Mexican President condemns “assassination” of Brad Will

MSM is still calling it a shootout (there are no guns used on theside of the popular uprising), but they’re referring to Brad’s death as an ‘assassination‘ now. If you doubt the claim that no guns were used, please watch the final, graphic, and painful minutes of Brad’s life – he films his own shooting. I have avoided linking to it until now because it is too difficult for me to watch, but this “shootout” business is just getting to be too much. Please note, when you’re not in a shoot out, you’re simply being shot at.

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — Mexican federal police, who occupied the southern city of Oaxaca yesterday, will remain “as long as necessary” to establish order after five months of protests, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said.
…

Aguilar read a statement from Mexican President Vicente Fox condemning the “assassination” of U.S. journalist Bradley Will. Will, who worked for Indymedia in New York and had entered Mexico on a tourist visa, was killed Oct. 27 during a shootout between protesters and police, the U.S. Embassy said.

For a happier video of Brad, watch this (I recommend skipping to the second song at 3:30 into it).

NY GOP Candidate Finger: Gay Marriage Should be “Compulsory”

A libertarian candidate demanding compulsory action. Ya gotta be kiddin’ me…

Making Gay Marriage Compulsory

October 30th, 2006

I’m the Libertarian/Republican candidate for Congress in NY’s 11th Congressional District and I was recently asked my opinion on the subject of gay marriage. I think it should be not only legal but compulsory. I’d like to see those guys get up each morning and apologize just like us straight married guys do. Give us something in common.

Posted by N.Y. GOP/Libertarian Candidate for Congress Steve Finger

UN Says Military Commissions Act May Violate International Treaties

According to an article released this past week, the UN is raising concern over the Military Commissions Act and its compatibilty with international law.

Washington’s new anti-terrorism law could end up violating international treaties protecting detainees, with some provisions denying suspects the right to a fair trial, a key U.N. rights expert said Friday.

Martin Scheinin, the United Nations’ expert on protecting human rights in the fight against terrorism, said the Military Commissions Act signed into law earlier this month by U.S. President George W. Bush contains provisions “incompatible” with U.S. obligations to adhere to treaties on human rights and humanitarian law.

“One of the most serious aspects of this legislation is the power of the president to declare anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge as an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ – a term unknown in international humanitarian law,” said Scheinin, a legal expert from Finland.

As a result, he said, those detainees are subject to the jurisdiction of a military commission composed of military officers – rather than a civilian court of law.

He also deplored the denial of the habeas corpus rights of foreigners – including legal, permanent U.S. residents – to challenge the legality of their detention, “in manifest contradiction with” the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty the U.S. ratified in 1992.

Another concern, Scheinin said, is the denial of detainees’ rights to see evidence that could exonerate them if the evidence is deemed classified. That, he said, “severely impedes the right to a fair trial.”

Even though it’s great that the UN is saying this, I’m not expecting much to come of it. I mean, after all, it’s not the first time that the current administration has ignored the opinion of the UN and gone ahead to do what it wants. For some reason the UN seems powerless against the US, and that’s a scary thing. I would also like to know where the UN was a while back, before the signing of the bill. Couldn’t they have spoken up then? Why wait until after it’s signed to make such statements.

“Momma’s Gonna Help Build a Wall”

Thank you, Matt Wuerker, for the great cartoons.

NYC Indymedia Activist Killed by Paramilitaries in Oaxaca

I first knew Brad from the FTAA demo in Miami and was incredibly impressed not only with his work down there, but also with his production role in The Miami Model afterwards. He was an acquaintance and colleague to me, but I looked to him as a leader in NYC’s independent media movement. He will be missed as a colleague and role model by me, and as friend and commandante by countless others.

As Kristen Bricker of Narco News writes tonight, “Brad gave his life tonight so that you and I could know the truth. We owe him to act upon it, and to share the risks that he took.”

RIP, Brad.

This, from NYC Indymedia:

Federal Police and Paramilitaries attack the barricades near Oaxaca’s office of justice, in the Calicante municipality. There aresereveal injured and one person dead.

Indymedia New York’s reporter, Will Bradley Roland, was shot in the chest and die before get the hospital, while Oswaldo Ramírez, photographer for Milenio Diario, has also been shot and is injured in the foot.

THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR ABOUT BRAD FROM A PERSON WHO WAS THERE WITH HIM:
- He was at the Santa Lucia Barricade

- He was shot from a distance of 30-40 meters right in the pit of the stomach

- They say it was urban paramilitary priistas in plain clothes who shot him

- People then pulled him away to safety; its confirmed that he’s dead; his body is at the red cross in oaxaca

- 3 additional dead (4 total); 1 member of radio universidad was injured, he went to the hospital in a volkswagen cuz no ambulances would ome

…

Radio APPO steaming now | Live coverage at CML

More on Brad from Narco News. Read it!

Tonight, from the Oaxaca City Morgue, Brad Will shouts “Ya Basta!” – Enough Already! – to the death and suffering imposed (as Brad, a thoughtful and serious anarchist, understood) by an economic system, the capitalist system. His death will be avenged when that system is destroyed. And Brad Will’s ultimate sacrifice exposes the Mexican regime for the brutal authoritarian violence that the Commercial Media hides from the world, and thus speeds the day that justice will come from below and sweep out the regimes of pain and repression that system requires. Brad gave his life tonight so that you and I could know the truth. We owe him to act upon it, and to share the risks that he took. Goodbye, old friend. Your sacrifice will not be in vain.

And these, from Reuters & CNN.

Culture of Corruption, In JPEG Form

Here is a graphic of a DOJ sheet, courtesy of Roll Call (via TPM). I don’t even need to explain it…

Election Decor

Some of the Benefits of Immigration

Just this morning, Bush signed a bill:

Authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, legislation that has fueled controversy over illegal immigration less than two weeks before crucial midterm elections…

By signing the bill, Bush will give GOP candidates a pre-election platform for asserting they’re tough on illegal immigration. Yet the centerpiece of his immigration policy, a guest worker program, remains stalled in Congress…

Its cost is not known, although a homeland security spending measure the president signed earlier this month makes a $1.2 billion down payment on the project. The money also can be used for access roads, vehicle barriers, lighting, high-tech equipment and other tools to secure the border…

Others have doubts about its effectiveness.

“A fence will slow people down by a minute or two, but if you don’t have the agents to stop them it does no good. We’re not talking about some impenetrable barrier,” T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing Border Patrol agents, said Wednesday.

In light of this, it would be good to look at anohter side of immigration. Amy Taylor over at the DMI blog wrote up a great piece yesterday about some of the ovelooked benefits of immigration.

She says:

High-skilled immigrant workers are crucial to our place as a competitor in the world economy. Since 1990 more than half the U.S. Nobel laureates in the sciences were foreign-born. One in five doctors are foreign-born, along with two of every five medical scientists, one of every five computer specialists, one of every six persons in engineering or science occupations, one of every four astronomers, physicists, chemical, and material scientists, and one of every six biological scientists. Since currently there is no direct route for high-skilled visa holders to stay permanently they may be pulled to other places who are actively recruiting such high-skilled workers. All of this talk of border security does not address how our economy and global competitiveness would be put at risk were we to lose our immigrants.

No one is talking about how we need immigrants to maintain our country’s economic growth either. Our economy relies on immigrants as workers, entrepreneurs, consumers and taxpayers whose taxes support our schools, hospitals and public services. Immigrants work in every sector of the economy. Immigrant consumers stimulate demand for products produced in our economy. No one is talking about what we would do in this idealized world without immigrants when the baby boom generation retires. Immigrants are, on average, younger and have more children than the native born. We will increasingly rely on them to support our aging population. We need them to keep our Social Security system robust. Immigrants are also crucial consumers in the housing market making up 12% of first-time homebuyers in 2001. Many other industrialized nations are now facing the dilemma of how they will support their own aging populations –but we are “younging” as we age, according to William H. Frey a well-known demographer, and immigrants are to thank for that. While immigrants are told daily to be grateful they are here, we are not hearing about how grateful we should be that they are.

All of this is good to think about. We often talk about immigrants doing jobs in the service industries that Americans don’t want to do, but we rarely think about them doing jobs that Americans can’t do – which is the case more often than one might think. People are so caught up in the image of the “illegal” immigrants and border hopping that they fail to see the more complex sides to the issue.

Obama Inhaled

Since the last post we made that contained a reference to weed was our most popular ever, I figured it would be worth a try to post this (yes, i stoop low for page hits).

NYtimes reports:

Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who said Sunday that he was considering running for president in 2008, created a little sunlight on Monday between himself and both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For one thing, he said that as a youth he had inhaled.

“When I was a kid, I inhaled,” Mr. Obama said here to an audience of magazine editors. “That was the point.”

The direct admission was in contrast to Mr. Clinton’s denial in his 1992 campaign for president that he had smoked marijuana.

“I didn’t inhale,” Mr. Clinton said, cementing the idea that he liked to have things both ways.

Mr. Obama had written in his first book, “Dreams From My Father” (1995), before entering politics, that he had used marijuana and cocaine (“maybe a little blow”). He said he had not tried heroin because he did not like the pusher who was trying to sell it to him.

In an interview here on Monday conducted by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, at a meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors, Mr. Obama said he was not making light of the subject.

“It was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage boy,” he said. “Teenage boys are frequently confused.”

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s hit him with the real questions and issues.

Other countries use U.S. as model for prisoner abuse

One of the key criticisms I heard about the Military Commissions Act and the U.S. treatment of prisoners in the weeks leading up to the signing of the act was that by allowing such actions, we are setting an example for the rest of the world. Given that we treat prisoners in such a way, what happens when a U.S. soldier, a U.S. citizen, or anyone else is labelled as an “enemy combatant,” captured by a foreign government, and tortured? How can we possibly criticize them for it, given that we do the same thing?

When I first heard that criticism, it was offered as a hypothetical situation. But yesterday, a report was published by Reuters that explained how other countries have in fact been citing the U.S. as an excuse/inspiration/model for their treatment of prisoners.

Some countries try to refute criticism over their treatment of prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terror suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said on Monday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator on torture, told a news conference that “all too frequently” governments respond to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.

“The United States has been the pioneer of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world,” Nowak said. “Today, other governments are kind of saying, ‘But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.’”

He said nations like Jordan tell him, “We are collaborating with the United States so it can’t be wrong if it is also done by the United States.”

Nowak, along with other U.N. human rights officials, has criticized U.S. policies against terror suspects, including secret jails, harsh treatment and the lack of due process. He turned down a visit to Guantanamo Bay because he could not interview detainees and prison officials in private.

He has argued that if there is evidence against detainees, after years in jail, it should be presented to the usually “efficient” and fair civilian courts rather than military tribunals.

Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said the new U.S. law adopted earlier this month, which outlaws rape and most forms of torture, still allows harsh interrogation methods rights advocates say border on torture. And it does not permit appeals in U.S. federal court…

The Real Reason for The Military Commisions Act, and The Act Challenged

From the Jurist on October 17th:

The military commissions bill became necessary after the US Supreme Court ruled in June that the commissions, as initially constituted, lacked proper legal authorization. The law provides statutory authorization for military commission trials for Guantanamo Bay and the Bush administration has promised to immediately take steps toward beginning prosecution.

From the Jurist on June 29th:

Wire services are reporting that the US Supreme Court has ruled that military commissions at Guantanamo Bay are illegal under military law and the Geneva Conventions, holding in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that President Bush did not have authority to establish the commissions as constituted.

A minor update, from the Oct 17th article:

A legal challenge to the law has already been filed by a group of Afghan detainees who argue that Congress, by passing the bill, endangered the rights of detainees. The habeas stripping provisions of the new law apply retroactively, and in order for the detainees to be successful, a judge will have to strike down the portion of the new law that precludes the challenges.

LA’s Homeless Are Like LA’s Old Nikes

I hate the terminology used in these stories. They discuss the “dumping” of the homeless.

The frame gets across the mentality of those doing the “dumping,” though, and that may be for the best. Those doing the dumping see these people the same way Nike sees their unsold extra shoes — expendable goods that should be dumped into undesireable locations at the going rate.

Los Angeles police have launched a criminal investigation into the dumping of homeless people on a rundown area in the city after ambulances were spotted dropping off discharged hospital patients there. The practice had long been suspected but police say they now have evidence, releasing pictures and video to the media on Tuesday of five hospital patients being left in the downtown area commonly known as skid row. “We cannot allow the dumping of the most needy … into that environment, and shame on those who do,” Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton told reporters on Tuesday…

The investigation will focus on possible violations of federal laws that require medical facilities to screen and stabilize patients before releasing them. It comes as Los Angeles city council seeks a compromise on a policy that attempted to ban people from sitting, lying or sleeping on the streets. It was ruled unconstitutional in April on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment.

Interview with a Professor of Constitutional Law

Another key clip from Keith Olberman’s show. He interviews a Professor of Constitutional Law at George Washington U. This man has a lot to say about what is going on, and he adds depth of insight rarely found in the media. The interview begins after Olberman’s introductory reporting on the Oct. 17th signing of the Military Commissions Act.

Habeas Corpus: Let’s start with the basics

We have decided to have habeas corpus and the Military Commissions Act become an ongoing theme over the next month, so I figure we should start it off with the basics. Below is some basic background information followed by some ranting:

What is habeas corpus? What does it mean? Many of us hear the phrase thrown around and many of us have used it without truly knowing the history of it. Since Lift While Climbing has decided to focus on posts involving habeas corpus over the next month, I thought the best way to start off would be to go straight to the origins of the phrase – what does it mean and where does it come from?

According to Wikipedia,

In common law countries, habeas corpus (/’heɪbiəs ‘kɔɹpəs/), Latin for “you [should] have the body”, is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

In the United States, way back when the original laws were being written (i.e. the Constitution), it was decided that habeas coprus would be a principal foundation of this country. It became something that represented America and something that Americans stood for.

Ever heard of due process, right to a fair trial, innocent until proven guitly, right to appeal, or the Geneva conventions? Those things are all tied to habeas corpus, but now all of that is down the drain due to the Military Commissions Act being signed.

Check out some of the criticisms of the act from Wikipedia:

A number of legal scholars and Congressional members – including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) – have said that the habeas provision of the Act violates a clause of the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention “shall not be suspended” except in cases of “rebellion or invasion.”^[18]

The Act has also been denounced by critics who assert that its wording makes possible the permanent detention and torture (as defined by the Geneva Conventions) of anyone – including American citizens – based solely on the decision of the President.^[19] Indeed, the wording of section 948b^[20] of the act appears to explicitly contradict the Third Geneva Convention of which the United States is currently a signatory, however as long as the Act is not used when dealing with a country or countries that have also signed the conventions, the Geneva Conventions do not hold any weight.

In the House debate, Representative David Wu of Oregon offered this scenario:

Let us say that my wife, who is here in the gallery with us tonight, a sixth generation Oregonian, is walking by the friendly, local military base and is picked up as an unlawful enemy combatant. What is her recourse? She says, I am a U.S. citizen. That is a jurisdictional fact under this statute, and she will not have recourse to the courts? She can take it to Donald Rumsfeld, but she cannot take it across the street to an article 3 court.^[21]

One has described the Act as “the legalization of the José Padilla treatment” – referring to the American citizen who was declared an unlawful enemy combatant and then imprisoned for three years before finally being charged with a lesser crime than was originally alleged.^[22] A legal brief filed on Padilla’s behalf alleges that during this time he was subjected to sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and enforced stress positions.^[23]

Amnesty International said that the Act “contravenes human rights principles.”^[24] An editorial in The New York Times described the Act as “a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”^[25]

American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said, “The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions.” ^[26]

The law has also been criticized for allegedly giving a retroactive, nine-year immunity to U.S. officials who authorized, ordered, or committed potential acts of abuse on detainees.^[27]

Unfortuneately, in this country, the possibility of Hillary Clinton having plastic surgery in the past is bigger news than the death of one of the principles the country itself was founded on. Most people probably don’t even realize that she has spoken out against the act, but they do realize that she’s challenging the alleged attacks on her looks as a teenager. The death of habeas corpus should be big news everyday, hands down.

Thank God for Keith Olbermann.  Also, thank God that we have places like youtube where we can watch videos made by people at home.  One good example is the one below where students filmed themselves protesting the Military Commisions Act and used the footage to remix the video for “American Idiot” by Green Day. I’d like to officially call out to all young people: follow their lead and make videos, art, music about this. Spread it on the net. Take media into your own hands!

Not the half of it

I like this comic, but I can’t laugh at it right now – at a moment when so much more than world opinon is at stake. It would have been funnier before the administration pushed through legislation that damages the right to challenge inprisionment, demand trial, and appeal to the judgment of peers, and individuals trained in the law. World Opinon seems like a trivial matter after the events of last week. Though, I admit, prior to that it seemed to be the most essential thing we were ruining.

We will all be posting frequently on the subject of Habeus Corpus for the next month.  Hopefully, we’ll gain a really good undertanding of what it is, and what is being lost in recent legislation.

Americans not scared/angry enough.

Keith Olberman trying to rouse us. He says Habeus Corpus is the fundamental liberty from which all other freedoms spring, and that well is drying up. When will we get mad?

The Military Commissions Act and Bush’s history of prisoner treatment

I was doing a little searching on the topic of the Military Commissions Act and found a great piece by Heather Wokusch at the Guerilla News Network.  I decided to repost the entire article below:

What the Military Commissions Act of 2006 means for you

Now that you could be labeled an enemy combatant…

Since Congress recently handed Bush the power to identify American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” and detain them indefinitely without charge, it’s worth examining the administration’s record of prisoner abuse as well as the building of stateside detention centers.

As Texas governor (from 1995-2000) Bush oversaw the executions of 152 prisoners, and thus became the most-killing governor in the history of the United States. Ethnic minorities, many of whom did not have access to proper legal representation, comprised a large percentage of those Bush put to death, and in one particularly egregious example, Bush executed an immigrant who hadn’t even seen a consular official from his own country (as is required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the U.S. was a signatory). Bush’s explanation: “Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?”

Governor Bush also flouted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by choosing to execute juvenile offenders, a practice shared at the time only by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Significantly, in 1998 a full 92% of the juvenile offenders on Bush’s death row were ethnic minorities.

Conditions inside Texan prisons during Bush’s reign were so notorious that federal Judge William Wayne Justice wrote, “Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions.”

In September 1996, for example, a videotaped raid on inmates at a county jail in Texas showed guards using stun guns and an attack dog on prisoners, who were later dragged face-down back to their cells.

Funding of mental health programs during Bush’s reign was so poor that Texan prisons had a sizeable number of mentally-impaired inmates; defying international human rights standards, these inmates ended up on death row. For instance, a prisoner named Emile Duhamel, with severe psychological disabilities and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed “natural causes” but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush’s governorship is unclear.

As president, Bush presides over a prison population topping two million people, giving America the dubious distinction of having a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country. When considering that (based on 2003 figures) the US has three times more prisoners per capita than Iran and seven times more than Germany, the nation looks more like a Gulag than the Land of the Free.

The White House has also stifled investigation into the roughly 760 aliens (mainly Muslim men) the U.S. government rounded up post-9/11, ostensibly for immigration violations. Amnesty International reports that 9/11 detainees have suffered “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some corrections officers” and a denial of “basic human rights.”

Then of course, there’s Guantanamo, where the U.S. is holding hundreds of detainees in top secrecy and without access to courts, legal counsel or family visits. Add to that the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis the U.S. has imprisoned (including a large percentage of innocent civilians) and countless U.S. secret prisons across the globe, and it looks as if incarceration is the nation’s best export.

While Abu Ghraib may have left administration officials falling over themselves with protestations of compassion, it’s worth remembering that the Bush White House has fought hard against the International Convention Against Torture, especially a proposal to establish voluntary inspections of prisons and detention centers in signatory countries, such as the United States.

Put it all together, and last week’s passage of the Military Commissions Act is ominous for those in the U.S. As Bruce Ackerman noted recently in The Los Angeles Times, the legislation “authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any protections of the Bill of Rights.” The vague criteria for being labeled an enemy combatant (taking part in “hostilities against the United States”) don’t help either. Would that include anti-war protestors? People who criticize Bush? Unclear.

In 2002, former Attorney General John Ashcroft called for the indefinite detainment of U.S. citizens he considered to be “enemy combatants,” and while widely criticized at the time, Congress went ahead and fulfilled Ashcroft’s nefarious vision last week. Ashcroft had also called for stateside internment camps, and accordingly, in January 2006 the U.S. government awarded a Halliburton subsidiary $385 million to build detention centers to be used for, “an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” New programs that require additional detention space. Hmm.

The disgraceful Military Commissions Act and the building of domestic internment camps are yet more examples of blowback from the administration’s so-called war on terror, and we ignore these increasing assaults on our civil liberties at our own peril.

Action Ideas:

1. Read the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for yourself here: Find out how your congressmembers voted on this legislation, and raise the topic when they ask for your vote this November.

2. For more information on U.S. prisoner abuse, check out BBC’s report from 2005 entitled “Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons.” Text and video versions are archived here. You can learn more about U.S. prisoner’s rights from the American Civil Liberties Union.

3. To take action regarding “the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror,“ visit Cageprisoners.com.

GNN contributor Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now (Volumes 1 and 2). Heather can be reached at www.heatherwokusch.com.

I strongly recommend clicking on some of the links in the article, in particular the one to Amnesty International’s article on the death penalty in Texas. While I had heard of some of this stuff before, it’s worse than I thought. Something must be done to put a stop to this madness.

New Clint Eastwood movie is historicaly (and racially) inaccurate

The Guardian reports that “Nearly 900 African-Americans fought on the Japanese island [Iwo Jima] but not one appears in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-tipped film.” The film is called Flags of Our Fathers.

Read the story here

McCain: “I’d just commit suicide” if Democrats take control of Senate

That’s all she wrote.

Bob Harris: Drunken Mob Killed Irony in 2002

Bob Harris from This Modern World wrote, “I am starting to think that irony got killed by a drunken mob in a bar fight sometime around 2002. Would explain a lot.”

Santorum, Does that Make Bush Bilbo Baggins?

For the moment, I’m embarrassed to be from Pennsylvania. 

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead…

A spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy. “You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book,” said Casey spokesman Larry Smar. “This is just like when he said Kim Jong II isn’t a threat because he just wants to “watch NBA basketball.’ ”

Tanzania Sees Water Privatization-Driven Resistence, Violence

I was living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2003, during the “build up” to the Iraq inavsion. I was about 4 miles from the fortress that was the newly opened US Embassy — it replaced the US embassy bombed in 1998.  It was painful to be an American in another city that had also been victimized by Al-Queda (I was coming from NYC, where I was on 9/11/01) . Many of the people in Dar, like many in NYC, saw the attck on Iraq as a pitiful distraction from the true perpetrators of NYC/DC attacks in 2001, but that is a story for another day…

While in Tanzania, I analyzed a World Bank-induced public utility privatization scheme that was clear to me to be an impending disaster. Beyond the complications that would arise from tiered access to safe water and increased prices, the sheer number of landholders without deeds in Dar es Salaam, I believed, tipped the equation of potential problems beyond even that of Bolivia’s wonderfully horrific water privatization scheme. (My opinionated, poorly written report on Dar’s plan is at my old blog. It includes interviews w officials from the city’s to-be-privatized water utility, representatives from the World Bank  and the Tanzanian government, as well as ‘everyday’ Tanzanians I played basketball with while there.)

My study focused on the land rights of residential properties, not that of unregistered and “unofficial” businesses. The problems, though, are similar in many ways. 

There is unfortunate news from Dar today. As reported by the BBC:

Thousands of Tanzanian market traders are up in arms after being moved away from the centre of the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

More than 40,000 traders have been relocated to the city’s remote Kigogo area. They say they now have to pay taxes before they can ply their wares…

But the government insists that the traders have been occupying space in the city centre illegally – preventing the installation of sewage and clean water pipes and reducing traffic in the busy area to a single lane… In March, two people were killed in violent clashes between police and street vendors in the northern town of Mwanza.

Mwanza is the section I lived in and Kigogo is way out there. I mean, it is WAY out there. There is no way these vendors will be able to do the same type of business as they would in downtown Dar. Especially since much of their business is based on downtown-oriented foot traffic, as opposed to foot traffic intending to go to the market.

This is part of a much larger conversation of the suburbanization of the poor.  It is happening in the US (usually boiled down to the concept of gentrification, although these ideas are not synonymous) and it is happening in countless cities throughout the world.

This will have incredibly negative effects on the poor, in terms of their access to social infrastructure — transportation will be losing funding, public utilities such as electricity and water are currently being installed in cities under the guise of the economies of scale (more water users and payers in the city makes the infrastructure investment feasible) while not being supplied to the suburbs. While saying nothing of the access to health services and disaster relief infrastructure,  first-and-foremost in my book, this facilitates the deeding of the unrecorded class and, subsequently, taxation.

If we can’t get our system implemented on them in their squatter town, the thought goes, let’s move their squatter town to where we can implement our system on them. It’s how the government makes money and maintains social control.

Plus, the thinking follows, there’s good times to be had in the city, let’s freshen it up a bit and give the tourists access to it — those low-wage workers will find a way to get into work for them ‘cuz they got nowheres else to work… except that export processing zone

P.S. Hey, investors! Don’t worry, those pesky “existing” Tanzanian exporters have been disallowed from investing in the EPZ… this is strictly for folks like you!

Ohio seems to be changing its mind

In the last Presidential election, Ohio came off as being one of the key “swing” states. It was so important, that people from NYC and elsewhere were taking buses out there to try and persuade voters to not re-elect George Bush. But in the end, the majority of voters there still voted for him. Today, the political sentiments in the state seem to be changing.

From the NYTimes (via the International Herald Tribune):

The bellwether state of Ohio appears to have become hostile territory for Republicans this year, with voters there overwhelmingly saying Democrats are more likely to help create jobs and concluding that Republicans have far more corrupt politicians than do Democrats, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll.

 

Home this year to closely watched races for governor, U.S. Senate and a growing roster of competitive House seats, Ohio is one of the most contested battlegrounds of 2006, and one in which voters at this point are strongly favoring Democrats on most issues.

 

The Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senate hold commanding, double-digit leads over their Republican opponents in the poll and respondents said they intended to vote for the Democratic candidate for the House in their district by a 50-32 percent margin.

 

The results contained warning signals for President George W. Bush and his party across the nation three weeks from Election Day. The poll found a striking slippage in the president’s standing among white evangelicals, a Republican constituency that has provided the margin of victory in a number of recent elections. In November 2004, 76 percent of white evangelicals in Ohio voted for Bush. When asked in this poll whether they approve or disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president, only 49 percent approved while 45 percent disapproved.

 

Ohio is a Republican-leaning state that twice voted to elect Bush and gave him his margin of victory in 2004. But it is not a perfect microcosm of the country, and in particular has higher levels of economic anxiety, the poll found.

 

Sixty-five percent of those surveyed rated the state’s economy as bad; only 34 percent said it was not. A plurality, 46 percent of voters, said the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing Ohio, while 17 percent cited health care, 15 percent said terrorism and 12 percent said the war in Iraq. Only a third of Ohio voters approve of the job Bush is doing as president or the way he is handling the economy….

Find the whole article here

ThinkProgress Lays the Global Warming Smack on Drudge

This nicely done piece courtesy of ThinkProgress:

Global warming is real. Matt Drudge, “the Walter Cronkite of his era,” is working overtime to convince people it isn’t happening. Here’s what he put up on the Drudge Report today:

First, this is totally irrelevant. Global warming does not mean there is never going to be a cold day or a cold month somewhere on the globe. Globally, September 2006 was the 4th warmest on record.

Second, Drudge leaves out this crucial fact from the NOAA report he links to:

The January-September 2006 combined temperature is warmest on record. The previous record warm January-September happened in 2000.

In other words, according to the NOAA report Drudge cites, there has never been a warmer year in the United States so far than 2006. Amazingly, Drudge is seizing on this report to suggest that global warming isn’t real.

Freedom of Info News

The federal Freedom of Information Act, and its state-level Freedom of Information Laws, are indescribably critical to government transparency. That is, critical when implemented meaningfully. A note from GovExec:

Agencies subject to the Freedom of Information Act are for the most part complying with an executive order outlining a two-year process for improving the implementation of the 40-year-old law, according to a new Justice Department report…

The report stated that the Justice Department has focused on reducing backlogs by establishing a goal of closing the 10 oldest pending FOIA requests for records from its leadership offices on a regular basis. Other agencies, such as the Small Business Administration, do not have such backlogs, the report said.

And another take from Secrecy News:

…From a public access point of view, however, the results seem less significant, particularly since the executive order did not alter disclosure policy or standards at all. Instead, it sought to improve processing and productivity under the existing disclosure standards, while reducing backlogs.

As a result, some of the reforms of which the new report boasts may loom large within the government, but still appear inconsequential from the outside.

For example, using post cards to acknowledge receipt of FOIA requests instead of more formal letters is a “novel idea,” the Attorney General says in his new report. It “holds great potential for improving the process.” It is “an outstanding idea,” the report strangely insists. “The simple use of postcards rather than standard written letters … could save countless hours.”

Unfortunately, this won’t do. Efficiency, while welcome, is not the same as productivity. And the executive order does little to improve productivity… Even by the yardstick of efficiency, the current FOIA regime shows a certain lack of imagination.

Perhaps the single most important step that agencies could take would be to routinely post FOIA responses on agency web sites... It could be even better than post cards.

Union leader likens Santorum to “the anti-Christ”

If there was any doubt, PA is officially fiesty right now…

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A union official on Tuesday described Republican Sen. Rick Santorum as “the anti-Christ” on issues affecting working people. Pete Matthews, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 33, made the remarks during a luncheon speech before union retirees.

“I kind of refer to him as the anti-Christ, but I guess I’m not supposed to say that, but that’s what he’s about,” Matthews said, claiming Santorum lacks a record supporting working people. Santorum’s opponent, Democrat Bob Casey, spoke at the same luncheon but did not arrive until after Matthews’ speech…

Last month, Bill George, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, apologized for having said in a newspaper interview that some see Santorum as an Adolf Hitler.

Housing Discrimination in Brooklyn

As if the institutional racism/classism of continually increasing rent costs wasn’t bad enough in NYC, we have to have groups like the Corocoran group acting like its 1960 around here….

Gotham Gazette posted a report today by the National Fair Housing Alliance about racist housing practices in New York.  They briefly described it as follows:

This report by the National Fair Housing Alliance charges that real estate agents of the Corcoran Group “steered homebuyers by race and denied basic services to African Americans.” Such activity, the report argues, helps explain why New York City, “for all its diversity…remains among the most segregated areas in the United States.” It recommends that the federal government set up a testing program to “provide systematic assessments of real estate agents and companies and take appropriate policy and enforcement actions to counteract discriminatory behavior.”

Protestors against Military Commissions Act arrested in front of White House

Washington Post reports that just a couple of hours ago……

Protesters opposed to provisions in an anti-terrorism bill signed into law by President Bush have been arrested near the White House.

A spokesman for the U.S. Park Police said 16 people were taken into custody on the White House sidewalk around 10:30 a.m. Lt. Scott Fear said the demonstrators have been charged with impeding access to a White House entrance.

Bush signed legislation authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects at a White House ceremony in the East Room today. The legislation also clears the way for trials of terror suspects by military commissions.

The demonstrators represented a coalition of religious groups. Many of those arrested had been shouting out “Bush is the terrorist,” and “Torture is a crime.”

It’s amazing to me that an act like this can signed into law with such relative ease. I mean even though some people in the Republican party are drastically opposed to it (meaning Democrats surely are), Bush and his people still manage to spin their issues so that the general public and Congress will buy into it, or at least not fight back. Of course, part of their strategy is arresting or silencing people who show any sign of public dissent – like the poor folks today. I hope the public outcry to this legistlation gets much larger than this. Hopefully people won’t let things like this intimidate them.

From an article about the signing and the bill:

Congressional Republicans immediately seized on the new law, which was opposed by most Democratic lawmakers, as campaign fodder to use against Democrats on national security issues in the final three weeks before midterm elections. Democrats said the Bush administration was to blame for failing to devise a system that could pass constitutional muster, and they charged that the new law is likely to be met with legal challenges that would further delay trials for terrorists.

Bush approved the prosecution of “unlawful enemy combatants” before special military tribunals shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, but trials were suspended pending the outcome of appeals challenging the legality of the tribunals in federal court. In June, the Supreme Court struck down the tribunals, ruling that they were not authorized by Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions. As a result, the Bush administration pressed Congress to pass a bill that would specifically legalize them and endorse methods used by U.S. intelligence to extract information from terrorist captives.

The legislation was approved by Congress late last month after a debate in which opponents charged that a key provision — ruling out habeas corpus petitions for foreigners held in the war on terrorism — was unconstitutional. A key foe of that provision, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried unsuccessfully to delete it, but ended up voting for the overall bill anyway on grounds that the Supreme Court would be likely to strike the provision down. The writ of habeas corpus, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, allows people to challenge in court the legality of their detention, essentially meaning that they cannot be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Best Political Picture Ever – FBI Agents’ Frathouse Supports Weldon

The only thing that could’ve made this better was if this sign just said, “VOTE REPUBLICAN, NOV. 7th.” (If you don’t know, this is a picture of Curt Weldon’s (R-PA) daughter’s house and those guys there are FBI agents raiding it. “Weldon for Congress” reads the sign.)

Economic Model 2: Sustainable Agriculture in Red Hook, BK

Recently, Krems made a post that contained a description of sustainable agriculture as being an alternative to the current direction of the agriculural system in the US. In the current issue of L Magazine, the Red hook Community Farm is given as a good example of what Krems’ post was describing. What makes it even more interesting is that it exists in Brooklyn, which isn’t typically thought of when you hear the terms farm or agriculture. Below is the entire article, written by Amanda Park Taylor:

Some of you may remember a piece I wrote a few months ago, suggesting that the globalization of food production, while, apparently, economically viable, seemed a bit problematic. The importation of fresh and frozen produce from China and other far-away places, while viable in the short term, is both unsustainable and unethical: it consumes energy and resources and takes food away from places that themselves are having food shortages.

The answer I offered, the farmers market, has been taken to its highest form in Red Hook, and I’m just sad that I didn’t know about it sooner. There is a farm growing on the Brooklyn waterfront, the Red Hook Community Farm, and in addition to producing fruit and vegetables, they are selling their produce (alongside other farmers’) at their own market, supplying a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, a by-subscription food service) while creating jobs for local kids.

Red Hook Community Farm operates under the aegis of Added Value, a group that was formed in 2000 to try and help local kids with no resources and few prospects. Added Value opened a farmers market in Red Hook in 2001, after the neighborhood’s only supermarket closed. The neighborhood, filled with low-income families, was already suffering from higher-than-average rates of diabetes and obesity, and other diet-related health problems, and the disappearance of virtually all fresh food would have driven those rates even higher. Instead, the farmers market opened, making all kinds of produce available to area residents, and actually donating thousands of dollars worth of food to individuals who needed it.

In 2004, Added Value closed the loop of food production: they reclaimed a city-run, underused asphalt sports field and covered it with soil, converting it into a working farm. Now kids who need jobs work the farm alongside volunteers and trained horticulturists. They learn and earn money, becoming better prepared to be working adults. Grade-school age children visit the farm and learn where their food comes from, and the importance of eating healthfully. Farm produce fills the greenmarket and is sent to CSA members and the Red Hook Senior Center, feeding the neighborhood; a small group of local restaurants also buys greens and veggies from the farm. Hoop houses allow the farm to produce year-round.

So, to recap, starting with a two-acre plot of paved land, a committed group of people has managed to: 1) improve a compromised environment (air quality) 2) provide jobs and education in a health-giving and environment-improving field (pun intended) 3) improve community health both through the farm itself and the consumption of its produce 4) give the community a regular, free venue for meeting and socializing 5) provide food for the needy and elderly 6) provide a venue for education for kids of all ages 7) generate income while providing local businesses with local produce.

Sounds to me like a program that should be implemented in every low-income neighborhood, and probably every neighborhood, period. It wasn’t that long ago that the United States was involved in WWII, and Victory Gardens were planted and maintained to help feed our citizens and soldiers, and to help us win the war. We’re at war again, and while I’m afraid vegetable gardens won’t help us win against the insurgents in Iraq, or the idiots in Washington, they could help us win the wars against global warming (by reducing energy consumed in transporting food), obesity (by making healthy food available in places it’s been hard to get), and poverty (by making healthy food available to everyone).

Come down to the Red Hook Community Farm’s second Annual October Harvest Festival, on October 21st, and enlist.

I heard that Fairway recently opened a store in Red Hook as well- which overall seems to be a welcome addition to a neighborhood in need of grocery stores. My one suggestion to Fairway would be to establish a relastionship with the Red Hook Community Farm and perhaps sell some of their produce. I also heard that there is a ferry of some kind running from Manhattan to Red Hook so that people can go to Fariway. If they sell the produce from the Red Hook Community Farm, that will expand the potential of the farm’s outreach.

Bonus: L Magazine exposes the ugly side of Whole Foods’ labor practices.

“The price of same-sex marriage is paid by the children,” said Romney

Read this mess here.

“The price of same-sex marriage is paid by the children,” said Romney during a brief but peppy speech from Boston duringa forum hosted by the Family Research Council. “The child’s development is enhanced by the nurturing of parents of both genders. Every child deserves a mother and a father.”

Critics called Romney’s attack on Massachusetts for legalizing gay marriage an insult.

“Once again he chooses to demonize loving couples and families in Massachusetts as part of his heartless crusade for the presidential nomination,” said Marc Solomon, campaign director from MassEquality. “Everyone but Romney has moved on and we just wish he’d finally bite the bullet, move out and drop this pretend game of governing.”

Re-Post: The Nobel winner who wanted to make poverty a museum piece

From The Guardian…

Back in 1999 I interviewed the Nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus while in Bangladesh to report on development issues. I left with a lasting impression of a humble, compassionate man with a quiet confidence in the ability of himself, his Grameen Bank colleagues and society as a whole to change the status quo in real and practical ways. These qualities are I suspect often found in people who have directly challenged unacceptable aspects of humanity. For Nelson Mandela it was apartheid, for Mahatma Gandhi it was self-rule, for Prof Yunus it is poverty.

He told me that he had a dream of setting up a museum of poverty; a building where the children of the future would go and marvel at the phenomenon of poverty. They would ask questions which couldn’t be answered: “There was great wealth and prosperity and everyone was splurging, so why were others poor and dying?”
To see his ideas in action, I visited a group of women in rural Bangladesh who had taken out Grameen Bank loans…

The rest is here.

Please Get Lieberman the Hell Outta There

The dude has GOT to go…

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a lifelong Democrat and student of politics, blanked when asked if America would be better off with his party regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives…

“Uh, I haven’t thought about that enough to give an answer,” Lieberman said, as though Democrats’ strong prospects for recapturing the House hadn’t been the fall’s top political story.

Leaving Iraq

I want to let everyone know that there is a fantastic article in the new Harper’s magazine, entitled, “The way out of war: A Blueprint for Leaving Iraq Now.” by George S. McGovern (U.N global ambassador on hunger, dem presidential candidate, ‘72) and William R. Polk (Founder-director Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago). I cannot get a link to the Harper’s page, but the article is also available here.

It begins as follows:

Staying in Iraq not an option. Many Americans who were among the most eager to invade Iraq now urge that we find a way out. These Americans include not only civilian “strategists” and other “hawks” but also senior military commanders and, perhaps most fervently, combat soldiers. Even some of those Iraqis regarded by our senior officials as the most pro-American are determined now to see American military personnel leave their country. Polls show that as few as 2 percent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. This is the reality of the situation in Iraq. We must acknowledge the Iraqis’ right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so.

We suggest that phased withdrawal should begin on or before December 31, 2006, with the promise to make every effort to complete it by June 30, 2007.

…

Let us be clear: there will be some damage. This is inevitable no matter what we do. At the end of every insurgency we have studied, there was a certain amount of chaos as the participants sought to establish a new civic order. This predictable turmoil has given rise to the argument, still being put forward by die-hard hawks, that Americans must, in President Bush’s phrase, “stay the course.” The argument is false. When a driver is on the wrong road and headed for an abyss, it is a bad idea to “stay the course.” A nation afflicted with a failing and costly policy is not well served by those calling for more of the same, and it is a poor idea to think that we can accomplish in the future what we are failing to accomplish in the present. We are as powerless to prevent the turmoil that will ensue when we withdraw as we have been to stop the insurgency. But we will have removed a major cause of the insurgency once we have withdrawn. Moreover, there are ways in which we can be helpful to the Iraqis–and protect our own interests–by ameliorating the underlying conditions and smoothing the edges of conflict. The first of these would be a “bridging” effort between the occupation and complete independence.

It is Completely worth your time to read about this “bridging” effort, and the conflict-smoothing efforts the authors recommend – it is the meat of the article, and it will open your eyes about the possible alternatives to what we’re doing now. Its like reading a method for peace, captured in a 10-page article. The author’s suggestions represent a drastically different approach to global relations, and if one takes their spirit to heart, it will lead to active brainstorming on more practical measures of the same kind.
Time is not wasted on polemics; the rest of the article is full of the financial and diplomatic benefits of withdrawing, making it a testament to the practicality of letting go of Iraq. I haven’t seen writing on Iraq that makes as much sense anywhere.

Churchgoers Leaning Further D

Two options: 1- This means that white frequent churchgoers are becoming more D, or that, 2- white Ds are taking up a larger percentage of the churchgoing public than white Rs. I think you’ve got to take it to mean churchgoers are leaning more D or, more precisely in a year like this, leaning LESS Republican. Here’s Josh Marshall’s take.

Friday Morning Cartoon: The GOP Sat on a Wall…

Amish Non-Violence: A reason to turn off the tv?

I posted on the Amish just yesterday, but another post is in order. I didn’t offer a description of the incident then, so I’ve included one here, followed by a comment that makes you wonder: how would I feel if I turned off the tv?

A description, from the Chicago Tribune:

On Oct. 2, a deranged gunman burst into a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pa. He lined up 11 young girls and shot each of them, killing five, before taking his own life.

Witnesses say the oldest girl, 13-year-old Marian Fisher, bravely said, “Shoot me first” in an attempt to buy time for the younger students.

Then, her 11-year-old sister, Barbie, who would survive with wounds in her shoulder, hand and leg, said, “Shoot me next.”

Comment from Axis of Logic:

Vengeance and punishment are celebrated by the media – from the corporate newsrooms to evening television shows and Hollywood movies. Into this culture comes a shocking message of forgiveness from a gentle oasis where compassion, forgiveness and peace still reign – an Amish community that does not know television, Hollywood movies or the mainstream news media and where acts of violence are not seen and talk of retribution is not heard.

If you don’t know about the Amish community’s acts of forgiveness in response, read here.

To the States,

by Walt Whitman

______

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?

What deepening twilight – scum floating atop of the waters,

Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?

What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O

North, your arctic freezings!)

Are those really congressmen? are those the great Judges? is

that the President?

Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep,

for reasons;

(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent

shoots we all duly awake,

South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will

surely awake.)

Written 1891

Another (completely different!) way of approaching things…

From Diane Butler Bass’ post, ‘What if the Amish Were in Charge of The War on Terror?’, on Jim Wallis’ blog, God’s Politics.

Their practice of forgiveness unfolded in four public acts over the course of a week. First, some elders visited Marie Roberts, the wife of the murderer, to offer forgiveness. Then, the families of the slain girls invited the widow to their own children’s funerals. Next, they requested that all relief monies intended for Amish families be shared with Roberts and her children. And, finally, in an astonishing act of reconciliation, more than 30 members of the Amish community attended the funeral of the killer.

These ain’t conflict diamonds, is they? Jacob, don’t lie to me man.

Conflict diamonds – Kanye West rapped about them last year, activists around the world have been trying to bring attention to the situationfor years, and now the U.S. Government Accountability Office is trying to do something about it. The following was published by Inter Press Service via Common Dreams yesterday.

WASHINGTON – The United States, the world’s largest consumer of diamonds, should adopt stronger oversight measures to choke off a trade that fuels wars and human rights abuses in many exporting nations, a U.S. Congressional report finds.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog arm of the U.S. Congress, acknowledges in a new report that the United States has enhanced the quality of its rough diamond trade data by improving its collection processes, but says that “work remains to be done”.

The international diamond industry has built up a bad reputation in Africa by funding militants, rebel activities and civil wars in the poor continent in its pursuit of gems.

In December, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously for a ban on diamond exports from Cote d’Ivoire to stop rebels in the war-divided nation from using gems to purchase arms.

In the United States, the Departments of State, Treasury, Homeland Security and Commerce, and the U.S. Kimberley Process Authority (USKPA), a private entity run by U.S. diamond trade groups that issues rough diamond certificates, have all been responsible for controlling U.S. imports and exports of rough diamonds.

But the 68-page report says that the United States lacks an effective system for confirming receipt of imports — a Kimberley Process requirement for avoiding possible diversions of rough diamond imports.

It also notes that the United States has not had a plan for monitoring USKPA, although it is now developing and testing one.

Washington is aiding some countries known for trading in conflict diamonds such as Sierra Leone and Liberia in their efforts to comply global rules, but the process remains severally constrained by the limited capacity and resources of these countries, the report says….

“This report shows that the U.S. government has inadequately enforced the Clean Diamond Trade Act, undermining global efforts to keep conflict diamonds out of the legitimate diamond trade,” said Corinna Gilfillan of the international watchdog group Global Witness.

“This is alarming given that proceeds from the diamond trade have been used by warlords and rebel groups in Africa to finance devastating wars, while terrorists and organised crime groups have used diamonds for money-laundering and other illicit purposes,” she said.

Activists say the findings of the report are particularly important because they urge improvements in the world’s largest diamond consuming country. The United States buys 65 percent of the world’s diamond production.

Read the entire article here.

Edit: After I wrote this, I did a little searching and found a top ten list of reasons not to buy diamonds or accept diamonds as gifts. It’s pretty interesting.

P.S. – Does anybody have any suggestions for nice stones that i can buy for my wife without supporting  the things that diamonds potentialy support.

Some Tasteless Political Humor

An email from a friend of mine that goes to school in Boston:

I’m thinking of coming home the weekend before election day – will there be things for me to do?

I have to level with you, this Foley thing has really affected me…I think I’m going to vote Republican now. If these people will f**k little boys, just imagine what they’ll do to that guy running North Korea.

You know they’re replacing Foley on the ballot in Florida? And they’re trying to get his name taken off so that people won’t feel like they’re voting for Foley himself. Unfortunately, the name of the Republican they found to run against him…..John Wayne Gacy.

No one in my Congress class liked that one either.

Minutemen Dir Says Columbia Students are “21st Century Facists”

Just on MSNBC…

After saying the students at the Columbia demo against his organization last week were “the face of 21st Century Fascim,” the director accused them of calling a Minuteman supporter the N-word 12 times. The MSNBC journalist questioned, “So you’re judging the entire university by the action of a few students?” Reply: “It’s all I have to go on.”

While I doubt they used the N-word 12 times, and I do have my misgivings with the demo, this guy is is simply a jackass.

Did he meet one unfriendly Mexican immigrant when he was 6 years-old and use that to decide that all Mexican immigrants are evil and destrying our country? Maybe he’s like Bruce Wayne, and he saw the Joker, this case any Mexican-looking man, murder his parents and now he feels he’s justified in his xenophobic actions.

Sorry if calling him a jackass is unjustified, but it’s all I have to go on.

P.S.: I love the pic on the Minutemen website that has the “Columbia thugs” climbing on stage, as though they’re climbing the border fence.

Poem of the Day – Tuesday, October ten

“Star-Spangled” Nails

by Richard Brautigan

____

You’ve got

some “Star-Spangled”

nails

in your coffin, kid.

That’s what

they’ve done for you,

son.

Economic Model: A Mall filled with small, independent stores

When I was younger, I thought malls were great. I couldn’t wait for the weekends when my family would get in the car and drive to the mall so that we could shop for everything we needed – after all, malls have everything right?

When I got a little older, I realized that I was starting to not like malls. Every mall I went to was the same. A collection of Kay Bee, Sam Goody, The Gap, Eddie Bauer, and a food court. Now, it’s not necessarily those particular stores that I’m opposed to (although if I looked into some of their behind the scenes practices, I’m sure I would be). It’s more about the idea that no matter where I went, I felt like I was in the same place, with the same stores, and the same items.

The lack of this characteristic is one of the things that i love(d) about NYC for a long time. Every neighborhood you went to would offer a different selection of stores, products, and cultures. With the invasion of many corporate stores over the past several years, especially in Manhattan, that has started to change. Starbucks uptown is just like Starbucks downtown (or the starbucks across the street is just like the one you’re looking at it from).

Last year I discovered something new in Manhattan that I found pretty interesting. It’s called the Chelsea Market. The basic concept of it is like a mall, but what sets it apart is that the stores are all unique compared to other malls. They are independently owned – you won’t find any chains. The mall also has an interesting feel and look to it due to occupying the same space as an old Nabisco factory. What I love about it is that it uses the same elements of malls that i loved as a kid (so many stores and things to look at within one space, convenience) but adds to it the element of independently run mom and pop stores (of a high quality).

Anyway, today I ran into an article at Gotham Gazette that made me realize the greatness of the Chelsea Market. Because, honestly, when I first visited there i knew I liked it, but i didn’t necessarily think about all of this. It has a great economic impact as well some character. For anyone interested in urban economics, space, gentrification, or neighborhood culture, I recommend looking into this article and the market itself. Here is the article.

And here is a excerpt from the article to give you an idea of the concept behind the Chelsea market:

We said first, every one of our tenants has to be a family owned business, at least half of the businesses have to be female owned, the owner of each business and its executive offices have to be located in Chelsea Market, and the tenants have to be both wholesalers and retailers. That is because when the economy in the city was good, their wholesale business selling to restaurants would be good. But when business slowed down, as it did after 9/11, the tenant could stay in business because their retail operation would cater to the people who were not going out to restaurants.

Fun and Games

The Village Voice ran an article last week about games that are being organized in cities around the world using creative themes, technology, and often large amounts of players who don’t necessarily know each other. I’m always fascinated by stuff like this (whether it be just for fun, or when similar ideas are used to organize protests, etc.)

There are nearly 1,000 players many of them game designers, reviewers, teachers, and producers from across the country participating in events ranging from Lightning Buzz, advanced tag played with flashlights, to Plundr, a high-tech location-based game involving laptops, black-market trading, and MEGAputt golf in Central Park…

The game generating the most buzz is Cruel 2 B Kind, a benevolent variation on the popular street games Assassin and/or StreetWars, which were recently banned in London for causing public disturbances in these thin-skinned times. Instead of water guns, the secret weapons issued via text message during Cruel 2 B Kind include such directions as blow kisses, compliment someone’s shoes, curtsy or bow, offer welcome or help, mistake someone for a celebrity, or point out something beautiful.

While this isn’t political (and therefore doesn’t really fit into this blog), the article goes on to describe a similar idea being used to teach people about Iraq and some of the lesser known results of war.

Later that day, traveling through the city, I find a sticker plastered to a lamppost near Bowery and Bleecker for the urban “mash-up” game You Are Not Here, a 1:1 scale tour of Baghdad through the streets of Manhattan. I call the number and punch in the extension.

“Welcome to the Unknown Soldier Monument just west of the Green Zone in the heart of the most popular al-Zawra recreational park.”

The monument, I am informed, looks like a Frisbee, but it is actually a giant shield built by Saddam Hussein to commemorate the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Under my feet, there is a museum. Due to international law, which forbids the destruction of cultural institutions and artifacts, both the monument and the museum have been protected from attacks. I blink at the young punks lining up in the sunlight under the CBGB sign and feel the surreal nature of the day start to catch up with me.

“Thank you for visiting the Unknown Soldiers Monument, and don’t forget to visit the Baghdad Zoo on the other end of the park,” says the recording.

At the Baghdad Zoo, which is located near the Jefferson Market Garden on Greenwich Avenue, I learn that the zoo once housed 650 animals, making it the largest in the Middle East. During the first Gulf war, looters ravaged the zoo for food and profit, selling what could not be eaten to private collectors. Donkeys were used to feed the other animals.

As I peer through the wrought-iron fence at the idyllic garden beyond, the effect of the virtual tour is surprisingly chilling, but I’m hooked. For the rest of the weekend, I will be obsessed, carrying in my pocket a crumpled “mash-up” map, which depicts Baghdad on one side and Manhattan/Brooklyn on the other.

“You may notice the giraffe enclosure has only one giraffe in it,” says the Moviefone voice. “The other was killed for food. Thank you for visiting the Baghdad Zoo.”

When I first read this, I was sitting in my favorite Middle Easter restaurant in the East Village (Cafe Rakka) and decided to take a stroll and try to find the lampost. Unfortuneately, I couldn’t find the sign anywhere. I guess part of the excitement of these games is that you have to get in on them right away or miss out.

As a sidenote, this reminds me a little of a few years ago when some friends of mine organized massive games of manhunt in Greenwich Village during the halloween parade. Some of the players were freinds and some were friends of friends of friends. It’s pretty crazy to play a big game like that in a crowd of people, not knowing who’s playing and who’s not right away (we had glowstick neclaces to identify ourselves).

Amy Goodman on Colbert Report

Last week Amy Goodman, the host of radio show Democracy Now, made an appearancce on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report.

I don’t have cable, but luckily I do have a high speed internet connection with access to sites like YouTube. Here is a link to the clip.

Usually i’m a big fan of the daily show and its spinoffs, but I have to say that this clip annoyed me a little. It was nice to see Goodman getting the large exposure here, but Colbert would barely let her speak. While I do understand that it’s a comedy show, it would be nice to be able to laugh without losing some important information in the process. And it’s not that I didn’t find it funny, because I did laguh. The main problem I have is, that in the end, I can’t even say that she was painted in a positive light, so I cant imagine what type of impact this has on the segment of America that isn’t familiar with her and doesn’t necessarily agree with her opinions. She probably had some very interesting points to make with her stories, but was hardly able to speak.

Eyes on the Prize

Anyone interested in organizing new social movements or studying movements of the past should be aware that PBS is airing the documentary series “Eyes On the Prize” on Monday nights for the next few weeks. It’s a series about the civil rights movement in the US and its very well done. I’m looking forward to it because I haven’t seen the entire thing. I’ve only seen 3-4 episodes at random times in classes i’ve taken or catching bits and pieces on tv. It will be nice to actually see it consecutively.

click here for more info

“A temporary gift for my jihadist hackers”

As “a temporary gift for my jihadist hackers,” Aaron.cc has a page of intense images, with a generic version of REM’s Losing My Religion playing in loop. One image, though, I don’t understand.

I’m not familiar with the blog, or how long the images have been up, but the pork image seems odd to be coming from a presumably Kosher author and pointed towards a presumably Halaal audience.

I’m neither Jewish nor Muslim, so please correct me if I’m way off base.

Wendell Berry on Local, Sustainable Agriculture

Earlier this week I posted a poem by Wendell Berry – poet, farmer, essayist, novelist. Heres an excerpt from a fantastic interview with Sojourner magazine, in which he discusses the difficulties faced by American farmers, and the need for local, sustainable agriculture. Also, the fact that our current system of exporting and importing food is completely reliant on fossil fuels, and that it would collapse if fossil fuel production slowed or stopped. What would we do then, starve? How do you feed cities of millions if your local farms are producing for export, the city relies on import, and there’s no fossil fuel to do the job? Smells like Babylon to me.

BERRY: Tobacco acreages have declined here because the companies can fill their needs more cheaply elsewhere. The other products we grow are thrown into the world market to compete as best they can. With the help of subsidies, of course. In Kentucky we have always raised for export…

As it used to be, the subsistence economy carried people through the hard times, and what you might call the housewife’s economy of cream and eggs often held these farms and their families together. The wives would go to town with eggs and cream once a week, buy groceries with the proceeds, and sometimes come home with money. Or they’d sell a few old hens, that sort of thing. So that’s the first lesson to learn about agriculture, as far as I’m concerned: It needs a sound subsistence basis. People need to feed themselves, next they need to feed their own communities. That’s what we’re working for now. We want to develop a local food economy that local producers will supply and that the local consumers will support. It’s ridiculous that we should be importing food into this state while our farmers are suffering.

BERGER: What are the models that are being used here in Kentucky to resist the economic pressure from the larger market?

BERRY: Community-supported agriculture, farmer’s markets, direct marketing of meat, that sort of thing. There’s an effort under way to develop a retail market for local produce. But this is hard to bring about.

The local landscape used to contribute food to Louisville. There was a significant amount of truck farming going in those days. That’s gone. The stockyard’s gone, the packinghouses are gone. So there’s Louisville economically and culturally isolated from its rich agricultural landscape. Which is ridiculous.

BERGER: It’s almost a process of reweaving the city life with its agricultural counterpart – its breadbasket.

BERRY: That’s right – building commercial linkages between the city and its local countryside. And there are good reasons to do that. You’ve got the prospect, to begin with, of better, fresher food…

You have the possibility that urban consumers, by fulfilling their responsibility to local producers, can make secure their local food supply in the face of various threats… The influence of local consumers could work, not only to maintain farming in the local landscape, but also to diversify it. And American agriculture is badly in need of diversity. Another threat to the present food system of course is the likelihood that petroleum is not going to get any cheaper.

BERGER: That happened in Venezuela a few years ago. They had an oil producer’s strike and people lost their gasoline supply. As a result they couldn’t truck food anywhere. Whole communities were starving because they couldn’t get access to food in stores, and they didn’t have any capacity to feed themselves.

BERRY: What could be more terrible? There are lots of bad things that can happen to a food economy that’s both extensive and centralized. There’s no substitute for petroleum. And from what I read, the curve of discovery and production of petroleum is about to decline. To have a growth economy based on a declining fuel supply is bound to be stressful.

The Military Commissions Act: Laying the Legal Groundwork for a Police State

Last week the Senate passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 with a vote of 65-34. The House had already passed an almost-identical version of the bill and the President is sure to sign it into law. The new law will eliminate any non-citizen’s right to petition for the writ of habeas corpus. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont described the passage of this act as “A total rollback of everything this country has stood for.”

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights was one of many lawyers, judges, educators, and activists who spent last week fighting this legislation with all they had. I, for one, am grateful for their efforts. Here’s a bit about the bill according to an article of Ratner’s that he posted onto The Nation’s website:

Now noncitizens can be rounded up, detained forever and never get their case into a court.

Another nasty piece of the legislation authorizes the President, on his own authority, to detain anyone, citizen or noncitizen, anywhere in the world, whom he deems to be an “unlawful enemy combatant.” The definition of that term is broadly worded and would allow the President to imprison almost anyone.

Moreover, the President is now free to abuse and even torture those detained, using the slippery language of this legislation. Many of the gross abuses we saw at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo–stripping, hooding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and possibly mock drowning–will be allowed to continue if the President says so. And those who authorize or carry out torture techniques will have complete immunity from criminal prosecution. Those who authorized the torture of detainees in the past will be granted retroactive immunity.

To see how your senators voted on this Act, click here.

To see how your representative voted, click here.

Susan Ralston Into the Sunset; or, Never Miss Breaking News at 5pm Friday

NYT:

A key aide to presidential political strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday after a congressional report listed hundreds of contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House. Susan Ralston, special assistant to President Bush, submitted a resignation letter to him less than five weeks before congressional elections in which corruption and scandal are emerging as major issues.

TPMMuckraker:

Karl Rove threw a party for dozens of White House staffers at Jack Abramoff’s restaurant in January 2004, but was not charged, according to a new story in the National Journal (not available online). The senior White House adviser only paid his tab at Abramoff’s Signatures restaurant this May, the magazine reports — after Abramoff had pled guilty to multiple felonies, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.

National Journal:

This would be big news; maybe even worthy of a story on the major broadcast evening newscasts. But not today. Amazing that we haven’t got one breaking news alert from any news org. on a story that combines Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff and “resignation” in the same sentence. This wasn’t just a Friday 5pm news dump; this was a news dump under a 3 “f” umbrella: Five pm; Friday and Foley.

Wonkette:

In other concert-related bribery, Ken Mehlman demanded two tickets to U2 and Rove aide Susan Ralston was “the most frequent recipient of tickets from Abramoff.” She saw Bruce “Pinko” Springsteen and Andrea “Inexplicably Popular” Bocelli. At the Bocelli show, she even got her parking validated. IS NOTHING SACRED?

Watch PedophileConspiracyPushingSmutPeddlingLiberalDemocratNewsRag ABC report on the report yesterday.

Teenagers? Nope, “Screen-agers” Says White House Drug Control Director

“We call [kids] ‘screen-agers,’ because they spend so much time with televisions and computers,” said Robert Denniston, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s anti-drug media campaign.

Add Streisand to the list of Anti-Bush performances

From Yahoo News:

Before a capacity crowd of some 16,000 people at South Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center, Streisand gave assured renditions of standards from her long career as a singer and actress…

The show also featured a skit where an actor playing Bush uttered such lines as, “I’m concerned about the national debt, so I’m selling Canada,” and “If I cared about the polls I would have run for president of Poland.”

Streisand, 64, a longtime liberal activist, said she was coming out of retirement to raise money for her foundation, which supports a range of causes related to the environment, education, health care and other issues.

Edit: Don’t get it confused and think that I’m a Barbara Stresiand fan. I just think it’s cool that she used this opportunity to speak out on what she feels. Not everyone has the power to do it, reach a large audience, and get away with it.

Guns

The Independent published an article yesterday on gun violence in America, which is a topic that deserves some attention in the wake of the recent school shootings.

Some figures and interesting points from the article:

Is it about the guns?

There’s no question that the gun culture – stemming back to the frontier spirit of the 19th century and justified, at least by gun-ownership advocates, by the Second Amendment of the Constitution – plays a major role in perpetuating the high numbers of violent deaths.

In the US, there are roughly 17,000 murders a year, of which about 15,000 are committed with firearms. By contrast, Britain, Australia and Canada combined see fewer than 350 gun-related murders each year. And it’s not just about murder. The non-gun-related suicide rate in the US is consistent with the rest of the developed world. Factor in firearms, and the rate is suddenly twice as high as the rest of the developed world.

Children are affected particularly hard. An American youth is murdered with a firearm every four and a half hours on average. And an American youth commits suicide with a firearm every eight hours. It’s worth remembering that many of the most spectacular mass murders of recent years were really suicides, with the perpetrators choosing to take a few other people with them while they were at it. Gun-control advocates argue they manage to carry out their murderous fantasies only because firearms give them the means to do so…

Is there hope for an end to America’s gun violence?

Yes…

* With every high-profile mass murder, victims’ advocates and gun-control lobbyists gain more visibility, and more influence

* Someone, eventually, will make the link to homeland security: why make it so easy for al-Qa’ida to acquire assault weapons?

* The numbers of American children who die in gun violence means sooner or later, the madness will stop

No…

* Congress is in thrall to the NRA, and is too scared to act

* The burst of reformist energy that followed Columbine has subsided, and the most recent mass murders have been greeted with resigned indifference

* The US media is too addicted to its regular, real-life horror show to want it to stop

I suggest that people read the entire article and reflect on America’s gun situation, because it sure doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

Rapper Kamikaze vs. College Republicans at Mississippi’s Millsaps College

I wanted to post on this the other day, but didn’t get a chance. Keeley’s post about freedom of speech at colleges and the activities of campus based Republican groups reminded me of it…

AllHipHop.com reports that rapper Kamikaze has gotten himself into trouble with the Young Republicans at Millsaps College in Mississippi, and as a result, banned from the school.

Kamikaze, one-half of rap group Crooked Lettaz with David Banner, was invited to speak and perform at Millsaps as part of the college’s sexual awareness week.

During an interlude in his set, the rapper made comments about current U.S. president George W. Bush, infuriating members of the audience.

“I prefaced it by saying ‘I know that a lot of you, or some of you, won’t agree with what I’m saying and you’re entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine’,” Kamikaze told AllHipHop.com. “There is a real strong Young Republican contingent at this school.”

In his speech, the rapper accused Bush of pursuing oil and engaging America in a senseless war in Iraq, and also insisted that the government lied to start the war….
Kamikaze, whose latest single “U Sked” is featured on NBA Live 2007, added that his show was profanity-free, although some members of the crowd did yell ‘f**k Bush’ at one point.

According to him, however, members of the Young Republican Party later complained about the show. He received a letter from Millsaps College the next day, chastising him for his comments on President Bush.

In the letter, Student Body Association president Stephen Bradford Yakots stated, “While the students at the college rightfully supported sexual awareness week at the college…some were treated to no other than a tacky, senseless and an absolutely astonishing, explicit blasphemy of the sitting President of the United States; an act that represented the worst that Millsaps College could offer to its students and alumni that were present, wanting to enjoy an evening of the performing arts. The Student Body Association and the Socializing Activities and Performing for Students Board (S.A.P.S.) has no use for your shameful, adolescent and worthless view point of our leader and therefore will not be supporting any more visits made by you to our campus.”

Kamikaze described his general attitude about using his stage presence as a platform for speaking out on issues to Allhiphop.com as follows:

“And whenever we have a crowd in front of us, we address. If you have fans that you have that you can influence in one way or another, it’s an obligation for you to say something. We have to let folks know we aren’t up here to just rap. We are artists who are concerned with what’s going on in our communities. Anytime I do a show, I am speaking on social issues.”

I wish even more artists would feel this way. It’s unfortunate that one who does has to get banned for his actions.

This sheds a little complexity on the comments that Keeley made in his post about actions at Columbia and NYU. He said “To speak on private ground, such as a Columbia University, where student tuition pays a substatial portion of the overall bills, I believe students have the right to fight not to have someone on campus.” What happens when some students agree with the person being there and others don’t? What happens when we (meaning the writers on this blog) agree with the speaker instead of the action against the speaker?

The “Flop Sweat” of Rep. Tom Reynolds

Gross. Tom Reynolds has more than his feet to the fire for this whole GOP, alcohol-fueled, gay, clergy abuse, pedophilia, online predator thing.  Now, Reynold’s website that usually carried his remarks is mysteriously down.
And, just to be sure you didn’t miss this: One senior House Republican told CBS news that the fault here lies not at the feet of Denny Hastert or the knees of Mark Foley but actually on ‘a network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice.’

Columbia Students Invade Minutemen Project Event

“As a large, vocal protest raged outside Roone Arledge Auditorium at Columbia University, Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist was heckled and confronted onstage by students, prompting a fistfight between students and the Minutemen. According to an on-scene report, ‘there [were] at least two minutes of chaos between students, other students and the Minutemen.’” Read it at NYC Indymedia.

I whole-heartedly support this, supposing that students first went through other means to have Gilchrist dis-invited. In late 2002, someone I know snuck into NYU’s student center ‘dressed as a Republican,’ in order to get into the student center and remove prominently placed signs promoting the “need” to invade Iraq, prepared by the College Republicans. The signs were the nauseating “if-you’re-against-this-war-than-you’re-against-getting-this-five-year-old-Iraqi-girl-medical-supplies-and-clean-drinking-water” type of signs. Through this low-key act of disobedience and the intense conversations with a small group of activist friends, I feel I came to a much clearer understanding of free speech on campus. Gilchrist is a xenophobic fascist, yes, but he also has the right to speak in public. To speak on private ground, such as a Columbia University, where student tuition pays a substatial portion of the overall bills, I believe students have the right to fight not to have someone on campus. If they went through other channels first, such as petitions and targeted media work to shame him and his inviters into cancelling the event, I support this action. I do wish they would have interrupted it loudly and with the strong message they clearly had and then allowed the mess of a show to continue. Beat back ignorance with open-mindedness and universal respect.

In NYC’s guest-oriented college demo circuit, New School activists recently demo’ed against an appearance by New Gingrich.

“Just a River Away”

While Manhattan takes the prize for having the widest income gap between its black and white populations, Queens has earned itself a very different distinction. In addition to being one of the country’s most ethnically diverse counties, Queens is the only large county in the U.S. where the median income of black households has surpassed that of white households. Read on for some ideas on why things are so different just across the river…

The World Can’t Wait Demos

Tomorrow there will be a “Day of Mass Resistence,” organized by The World Can’t Wait. They’ve placed ads in newspapers across the country for this event that will be centered in DC, but will have locations throughout the nation. Our friends from Outernational, who Tom Morello says will be the next Rage Against the Machine, will be playing the NYC demo.

It’s going to take all kinds to get the change we need in this world, and this group is one that is making the necssary noise to make people turn and listen. That is for damn sure.

Join in–get loud–demand more. The time to be silent has long since passed.

Arlington North, Memorial to Fallen Vets

I meant to post this earlier.  Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Perry of Veterans for Peace.  He and his organization have done amazing things, not the least of which was “Arlington North,” a temporary memorial outside the Liberty Bell to fallen US soldiers (this project was, itself, harking to Arlington West in Santa Monica).  You can watch a brief news piece on Arlington North here.

It’s my understanding that he and others from this organization have worked with Raed Jarrar, who we discussed in the post, “ATTENTION: Terrorists Don’t Wear Terrorist T-Shirts.” I understand that some from their group were arrested at the Pentagon for dropping pamphlets with the same slogan that Jarrar featured on his shirt (“We will not be silent,” written in Arabic).

IRA Weapons Are Down; Focus Must Shift to Loyalists

The IRA has laid down its weapons and stopped recruiting, says a high-power British panel.  This situation “lays the basis” for a lasting peace, the commission reports.  I agree… if loyalist paramilitaries can also take these important steps.

That Ian Paisley, “the outspoken leader of militant Protestants in Northern Ireland and a vituperative critic of the Catholic Church,” was recently willing to meet with the powers-that-be of the Catholic Church, is a positive sign but there is certainly a long way to go.

Denny Hastert Down the Drain

‘Bout time this story broke.  Protect the kid, nail any leader to the wall that didn’t step up, Repugnicant or Democrat.

A Mitsubishi Dealership Launches “Jihad” on the Competition

Jihad proclaimed in radio ads. This article reads like the Onion.

From Tim Feran, at the Columbus Dispatch:

“Some Columbus radio stations have rejected as insensitive an advertisement for a car dealership that invokes Islamic references…

In the spot, Keith Dennis of Dennis Mitsubishi talks about “launching a jihad on the automotive market.”

Sales representatives “will be wearing burqas all weekend long,” the ad says. One of the vehicles on sale “can comfortably seat up to 12 jihadists in the back.”

“Our prices are lower than the evildoers’ every day. Just ask the pope! ” the ad says. “Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies.”

Jeff Wilson, general manager of Radio One stations WCKX (107.5 FM), WJYD (106.3 FM) and WXMG (98.9 FM), doesn’t intend to air the spot.

“We won’t play that,” Wilson said. “With no disrespect to their creativity or their desire to build business, everything we’re about is promoting the values of diversity. To air things of that sort would go against our mission statement.”

Representatives of WSNY (94.7 FM), WBNS (97.1 FM), WWCD (101.1 FM), WJZA/WJZK (103.5/104.3 FM), and WODB (107.9 FM) also said they won’t air the ad.

But Aaron Masterson, general manager of Dennis Auto Point, which writes and produces its own commercials, promised that the commercial will air.

“It starts next Friday morning,” Masterson said. “… “We made it very clear we wanted market saturation to get the point across.” …

The president of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, doesn’t think terrorism is to be taken lightly…

“Using that as a promotional pitch when so many are dying from the criminal activity of suicide bombers, that’s not funny,” Mobin-Uddin said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate when it causes real pain. It exploits or promotes misunderstanding in terms already misunderstood or misused. That type of ad does nothing but promote discord in a very difficult time. The timing is just amazing. Maybe that’s part of the shock value.”

When Dennis previewed the commercial Wednesday for radio executives, Masterson said, “everybody in the room thought it was very funny…”

ACORN Accused of Voter Fraud

If it hasn’t become abundently clear to you yet, this is a gaw’dang mess of an election year:

An advocacy group that registered more than a million voters two years ago is facing new allegations of voter fraud and sloppy work just weeks before crucial midterm elections.

Philadelphia’s municipal voter registration office has rejected about 3,000 cards submitted by ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – since April because of missing information or invalid addresses.

Denver County election officials forwarded about 200 cards to the secretary of state’s office after finding similar handwriting on signatures.

In Ohio, election officials in three of the state’s largest counties have cited problems with hundreds of voter registration cards. ACORN is accused of submitting cards with nonexistent addresses, forged signatures and, in one case, for someone who died seven years ago.

Check out the PA State GOP press release on this.

Voter Registration by Cell Phone

Nice.

Would-be voters with cell phones can now start the process of registering by sending a text message, thanks to a program the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters Education Fund unveiled last week.

Cell phone users throughout Pennsylvania need only send the message “Pgh” or “Pa” to the number 75444.

They then get a message asking for their name and address, and if they supply it, an already completed voter registration form will be sent to their residence.

[read it all]

Victoria’s Dirty Little Secret

Jeremy Caplan, writing for Time magazine:

“There’s nothing sexy about bad publicity. Victoria’s Secret has had its fair share over the years… Now the attacks are coming from a bunch of tree huggers in suits. Forest Ethics, an environmental-advocacy group, has launched a national campaign of protests.
…
The reason the environmentalists are so mad: Victoria’s Secret prints and mails 395 million catalogs a year, averaging more than 1 million a day… Activists argue that Victoria’s Secret is contributing to the stripping of endangered forests. Forest Ethics is trying to pressure the company into changing the paper it uses, 25% of which comes from the Great Boreal Forest in Canada, one of the world’s largest endangered forests. Unlike more radical environmental groups, which refuse to negotiate with companies they view as evil, Forest Ethics has tried to introduce Victoria’s Secret to green-friendly suppliers and convince the company of the benefits of using recycled paper. “It used to be that you either worked with companies or against them,” says Forest Ethics executive director Todd Paglia. “But that’s foolish and a false choice. We help companies change, but we don’t take no for an answer.”

In my opinion, when we’re ravaging our world to make glossy pictures of boobies, its time to tear it all down and take a new look at everything. Still, I’ll take small change over none at all. So: an irregular (yet enthusiastic) “good luck” to Forest Ethics!

The Want of Peace

by Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

National Popular Vote Plan; Ballot Access News On Fire

Ballot Acces News is certainly on top of their game this week:

In 2007, bills will be introduced in 28 states to pass the “National Popular Vote Plan” for president. The states are Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The organization supporting the plan may do an initiative in California, since the Governor vetoed it and is considered likely to be re-elected this year.