Will YouTube be the Craigslist of TV News?

By Adam Clayton Powell III

 

BOSTON -- Watch that space: YouTube video news is here, tailored just for you, featuring news of your microlocal neighborhood, just for you.

If you haven't seen it, YouTube News Near You is an automated microlocal news service, with software detecting a your location and matching it with video news stories from that neighborhood. Turn on, tune in, and drop out of the six o'clock local TV news.

So far the story selection is pretty limited. Think of YouTube's new local news service as 2009's version of the "Camel News Caravan," NBC's 15-minute nightly newscast of the early 1950's, hop scotching your neighborhood for headlines. But five decades ago, John Cameron Swayze soon gave way to Huntley and Brinkley, and modern NBC television news was born. YouTube news could evolve really quickly in the next few years, or the next few months, especially as YouTube signs up local television and newspaper newsrooms around the country as video-providing partners.

And please note YouTube news is launched by Google, which dominates search advertising. YouTube news will drill down and let Google deliver ads tuned to microlocal neighborhoods, because viewers are already tagged by their location. It's easy to imagine Google adding viewer self-selection to enable specifying which neighborhood (or neighborhoods) you want delivered to your computer: self-identification by nine-digit zip code. Now microlocal online ads start to really make sense, because advertisers can pinpoint exactly where viewers are. Coming soon to your computer: ads for momandpopstore.com

Viewers will also be able to self-select in other ways. Embedded in the very structure of YouTube is self-selection driven by choices you make. You clicked on three stories about traffic? Here's another – and a local political candidate's ad touting his proposals to ease traffic congestion. You liked that clip on the fire down the street? People who liked that story also liked this one, too... and by the way Amazon has a sale on fire extinguishers if you order on line in the next five minutes.

Sound farfetched? Not at all: News Near You went mainstream in The New York Times this week. But last month there were reports in the blogosphere noting YouTube's approach to publishers asking to become a "YouTube news partner." One blog included the text of the pitch from YouTube, complete with five benefits, from larger audiences and increased revenue to detailed demographic analyses, for free, of the people who play their videos. News Near You is snuggling much closer to you than you may have expected.

http://communicationleadershipblog.uscannenberg.org/2009/08/will-youtube-be-the-craigslist.html

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Protesters in Ybor City drown out health care summit on Obama's proposal

By Adam C. Smith

TAMPA — Bitter divisions over reforming America's health care system exploded Thursday night in Tampa amid cat calls, jeering and shoving at a town hall meeting.

"Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny!" dozens of people shouted as U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, struggled to talk about health insurance reforms under consideration in Washington, D.C.

"There is more consensus than there is disagreement when you get right down to it,'' Castor offered, immediately drowned out by groans and boos.

She pressed on, mostly unheard among screams from the audience estimated by Tampa police to be about 1,500.

"Tell the truth! Tell the truth!" "Read the bill!" "Forty-million illegals! Forty million illegals!"

The spectacle at the Children's Board in Ybor City sounded more like a wrestling cage match than a panel discussion on national policy, and it was just the latest example of a health care meeting disrupted by livid protesters. Similar scenes are likely to be repeated across the country as lawmakers head to their home districts for the summer recess.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article1025529.ece

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A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

by JAMES A. HAUGHT

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its "coalition of the willing" to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush's call and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn't comply with Bush's request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to "turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws," and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, "and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: "When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass." France's La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline "A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog." But other news media missed the amazing report.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5

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Sincerely, John Hughes

by alisonbf

I was babysitting for my mom's friend Kathleen's daughter the night I wrote that first fan letter to John Hughes. I can literally remember the yellow grid paper, the blue ball point pen and sitting alone in the dim light in the living room, the baby having gone to bed.

I poured my heart out to John, told him about how much the movie mattered to me, how it made me feel like he got what it was like to be a teenager and to feel misunderstood.

(I felt misunderstood.)

I sent the letter and a month or so later I received a package in the mail with a form letter welcoming me as an "official" member of The Breakfast Club, my reward a strip of stickers with the cast in the now famous pose.

I was irate.

I wrote back to John, explaining in no uncertain terms that, excuse me, I just poured my fucking heart out to you and YOU SENT ME A FORM LETTER.

That was just not going to fly.

He wrote back.

"This is not a form letter. The other one was. Sorry. Lots of requests. You know what I mean. I did sign it."

He wrote back and told me that he was sorry, that he liked my letter and that it meant a great deal to him. He loved knowing that his words and images resonated with me and people my age. He told me he would say hi to everyone on my behalf.

"No, I really will. Judd will be pleased you think he's sexy. I don't."

I asked him if he would be my pen pal.

He said yes.

"I'd be honored to be your pen pal. You must understand at times I won't be able to get back to you as quickly as I might want to. If you'll agree to be patient, I'll be your pen pal."


For two years (1985-1987), John Hughes and I wrote letters back and forth. He told me - in long hand black felt tip pen on yellow legal paper - about life on a film set and about his family. I told him about boys, my relationship with my parents and things that happened to me in school. He laughed at my teenage slang and shared the 129 question Breakfast Club trivia test I wrote (with the help of my sister) with the cast, Ned Tanen (the film's producer) and DeDe Allen (the editor). He cheered me on when I found a way around the school administration's refusal to publish a "controversial" article I wrote for the school paper. And he consoled me when I complained that Mrs. Garstka didn't appreciate my writing.

"As for your English teacher…Do you like the way you write? Please yourself. I'm rather fond of writing. I actually regard it as fun. Do it frequently and see if you can't find the fun in it that I do."

He made me feel like what I said mattered.

http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html

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EVERYONE HATES THE COPS

by Ted Rall

After Professor Gates, Why Pretend?

NEW YORK--The current national conversation about race and the police reminded me about an incident that occurred when I was in Uzbekistan. As I walked into an apartment complex for an appointment I noticed the decomposing body of a man lying on the side of the road.

"How long as he been there?" I asked my host.

"Three, maybe four days," he said.

"What happened to him?"

"Shot, maybe," he shrugged. "Or maybe hit by a car. Something."

I didn't bother to ask why no one had called the police. I knew. Calling the Uzbek militsia amounts to a request to be beaten, robbed or worse. So desperate to avoid interaction with the police was another man I met that, when his mother died of old age at their home in Tashkent, he drove her body to the outskirts of town and deposited her in a field.

With the exception of New Orleans after Katrina, it's not that bad here in the United States. Consider Professor Henry Louis Gates: he shouldn't have been arrested by that Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer, but he came out of the experience physically unscathed.

Nevertheless, the Gates incident has illuminated some basic, strange assumptions about our society. Cops think they have a constitutional right to be treated deferentially. And black people think cops are nice to white people.

Yeah, well, take it from a white guy: we don't like cops either.

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

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Hmmm....Looks Familiar

by Drew Friedman

 

I've been trying to avoid this all week, aside from addressing it on Facebook, but it doesn't seem to be going away. The image of Obama as The Joker has been popping up on posters in Los Angeles and has managed to get a lot of media attention, including today's LA Times:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/obama-bush-and-the-joker-cultural-double-standard.html

Most of the articles and blogs have also mentioned that I did an image of George W. Bush as the joker last year for Vanity Fair Online. Some of the news outlets, (Fox News, etc), have asked me for my feelings about it all, why the left never made a peep about the Bush image being over the top, but are now complaining that the Obama image is "racist", and insensitive.  I've basically dismissed it by quoting the standard, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and "Great minds think alike", but I finally decided to bring it up here. My image was done the week the Batman movie came out, and I think works well using the analogy of the Joker, an agent of chaos, destruction and death, all the while  laughing through it all, as Bush, seemingly laughing and unmoved through the destruction reaped by his war in Iraq. The Obama/Joker image just doesn't work as satire, humor or anything else. You can put the white face Joker makeup on any celebrity or politician and you'd have a provocative, negative image, but beyond that, what's the actual point? What does being a supposed Socialist have to do with The Joker?


The best thing that came out of all this is that I got a great quote for the back cover of my upcoming anthology from Rush Limbaugh, who called my illustration of Bush, "of low artistic quality".

Such an honor!

http://drawger.com/drewfriedman/?article_id=8462

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Age in which letters are old-fashioned takes toll on Postal Service

Residents of retirement home remember a different day

 

By Joe Burris

 

As the U.S. Postal Service considers closing hundreds of post offices nationwide to save money, one question looms, especially for those 25 and younger: Who'd notice?

During her freshman year at the University of Virginia, Kaitlyn McDowell enjoyed receiving the occasional letter with a care package from younger cousins.

Beyond that, though, the 19-year-old from Ellicott City mostly corresponds by e-mail, text messaging and social networking, like many of her generation.

"It's easier. You don't have to go through the trouble of getting stamps, writing the letter, sealing it and taking it to the post office," said McDowell.

The paperless preferences of McDowell and her peers reflect a generational shift from a time when letter writing was a preferred form of communication. It's one of the reasons the U.S. Postal Service, which has projected a net loss of more than $7 billion at the end of this fiscal year, is considering closing hundreds of post offices.

The postal service says that third-quarter mail volume is down 7 billion pieces, or 14 percent, compared with a year ago - the largest consecutive third-quarter drop in total volume since 1971. To offset the resulting budget crunch, officials are also considering discontinuing Saturday deliveries and eliminating some classes of stamps. They say that some collection boxes are already being removed from city streets, in part because they contain just 25 or fewer pieces of mail within a given period.

Yet for many twentysomethings and teens who have grown up on digital media, post offices and collection boxes are about as vital as pay phones.

 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-md.pa.lettersaug07,0,5960461.story

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Part 7 of 10 Psychiatry - Making a Killing with Dr. Rima Laibow & G. Edward Griffen By CCHR

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Hey, Amazon: Keep your ads out of our books!

By Danny Westneat

Recently Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was asked whether he still reads books on paper, what the techies call "physical books."

"I kind of am grumpy when I am forced to read a physical book," Bezos replied. "Because it's

not as convenient ... You can't turn the page with one hand. The book is always flopping itself shut at the wrong moment.

"It's had a great 500-year run ... but it's time to change."

Uh oh. I like Amazon — the ease and price of its service, and, at least in the past, its corporate principles. Like the time in 2006 it fought the U.S. government's subpoena to sift through the book-buying records of 24,000 of its customers.

But lately I've got to say: Jeff, you're making me grumpy.

I am one of those annoying book junkies. I've been in the same book club for 15 years. Paper or pixel, it doesn't make much difference to us. I tried to describe what does matter to me when Amazon put out its e-book reader, the Kindle, in 2007:

"Books are our last private refuge," I wrote. "They're analog. Stand-alone. Other than talking with my wife late at night, reading a book is about the last form of communication I do that doesn't involve logging on to some collective network."

Which is why U.S. Patent Application No. 20090171750 is so irksome.

It was filed last month by three Amazon technologists. It's a system for embedding ads in books. Both in special-run print books and in what is said to be the future of all reading, e-books on devices such as the Kindle.

There could be full-page ads. Ads in the book's margins. Ads that open when you click on them. Ads individualized to you the reader. And ads pinned to what the book is about.

"For instance, if the requested content includes a novel taking place in Europe, the advertisements may include information about European hotels, resorts, etc.," the Amazon patent application reads.

Or: "If a paragraph ... describes a sports competition, the content manager may place a sports equipment advertisement, such as an ad for a sports shoe, on the left or right margin closest to the paragraph describing the sports event."

This idea has launched a cottage industry of jokes pairing ads with your favorite books. "Catcher in the Rye," brought to you by Clearasil. "Lord of the Flies," sponsored by Parenting Magazine. "

The Grapes of Wrath," made possible by the La Leche League.

We laugh as a way of saying: Amazon, what are you thinking?

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/109393-hey-amazon-keep-your-ads-out-of-our-books/

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The hidden truth behind drug company profits

Ring-fencing medical knowledge is one of the great grotesqueries of our age

by Johann Hari

This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations – but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents – and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it.

To understand this tale, we have to start with an apparent mystery. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been correctly warning for months that if swine flu spreads to the poorest parts of the world, it could cull hundreds of thousands of people – or more. Yet they have also been telling the governments of the poor world not to go ahead and produce as much Tamiflu – the only drug we have to reduce the symptoms, and potentially save lives – as they possibly can.

In the answer to this whodunnit, there lies a much bigger story about how our world works today.

Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist – and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels – is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes.

Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive, but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, then they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years. Nobody else can make it.

Although it's not the goal of the individuals working within the system, the outcome is often deadly. The drug companies who owned the patent for Aids drugs went to court to stop the post-Apartheid government of South Africa producing generic copies of it – which are just as effective – for $100 a year to save their dying citizens. They wanted them to pay the full $10,000 a year to buy the branded version – or nothing. In the poor world, the patenting system every day puts medicines beyond the reach of sick people.

This is where the solution to the swine flu mystery comes in. Ordinary democratic citizens were so disgusted by the attempt to deprive South Africa of life-saving medicine that public pressure won a small concession in the global trading rules. It was agreed that, in an overwhelming public health emergency, poor countries would be allowed to produce generic drugs. They are the exact same product, but without the brand name – or the fat patent payments to drug companies in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

So under the new rules, the countries of the poor world should be entitled to start making as much generic Tamiflu as they want. There are companies across India and China who say they are raring to go. But Roche – the drug company that owns the patent – doesn't want the poor world making cheaper copies for themselves. They want people to buy the branded version, from which they receive profits. Although not obliged to, they have licensed a handful of companies in the developing world to make the treatment – but they have to pay for license, and they can't possibly meet the demand.

And the WHO seems to be backing Roche – against the rest of us. They are the ones best qualified to judge what constitutes an overwhelming emergency, justifying a breaching of the patent rules. And their message is: Don't use the loophole.

Professor Brook Baker, an expert on drug patenting, says: "Why do they behave like this? Because of direct or indirect pressure from the pharmaceutical companies. It's shocking."

What will be the end-result? James Love, director of Knowledge Economy International, which campaigns against the current patenting system, says: "Poor countries are not as prepared as they could have been. If there's a pandemic, the number of people who die will be much greater than it had to be. Much greater. It's horrible."

The argument in defence of this system offered by Big Pharma is simple, and sounds reasonable at first: we need to charge large sums for "our" drugs so we can develop more life-saving medicines. We want to develop as many treatments as we can, and we can only do that if we have revenue. A lot of the research we back doesn't result in a marketable drug, so it's an expensive process.

But a detailed study by Dr Marcia Angell, the former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, says that only 14 per cent of their budgets go on developing drugs – usually at the uncreative final part of the drug-trail. The rest goes on marketing and profits. And even with that puny 14 per cent, drug companies squander a fortune developing "me-too" drugs – medicines that do exactly the same job as a drug that already exists, but has one molecule different, so they can take out a new patent, and receive another avalanche of profits.

As a result, the US Government Accountability Office says that far from being a font of innovation, the drug market has become "stagnant". They spend virtually nothing on the diseases that kill the most human beings, like malaria, because the victims are poor, so there's hardly any profit to be sucked out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-hidden-truth-behind-drug-company-profits-1767257.html

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Remembering Woodstock

Bryan Thomas's Photos - Woodstock 1969

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Liberals' birther obsession: It's the left-wing, not the GOP, that's pumping up the story

By James Kirchick

You could be forgiven for thinking that a serious campaign is afoot - aided and abetted by the national Republican Party - to question Barack Obama's citizenship. Over the past two weeks, an inordinate amount of news coverage has been afforded to "birthers," conspiracy theorists who claim that the President was not born in Hawaii, as his birth records indicate, but in Kenya.

It is not Obama's right-wing opponents, however, who are devoting the most attention to this obscure, Internet-driven "movement," if one can even use that label to describe such a paranoid groupuscule. Rather, it's liberals, bent on portraying their conservative opponents as extremists - and changing the subject to help a President under increasing scrutiny for the substance of his policies - who are driving this story.

Making the rounds in the propagation of this meme is a deceptively edited video produced by far-left Web site FireDogLake, in which an interviewer chases Republican congressmen around the Capitol asking if they believe Obama is a natural-born citizen. Some respond in the affirmative while others ignore the questioner, and it is this latter handful that liberals have proffered as evidence that the GOP is "fearful" of disparaging its "birther base."

But the refusal of Republican congressmen to answer questions from a Michael Moore wanna-be is understandable; public figures are frequently accosted on the street by crazy people and amateur propagandists wielding cameras. In fact, it was later revealed that one of the supposedly fearful Republicans running from the camera's glare was a Democrat late for a vote.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/08/05/2009-08-05_liberals_birther_obsession.html#ixzz0NVfB8ZIv

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Judge clears way for dinosaur park to be seized

by Kris Wernowsky

A federal judge has cleared the way for the government's seizure of a creationism theme park in Pensacola owned by a couple convicted of tax fraud.

A ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers states that the nine properties that make up Dinosaur Adventure Land as well as two bank accounts associated with the park will be used to satisfy $430,400 owed to the federal government.

Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, is serving 10 years in federal prison for failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $470,000 in employee taxes.

He was found guilty in November 2006 on 58 counts, including failure to pay employee taxes and making threats against investigators.

The conviction culminated 17 years of Hovind sparring with the IRS. Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property.

Hovind is incarcerated at the Edgefield Federal Correction Institution in South Carolina.

His wife, Jo, also was sentenced to a year in federal prison for her role in the tax fraud. She's currently jailed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna.

Rodgers' 16-page order released late Thursday gives the government the green light to divide up the nine properties in and around the 5800 block of North Palafox Street and begin to sell them until the $430,400 forfeiture amount is satisfied.

http://www.pnj.com/article/20090801/NEWS01/908010317

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Crazy ex-girlfriend

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Radio Chazerei

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Murdoch papers to charge for websites by 2010

By Stephen Foley

The days of being able to read newspapers for free on the internet are coming to a close, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch signaled, as he promised The Times and The Sun would begin charging for access to their websites within months.

In a sweeping rethink of how the beleaguered newspaper industry operates, the News Corporation founder declared that quality journalism must come at a price.

"We will be platform neutral, but never free," Mr. Murdoch told investors, moments after revealing that plunging revenues from his newspapers had helped push the company into the red. With newspaper advertising collapsing, "the drumbeat for change" is only growing louder, he said. "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good journalism."

The plan to charge for online news is being hatched by a team of Mr. Murdoch's senior lieutenants, including his son James, and Rebekah Wade, the editor of The Sun who is moving up to become head of News International, the newspaper division that controls the company's four British titles.

And it could also mean the start of charges to access Sky News on the internet, Rupert Murdoch signaled last night. The same online strategy will be adopted at News Corp's US businesses, which include the Fox News cable channel and The New York Post newspaper.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/murdoch-papers-to-charge-for-websites-by-2010-1767981.html

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Lying about Iraq made me quit, press officer claims

By Kim Sengupta

Having to peddle "government lies" about the safety of soldiers in Iraq led to a Ministry of Defence press officer suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, an employment tribunal will hear.

John Salisbury-Baker will claim that he suffered "intolerable stress" through having to "defend the morally indefensible" when responding to media inquiries about the ability of army vehicles such as the "Snatch" Land Rover to protect soldiers.

Mr Salisbury-Baker, 62, says he found it impossible to support the official line on deaths and injuries after seeing the suffering of soldiers' families. After 11 years of service at Imphal Barracks near York, he could no longer keep working and is taking legal action against the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The case takes place amid accusations over the government's attempts to claw back compensation from two injured soldiers, as well as a rising toll of casualties from improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.

Mr Salisbury-Baker's partner, Christine Brook, said: "John is an honest, sensitive and moral person, and having to peddle government lies that soldiers in vehicles such as the Snatch Land Rovers were safe from roadside bombs made him stressed.

"He was particularly plagued by the thought that some of the bereaved families he was visiting might have previously believed their loved ones were safe, because of what he himself had said to the media.

"He felt responsible. He has been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by his doctor and is pursuing a claim for disability discrimination, on the grounds that the stress of what he was being asked to do effectively made him disabled."

Mr Salisbury-Baker will say that about 30 per cent of soldiers killed in Iraq came from the area in which he was working. Ms Brook said his job "was to visit families just hours after an officer had called to tell them the news that their loved ones were dead." He provided a "media shield" to help them deal with the press interest.

"He helped more than a dozen families through this traumatic time, whereas I believe the officers deployed to give the bad news to families only had this duty once, with the role passed on to someone else the next time," she said. "He sometimes attended funerals at the same church on more than one occasion."

Ms Brook claimed that the MoD had failed to give her partner training on how to cope with the stress of dealing with the bereaved and this had contributed to his illness.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lying-about-iraq-made-me-quit-press-officer-claims-1767353.html

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Push for the Kucinich Amendment and Keep Single Payer Alive

By Siobhan Kolar

The people started lining up an hour early in Aurora, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago and not a hotbed of radical socialism, to hear Representative Dennis Kucinich talk about HR 676, the single payer bill he co-authored with John Conyers. "Hastert Country" recently turned blue with the election of Democrat Bill Foster, but conservative ideas still dominate. But people want to know about healthcare. Two fiftyish white women said their pastor told them to attend. Another woman stood on the edge and left, telling one organizer, "I think you are really on the wrong track" and others discussed their viewpoints in small knots in the hallway.

It was a real grassroots event with details coming together at the last minute and the speakers' list growing as Rep. Mary Flowers and Rep. Mike Boland, two primary sponsors of Illinois single payer bill HB311, joined single payer speakers, antiwar activists, representatives of labor and Greens.

What drew them together was the belief that single payer was the answer, and the desire to hear Dennis Kucinich, co-author with John Conyers of HR 676, the single payer bill that would make healthcare available to all at a huge cost savings because 1/3 of every healthcare dollar going to insurance companies would now go to healthcare. The bill currently has 86 sponsors. Kucinich believes that the time for HR 676 is coming and that the movement has to build nationally and state by state.

On the bill in the House, Kucinich told the 300 plus crowd, "Let me be clear, I am not here in support of HR 3200," he said "because it keeps insurance companies in the game." Kucinich said that when he and John Conyers wrote the single-payer bill they viewed healthcare for all as the next civil rights struggle.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44975

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Health Care Reform Sell-Out: Why Obama and the Democrats are Either Shysters or Idiots

by dlindorff

As I wrote months ago in an article titled America's Stupid Health Care Debate: Keeping Some Ideas Off the Table and several subsequent pieces on my website, President Obama and the Democrats who currently run Congress have been hoist on their own collective petard by their craven and gutless refusal to consider adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system to finance health care in the US, or simply to expand Medicare, which is a successful single- payer program, to cover everyone, instead of just people over 65 and the disabled.

Instead, because they are the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars in legal (and probably plenty of illegal) bribes from the health care industry, they have cobbled together a "reform" in name only, which preserves not just the central role of the vampire-like health insurance industry, but also ensures the continued rapacious profitability of the other segments of the medical-industrial complex—the hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and the specialist doctors.

Now, like Hillary and Bill Clinton before them, these weasels and slimeballs who pose as the people's advocates are left with nothing but a Potemkin Health Plan that looks on the outside lie a reform, but that changes little or nothing, leaves vast numbers of Americans uninsured, forces tens of millions to buy crappy plans from private companies, and that will end up doing nothing to halt the continuing rise in health care costs that is bankrupting the people, employers and the country.

Nice going guys!

Let's for a moment consider what could have happened.

Medicare, which is wildly popular among seniors and the disabled according to every poll I've seen, currently covers 45 million of the highest-cost segment of this country's 300 million people—its elderly and its permanently disabled. It does this at a cost of $484 billion.

Now that's a heck of a lot of money—about 13% of the federal budget—but it's money well spent. We're talking about our parents and grandparents here, and because they're all covered by a government single-payer plan that pays virtually all of their doctors' and hospital bills, we don't have to pay those bills for them out of our own pockets. Okay, there are problems—the drug industry managed during the Bush/Cheney dark ages to get a prescription drug law passed that bars Medicare from negotiating group discounts for drugs, and that has added enormous rip-off costs to the program, but that's just another example of corporate scamming of the system that needs to be fixed. The important point that needs to be made is that according to Medicare analysts, 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries account for fully two –thirds of the total annual cost of Medicare.

What that tells you is that the cost of treating that 10% of the elderly is $320 billion, while the healthier 90% of the elderly—roughly 40 billion people--only cost $160 billion a year to care for.

Now, given that the rest of the population under 65—about 255 million people—need on average far less care than the 90% of seniors who are in that lower-cost group, extending care to them all would clearly cost less than $1 trillion. Add in the cost of the 10% of high-cost elderly, and you've got a total bill of $1.34 trillion to care for everyone in America.

That's a big number, but now you need to subtract out the total cost of Medicaid—the crappy program that, primarily funded by the states through income and sales taxes—pays for the crappy care of the poor. That would be about $400 billion in 2009. So now we're down to $944 billion to care for all Americans. But from that we need to subtract the cost of Veterans health care—another successful single-payer program that already cares for veterans (or at least some of them—it's grossly underfunded). If we had a single-payer system for all, we could just fold the Veterans Hospital system into the national program. That would mean eliminating another $100 billion that would be saved (because remember, we calculated that original expanded Medicare budget for covering all 300 million of us. So now we're down to an annual budget of $844 billion for a single-payer program to cover all Americans. Finally there is uncompensated care provided by hospitals to those 47 million Americans who have no health insurance but who don't qualify for Medicaid. This care is funded in two ways—one by state and county revenues, which come out of state income and sales taxes and also out of local property taxes, and the other is in the form of higher hospital charges and insurance premiums and Medicare costs for the rest of us. Uncompensated care is estimated to cost about $200 billion, all of which would be eliminated if we had a single-payer plan for all.

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/351

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MODEST MOUSE PREMIERS HEATH LEDGER DIRECTED VIDEO

The Heath Ledger-directed video for Modest Mouse's "King Rat" premiered today, over 18 months after the Academy Award-winning actor passed away tragically at the age of 28. The blueprint for the video was mapped out at the time of Ledger's death but the animation itself was unfinished, so the Masses, a film and music company that Ledger was a partner in, completed Ledger's vision with the "King Rat" video. Keeping with the spirit of the video, proceeds from when the video is purchased on iTunes will benefit the non-profit marine life organization Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for the next month. The video hits iTunes August 7th.

 

http://seattlefilmandmusic.wordpress.com/

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A NEW LIFE: Journalists on how they reinvented themselves - Part 1 - ME Sprengelmeyer, from Washington correspondent to weekly newspaper owner

by ME Sprengelmeyer - Former Washington correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News

 

(Photo by Mark Holm)

I shed tears twice this year.

On Feb. 26, 2009, there wasn't a dry eye in the Rocky Mountain News newsroom after we got word that we'd be working on the paper's final deadline – just weeks short of its 150th birthday.

It meant the loss of Colorado's oldest business and oldest friend. And for a couple hundred great journalists, it meant the end of something really special. The Rocky was not your typical big-city paper. It had a soul.

John might not like this, but I always thought the alternative weekly Westword absolutely nailed it with a May 25, 2006, description of the two Denver papers.

"Based on front pages from twelve days in May, the paper seems like a slightly off-kilter relative who's prone to the occasional rant but is seldom boring, whereas the Post comes across as a steadier, more solid member of the community, albeit one apt to drone on drearily at cocktail parties."

I'll take that juxtaposition, especially when you consider the four Pulitzer Prizes the paper won under the off-kilter relative's leadership, and the innovative coverage we tried (sometimes with success, sometimes not) day in and day out.

But it wasn't just an institution that died in February. Hundreds of veteran reporters, editors, artists, photographers and support staff lost their vocations. Diving into the current job market is like going head-first into a kiddie pool in the middle of a drought.

I knew that long before the Rocky's closure.

I saw the handwriting on the wall a couple years ago. As the Washington correspondent via Scripps Howard News Service, I watched corporate chain after corporate chain drain the talent pool at the national bureaus, which started being referred to as "cost centers" in corporate lingo. I watched "paper cuts" inflicted in newsrooms all over the country. It was clear, even two years ago, that if I ever lost my dream job in the D.C. bureau – the one that had led me to Iraq and Afghanistan and too many adventures to count – then I would be hard-pressed to find anything nearly as satisfying…anywhere.

So a few years ago, I hatched a harebrained plot.

I've known John Temple for years. He was my city editor when I was a stringer at the dearly-departed Albuquerque Tribune. And he became my big-boss editor for ten years at the Rocky. But here's something even he doesn't know.

In early 2007, after Denver was awarded the Democratic National Convention, I pitched a radical idea to pack up the D.C. bureau, move it to Des Moines, Iowa, and go start-to-finish following all the presidential candidates of both parties – including the one who would eventually be the star of our show in Denver. It was a bold, multimedia plan, and I'm proud of the hundreds of thousands of words that made it into the paper, into the "Back Roads to the White House" blog and my memory banks for political coverage after that.

But I had a quirky ulterior motive, too. I knew that the back roads would take me to little dots on the map where little weekly papers have been standing for just about as long as the Rocky Mountain News. I had the fantasy – and a whole lot of reporters I know have had the fantasy – of one day being a one-man newsroom at a tiny little paper like the one in "The Milagro Beanfield War" and so much great literature.

I landed in Iowa in April 2007 and would have to chase the candidates to places you've never heard about. As a reporter, one of the best ways to understand a candidate and a message she or he is spinning in that area is to wander into the local newspaper and get the lay of the land from the editor, publisher and staff (if there is a staff). So I'd rush ahead of the candidates, pop into little newsrooms and get the lay of the land. And, heck, while I was there, I'd always sneak in a few questions about the state of small town journalism.

How's it going? Are the ads still flowing? What about the Internet? Is it much of a threat out in the sticks? How many people does it take to put out a quality product? What if you made some strategic investments in quality content here and there? Would your franchise do any better, or had it already maximized the local potential?

I didn't always find healthy newspapers. But invariably, I saw potential, because if you look very closely, the small-town newspaper's business model does and always has resembled a miniature version of the direction the big-city papers will eventually reach.

 

http://www.johntemple.net/2009/08/new-life-journalists-on-how-they_04.html

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Beijing closing coal plants in environmental move

BEIJING -- China has taken advantage of a drop in electricity demand due to the global financial crisis to speed up a campaign to close small coal-fired power plants and improve its battered environment, an official said Thursday.

Authorities have closed power plants with a total of 7,467 generating units, meeting a previously announced goal 18 months ahead of schedule, said Sun Qin, deputy administrator of the Cabinet's National Energy Administration.

"This couldn't be done when power demand was very intense," Sun said at a news conference. "Due to this financial crisis, the power generation has slowed down, so we took this opportunity to accelerate the shutdown."

Beijing is trying to improve its energy efficiency and reduce surging demand for imported oil and gas by closing smaller, less efficient power plants and encouraging use of wind, solar and other clean sources.

The latest closures will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain by an estimated 1.1 million tons and carbon dioxide output by 124 million tons per year, Sun said. He said the closures involved moving 400,000 workers to new jobs.

China and the United States are the world's biggest emitters of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" that scientists say trap the sun's heat and are altering the climate.

China produced 6.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2006, according to a study by the Netherlands' Environmental Assessment Agency.

Beijing says it is committed to reducing pollution but has resisted pressure to adopt binding goals to reduce its greenhouse gas output, saying the onus is on developed countries to reduce their emissions.

The Chinese government's top priority in closing coal-fired power plants is controlling sulfur dioxide emissions. Acid rain from heavy coal use has poisoned most of its rivers and lakes and badly damaged its forests.

Sun said environmental officials will meet in August to make plans to close more small coal-fired power plants.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/1163711.html

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Whale saves drowning diver

A beluga whale saved a drowning diver by hoisting her to the surface, carrying her leg in its mouth.

Grateful ... Yang Yun returns to surface of the
aquarium after her dramatic rescue

Terrified Yang Yun thought she was going to die when her legs were paralysed by crippling cramps in arctic temperatures.

She had been taking part in a free diving contest WITHOUT any breathing equipment.

Competitors had to sink to the bottom of an aquarium's 20ft arctic pool and stay there for as long as possible amid the beluga whales at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China.

But when Yun, 26, tried to head to the surface she struggled to move her legs.

Terrified ... Yang Yun dangles helplessly

Lucky Yun said: "I began to choke and sank even lower and I thought that was it for me - I was dead. Until I felt this incredible force under me driving me to the surface."

Beluga whale Mila had spotted her difficulties and using her sensitive dolphin-like nose guided Yun safely to the surface.

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2560871/Beluga-whale-saves-drowning-divers-life.html

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Los Angeles medical marijuana patients to say it with flowers

by J. Craig Canada

Tomorrow, August 6, 2009, the medical marijuana movement in Los Angeles will say it with flowers if Craig Rubin has his way.

Last night it was announced on Facebook and through IndyBay that the "Beverly Hills Green Cross" medical marijuana collective will be giving out an eighth-ounce of "Beverly Hills Haze" to the first 500 medical marijuana patients to speak to the Los Angeles Planning and Land Use Management Committee at 10:00 AM on Thursday, 6 Aug 09.

Patrick Duff of "Royal Temple of Zion", and "Discount Relief Collective" announced they would donate an additional 100 eighths of medical marijuana so that the first 200 medical marijuana patients to speak will receive a total of a 1/4 ounce of medicine.

The meeting of the Los Angeles Planning and Land Use Management Committee will consider 20 "hardship exemption" applications for medical marijuana dispensaries.  There are also 19 applications that have been withdrawn for consideration before the committee by the submitters.  These, along with the 20 medical marijuana dispensary hardship exemptions to be considered are listed with the IndyBay article of 4 Aug 09 by Brett Stone.

In order to receive the free medicine, medical marijuana patients will need to fill out a card to address one or more of the hardship exemptions scheduled that day and speak for one minute.  The eighth-ounce of "Beverly Hills Haze", which is promised to the first 500 medical marijuana patients to speak at the committee meeting, is said to be worth $60.

"We're taking a page out of 60's activism" said Craig this afternoon, "we need to clog the room with speakers, make it take an hour or two for each hearing instead of the 8-10 hearings an hour they have been doing."

The meeting will be at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Room 350.

http://www.examiner.com/x-14883-Santa-Cruz-County-Drug-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d5-Los-Angeles-medical-marijuana-patients-say-it-with-flowers

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Drug War Quiz: Just Say Know

 

Dust off your short-term memory and test your drug war knowledge with some tidbits from This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America.

By Ryan Grim

 

1. A 1918 New York Times article suggested Germany was trying to make Americans "cokeys" and "hop fiends" with...

• Drugs mixed into sausage
• Drugs in toothpaste and teething syrup
• Narco-polkas

2. How much "ditchweed"—wild hemp with no psychoactive properties—did the DEA destroy in 2005?

• 219 plants
• 219,000 plants
• 219 million plants

3. As the "methedemic" raged in 2004, how many meth "superlabs" did federal authorities seize?

• 55,500
• 550
• 55

4. During the late 19th century, most opium addicts were first turned on to the drug by...

• Doctors
• Hobos
• Chinese opium dens

5. Which of the following did not support efforts to criminalize marijuana in the 1930s?

• Pharmaceutical industry
• American Medical Association
• Liquor industry

6. Nearly what portion of Mexico's arable land is used to grow drugs?

• 1/5
• 1/4
• 1/3

7. Which president first declared cocaine "the most dangerous drug problem that the US ever faced"?

• William Taft
• Ronald Reagan
• George W. Bush

8. Who was the Senate's most strident drug warrior in the 1960s?

• Barry Goldwater
• Robert F. Kennedy
• Strom Thurmond

9. In which decade did Americans' illegal drug use decline most rapidly?

• 1980s
• 1990s
• 2000s

10. In 2004, the White House buried a study that found that a $1.4 billion anti-pot ad campaign had...

• Increased first-time pot use among 14- to 16-year-olds
• Increased first-time pot use among whites
• Both A and B

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/quiz-just-say-know

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Gaza kids eye kite-flying world record

Thousands of Palestinian children have gathered in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to break the world record on the number of kites flown at the same time, in the same place.

Thursday's event was part of a UN initiative organised to restore hope and normality to the war-torn territory.

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CNN purportedly refuses ad critical of insurance industry

 

By John Byrne

At least they don't call themselves "Fair and Balanced."

Days off refusing to run an ad spot criticizing its evening host Lou Dobbs, the cable network has now refused to run an ad criticizing a top health insurance executive who recently retired with a package worth some $70 million and was paid $12.2 million in total compensation last year (More details of Hanway's salary and compensation package are available at Forbes).

Why?

The ad "unnecessarily" "singles" out an individual company and person by name.

According to Washington Post Company blogger Greg Sargent, CNN wrote the labor-backed group Americans United for Change that, "This ad does not comply with our clearance guidelines because it unnecessarily singles out an individual company and person."

The ad claims that, on average, Cigna CEO H. Edward Hanway makes $5,883 an hour.

MSNBC, meanwhile, has said they'll run the ad.

UPDATE

Health insurer Cigna is now fighting back against the Americans United for Change ad. In an article published at TradingMarkets.com, spokesperson Chris Curran said: "The debate on health care reform is not about how industry executives are paid; rather, it's about what kind of health care reform can be passed for the greatest benefit of the American people."

Curran said that Cigna "agrees" with Americans United For Change that "health care reform is needed. In fact, we also support the president's goal of expanding access, controlling costs, and improving the quality of care. However, we do not see how a government-sponsored plan accomplishes that."

The following ad, produced by Americans United for Change, was posted to YouTube August 2, 2009:

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/05/cnn-refuses-ad-critical-of-insurance-industry/

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Parents take their faith to deadly extremes

Girl dies as they pray rather than seek medical treatment

BY RICHARD ROEPER

Your 11-year-old daughter is on the floor of your home, unable to walk, talk, eat or drink. Do you:

A. Call 911.

B. Pray.

C. Call 911 and then start praying.

Options A. and C. are acceptable. Option B. is stupid, cruel and criminal.

A Wisconsin man has been found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide in the death of his daughter. Dale Neumann, 47, faces up to 25 years in prison because, as he testified last week, he believed God would heal his child. Neumann's wife, Leiliani, faces a similar sentence.

According to news reports, 11-year-old Madeline Neumann died in the family home as her parents and others surrounded her and prayed. They claim they didn't know how sick the girl was -- but how can any parent NOT call 911 when their daughter is so obviously suffering?

"If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumman said.

Really? In that case, why don't you jump out of a 20th-story window and ask God to save you?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/roeper/1699390,CST-NWS-roep04.article

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Drop dead!

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Blowback

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Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

By Jeremy Scahill

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

 

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

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Liberating two young women

http://www.politicalcartoons.com/

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House Orders Three Jets

"Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies," Roll Call reports.

"But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress."

The Air Force had asked for one jet as part of an upgrade program, but the House Appropriations Committee added two more at its own discretion.

 

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/08/05/house_orders_three_jets.html

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Does the Marijuana Pill Work?

By Allen St. Pierre

This informative article from CBS News about the government's claim that there is no need for medical patients to access cannabis, when there is a 'fake' cannabis pill on the market, features remarks from NORML advisory board member, professor and author Mitch Earleywine, and former deputy drug czar under Bush 1.0 Herb Kleber, which strongly underlines the differences between credible and not credible on the topic of cannabis.

Credible:

[One] problem with Marinol is that it's orally administered," Dr. Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, said in an email. "Therefore, it takes longer to work than cannabis inhaled from a vaporizer. (Usually 90 minutes at best rather than 15 seconds - a meaningful amount of time to the nauseated.)"

"It's harder to control dosage, too, so folks end up discombobulated or without symptom relief," he added. "In addition, folks who are vomiting can't hold down the pills." Earleywine also said that a dose Marinol costs three to five times as much as a comparable dose of medical marijuana.

Not Credible:

"Are there actions in the whole plant that you don't get from just the Marinol? I would be surprised if there wasn't," he continued. "The problem is that most of the data about the potential medical actions of the smoked form are anecdotal."

Dr. Kleber, who said he has prescribed Marinol to a patient and found it to be effective, points to what he characterizes as a significant advantage of the pill over traditional marijuana: "People don't abuse it."

"Marijuana addiction is becoming common and as a result I'm seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana," he said. "Contrary to popular beliefs that there is no marijuana withdrawal, there is marijuana withdrawal. It's very clear cut."

Talk about anecdotal! Dr. Kleber would have readers believe, that cannabis today, as compared to the prior 2,000 years of documented cannabis use by humans is that "Marijuana addiction is becoming common".

Really?

"I'm seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana"

Of course you are Herb because as it has been well documented by NORML that the criminal justice system throughout most of the United States presents minor cannabis offenders with the Hobson's Choice of either going to jail or to visit the offices of the 'Dr. Klebers' in America for 'treatment'.

Dr. Kleber well knows this, so his statement is for me the working definition of disingenuous!

http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/04/does-the-marijuana-pill-work/

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Cash for Clunkers

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The Newspaper-Web WarEver get the feeling this battle was fought before?

By Jack Shafer

The newspaper industry and its allies have many grievances against the Web. They say the Web is parasitic, that it copies newspaper content and steals its advertising. They claim that Web creators will never provide the deep reporting that democracy needs and that newspapers provided before the Web arrived and ruined the media neighborhood. They want to tame the Web by rejigging copyright law. And they protest that the Web has undermined quality journalism by teaching readers to expect news for free.

Whatever the merits of these complaints, it's not the first time established media have accused new media of bringing on Armageddon. In her deeply researched 1995 book, Media at War: Radio's Challenge to the Newspapers, 1924-1939, scholar Gwenyth L. Jackaway charts a similar set of complaints leveled by newspapers against the upstart medium of radio in the 1920s and 1930s.

The then-and-now media parallels don't line up perfectly, but a review of the war between newspapers and radio provides something just this side of enlightenment and helps frame the underlying issues in the current fight for advertising dollars. Along the way, Jackaway establishes that the newspaper industry was as shameless in the 1930s as it is today and hints at how this modern conflict may resolve itself.

Like today's Web, radio harmed newspapers commercially by disrupting the institutional identity they had carved out, Jackaway writes. The upstart media forced journalists and readers to ask, "[W]ho is a journalist? What is news? How should the news be delivered? What are the rules regarding the form and content of an acceptable news message?" Radio also fractured the existing institutional structure that partnered newspapers and wire services to deliver national and regional news. Radio could easily bypass newspapers and funnel news directly from the wire services to audiences. And, last, radio battered the institutional function of newspapers with live broadcasts of everything from sporting events to political conventions, allowing listeners to hear the news as it happened instead of reading about it 24 hours later.

Although not completely analogous to today's tussle between the newspapers and the Web, the media battle in the 1920s and 1930s echoes its points of contention. Back then, anti-radio newspapers (newspapers that didn't own radio stations) were furious over the unauthorized use of newspaper and wire service copy, just as today's Associated Press and newspaper publishers are raging over what they regard as the theft of their copy and headlines by Web sites and search engines like Google.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223216/

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Police beat women opposing Sudan dress code trial

Dozens of Sudanese women protest Tuesday Aug. 4, 2009 outside a Khartoum court where a female journalist …

 

By MOHAMED OSMAN and SARAH EL DEEB

 

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting at the trial Tuesday of a female journalist who faces a flogging for wearing trousers in public.

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein could receive 40 lashes if found guilty of violating the country's indecency law which follows a strict interpretation of Islam. The 43-year-old says the law is un-Islamic and "oppressive," and she's trying to use her trial to rally support to change it.

"I am not afraid of flogging. ... It's about changing the law," Hussein said, speaking to The Associated Press after a hearing Tuesday.

Hussein said she would take the issue all the way to Sudan's constitutional court if necessary, but that if the court rules against her and orders the flogging, she's ready "to receive (even) 40,000 lashes" if that what it takes to abolish the law.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police on a popular cafe in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

In an attempt to rally support, Hussein printed invitations to diplomats, international media, and activists to attend her trial which opened last week. She also resigned from her job in the U.N.'s public information office in Khartoum, declining the immunity that went along with the job to challenge the law.

Around 100 supporters, including many women in trousers as well as others in traditional dress, protested outside the court Tuesday.

Witnesses said police wielding batons beat up one of Hussein's lawyers, Manal Awad Khogali, while keeping media and cameras at bay. No injuries were immediately reported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_sudan_women_flogged;_ylt=Aql5AyyrguDgQ5d5wZbYLzUDW7oF

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Garfield Minus Garfield

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Jul 31

Jul 29

Jul 27

Jul 24

 

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

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Ryan O'Neal: I Hit On My Daughter Tatum At Farrah's Funeral

Vanity Fair has split September covers - Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett - and the explosive Fawcett article by Leslie Bennetts offers a remarkable, on-the-record example of the father-daughter dynamic between Farrah's on-off lover Ryan O'Neal and his daughter Tatum (who he calls a bitch), as well as insight into his relationship with Farrah.

O'Neal spoke to Bennetts and characterized himself as "a hopeless father." He offered the below example from Farrah's funeral as a reason why:

"I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me," Ryan told me. "I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She said, 'Daddy, it's me--Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."

"That's our relationship in a nutshell," Tatum said when I asked her about it. "You make of it what you will." She sighed. "It had been a few years since we'd seen each other, and he was always a ladies' man, a bon vivant."

Ryan also talks about the demise of his relationship with Farrah in 1998, when the pair initially split. He cites Farrah's menopause and talks about subsequently bedding a much-younger woman.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/ryan-oneal-i-hit-on-my-da_n_249668.html

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