hooding and sensory deprivation, sleep and food deprivation, forced squatting and standing for long periods of time in stress positions, sexual abuse, beatings, torture, and use of force resulting in death."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090210_obamas_afghan_trap/

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Why does Obama want to kill my daddy in Afghanistan?

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Our enimy

http://www.pbfcomics.com

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This column will change your life

Can years of wisdom be boiled down to a slogan?

by Oliver Burkeman

When I asked my 85-year-old grandmother if there were ways in which old age had brought her increased happiness, she immediately mentioned how easy it is to get rid of telemarketers. "I'm in my 80s!" she enjoyed scolding a man from TalkTalk the other day, thereby implying it wouldn't be worth his while explaining what "broadband internet" meant. My grandmother knows exactly what broadband is.

But she hadn't really answered my question. I'd been hoping for something profound: a life-lesson born of experience. Maybe the notion that old people are wiser - and consequently happier - is a wishful desire to believe there is an upside to ageing. Still, it's the driving force behind numerous recent works in which the old are pestered for advice - most famously the bestseller Tuesdays With Morrie - and also the book that prompted my grandmother-interrogating: Henry Alford's How To Live, a marvellous new memoir-cum-advice guide based on conversations with oldsters.

There are problems, though, with hunting for distilled insights from the old. First, it's horribly self-selecting. As research, Alford read a book entitled 80, comprising interviews with 80 famous 80-year-olds - but all he discovered was famous people's opinions on how to live. Perhaps others approached life similarly, but encountered only mediocrity, and never got interviewed for books? Or perhaps they followed a different approach and were happier, but not famous. ("To read 80 interviews given by primarily affluent white Americans," Alford writes, "is to have the prescription 'Do something that you love' beaten into your head until you're ready to maim a small animal.")

Second, while there's mounting evidence that older is indeed wiser, it may not be the kind of wisdom easily boiled down to a slogan. Except in cases of dementia, a 2008 review of the academic research found, the typical problems of the older brain - slower reactions, declining short-term memory - may be side-effects of something positive. Age widens the focus of attention: older people presented with problem-solving tests go slower, but do better; they weigh more data, consider more possibilities, and place them in a broader context of experience. Is it any wonder that takes longer? The neurobiologist Lawrence Katz defines wisdom as "a dense and rich network of associations developed through a lifetime of experiences". You can't express such wisdom aphoristically: it is, precisely, the wisdom to know that life's too nuanced to be summarised on a fridge magnet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/14/elderly-people-health-wellbeing

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How the Crash Will Reshape America

The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America's economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

by Richard Florida

My father was a child of the Great Depression. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1921 to Italian immigrant parents, he experienced the economic crisis head-on. He took a job working in an eyeglass factory in the city's Ironbound section in 1934, at age 13, combining his wages with those of his father, mother, and six siblings to make a single-family income. When I was growing up, he spoke often of his memories of breadlines, tent cities, and government-issued clothing. At Christmas, he would tell my brother and me how his parents, unable to afford new toys, had wrapped the same toy steam shovel, year after year, and placed it for him under the tree. In my extended family, my uncles occupied a pecking order based on who had grown up in the roughest economic circumstances. My Uncle Walter, who went on to earn a master's degree in chemical engineering and eventually became a senior executive at Colgate-Palmolive, came out on top—not because of his academic or career achievements, but because he grew up with the hardest lot.

My father's experiences were broadly shared throughout the country. Although times were perhaps worst in the declining rural areas of the Dust Bowl, every region suffered, and the residents of small towns and big cities alike breathed in the same uncertainty and distress. The Great Depression was a national crisis—and in many ways a nationalizing event. The entire country, it seemed, tuned in to President Roosevelt's fireside chats.

The current economic crisis is unlikely to result in the same kind of shared experience. To be sure, the economic contraction is causing pain just about everywhere. In October, less than a month after the financial markets began to melt down, Moody's Investor Services published an assessment of recent economic activity within 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Three hundred and two were already in deep recession, and 64 more were at risk. Only 15 areas were still expanding. Notable among them were the oil- and natural-resource-rich regions of Texas and Oklahoma, buoyed by energy prices that have since fallen; and the Greater Washington, D.C., region, where government bailouts, the nationalization of financial companies, and fiscal expansion are creating work for lawyers, lobbyists, political scientists, and government contractors.

No place in the United States is likely to escape a long and deep recession. Nonetheless, as the crisis continues to spread outward from New York, through industrial centers like Detroit, and into the Sun Belt, it will undoubtedly settle much more heavily on some places than on others. Some cities and regions will eventually spring back stronger than before. Others may never come back at all. As the crisis deepens, it will permanently and profoundly alter the country's economic landscape. I believe it marks the end of a chapter in American economic history, and indeed, the end of a whole way of life.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200903/meltdown-geography

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Republicans try to block Guantánamo detainees from prisons in their districts

Party members in Congress introduce legislation seeking to prevent inmates from being held near their electorates

by Daniel Nasaw in Washington

Republicans in at least six states are seeking to block the White House from transferring Guantánamo Bay detainees to their districts, in what critics call an effort to stymie Barack Obama's efforts to close the prison.

Congressional Republicans have introduced bills that would bar the government from moving any of the 250 inmates to some of the most prominent military and civilian detention centres in the US, including a "supermax" high-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado, which holds at least 16 convicted international terrorists, and a South Carolina naval brig that holds the only enemy combatant jailed in America.

Obama, who signed an executive order during his first week as president to shut the six-year-old facility, has yet to release plans for the suspected terrorists who remain there. Critics say the pre-emptive legislation and media campaigns from Republicans – and at least one Democrat – are intended to defend George Bush's legacy against those who claim the prison has damaged America's standing in the world and has become a recruiting symbol for terrorists.

Last week, 20 Texas Republicans sent a letter to Obama urging him not to send Guantánamo detainees to their state. Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator, aims to keep detainees out of a military prison there, and an Arizona Republican has filed legislation that would prevent detainees from being shipped to federal civilian or military prisons.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/16/guantanamo-republicans-prisons

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