Fab Five Freddy heckles Bush Sr.

Allhiphop sent out the description of a funny event yesterday:

 Hip-Hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy recently took on former United States President George Bush, Sr. during a football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 25. The match marked the reopening of the Louisiana Superdome, which shut down in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Freddy told the New York Post that he attended the football game with MTV’s CEO Judy McGrath, ex-Viacom CEO Tom Freston, and Viacom’s John Sykes. When the trio stepped on the field to catch performances by U2 and Green Day, George Bush, Sr. walked by. “I got in his way and [yelled], ‘We need to bring the troops home!’” Freddy said. According to the former host of Yo! MTV Raps, Bush replied “We must win this war.” Fab Five Freddy said he reiterated his call to bring the troops home to Bush, who was being shuffled away by associates. The former President reportedly came back to Fab 5 Freddy and said “I don’t really have anything to do with it.”

What a strange scenario.  First of all, what is Fab Five Freddy doing hanging out with all these Viacom big wigs.  i mean i know he’s hosted a good number of MTV shows and specials, but it’s still funny.  Then of course, the exchange between Freddy and Bush.

MySpace gets political

Sarah Phillips, of the Guardian’s NewsBlog, posted about a new profile featured on MySpace which encourages voter registration and voting for the upcoming November elections. She says:

It may not be a website with a reputation for having a social conscience, but MySpace has launched a new service for its ever-expanding troupe of savvy teenage networkers: political empowerment.

The US arm of the self-promotion site has teamed up with the non-partisan youth voting campaigners Declare Yourself to encourage members to make use of their vote in the state elections this autumn.

Designed as a standard MySpace profile, the page combines downloadable voter registration forms and voter information with public service announcement videos directed by David LaChapelle, warning of the dangers of “silencing yourself”. After registering, users can pin a virtual badge to their profile saying “I Registered to Vote on MySpace”.

This sort of gives me a flashback to the 2004 election, where it became cool to register to vote. Companies like Sean John printed up T-shirts saying things like “Vote or Die.” While I do think its important to encourage voter registration, I feel that many of these “campaigns” simplify it too much and don’t actually produce the results that would lead to big change. Simply being registered to vote isn’t enough. All that leads to is a bunch of people saying things like “I registered to vote on MySpace” but not knowing anything about the issues. Plus, on top of it, companies just use it as an excuse to make money off of a part of American society that they previously had left un-branded.

Edit:  Some people seem to be reading this slighlty wrong, so I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.  I am not saying that programs like this are bad or that MySpace should remove it.  People should definitely have easy access to voter registration.  I was just pointing out that there are some negaive sides to it, and that I would like to see even more from the programs in places like this.  For example, why not provide links to voter guides, so that people who registered can find out when, where, and how to vote once registered.  Or how about creating profiles of each candidate, listing all of their stances on issues and brief histories of their careers.  I would rather see direct resources like this on line, rather than the possibility of receiving some junk mail as Keeley suggest in the comment below.  And of course everyone should be able to vote, regardless of their knowledge of the issues or not, but itd be nice to make access to information about issues go hand in hand with access to registration.
Another one of my points was that registraton isn’t enough in the sense that rgistration alone doesn’t lead to voting.  In the 2004 election, over 16 million registered voters didn’t vote due to a wide variety of issues including transportation, conflicting schedules, having incorrect information or no information about times and locations, or not feeling that their vote mattered.  This was in an election where there were a massive amount of people being registered, and large numbers of programs like this started.  Not to mention that more people tend to vote in presidential elections than in other smaller elections.  Finally, while more people both registered and voted in the 2004 election than had happened in quite a while, we still ended up with the results we did.  Obviously registration drives and voter turnout methods are working better on one side of the spectrum than the other (Jerry Falwell?).  So maybe its not that these non-partisan programs are so bad, but that the progressive groups need to do a better job of getting registered voters out to the polls.

Bank Spying Update

Back in June, Liftwhileclimbing did some reporting on a program between U.S. authorities and Belgian Financial records company SWIFT, in which data regarding financial transactions was turned over to U.S. authorities in the name of “anti-terrorism.”  Today, Washington Post gave an update of the situation:

A secret U.S. program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated Belgian and European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said Thursday.

The decision, announced by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, came as the country’s Data Privacy Commission released a 20-page report finding that the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators.

“It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by SWIFT that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law,” the report says…

SWIFT said in a statement that it had relinquished data to the U.S. Treasury Department only after it had been “subject to valid and compulsory subpoenas” from U.S. authorities.

The Belgian ruling is the latest in a string of European complaints about how the United States is conducting global operations against terrorism. European governments, politicians, human rights groups and citizens have also criticized the treatment of inmates at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the operation of secret prisons by the CIA — including some reportedly in Europe — and the CIA’s extrajudicial transfers of terror suspects.

Europeans tend to support strong efforts against terrorist groups — many of their countries have terror cells within their borders, and two, Britain and Spain, have suffered major attacks on their transit systems. But many Europeans believe that U.S. policies go too far and fuel radicalism in the Muslim world….

The program was begun without congressional or court approval shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With SWIFT’s cooperation, U.S. investigators tapped records from the cooperative’s banks, a total of millions of transactions, looking for suspicious patterns and links to terrorists.

A SWIFT spokesman said Thursday that “the status of the program is unchanged.”

Same-Sex Partner Benefits & Lieberman’s Election-Time Liberalism

A bipartisan team of senators introduced a bill Wednesday to offer federal benefits to same-sex domestic partners of civil servants. The bill (S. 3955) offered by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Gordon Smith, R-Ore., would allow domestic partners to benefit from federal retirement, life insurance, health insurance, workers’ compensation, long-term care insurance and dental and vision benefits…

In an August letter seeking co-sponsors, Lieberman and Smith said the Congressional Budget Office has estimated it will cost less than one-half of 1 percent of the current cost of the benefits to extend them.  “While this bill has a very modest cost to the government, it will have a significant impact on federal employees living in domestic partnerships and will assist our government in competing for the most qualified personnel,” the senators wrote.

Liberals Are Sex Fiends in Their Dreams?

“If you’ve recently dreamed about sex with a stranger, flying or the dead coming back to life, chances are you’re probably a liberal instead of a conservative… While left-wingers might be more adventurous in the subconscious bedroom, they’re also more likely to wake up in a cold sweat. Liberals showed slightly higher levels of nightmares than conservatives — a statistic at odds with a similar dream study Mr. Bulkeley conducted in the late 1990s. He said the ideology of the United States’ governing party may affect the dream patterns of Republicans and Democrats.”

No Immunity For Ashcroft

According to the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a “material witness” in a terrorism case.

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003.

Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government’s use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks….

The law was intended to give authorities the power to detain witnesses they feared might flee before testifying. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government used it to hold 70 men, nearly half of whom were never called to testify in court, according to a study by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch.

CRS: Bush Asserting ‘Functioning and Determinitive Control,’ Leveraging ‘Power and Control Away From Congress’

More stuff:

“It seems evident that the Bush signing statements are an integral part of the Administration’s efforts to further its broad view of presidential prerogatives and to assert functional and determinative control over all elements of the executive decisionmaking process,” the CRS study said.

“It appears that recent administrations, as made apparent by the voluminous challenges lodged by President George W. Bush, have employed these instruments in an attempt to leverage power and control away from Congress by establishing these broad assertions of authority as a constitutional norm.”

… See “Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications,” September 22, 2006.

Batman and Mr. Freeze unite for a positive cause

 

I subscribe to Fusicology for news about parties and events, I didn’t expect to see political news on the top of their most recent mailer!

Anyway, fusicology reports:

On Monday, September 25th, 2006 California Governor Schwarzenegger signed two bills that prohibit the state’s pension funds from investing in companies with active business in Sudan, hoping to help convince other states to do the same. Ultimately, it is to pressure the Arab-dominated government of Sudan, which is blamed for the deaths of at least 200,000 non-Arabs since 2003 and the displacement of more than 2.5 million people in the nation’s western Darfur region.

At the bill signing, the Governor was joined by other governmental leaders and advisors alongside Documented Liberal Democrat Actor-vists, Don Cheadle and George Clooney were also on hand for the signing. When asked if he wasn’t worried that he might not be giving California’s Right—Of-Center Governor a perfect photo-op, Clooney first quipped that he’d done that years ago when the two co-starred in the franchise downside, “Batman and Robin”. Refusing to allow politics the shade the humanitarian efforts being championed on the day, Clooney added, “I couldn’t be more proud of this bipartisan effort, and thank Gov. Schwarzenegger for his leadership at this most crucial time,” said George Clooney. “It’s a great step forward in holding people responsible for their actions, and a great blueprint for other states. Two and a half million refugees just got a little safer because of this, and we have much more work ahead of us…….”

Now hopefully other states, heros, and villains will do the same.

Fox News Chief is Animal House’s Otter

I like this one, so much:

Fox News chief Roger Ailes says ex-President Bill Clinton’s response to Chris Wallace’s question about going after Osama bin Laden represents “an assault on all journalists.”

Ailes said Clinton had a “wild overreaction” in the interview, broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.”

This is great. It reminds me of the scene in Animal House where Otter, the Ferris Bueller-type that sleeps with the Dean’s wife, gives a speech before the disciplinary board, saying that if they try to hold his fraternity responsible for the “liberties” they took, it is an indictment of society as a whole. Beautiful.

Otter: Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests – we did.
[winks at Dean Wormer]
Otter: But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg – isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!
[Leads the Deltas out of the hearing, all humming the Star-Spangled Banner]

P.S.- My runner up on quote of the day is courtesy of The Hotline: “When asked why she requested cookies and milk, 5-year-old leukemia patient Sydney Chehab ’said it was just a civil way to have a conversation with’ Bush.” Fabulous — I’m glad we’ve trusted that guy to be in the room w Musharraf and Karzai at the same time.

McCain Stumping Across the Pond

Building allies for ‘08, no doubt:

One of the golden rules for younger politicians, I’d assumed, was never to compare yourself to John F Kennedy.

The problem is that you can come across as more of a Dan Quayle, the former US vice president once told: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”

Luckily for David Cameron, he has someone else to do it for him (and not for the first time).

US senator John McCain tells the Spectator (registration required) that, although young, the Tory leader has the leadership qualities to be prime minister.

“Oh, sure,” he says. “Probably the most respected – can I say beloved – leader of my time was Jack Kennedy, who bought youth, incredible youth, the Camelot era, to the American public.”

The Tories are delighted that their guest at next week’s conference is talking this way.

[read it all]

Gov to New Mex Voters: Don’t Bother, Here’s Your New Rep

[Sorry for the funneling of other sources today, but it's just like that sometimes.]

From Ballot Access News:

New Mexico state house representatives have two year terms. This year, the voters who live in the 68th district have lost their right to elect a state representative.

The only person running for that seat in this year’s primary was incumbent Democrat Hector Balderas. Naturally, he was re-nominated by the Democrats. Normally his name would then have appeared on the November ballot, unopposed. Although New Mexico permits write-ins, no write-in space is printed on the ballot for a particular office if no declared write-in candidate filed by early June.

In September, Balderas was chosen by a meeting of the Democratic State Committee to be the party’s nominee for State Auditor, since the person nominated for that office in June had withdrawn due to charges of sexual harassment. Since New Mexico law does not permit anyone to run for two offices simultaneously, Balderas’ name was removed from the ballot as the Democratic nominee for State Representative, even though it was too late for anyone to withdraw. Therefore, the office has no candidates, and won’t even appear on the ballot.

Most shocking, there will be no special election to fill the seat next year. The Governor will appoint someone who will serve until the November 2008 election.

NYS “Redistricting” Hearings

From ReformNY:

The Assembly Governmental Operations Committee held hearings on redistricting yesterday and Monday in Utica and Buffalo, with a hearing in NYC scheduled for October 17. At issue are three bills (A.624, A.2056, and A6287-a) that seek to alter New York’s redistricting process, which currently allows for a bipartisan gerrymander, giving incumbents the power to draw their own preferred districts and effectively eliminating serious electoral challenges.
Even though the lines won’t be drawn until after the release of the 2010 census data, it’s not too early to start raising the profile of the broken redistricting process in New York. It will be an uphill battle, and legislators, comfortable in their incumbent protection districts, will need all the pressure we can put on them to actually make a change in this entrenched system. Kudos to NYPIRG, Common Cause, and the New York League of Women Voters for pushing reform at the Assembly hearings, and we hope to see the Senate convene similar discussions.

HUD Secretary Cleared of Partisan Favors, Kind of

There was all kindsa crap about this one initially after it happened (not the least of which was the Wonkette’s bestowing “spokeshottie” status on Dustee Tucker of HUD):

A recent investigation into remarks by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson raises as many questions as it answers, with conflicting accounts on how political affiliations may have played into contract award decisions at the agency.

The inspector general investigation was requested by several members of Congress in May after a news story in the Dallas Business Journal that Jackson told participants at a minority business conference that he had personally scuttled the contract of a man who said he did not support President Bush. Shortly after the news account, Jackson released a statement saying the story he had shared was made up.

Investigators concluded that the substance of Jackson’s remarks was partly true. But they did not unearth evidence that would implicate the HUD chief for unethical or illegal contracting practices.

Rather, the report presented page after page of sworn testimony by Jackson and senior staff members — some of it conflicting — on procurement practices at the department and Jackson’s involvement in contracts since he joined the agency in June 2001.
[...]

Investigators also heard from two senior staff members — Chief of Staff Camille Pierce and Deputy Secretary Roy Bernardi — that Jackson told political appointees at a staff meeting that it was important “to consider presidential supporters” in the award of “discretionary” contracts. Other officials said they had not heard Jackson make that remark.

Another official, General Counsel Keith Gottfried, said he had heard rumors that Jackson tries to help his friends win contracts, though he said he had never heard of contracts being rescinded or terminated as a result of the secretary’s actions.

[...]

The investigators’ report delves into several specific contracts that were handled questionably. One of those was a contract with Abt Associates, a company that many officials recalled the secretary disliked. According to Pierce, his chief of staff, “There was a question about the Abt award, and he said the quality of Abt work is inferior, and besides, they are a Democratic organization. No, no, he didn’t — he said he believed that they would take their money, the HUD money, and contribute it to the Democratic Party or something.”

That award eventually was signed, Pierce recounted, when Jackson learned Congress already had been notified of the award recipient.

[...]

The investigators’ report, prepared by Anthony Medici, special agent in charge of the HUD inspector general’s office’s criminal investigations division, has not been publicly released but has been distributed to those members of Congress who requested it. A congressional staffer with access to the report said the department considers it to have the same protections as a personnel file, and thus, to be subject to the Privacy Act. Mike Zerega, spokesman for the IG’s office, would not comment on the reasons for not publishing it.

The executive summary of the 340-page report has been leaked online, and a staffer said Democratic senators likely would call for hearings and further investigations after a rush of last-minute business this week.

Chertoff Threatens to Contract w. Halliburton Unless We Deport Salvadorans

Election Years rule! (side note: The Julie Myers of ICE at DHS mentioned below is the neice of former Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers. A critical look at here resume is here.)

The Homeland Security Department soon may need to either buy additional space in existing jails to detain apprehended illegal immigrants or implement a $385 million contingency contract to build more detention centers, sources told Government Executive Tuesday.

Unless lawmakers revoke a provision that prevents the deportation of Salvadorans, a contingency contract already agreed upon with Halliburton subsidiary KBR may be put into effect to offset the amount of space being taken up by arrested Salvadorans, one of the sources said.

[...]

At Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Stevan Pearce, R-N.M., told Chertoff that detention space for illegal immigrants is in short supply in his district, which borders Mexico.

“We’re at the threshold where it begins to deteriorate,” he said.

Pearce is not the first lawmaker to push DHS officials to fix detention problems; another Republican congressman, Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, told Julie Myers, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency within DHS, during a July hearing that “there’s no place to put” illegal immigrants.

[...]

Another DHS source said an abundance of space is available in existing facilities, but the department would need to rent it.

This source said the department is still pushing to meet its goal of having nearly 28,000 beds at jails for arrested illegal immigrants. “All we really need is money,” the source said, adding that “there is excess bed capacity in state and local facilities that is available to the extent we can afford it.”

But there is a possibility that “we may construct some new detention facilities,” the source said.

US Nuke Commish to Publish Uranium Export Numbers (Again)

“The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that it will no longer conceal the amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel proposed for export to foreign research reactors. The announcement marks a step back from the heightened secrecy adopted by the NRC and other government agencies post-September 11.”

read on…

African Civic Orgs Opposing Free Trade Agrmt with EU

Courtesy of Poverty News Blog:

NAIROBI, Sept 26 (Reuters) – African countries risk sinking further into poverty if the European Union pushes ahead with new free trade deals that could harm local industry and farming by unfair competition, non-governmental aid groups said on Tuesday.

[...]

Three non-governmental bodies — ACORD, EcoNews Africa and Oxfam — said they would petition the EU and African countries attending trade talks in the Indian Ocean city of Mombasa on Wednesday to address their concerns over fair trade deals. [read it all]

Santorum Opponents Don’t Support Apple Cider

I am just plain confused by this one from PA’s Times Leader:

WILKES-BARRE – A city man who drove his car through a department store in the Poconos two years ago will be cited after committing another “bizarre” act on Monday which ended when he threw a jug of apple cider at an off-duty police officer, authorities said.

Patrick Tosh, 54, of Barney Street, walked into the Republican headquarters near Boscov’s on South Main Street at about 2 p.m. Monday and shouted profanities while holding a jar of apple cider and a sign that read, “Santorum did nothing for FIMA. He sucks,” according to police and witnesses.

“He started to put down (U.S. Sen.) Rick Santorum … and he demanded that Rick Santorum come to his home for two straight days,” said Joyce Dombroski-Gebhardt, a Republican committeewoman who volunteers at the center, which opened four weeks ago.

“He was going berserk,” said another volunteer, Gina Nevengloski. “He was as red as a fire engine.”

Tosh also demanded that 200 signs for Republican state House candidate Christine Katsock be placed on his lawn, said Dombroski-Gebhardt.

Wilkes-Barre police Lt. Paul Middleton, who was off duty and not in uniform, happened to be inside the headquarters when the incident occurred.

“Paul said, ‘Those are ladies, watch your mouth,’” Dombroski-Gebhardt recalled.

Tosh eventually walked outside the building and began pouring apple cider on the windows, said Dombroski-Gebhardt. When Middleton walked outside to stop him, Tosh threw the apple cider and the jar at the officer and ran.

“His bizarre behavior continues,” said city police Lt. Steven Olshefski.

An officer arrived on a motorcycle and Middleton hopped on, but they couldn’t find Tosh, said Dombroski-Gebhardt. But Olshefski said police know where to find him and he will be charged with summery counts of disorderly conduct, scattering rubbish and harassment. Olshefski noted that Middleton was struck in the leg with the jug and was not injured.

Tosh could not be reached for comment. Olshefski said police received a few calls over the weekend about Tosh “acting silly.”

In 2004, Tosh was arrested after police said he crashed a stolen car through a Target store in Stroud Township, drove around in the store, then drove back out. No one was injured. Police said Tosh was not under the influence. He pleaded no contest to criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and receiving stolen property and in June 2005 was sentenced to nine to 23 months in the Monroe County Correctional Facility and two years of probation, according to court documents. He was also ordered to pay more than $12,000 in fines.

Common Dreams archive: Citgo Buy-cott

In light of the recent events at the UN involving Chavez, as well as Chavez’s program for donating heating oil to low income Americans, Common Dreams reposted an article from their May, 2005 archives about Citgo and Venezuelan Oil. Here is the article, by Jeff Cohen, in its entirety:

Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.

And tell your friends.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.”

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela — not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn’t have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That’s why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don’t have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)

I read somewhere that people are taking out anger at Chavez on Citgo.  One example I read was that a Citgo sign that had been hanging in a Boston stadium for years was taken down.  I’m posting this article so that people see the other side of the arguments and don’t do things based simply on blind patriotism.

Chavez and the World opinion of the U.S.

This past week, many media outlets and politicians joined forces in defending Bush and the U.S. after comments that were made at the UN by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  While much of this “defense” ended up looking more like offense and name calling, people are missing out on the bigger picture, which is that Chavez’s remarks reflect much of what the rest of the world has been feeling or is starting to feel.

The Washington Post ran an article about these sentiments, which stated the following:

Anti-Americanism never really left the United Nations, but this year’s gathering of world leaders demonstrated an unusually strident disrespect for the United States. The United States is perceived as weakened by a draining war in Iraq, while many of its adversaries feel emboldened with newfound oil wealth.

Resentment of American power has also been exacerbated by the United States’ close association with Israel during the recent war in Lebanon and even the administration’s campaign for greater democracy throughout the Middle East. A theme running through a number of the speeches delivered here is that democracy cannot be imposed through force…

As Chavez put it in his fiery speech, which was greeted by wild applause in the chamber: “They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons. What a strange democracy. . . . What type of democracy do you impose with Marines and bombs?”

The rising anger at American policies comes as some U.S. officials privately acknowledge that they feel stymied on many international fronts: The war in Iraq is going poorly, the drive for sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program has faltered, the disarmament talks with North Korea are all but dead, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is frozen, and the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region seems unsolvable.

According to the article, world leaders from Iran, Egypt, Bolivia, and other countires expressed similar ideas and distaste for U.S. Foreign policy, all of which was was greeted by applause.  So instead of responding to these remarks by counter-attacking and calling Chavez names like “El Loco,” maybe newspapers like the NY Post and Daily News should do some self reflection on the state of the U.S. and its foreign policy, because the egotistical arrogant attitude sure isn’t working.

The Unity Petition

An interesting project from high school students, even if it isn’t the most earth-shattering or revolutionary language — any politcal involvement at that age is a positive thing. I can’t find the funding stream for it, but will be sure to GuideStar it later.

Anyway, check it out: The Unity Petition.

Unified Challenge on US Farm Subsidies Continues to Broaden

From Journal Star:

CAIRNS, Australia — The Cairns Group of farm exporting countries will press ahead with a plan to revive world trade talks, despite the European Unions’ rejection of the idea, Australia Prime Minister John Howard said.

Negotiations have stalled over reducing tariffs and subsidies for farmers in Europe, the United States and other developed countries such as Japan, where strong industry lobbies argue they won’t be able to compete against a flood of imports from poorer nations.

Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile will propose a plan under which the EU would agree to better by 5 percent its offer to reduce farm tariffs, while the U.S. would agree to cut subsidies by $5 billion. He described it as a “middle-ground” proposition.

In another piece:

Japan’s Agriculture Minister Shoichi Nakagawa declined to set a specific target for U.S. subsidy reductions, but said the EU’s proposal was a good starting point.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, present as an observer at the meeting in the northeastern city of Cairns, said Washington was willing to give more, but fwanted the European Union to first put greater tariff reductions on the negotiating table.

Arguments over U.S., EU and Japan agricultural tariffs and subsidies were elements in bringing the so-called Doha round to a standstill in July.

The vision statement of the Cairns Group reads: “The Cairns Group of Agricultural Fair Traders reaffirms its commitment to achieving a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system as sought by the Agreement on Agriculture. To this end the Cairns Group is united in its resolve to ensure that the next WTO agriculture negotiations achieve fundamental reform which will put trade in agricultural goods on the same basis as trade in other goods. All trade distorting subsidies must be eliminated and market access must be substantially improved so that agricultural trade can proceed on the basis of market forces.” [read the rest]
Its current membership includes:

Argentina | Australia | Bolivia | Brazil | Canada | Chile | Colombia | Costa Rica | Guatemala | Indonesia | Malaysia | New Zealand | Pakistan |Paraguay | Philippines | South Africa | Thailand | Uruguay

Vietnamese Trade Pact Facing Resistance [wsj wash wire]

Another on trade issues from Wash Wire…

ADMINISTRATION FACES congressional resistance to Vietnam trade pact.

Textile-friendly Republican Sens. Dole of North Carolina and Graham of South Carolina resist letting Vietnam join WTO. They warn trade representative Schwab of “large-scale job losses in both our states” and seek limits on Vietnamese apparel exports to U.S.

“We’re looking for some way for the industry to defend itself,” says industry advocate Cass Johnson. To soothe domestic companies, Commerce Department official Lavin visits North Carolina textile executives.

After returning from China, Paulson will meet with Sen. Schumer, who may seek floor action on tariff bill.

Most “Un-Diplomat” Quiz on The Guardian

In light of Hugo Chavez’ mention (again) of US Pres Bush as ‘the devil,’ The Guardian prepared a quiz.

Sample question:

Where was Silvio Berlusconi when he told a man: “I know in Italy there is a producer, producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I will suggest you for the role of kapo [commander]. You would be perfect for that role.”

In a downtown Pizzeria

In the dierctors box at the San Siri stadium

At the European Parliament

In the Vatican

WaPo Blowing the Whistle (a 2nd wal-mart related post today?)

The Washington Post ran an article today, exposing the activities of corporations that get tariffs removed on foreign imports by drafting legislation and lobbying. This wouldn’t be so bad if the American taxpayers weren’t picking up the costs….

Each legislative season, corporate executives and lobbyists quietly draft hundreds of bills to suspend tariffs. Over time, the changes cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, a Washington Post analysis of U.S. trade data found…

The bills in Congress generally give no hint of whom the suspensions have been designed to benefit and sometimes refer to the products only by strings of numbers linked to phone-book-size tariff tables. But many corporate names can be found in reports on the legislation produced for Congress by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Lawmakers usually introduce the provisions at the behest of companies in their districts. Many of those companies and their executives have given federal campaign contributions totaling millions of dollars.

Part of the argument by supporters of the legislation is that by removing tariffs they are reducing prices for consumers and creating jobs by cutting costs for U.S. manufacturers. But guess what?

The practice of not naming companies in the legislation obscures a fact revealed by The Post’s analysis: The biggest beneficiaries of the rising tide of tariff-suspension bills are domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Of the 10 companies that stand to benefit from the greatest number of bills examined in the study, eight are owned by or affiliated with German and Swiss chemical companies. (Graphic of companies)

So essentially, American taxpayerrs are paying big tax money for foreign companies to make even more profits (And our Representatives are being paid big campaign money for this to happen)
The Post also mentions that these bills have gone unnoticed for the most part, despite growing criticism for “pork barrell spending and earmarks.” But it’s not like it’s a small number of bills, it’s very large:

Since the beginning of last year, legislators have introduced more than 1,400 bills seeking new or renewed tariff waivers or reductions.

To put that in terms of your pockets:

Budget analysts estimate that the grab bag of tariff suspensions passed by the House in March, if approved by the Senate and signed into law, would cost taxpayers $278 million…

Under guidelines set by Congress, each tariff suspension is supposed to cost taxpayers no more than $500,000 a year. Many proposals above the limit are rejected; others win approval anyway.

Another part of the problem is that this legislation often goes unnoticed by small American companies, which allows bigger companies, foreign or otherwise, to have lower prices on their imported goods than the prices of goods produced by the smaller companies. For example:

Dungey, who co-owns Auburn Leathercrafters in Upstate New York, launched a one-woman campaign against four bills that would cut the 2.4 percent tariff on imported dog collars and leashes. She argued that anyone familiar with the industry would realize domestic producers would find the waivers “devastating.”

She said she believes that Wal-Mart and other big importers count on U.S.-based manufacturers never learning about the obscure legislation. “A lot of people just don’t have the time to devote to staying on top of it,” Dungey said.

Some of the companies listed as receiving major benefits from these bills are Wal-Mart, Bayer (a German company), Spalding, Payless Shoes, and many foreign chemical companies. Of the American companies on this list, many are affiliates of foreign companies and sell foreign produced goods.

Finally, this legislation is being passed by both Republican and Democrat Reps. from all over the country. The article mentions a number of them by name.

——————

For anyone interested, Washington Post also has a great resource for researching Congressional votes on bills, dating back to 1991

Parolee Practices Religion at Direction of Government

From the beautiful people at Liberty Level:

First, William Stanley’s release was delayed three months, according to the ACLU. Apparently West Virginia has a prohibition on cohabitation if you’re unmarried (no joke), and since he had been planning on moving in with his fiancée, he couldn’t leave.

Then, he was placed in the Union Mission, where he attended religious classes and had to go to an approved church. “Being forced by the government to practice a religion is the antithesis of what it means to be an American,” said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the West Virginian branch of the ACLU.

For the rest.

PA Gaming Board To Turn a Blind Eye?

This is a frickin mess, and bound to be good for Pennsylvania:

The chairman of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board appeared before House and Senate panels this week to answer questions about gambling operations and to comment on upcoming legislative fixes to the state’s 2-year-old gambling law.

House lawmakers, in particular, wanted to know about the board’s decision last spring to stop using the Pennsylvania State Police to do background investigations to screen gaming agency employees. The board is farming the work out to an independent contractor.

Gaming board Chairman Tad Decker told the House Republican Policy Committee the board stopped using the state police to investigate gaming agency employees because they were taking four to five months to complete the work, while an independent contractor takes three to four weeks.

“We realize the state police couldn’t be doing everything,” he said. “But as far as criminal investigations, the state police are the premier group to do it because of their ability to connect with law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania and other states and internationally as well.”

[...]

Rosenberry isn’t the first agency hire to come under criminal scrutiny.

In January, press aide Kevin Eckenrode was charged with dropping his girlfriend out of his Harrisburg apartment window and down 23 floors to her death. Shortly afterward, board member William Conaboy, who recommended Eckenrode for the post, resigned.

Two of the board’s lawyers have also been arrested in drunken brawls.

So the board members can’t even stay off death row, and they’re in charge of picking who does the background checks? Time for PA’s politically connected Tony Sopranos to open up background checking companies.

(Personal note: I need to repeat something here to be sure it’s not lost, “In January, press aide Kevin Eckenrode was charged with dropping his girlfriend out of his Harrisburg apartment window and down 23 floors to her death… Two of the board’s lawyers have also been arrested in drunken brawls.”)

Wal-Mart Launches Its 1st Voter Registration Drive

More from The Hill:

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, is planning to launch a voter registration and education campaign this fall targeted at its 1.3 million employees in an effort to combat growing criticism from Democrats and labor unions.

By doing so, the world’s largest retailer is striding into the national political arena, which until this election cycle it has taken pains to avoid.

Wal-Mart’s voter registration and education programs could be among the biggest in the country, though not as big as those of its labor union opponents. The AFL-CIO, for example, has nearly 13 million members.

The company’s decision appears to be a response to several high-profile Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and four 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls, who participated in a labor-organized anti-Wal-Mart campaign this summer.

read on here.

Terrorists Support Lamont (Yo, Joe, is that bad for the insurance industry?)

Election Central on the trail of this dude…

McAuliffe to join Sen Clinton for Prez

From The Hill:

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has told business associates and Democratic donors that he will chair Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign next year, according to several Democratic sources.

Together, Clinton, the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and McAuliffe, the top money man in Democratic politics, have a good chance of raising $100 million before the first official contest, the Iowa caucuses in January 2008.

While Clinton and her staff insist she is focused solely on winning reelection in New York this November, the decision over who will be in charge of getting her elected to the White House is already settled…

The “I don’t have a car!” dance

If you’re in NYC you might scoff at this, but there are many places where driving is the norm. Chicago is one of them..

I live in Chicago, however, and I don’t have a car!!!

Why am I dancing about it? Let me tell you all the reasons:

I don’t pay for gas!! Hence, i provide less motivation to go to war for oil than i might if i made trips to the pump

I don’t pay for car insurance! Hence, i have more &^$(#ing money than i would have otherwise

Biking everywhere keeps me in shape!! -Hence, my mood is improved, and my body-image experiences a boost.

Bike repairs don’t cost nearly as much as car repairs. And you can do them yourself!!!

Experience the world as you travel, without a barrier of glass and steel.

I experience the elements, and am therefore more in tune with nature and weather! When its raining, i know it; when its cold, i feel it! Biking through a cold Chiciago winter is something to be very proud of, an ordeal of beauty.

The bicycle is one of the most incredible inventions we’ve ever come up with! -Still powered by my peanut-butter sandwich, but much faster than walking

And the best thing of all: NO *@&^ TRAFFIC!

i just weave past em!

A candid little anecdote to support what i’m saying:

I went to a party last weekend, and pedalled home with a beautiful woman on my bike seat. I offered to call a cab, but she preferred the biking experience! Who would have thought?

Just another day in America

Two stories caught my eye tonight. One is about a company who was once the mecca of peer-to-peer filesharing, whose popularity changed the way we thought about music distribution, and who has ultimately been forced to become part of the corporate structure it once sought to undermine. The second is about another company whose popularity has re-defined the way video content has been distributed, and how corporate entities are seeking to censor & profit from this revolution.

Just another day in America.

NAPSTER MULLS POTENTIAL SALE

“Napster…on Monday said it had engaged advisers to help it evaluate “strategic alternatives” – including a potential sale…Napster last month reported a quarterly loss before tax of $9.6m onrevenues of $28.1m.” -MSNBC

Say what you want about intellectual property rights, but no CD is worth $20. Napster in its hayday opened a lot of peoples’ eyes to a lot of new and different music that would have otherwise been unavailable, or by the time it got through the music industry apparatus so watered down that it would be sucked dry of any value.

I’m all for artists getting paid, but I’m also for giving people the ability to seek and discover new things. And the suits of the music industry have no value for that.

I also understand that Napster’s hand at the time was forced, and under the law they had to essentially sell out in order to stay in business. But this report simply underlines how far they’ve fallen, and has implications to the general state of peer-to-peer filesharing in Bush’s America.

And as sad as that is, it pales in comparison to this:

YOU TUBE SIGNS DEAL WITH TIME WARNER

“Under the revenue-sharing agreement announced Monday, New York-based Warner Music became the first major label to license its songs to the millions of ordinary people who upload their homemade videos to the San Mateo-based YouTube…The Warner Music deal could be the first of numerous pacts between YouTube and the music industry, which has been exasperated by copyrighted material appearing on video-sharing sites.” -San Jose Mercury

I know that YouTube has signed a deal with NBC in the past to distribute trailers for their fall programing, and while that’s barely defensible, this deal is truly disgusting. Here’s more:

“Many of YouTube’s most widely watched videos already include copyrighted music for which record labels and artists haven’t been paid. Though none of the labels has yet sued the company, Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris typified the entertainment industry’s exasperation with YouTube just last week, when he implied that the world’s largest record label was prepared to sue the site unless it did a better job of preventing copyright violations.

YouTube seems prepared to ward off any threats, saying that the Warner Music videos will be tracked by its “content identification and royalty reporting system,” also announced Monday. The technology, expected to be ready by the end of the year, will enable music companies to review videos created by YouTube users that include copyrighted songs and decide whether they want to approve or reject them because of infringing content.

“It pretty much signals — at least in terms of Warner compositions — the end of any potential litigation they’d be subject to,” said Chanko.” -San Jose Mercury (emphasis added)

Basically record companies want to censor independent video content based on the way it reflects on the music playing in the background!

The beauty of YouTube is that the censor is us, and what we are willing to accept as appropriate. If it’s within the laws of the United States of America (who still has free speech, right?), and its accepted by the people, then it’s permissable for you to distribute it to a potentially large audience because of the format YouTube has helped to pioneer.

But no more. Now if you’re video is deemed inappropriate by the same coporate interests who have ruined radio, television, and cinema, then it’s deemed unacceptible for distribution.

Again here we see that corporate interests are forcing the hand of a company who goes against their uber-capitalist structure. And in my mind, the case of YouTube & Time Warner breaks down pretty explicitly to a form of public & legal blackmail.

And it’s my opinion that partnerships like this will kill YouTube, because it will fall into the same censored structure that plagues the rest of our media distributors.

When will these corporations just take a deep breath and relax? When will they realize that it’s possible that outlets like YouTube can actually benefit their bottom line in the long term? Squeezing your customers for every cent that they have today will only give them less money to give you tomorrow.

And YouTube is already acting as free promotion for any of the “protected” intellectual property being distributed. Corporations need to realize that suits in a board room are not necessarily the greatest barometer of artistic achievement, and that the control over the content (aka censorship) that they try to have is counterproductive.

A search for “Time Warner Sucks” on YouTube tonight yielded no results.

Iraqi Children Facing Lack of Education

The Reuters Foundation Alertnet posted a report this week on a side of the War in Iraq that isn’t as commonly revealed as death or injury, and that is its effect on the education of Iraqi children.

Some snippets from the article:

BAGHDAD, 14 September (IRIN) – The UK-based charity organisation Save the Children has launched a global report exposing the devastating consequences of armed conflict on education in 30 countries. As the only country in the Middle East assessed, Iraq is singled out as one of the most recent problem areas.

Entitled ‘Rewrite the Future: Education for children in conflict-affected countries’, the report says that 43 million primary-age children worldwide are unable to go to school because of armed conflicts in their respective countries…

The Save the Children report says 818,000 children in Iraq, 22.2 percent of the total number of students in the country, are unable to go to school.

The Iraq government says that armed conflict is one of its most serious concerns. Ever since the US-led occupation of Iraq began in 2003, the country’s security situation has continually deteriorated…

Insurgency, sectarian attacks and criminal violence are killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians every day. As a combination of this deteriorating situation and increasing poverty, more and more children are being taken out of schools by parents.

“We have observed that in the past three years, more chairs have become empty in our country’s classrooms. This problem goes from primary education to universities,” said Ahmed Yacoub, Ministry of Education official researcher.

“Attacks and kidnaps in schools have made parents afraid that the next victims would be their children. So they prefer to let them not have a proper education until the situation improves. Others require their children to start working early because poverty has risen and their [financial] help becomes more important,” Yacoub added

Education Week magazine ran a related report this week entitled “U.S. Withdraws from Education reform in Iraq,” giving specific details of U.S. funded education work being cut off without many of the original goals being completed.  Some of the agencies that have been involved often cite security issues as a major reason.  Unfortuneately, Education Week’s website requires a subscription to access the online conent.  If you have one, check it out @ www.edweek.org

Here is a small portion of the article, just to get the basic point across:

When the new school year opens in Iraq in October, Iraqis will not be receiving any financial or technical help from the U.S. government to improve what goes on in the classroom, for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted by America-led coaltion forces.

The U.S. Agency for International Development ended its support of the Iraqi education sector in June, according to USAID officials and a July report to Congress.  No longer will the federal government sponsor  workshops for teachers on child-centered teacching methods, refurbish schools through small grants to communities, distribute school supplies, or pay for the printing of textbooks – activities that the United States has subsidized since Spring 2003.

And the government is getting out of school reform before it accomplishes many of the goals it set out to acheive.

I’m purely speculating, but could it be that the U.S government is gearing up to make an offer of privatized education in Iraq?  If that were to happen, Iraq truly could have a system set up that is modelled after the U.S. system, where people often pay huge sums of money for education, while scholarships and grants are on the decline. For now, it seems both systems have different means to the same end anyway (that end being decrease in education).

Activists Walk from World Bank; Bank Also Enumerates Failing States (There’s More!)

What better place to get info on fair trade activism than the laissez-faire WSJ, and who better for Wolfowitz to blame than Singapore (it sure ain’t his fault!):

Antipoverty activists announce a boycott of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank annual meetings to protest Singapore’s refusal to let some of them enter the country.

After massive antiglobalization demonstrations over the last decade, the international lenders have tried to incorporate nongovernmental organizations into their decision-making. But the relationship isn’t always smooth.

Now 163 such groups say they won’t participate in official events in Singapore. They had planned to raise concerns about the often-austere economic policies the IMF urges its 184 member nations to implement, as well as the environmental impact of dams and other big World Bank projects.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz condemned Singapore’s “authoritarian” actions. “The one thing I think I would say is that a lot of that damage has been done to Singapore and it’s self-inflicted,” Wolfowitz told activists at a roundtable, before they walked out. “It is unacceptable.”

An IMF spokesman said of the activist groups: “We have been having productive discussions, and we expect them to continue.”

The letter reads in part:

“In solidarity with those denied entry into Singapore and denied the exercise of their expression, we will stay away from meetings and seminars in Singapore,” the organisations said in a statement.

“We call on all social movements, civil society organisations and networks and individuals to uphold rights of peoples to freedom of expression and association, and to honour this boycott by staying away from official meetings in Singapore.”

The World Bank also enumerated the numebr of “failing/fragile states” in the world this week. I’d say this is the foremost fronteir in the Global War on Terror, but what do I know…

The latest World Bank study on failed and failing states (now called “fragile states”) shows just how rapidly the global situation is deteriorating. As reported in the Washington Post by Karen DeYoung, the number of states that could provide logistical bases and ungoverned spaces for terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and other armed non-state groups has jumped from 17 in 2003 to 26 this year.

The growth of “black holes” and stateless regions is even more alarming when compared to a similar study done by the Bank in 1996, when only 11 states fell into the category of failed states. [more]

BREAKING NEWS!! SECRET PLAN FOR VICTORY IN IRAQ!

In a document that the Bush Administration doesn’t want you to see, here in its entirety is the Bush Plan for Victory in Iraq.

I, for one, think that it’s everything you’d expect it to be and more.  Kudos to the administration for finally getting a plan together on one piece of paper.

More news as it develops…

U.S. Catholic bishops to prez, Congress: Fair, just, comprehensive immigration reform needed

The cynic in me says this is stright-forward politics/PR/recruitment tactics surrounding the shifting demographics American (and global) Catholicsm is undergoing, but irregardless, this is good stuff:

U.S. President George Bush and members of Congress must move beyond partisan political concerns and come together to produce fair, just and comprehensive reform to the flawed immigration system, said the U.S. bishop in charge of migration issues for the nation’s Catholic conference.

“Immigration is a moral issue because it impacts the human dignity and human rights of the person,” said Bishop Gerald R. Barnes of San Bernardino, Calif., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, in a Sept. 12 statement. “It is an issue which should supersede political concerns.”

[...]

Bishop Barnes stressed that “just legislation” should include:

- “A viable path to citizenship” for undocumented already in the United States.

- “A temporary worker program” that protects the rights of both U.S. and foreign-born laborers.

- Reforms to reduce the backlogs and shorten the amount of time for cross-border family reunification.

- Restoration of due process protection for immigrants.

- Enforcement that does not “undermine the fairness of our laws” and ensures “that the human dignity of the person is protected.” The U.S. bishops, he added, “will oppose enforcement initiatives which do not meet this test.”

NYTimes “Other People’s Children”

Attytood, I think, hits a new high point    by highlighting this lowlight for the Times:

The fact that this phrase could get past a bevy of editors on West 43rd Street, not to mention thousands of readers, including so many who comment on the media on their own blogs, speaks volumes — about why the nation can’t come to grips with Iraq, and how far we in the media have distanced ourselves from the great mass of citizens.

The New York Times said this:

The time when we felt drawn together, changed by the shock of what had occurred, lasted long beyond the funerals, ceremonies and promises never to forget. It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured.

But the call never came. Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children, and with money earned by the next generation. Our role appeared to be confined to waiting in longer lines at the airport. President Bush, searching the other day for an example of post-9/11 sacrifice, pointed out that everybody pays taxes.

“Other people’s children”? Who exactly are the “others” in this editorial, and who is the “us” of the airport lines?

More weapons lies

Washington Post reports today:

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran’s nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran’s capabilities, calling parts of the document “outrageous and dishonest” and offering evidence to refute its central claims…

Ignorant Internet Surfers

Ok, so the first couple times I saw the search term “anti muslim t-shirts” appear under the search terms that led to this site, I shrugged it off as nothing.  But at this point,  that term has led internet browsers to our site almost everyday (sometimes multiple hits per day).

If this means what I think it means, then all I have to say to whoever is searching for that:

STOP BEING IGNORANT

Don’t believe the hype that is fed to you in the media everyday.  Yes, there are some bad Muslims in the world.  But guess what, there are bad Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Athiests, and every other religious, political, or cultural group out there.  Even the current Administration probably understands at least that simple concept.

It would be one thing for you to search for shirts that say “Find Osama” or something like that, but to target the entire Muslim population of the world with your idea for a t-shirt?  Do t-shirts like this exist or are you just hoping they do?

What’s even worse is that the people who search for that term end up on this site because of this post, which tells the story of other anti-muslim ignorance.  I guess I should be thankful that they end up reading the story of that awful incident instead of landing on an anti-muslim site.  If my plan works correctly, they will now also end up on this post and think about this too.

Sorry for the rant, but I couldn’t help but let it get to me.  It got to Keeley too, just for the record.  He told me in person.

Peace!!

Bush assasination film set for U.S. distribution (unless protestors stop it)

I found this article on CNN.com about a movie that depicts President Bush getting assasinated.  Sounds like a pretty crazy concept for a movie/mockumentary.  Read below:

TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) — After you kill off President George W. Bush in a fictional film, what do you do? How about make a deal.

Gabriel Range, the British producer/director/creator of “Death of a President,” the fictional documentary that sight unseen became one of the most talked-about movies of the Toronto Film Festival, has sold U.S. distribution rights to Newmarket Films, which handled Mel Gibson’s equally provocative movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

Newmarket, which reportedly paid $1 million for the film, is expected to give “President” a wide release within the next few months. It will air on Britain’s Channel 4 next month….

The film is shot as if it were a conventional television documentary, even though the events are fictional.

Range, who also co-wrote the film, uses footage taken of Bush during three visits to Chicago to create the scenes that lead up to the president being shot.

He also uses special digital effects to superimpose the head of the president on that of an actor pretending to be shot, and he creates a flowery eulogy delivered by President Dick Cheney at the funeral of his predecessor.

The movie opens with demonstrations against Bush as he visits Chicago in 2007. As he leaves a hotel after delivering a speech, he is shot by a sniper in a nearby building.

A police hunt leads to the arrest of a Palestinian man on flimsy evidence. Later the man is convicted of the assassination and kept in prison even as evidence points to another person as having committed the crime….

The 93-minute film’s subject matter has led to protests in the United States, especially from conservatives. Range said he has received five or six death threats.

But he said that was because there was a rush to judgment about his film, without people knowing what was in it. “We portrayed the horror of assassination. I don’t think anyone would get the idea of assassinating Bush from this film,” Range said.

I like that the filmmaker approaches this topic with some complexity, showing the “horrors of assasination,” as he says, but also showing potentail results in today’s political climate, such as a Palestinian man being falsely arrested.  It looks like he decided to do it tastefully, rather than just making a movie for shock value.  Hopefully the protestors won’t make enough noise to get it banned before it actually reaches theaters.  It could very well stimulate some important and intersting discussions.  Of course,  all of what i just said is subject to change after I actually see the movie.  (i’m predicting my review of the movie like he’s predicting what would happen if the President was shot)

Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement Negotiations

Negotiations are gonna be tense on this one:

 

In addition to strenuous negotiations on sensitive agricultural goods, Seoul trade officials are now facing the challenges of responding to irksome U.S. demands concerning the financial sector.

Seoul’s Trade Ministry said it expected agricultural talks to intensify, and the services and investment sectors, including financial services, to enter full-fledged negotiations during the four-day FTA talks in Seattle.

While not delineated, here’s a nice note from the piece on corporate hegemony above and beyond national sovereignty (read up on NAFTA’s Chapter 11 [pdf], a.k.a. “investor protections,” for a better understanding on this critical point that will have massive implications over generations):

 

Classified as “special financial institutions regulated by unique laws,” Seoul firmly says they are not subject to the trade talks. The government fears that new complications would emerge, such as foreign financial institutions filing lawsuits against the government for assisting public banks.

[...]

Both countries hope to conclude the talks by March 2007 to get the pact ratified before U.S. President George W. Bush’s trade negotiation authority expires on July 1, 2007. The trade promotion authority allows the Bush administration to negotiate a free trade deal without Congress having to approve amendments.

Thanks to Inner City Press for the heads up on this article. Remember,it is almost three years to the day (9/10/03) that, “Lee Kyang Hae, 55, who headed South Korea’s Federation of Farmers and Fishermen, stabbed himself in protest against the WTO, ‘which destroys Korea’s economy and its agriculture.’”

Tech-yesand-no

Apple today announced iTV, a device whose function will revolutionize media distribution in every way.

A wireless high-speed connection will distribute ANY content in your iTunes (movies, music, and perhaps soon live tv) from your computer to your television instantly. And it’s even going to be available in HI-DEF!

Sure there’s Slingbox, a device to send the signal from your cable box over IP, but you still have to pay for the cable box at your home for you to have any content to watch.  And you need a morgage to afford a Tivo.

With iTV, the content distribution is the entirety of the internet.  Want to watch a video podcast?  Download it and watch it in HD.  Need to catch the latest episode of Lost?  Download & Watch in HD.  George Bush just choked on a monkey?  Download it and watch…in HD!

And because the content is all managed through iTunes (or similar software), this opens up a whole new outlet for independent video dissemmination, which can only mean a more accessible and diverse media that is delivered to you without commercial filter (aka censorship) straight to your TV.  Imagine your favorite blog or podcast now available as automatically downloaded video content on your computer AND your television.  Tivo to the extreme!

In some way, shape, or form, this technology will further re-invent media distribution, much in the way that blogs have re-invented journalism.  Even though it won’t be out until at least 2007, you can sign me up right now.

On a related but totally different note, check this out.  I believe that this is a humor column by a Dr. Bernard Weiner.

A quick google search on Mr. Weiner reveals that he runs a site called Crisis Papers.  He’s also a PhD, and a professor at UCLA, which made me think for a second that this article was true, but his website has an entire “fantasies” section, so I’ll assume this is part of such delusions.

Here’s an excerpt:

—————

“This new invention is only in its trial phase,” he said, eyes gleaming in excitement. “But if the current tests are any indication, this device will revolutionize spying, journalism, the whole concept of privacy, everything. I call it ‘The Flying Wi-Fi’.”

Since his expected patent hadn’t come through yet, he swore me to secrecy for how this insect-drone worked. He needn’t have bothered, as I couldn’t follow his jargoned explanation of nano-technology anyway, but I can tell you this much: The Flying Wi-Fi is about the size of a small moth, it can stealthily hover or remain stationary almost
silently in any location, and it’s equipped with an ultra-sensitive wi-fi camera (with an amazing wide-angle lens) and microphone.

“Do you get it now?” he asked me. “Basically, with miniaturized, improved wireless technology components, it sends signals back to the computer base. The data can be viewed, listened to or transcribed into text…

“Well, I told you that this was going to revolutionize the concept of privacy,” he said, “but don’t forget that it will also totally alter the way journalists and bloggers gather information and dispense what they learn. The democratization, and instant dissemination, of information. Government officials better watch what they say.”

————-

He goes on to discuss overheard converstations in the offices of Rove, Cheney, et all.  Fictional, yes, but the device is a scary thought nonetheless.

Ah, technology, how I love and hate thee all at the same time.

America is Striving to be….Less Educated?

Amy Traub from the DMI Blog put up a post this week titled “For the First Time in Our History, The Next Generation Will Be Less Educated.”

Here is that post in its entirety:

It’s no secret that today a college degree is increasingly necessary to access the American middle class. Better educated people tend to earn more and pay more taxes, while a well-educated workforce is crucial to the nation’s international competitiveness in an increasingly globalized world.

Across the political spectrum, most of us agree with this. No matter what their political stripe, most politicians at least pay lip service to the importance of education. But that’s about as far as the consensus goes.

The ideology of the right tells us that if we cut public investment and just stand back to let the market do its magic, prosperity and well-being are sure to follow. In the realm of higher education policy, this approach has brought us dramatic cuts in student aid , four years of frozen Pell Grants for low-income students (with a fifth frozen year proposed in the president’s 2007 budget), and reduced funding for public colleges and universities in many states.

The results? Just look at the title of the blog post. As the New York Times reported Thursday, “For the first time in our history, the next generation will be less educated.” Reporting on a new study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Times notes that:

-”While other nation’s have significantly improved and expanded their higher education systems, the United States’ higher education performance has stalled since the early 1990’s”

-”For most American families, college is becoming increasingly unaffordable”

-As a result, today’s young people are “lagging educationally compared to the baby boom generation.”

The study, which evaluated higher education in each state individually as well as providing a national picture, also found that:

-The proportion of family income needed to pay net college costs (after accounting for all student financial aid) at public four-year colleges has grown from 28% to 42% in Ohio; from 24% to 37% in New Jersey.

-The likelihood of a 9th grader enrolling in college four years later is less than 40%; and that likelihood has decreased from 44% to 32% in Hawaii; from 46% to 35% in Vermont; and from 45% to 37% in New York.

-Since the early 1980s, the rate of increase in the price of college has far outstripped price increases in other sectors of the economy, even health care. Over these years, median family income increased by 127%; college tuition and fees by 375%

So much for our shared commitment to higher education.

But do progressives have any better ideas? We do, and it’s very simple: invest more in higher education. Help more young people afford college. Make paying for college less of a deal with the devil, where many degrees come with decades of debt. The Reverse the Raid on Student Aid Act is one concrete step towards these goals.

To me, this is huge. It ties into all of the problems this country is dealing with in terms of class, the economy, globalization, etc. Of all goals the government should set, education, and an affordable one at that, should be a top priority. The cost to go to college is sky high, people are graduating with years worth of debt (if they can even afford to pay for an entire college degree, or college at all for that matter), and then they have to compete for jobs that continually increase in minimum requirements and applicants. Increasing cost of education and decreasing financial aid means prolems both domestically and internationally, and it’s as simple as that.

Olbermann Continues His Assault…

Keith Olbermann made another jab at the Bush Administration yesterday for the 5th year anniversary of 9-11.  I, among others, feel that Bush and his administration try to use 9-11 to push their political agenda.  Here is what Olbermann had to say:

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.   And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those “missing posters” seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds — none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful….

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

 

Pretty powerful stuff.  Check out the entire thing here.

Board of Elections Error Encourages Illegal Activity

Why does this country, international fighter for “democracy,” have so many problems with voting? The list of reasons for people not to vote often appears longer than the reasons for them to vote: election fraud, miscounts, outdated voting machines, voter intimidation, disenfrachisement, and confusing instructions at the voting booth (not to mention lack of inspiring leaders). As if all that wasn’t enough, we also have the problem of Boards of Elections making mass mistakes and then giving misinformed instructions….

The NYTimes Empire Zone blog reported today that:

Roughly 200,000 New York City voters who had recently moved were given the wrong information about where they could vote in today’s primary, according to officials at the Board of Elections.
In a mailing sent to their new homes, these voters were told to go to their old polling places, which is technically not legal.

This kind of reminds me of another incident during the 2004 elections. My roomate received a notice from the Board of Elections telling him to go vote on the wrong date! They sent a follow up, correcting their mistake, but what if he didn’t get that message? I dont even know how many people this happened to.
Today’s mishap is another chapter to a very large problem in this country. If we are going to parade the idea of democracy around the world, we need to do a lot of work to make ours work right.

To put today’s problem in further context, I believe it was a smaller number of votes that caused dispute during the 2004 elections…which makes 200,000 look pretty significant.

MC Serch Helps Set an Example for the Middle East

From allhiphop.com email alerts:

Michael “MC Serch” Berrin and Greensboro, North Carolina DJ Waleed Coyote will collaborate on a compilation titled Peace in the Middle East, a new album made up of Arab and Jewish artists. Serch, a Jewish rapper and member of famed ’90s rap group 3rd Bass and DJ Waleed Coyote, an Arab DJ on Greensboro’s 102 Jamz and Othaz Records executive, announced the project, which aims to bring awareness to issues in the Middle East and to begin a peace process between the two cultures utilizing Hip-Hop music. “I am very proud of all of the artists that are involving their time and energy to talk about peace, talk about the importance of living together, being peaceful together, and coexisting together,” MC Serch told AllHipHop.com. Rappers already attached to the project include Ill Bill, Yatty, Noose, Abnormal, Moxberg, whuthisname and others. “I always knew he [Serch] was just like me, but he belongs to another religion and culture. And that religion and culture that I’m supposed to beef with. But there wasn’t any, it was like meeting a cousin.”

This sounds like an interesting idea. My only complaint is that they can’t get some more well known people involved to ACTUALLY get their message out. While MC Serch has had his place in hip hop history, his name alone isn’t going to sell a lot of records in today’s market. I guess he’s hoping to market it on concept alone.

Part of the problem is possibly the lack of Arab and Jewish [big name] hip hop artists. While they’re have been some, they are few and far between. I suggest he looks to a place like France, since many of the rappers there are Arab. Can anybody come up with a list of names?

My list of suggested artists starts off with:

Sniper (french hip hop group)

Remedy (yeah, that guy that was working with the RZA)

Egyptian Lover (Electro/hip hop producer in the 80s. Was he actually Egyptian?)

Chicago Mayor Uses First Veto Of His Career To Deny “Living Wages”

[Below is another post submitted to us by our friend Brian. He'll be getting his own user name soon.]

Sadly, the mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, has used the first veto of his 17-year career to overturn the Big Box ordinance , which passed by a wide margin in the city council a few months ago. The ordinance would have required “big box stores,” such as Walmart and Target, to pay a living wage.

Big Box stores are defined as “stores of at least 90,000 square feet operated by firms with $1 billion or more in annual sales.” The ordinance would have set standards requiring that big box “employees be paid a minimum of $9.25 an hour in wages and $1.50 in fringe benefits, [rising] to $10 and $3…by 2010.”

Ironically, “Wal-Mart’s [spokesperson] called Daley’s decision a ‘victory’ for working families.”“I…share a desire to ensure that everyone who works in the city of Chicago earns a decent wage,” Daley said, “but I do not believe that this ordinance, well intentioned as it may be, would achieve that end… It would drive jobs and businesses from our city, penalizing neighborhoods that need additional economic activity the most.”

“No American, other than Mayor Daley and the folks at Wal-Mart, believe it’s right for corporations to make billions while their workers get paid poverty-level wages and live without affordable health care,” said Chris Kofinis, a spokesman for union-affiliated advocacy group WakeUpWalMart.com.“I…share a desire to ensure that everyone who works in the city of Chicago earns a decent wage,” Daley said, “b ut I do not believe that this ordinance, well intentioned as it may be, would achieve that end… It would drive jobs and businesses from our city, penalizing neighborhoods that need additional economic activity the most.”

“Alderman Joe Moore said arguments that such ordinances drive jobs and desperately needed development from some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods are untrue.”

“The experience of other cities that have done living wage ordinances, is that they help create more jobs and lead to more business development, not less,” he said.

The Chicago Reader asks a very good question: “How much does Wal-Mart spend to avoid paying its workers more?” “WAL-MART WON’T say how much.”

(Quotes were taken from the Chicago Tribune and Business Week.)

Election Day 9-12-06

So i’m thinking that they should move elections to the spring so that they don’t fall so close to Sept. 11th. TV is full of images of September 11th and of election talk, so you can’t help but think about them together. Obviously, the President and Co. have capitalized off of this day in U.S. history, and removing election day from the picture would help to remedy that a little. But I guess it really doesn’t matter anyway, because if elections were moved to the spring they would just make up some terror alert.

Plus, tomorrow is less about rivalry between parties and more about rivalry within parties. I personally am registered as an independent (so that i can critique both parties from the outside), but I have to honestly say I’m missing out on something in tomorrow’s primaries. I may have to reconsider my party registration for the future.

My area has one of the hottest election battles in NYC, with the Congressional seat that Major Owens stepped down from sitting wide open. There is also interesting races going on for Governor, Attorney General, and Senate.

The following is a list of how I would vote if I were to be voting tomorrow:

Governor: Spitzer. He did some pretty good things in his position as Attorney General, including going after Wall Street firms, and other parts of the financial services industry, in order to make their practices better for consumers. He also seems more interested in providing the necessary funding for NYC education than his opponent. Plus, he seems to have some power when it comes to challenging Bloomberg and projects like the Atlantic Yards. Finally, Spitzer is getting the nod from NYtimes.

Senate: Tasini. First of all, I’ve never been a huge fan of Hillary Clinton. Something about her is not to be completely trusted. Even though I don’t know enough about Tasini, I like what I’ve seen, including his criticisms of Hillary’s past and present stances on the war in Iraq. Plus, Hillary is probably guaranteed to be the winner here anyway, so I figure a vote for Tasini is a vote to show Hillary that people care about the issues that he is pushing.

Attorney General: Green. Just like Spitzer, the New York Times is endorsing Green, which is a big plus in my mind for him. But on top of that, Cuomo has been linked to a major slumlord (another article here) as well as being former head of HUD (aka the #1 worst landlord in the city and country on the Village Voice’s top 10 worst landlords list). That doesn’t reflect too good on him, in my opinion.

Congress: Chris Owens. All of the Congressional candidates seem to be decent choices, but I have to give my personal endorsement to Owens. In the end, he is the most progressive, and is the only candidate in this race that completely opposes Ratner and the Atlantic Yards project. Other than that, one issue for me in this race is, well, race. While Yassky doesn’t seem to be that bad, I have some issues with voting for the only white guy in the race for a black majority district. I mean, the guy did get heckled and had donuts thrown at him by some local residents after all.

If you aren’t sure about what to do tomorrow, don’t use that as an excuse not to vote. Read up on it tonight. There is plenty of information available online about candidates and races. In NYC, for example, Gotham Gazette provides a great guide during each election season. Check it out here. As for other cities, I’m sure there are similar guides.

Russell Simmons Furthers His “Sell-Outability”

What a jackass.  BigDaddyChris posted on this earlier, but here’s an update:

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele yesterday aired a new commercial for his U.S. Senate bid featuring hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and said he plans to barnstorm the state after Tuesday’s primary.

[...]

The 60-second TV commercial features footage from a recent fundraiser that Mr. Simmons hosted in Baltimore for Mr. Steele.  It shows Mr. Simmons onstage in a T-shirt and blue jeans, saying: “The lieutenant governor is clear on his mission. He said he wants to fight poverty and ignorance … Now I’m here to endorse him.”

[...]

Mr. Simmons is a well-known hip-hop personality who, in 2004, helped register about 4 million voters through a political action nonprofit that he helped to found. Most of the new voters were Democrats in the 18-35 demographic.   Mr. Simmons surprised many in the black community last month when he endorsed Mr. Steele and headlined the Baltimore fundraiser.
Mr. Mfume [former director of the NAACP] is on the board of directors of Mr. Simmons’ political action group, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.    Mr. Simmons said he supports Mr. Steele because of his commitment to help the black community build wealth. Mr. Simmons said, “Some of the things [Mr. Steele] is doing are inspiring, and maybe moving Democrats to pay attention.”

Simmons: what a jackass. Watch the ad (“Building Bridges”) here.

Intelligence Oversight Process “Neutered”

The good folks at Secrecy News posted up on another important, and possibly election-year-loaded, issue:

For the second year in a row, the U.S. Senate may fail to enact an intelligence authorization bill, effectively neutering the intelligence oversight process.

“The failure of the Senate to pass intelligence authorization for 2 years threatens to erode the ability of the Intelligence Committee to carry out the mission assigned to it by the Senate,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking member of the Committee, in a floor statement.

In an effort to compel Senate action on the intelligence bill, Sen. Rockefeller introduced an amendment that would strip out language in the Defense Appropriations bill that provides a nominal authorization for continuing intelligence activities.

See September 6 statements by Sen. Rockefeller and Sen. Dianne Feinstein here.

 

US Sees the FTAA Gasp For Air, Threatens to Revoke “Preferential” Status

While some have reported that the Free Trade Area of the Americas “is dead,” I agree more with the stance that it will be watered down into smaller agreements with individual countries, which will then put pressure on countries abstaining. To push countries into these smaller agreements, the US Trade Representative, Susan Schwab (see our backgrounder on her here), threatened earlier this week to revoke preferential treatment for “left-leaning” countries, as some journalists have described it.

This article lays it out well, though. Excerpts:

For over 30 years, trade preferences have enabled underdeveloped countries to export products to developed countries without paying tariffs or customs fees. The U.S. established its trade preferences program–called the General System of Preferences (GSP)–in 1976, and has renewed it eight times, most recently in 2002.

The three countries most likely to lose trading preferences with the United States–Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela–have said U.S. proposals to open a giant free trade zone among the countries of North and South America unfairly favor U.S. companies.

[...]

In mid-August, U.S. trade representative Susan Schwab announced the administration-mandated review of its trade preferences program. Schwab said the purpose of the review was to determine which countries needed preferences most.

Countries with upper-middle-income economies based on the World Bank’s classifications–which in Latin America include only Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela–would be less likely to get renewals than poorer countries, Schwab said.

[...]

“The U.S. government’s announcement that it will review the possibility of limiting, suspending, or withdrawing trade preferences under the General System of Preferences to three Latin American countries–Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela–is political pressure to make these nations participate in the model of regional integration proposed by the United States,” said Caro.

If countries agree to one-on-one talks with the United States, they are likely to be forced to accept far less favorable trading conditions than if they negotiate as a group, Caro added.

[...]

Leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, who have been pushing regional integration models like the South American trading block known as Mercosur, are also upset about the U.S. announcement that trade preferences may be revoked.

The potential suspension of U.S. trade preferences is “reminiscent of the old theories of the Roman Empire toward countries that didn’t agree with its policies,” Kirchner said in August, while Chavez has repeatedly warned other South American countries that signing deals with the U.S. would threaten regional ties.

[...]

If larger countries like Brazil and Argentina sign bilateral deals with the United States, smaller nations in the region would likely be pushed into similar agreements, according to the IRC’s Caro.

Dems Big Donors Done Disappeared

From The Hill story about Soros-types not donating during the mid-term cycle:

“There are still a lot of people that don’t play 3.5 years out of four no matter how big the midterm is,” said a Democratic fundraiser experienced with large donors. “It’s not important enough for them. It’s always ‘What can I get out of this? Can I be close to the president of the United States? Can I have an ambassadorship?’”

NPH Wouldn’t Do That, KSM Would (They’re Pretty Sure)

Yesterday, Bush answered the question I relayed from Attytood a few weeks back: Why isn’t Khalid Shaikh Mohammed on Trial?  It’s cuz he was in a not-so-secret CIA prison.  And why is he now going to be on trial?  Cuz Iraq is a mess, and it’s time to bring attention back to the “successful” end of the GWOT.  Here is the repost from Attytood:

Forget bin Laden (as Bush and Cheney seemingly have) for a moment. What is the deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, said to the organizational planner of 9/11, in custody somewhere since 2002 — and to this date not charged for his role in the greatest mass murder in American history?

What gives? Wouldn’t a conviction of KSM, under the American system of justice be not just a courtroom victory but also a victory in the worldwide court of public opinion, where America has been slaughtered the last four years or so? Instead, KSM is hidden away in an American gulag that makes a mockery of the values our troops are supposed to be defending.

That’s a more important question than what it reads on bin Laden’s “Most Wanted” poster.

Good points from Attytood, but part of the logic is already being undercut: The presumption that the conviction of KSM would be “under the American system of justice,” while one of the JAG attorneys for a prisoner at Guantanamo already said on MSNBC that the Bush proposal from yesterday makes no substantive changes to the system that the Supreme Court already struck down in the Hamdi case.

Mos Def’s Run in With the Law

I’m a little late on this one (even though i did see it on the news after it happened) but Mos Def got arrested outside of the VMAs last week for putting on an unauthorized public performance.  Apparently he had requested to perform at the award show, got denied, and decided to set up his own stage outside.  The song he performed was called “Katrina Clap” and has to do with Hurricane katrina and the racism, economics, and politics surrounding it.

Here’s a video of the performace and the arrest.   Here’s an actual music video for the song.  Both are a must see.

I think Mos Def deserves an award for “person of the week” or something like that.

Here are some of the lyrics as shown on mosdef.funky4u.com

Listen homie, It’s dollar day in New Orleans,
It’s where there water everywhere and people dead in the street (eet eets),
And Mr. President he ‘bout that cash,
He got a policy for handlin’ the bruthas and trash,
And if you poor you black,
I laugh a laugh, they won’t give when you ask,
You betta off on crack, dead or in jail, or with a gun in Iraq (a aq),
And it’s as simple as that,
No opinion my man it’s mathematical fact,
Listen, a million poor since 2004,
And they got illions and killions to waste on the War,
And make you question what the taxes is for,
Or the cost to reinforce the broke levee wall,
Tell the boss he shouldn’t be the boss anymore

There’s No Crying in Baseball, and No “Innocent Bystanders” in Guantanomo Bay

Bush is currently addressing the country, or, well, at least those people in the country who are interested to listen.

He just said that Guantanomo Bay doesn’t hold any “innocent bystanders.” It sounded and tasted like BS, so i did a straightforward Google search for “Guatanamo Bay” and “innocent bystanders.” Not surprisingly, it netted over 19,000 results. Below is one of the first results of that search:

 

6/23/04: A senior American military interrogator at Camp Delta told 60 Minutes II that as many as 20 percent of the Guantanamo prisoners were sent there by mistake – and that they were innocent bystanders, or very small fish.

 

Like in the movie A League of Their Own, when Tom Hanks says there’s no crying in baseball in clear contridiction to the player that is crying in front of him, it looks like, according to a “senior American military interrogator at Camp Delta” in Guatanomo Bay, one of every five prisoners at Guantanomo shouldn’t be there despite claims they should be.

Saying there’s no crying in baseball sure don’t make it true.

Election Season Terror

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems like there is a higher terror alert during every election season….

A Tried and True Method

[The following was forwarded to us for posting by Brian Kremen. Good find, thanks Brian.]

From Ken Silverstein’s blog, Washintgton Babylon ( http://www.harpers.org/WashingtonEditor.html):

Gustave Gilbert, an intelligence officer and psychologist who spoke with Nazi POWs after World War II, interviewed Hermann Goering, the Nazi Reichsmarshall. An excerpt from Gilbert’s account of the talk:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

“Why, of course, the ‘people’ don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war… That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Olbermann Vs. Rumsfeld

Keith Olbermann, of MSNBC’s Countdown, invoked the spirit of Edward R. Murrow this past Wednesday for an attack on Donald Rumsfeld, who made some controversial comments about “Islamic fascists” and people who oppose the current administration, calling them “morally and intellectually confused.”

If you haven’t seen the video, you need to watch it. This is the type of journalism that has been lacking in this country for quite a while, and hopefully it will inspire more journalists to speak out.

Moments like this in the media are very important because we are often flooded with images and phrases that are created by the conservative right wing to sway public opinion; to convince the public into blindly following their causes; to make people afraid of speaking out. For example, check out an article on some of the recent trends in issue framing by the Inter Press Service. Rumsfeld and Bush didn’t just come up with terms like “Islamic fascists” and “appeasers” out of nowhere. It’s part of a larger effort by conservative media and politicians to frame the issues their way so that they can maintain support by the general public.

Thanks to Olbermann, these efforts aren’t just simply accepted. He is brave enough to make his critique of the administration very public and to name names. This is what media should truly be, something that puts elected officials in their place – modern checks and balances.

I’ll finish the post with some of the statements made by Olbermann. After all, he says it all best.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong……

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count — not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

Cali GOP Registers Imaginary People, Blames Sub-Contractor

Dear readers, You ever play that card game “Bullshit”?

According to the Sacremento Bee:

Several GOP voter-registration workers created fake individuals in documents submitted to the California Republican Party, which said Thursday that it discovered the fraudulent activity through an internal review and forwarded its findings to Secretary of State Bruce McPherson… The documents were filed two weeks ago by an unnamed Southern California subcontractor hired by the party’s principal registration vendor, California Grassroots Mobilization…

Kevin Korenthal is listed as a contact for California Greasstoors Mobilization. The domain name attached to his email adddress does not work, however. “Mr. Korenthal is a lifetime resident of Southern California. He was a City Chairman for Bush/Cheney04 in Los Angeles County and currently writes a daily weblog at http://www.socalpundit.com.

Here is a brief excerpt of one post on his social pundit site:

“We will win this war but it will be no thanks to liberals of today. Rather than see America to victory you constantly ponder our ever-imminent loss. To me that means you are working on enemy Islam’s side. This is a struggle for the future of humanity. You know what the sides are, which are you on Mr. scvvoter?”

If you’re interested to ask him questions:

Kevin D. Korenthal
California Grassroots Mobilization
24267 San Fernando Rd
Santa Clarita, CA 91321
Phone: (661) 310-0769

This “registration vendor,” Kevin Korenthal, seems to share an address with another organization at 24267 San Fernando Rd: The Santa Clara Valley GOP. A Cali State Rep also shares this address. And what organization is included in the links page at the Santa Clara Valley GOP site, other than Korenthal’s SoCalPundit? Here he is saying, “I’m basically (Santa Clara Valley GOP’s) chairman, but to be honest with you, we’re still trying to figure out what the name of this position is. Essentially, my duties include working out a plan for additional voter registration, and making sure that we’re getting our Republicans to the polls, and increasing our volunteer turnout.”

So, clearly the chairman of the local party, who’s also the contact at this private company leading the registration drive effort, found out somebody fucked up and he’s gotta pin it on the sub-contractor… so the question is, what role in Santa Clara Valley GOP do the principals at this sub-contractor hold.

I’d bet dollars to dingos that a reporter in the area was getting sweet on the fake names, so the GOP beat ‘em to the punch by “coming clean” and getting this story printed first. I call “Bullshit!” and I don’t expect to be the one picking the cards up off the table.

Robert Mugabe Would Be Proud: NSA Eavesdrops On ACLU

Zimbabwean Pres Robert Muagbe would be proud. The good folks over at Liberty Level (newly in our blogroll) offered this update earlier today:

It has recently come to light that the government has been spying on a number of peace groups in Baltimore, according to the ACLU.

[...]

FOIA requests by the ACLU have shown that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces were used to spy on such threatening groups as environmental and animal rights advocates, labor and fair trade groups, grassroots political groups, peace and social justice groups, human rights groups, civil liberties groups, nuclear disarmament groups, and Native American groups (who are, in fact, the only real Americans).

The “Green Scare” is certainly cover for much of this.

How Many Times Can You Lose, and Still be “SHOCKED?”

NYT reports:

Greece Shocks U.S. Basketball Team

The Americans will fall short of a championship in a major international tournament for the third straight time.