Friday News Bucket

42 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 6:53 am

   Internal White House memos show they knew the levees had been breached on Monday, August 29: AP/MSNBC

   Shortly after the disaster, Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” He later said his comment was meant to suggest that there had been a false sense of relief that the levees had held when the storm passed, only to break a few hours later.

   The Bush administration has said it knew definitively early Tuesday, Aug. 30, the day after the storm, that the levees had been breached, based on an Army Corps of Engineers assessment.

   Democrats said the documents showed there was little excuse for the tardy federal response.

   “The first communication came at 8:30 a.m.,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “So it is inexplicable to me how those responsible for the federal response could have woken up Tuesday morning unaware of this obviously catastrophic situation.”

   The first internal White House communication about levee failures came at 11:13 a.m. on Aug. 29 in a “Katrina Spot Report” by the White House Homeland Security Council.

   “Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city,” the internal report said.

   • 

     Oui on February 10, 2006 at 9:42 am

     .
     ● BREAKING:
     Bush knew about impending N.O. levee breaches ◊ by blksista
     Thu Feb 9th, 2006 at 09:35:24 PM PST

     This news is at least a few hours old, from the Associated Press:

     A timeline pieced together by Senate Democrats shows that the Bush White House knew as early as 8:30 a.m. EST, August 29.

     
     Sen. Harry Reid, D-N.Y., flanked by Sen. Hillary Clinton D-N.Y., speaks during an Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Katrina Survivors rally near the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Demonstrators from New Orleans and beyond called for more federal funding to help rebuild the devastated Gulf Coast. AP Photo/Caleb Jones

     Extra :: Nola.com

     “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

     ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

     • 

       CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 9:47 am

       I put the bucket together before I even looked at the diary list this morning…sorry about the duplication.

       • 

         Oui on February 10, 2006 at 10:05 am

         .
         Is no problem whatsoever, better double than nothing. I just linked as a service to readers and hat tip to blksista.

         Kudos to you for great series of news highlights and buried topics not covered by MSM. I always enjoy this journal.

         Thank YOU Cabin Girl and all contributors.

         “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

         ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

   • 

     Janet Strange on February 10, 2006 at 10:51 am

     So the White House was informed about the levees breaking Monday night. On Tuesday, while Americans were drowning, this is what the President of America was doing:

     

     I’d be a lot more impressed with the NYTimes coverage of this if they had reprinted this photo with the story. Worth a lot more than a thousand words.

     • 

       Salunga on February 10, 2006 at 11:48 am

       God bush is a jackass. That picture takes me back to a bad place.

2. 

   CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 6:56 am

   More on the Culture of Corruption: Tennessean

   Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play.

   The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member.  In an interview, Frist, a doctor and Tennessee Republican, denied that the wording was added that way.

   Trial lawyers and other groups condemn the law, saying it could make it nearly impossible for people harmed by a vaccine to force the drug maker to pay for their injuries.

   Many in health care counter that the protection is needed to help build up the vaccine industry in the United States, especially in light of a possible avian flu pandemic.

   The legislation, called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, allows the secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency, which then provides immunity for companies that develop vaccines and other “countermeasures.”

   Beyond the issue of vaccine liability protection, some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees’ working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy.

   “It is a travesty of the legislative process,” said Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

   “It vests enormous power in the hands of congressional leaders and private interests, minimizes transparency and denies legitimate opportunities for all interested parties, in Congress and outside, to weigh in on important policy questions.”

3. 

   CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 7:08 am

   Neil Young and Jonathan Demme NYT

   WHEN the curtain opens, Neil Young is standing onstage, his face full of years. Dressed in a gray western suit, with a plainsman’s hat and a well-used acoustic guitar, he looks like an old-time cowboy crooner, but somehow scruffier. The hair curling over his collar seems greasy and the way he ducks his head you might think he hadn’t spent much time indoors; he probably needs to knock the dust off his boots before he enters the parlor. It’s a fanciful fiction, this gent with the hat, the suit and the aw-shucks reserve, and part of the beautiful story Jonathan Demme tells in his concert film “Neil Young: Heart of Gold.”

   Mr. Demme shot the film over the course of two concerts recorded on Aug. 18 and 19 in Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium, original home of the Grand Ole Opry. The first half of the film includes 9 of the 10 songs from Mr. Young’s most recent album, “Prairie Wind” (Mr. Demme saved one song for the DVD); the second features 10 titles from his songbook, a number of which were first recorded in Nashville. Although this part of the film — this set, really — begins with “I Am a Child,” which he recorded with his former band Buffalo Springfield, many of the other titles in this section — “Old Man,” “Old King” and “The Old Laughing Lady” — suggest that Mr. Young, who turned 60 in November, is in a ruminative state of mind.

   (just thought I’d break things up with some entertainment news.)

   • 

     maryb2004 on February 10, 2006 at 7:51 am

     Clearly this was the reason this diary was promoted.  

     • 

       Steven D on February 10, 2006 at 7:56 am

       Actually I’ve long wanted to promote one of these diaries.  This seemed like a good day for it.

       And here’s a contribution on my news obsession:

       UNITED NATIONS Feb 9, 2006 (AP)– Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Iran on Thursday to maintain a freeze on its nuclear activities and pursue talks to shift its uranium enrichment program to Russia.

       While Iran’s nuclear program has been formally reported to the U.N. Security Council, Annan said what’s important is that the Iranians and the Europeans who have been trying to resolve the nuclear dispute have said “negotiations are not dead … and they are prepared to talk.”

       “And I would urge them to continue,” the secretary-general told reporters.

       “And I hope Iran will continue to freeze its activities, the way they are now, to allow talks to go forward, to allow them to pursue the Russian offer, and to allow negotiations with the European three and the Russians to come back to the table,” Annan said.

       • 

         CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 8:03 am

         Thanks, Steven!  🙂

4. 

   AndiF on February 10, 2006 at 7:46 am

   From Kaiser Net

   Here’s A new and really useful way to decided who to vote for in an election:

   Male U.S. representatives with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of abortion rights and “more liberally on a range of women’s issues” than male representatives without daughters, according to a working paper published this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Washington Post reports.

   Ebonya Washington of Yale University examined the 105th Congress members’ familial compositions and the National Organization for Women’s ratings of its male members. The ratings, which are based on members’ votes on 20 women’s issues, range from zero — which means they consistently vote against NOW’s position — to 100 — which signifies consistently voting with NOW’s position. Washington found that a male representative was more likely to vote with NOW’s position on women’s issues, especially reproductive rights, if he had daughters. Specifically, the report says that “each daughter is associated with an increase of nearly three points” on NOW’s rating scale.

   The report adds that the association between voting records and daughters superseded any party affiliation. There were not enough female representatives in the 105th Congress to draw any conclusions about their voting habits with respect to family composition, the report says (Morin, Washington Post, 2/8).

5. 

   AndiF on February 10, 2006 at 7:54 am

   Full Article

   The Boston Globe reports on a study that shows that G-rated movies have very few female characters. I guess if you can’t show girls and women as sex objects, there’s no point in having them in a movie.

   A study of the most popular G-rated movies of the past 15 years has found that three-quarters of the characters are male, raising concerns that Hollywood is inadvertently telling children that women are less important than men.

   The survey, which will be unveiled tonight in Los Angeles by actress Geena Davis, analyzed the 101 top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1990 and 2004 and found that 75 percent of all characters were male, 72 percent of the speaking roles were male, and 83 percent of the characters in crowd scenes were male. The study, titled ”Where the Girls Aren’t,” analyzed 4,249 speaking characters in live-action and animated films made for children under the age of 11.

   [snip]

   Joe Kelly, president of Dads & Daughters, pointed to the 1995 animated film ”Toy Story” as an example. ”It’s a marvelous movie, funny, clever, and it has a really important message — that it’s possible for clashing personalities and values to find a way to work together toward a common goal,” he said. But it also has only one female toy with a speaking part, Bo Peep.

   • 

     maryb2004 on February 10, 2006 at 8:01 am

     Well, in Disney movies the mother is always dead so that cuts down on the female characters.  

     I remember that sometime around the time the Lion King came out the studios actually admitted that they were going for the little boy audience because they had the little girl audience locked up with the mermaids and princesses.

   • 

     sybil on February 10, 2006 at 12:10 pm

     Excellent black/white documentary about Edward R. Murrow standing up to corporations, bosses, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

     The few women in the movie were in servile positions. The important meetings were Men Only. But that was exactly right for the time being portrayed.

     Also, if you watch the old movies on Turner Classic Movies, the lowly position of women becomes glaringly obvious but again it is a true depiction. We have come a way but we have not come a long way from those days.

     (Beautiful poem, Cabin Girl.)

6. 

   ask on February 10, 2006 at 7:59 am

   Ethiopia first at Winter Olympics

   Ethiopia is being represented for the first time at the Winter Olympics.
   Robel Teklemariam said he hopes his countrymen’s long-distance records on the track will translate into success in the cross-country skiing events.
   Teklemariam, who left Ethiopia as a child, says without the financial help of Ethiopians abroad, he would not have made it to February’s games in Italy.
   He was so determined to compete that he set up a national skiing federation to get the sport recognised for Ethiopia.

7. 

   Steven D on February 10, 2006 at 8:25 am

   One more for good measure:

   The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

   Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies’ mistakes in concluding that Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration’s decision to invade.

   “Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,” Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration “went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”

   “It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote.

   Pillar’s critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of the administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.

   It is also the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration’s handling of intelligence.

   Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency’s leading counterterrorism analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.

   White House officials did not respond to a request to comment for this article. They have vehemently denied accusations that the administration manipulated intelligence to generate public support for the war.

   • 

     Oui on February 10, 2006 at 10:00 am

     .

     Ex-CIA official Faults Use of Data on Iraq ◊ by alohaleezy
     Fri Feb 10th, 2006 at 05:37:16 AM PST

     The walls are starting to crumble folks. One by one, the CIA agents are tired of getting the blame for faulty intelligence and are speaking out.

     In this Walter Pincus/WaPo article this morning, we have Paul R. Pillar, a 28 year veteran of the CIA, telling us: “Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war.” Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the Journal Foreign Affairs.

     ● Council on Foreign Relations – CFR

     “But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

     ▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

     • 

       Salunga on February 10, 2006 at 11:55 am

       The intel guys really have to resent the administration for cherry picking and then leaving them hang out to dry.

8. 

   idredit on February 10, 2006 at 8:27 am

   Not to be missed is Prof. Juan Cole’s piece on Libby’s claim, “Cheney made me do it” – laying out all the players, replete with photos.

   Yea, any around old eneough to remember a certain comedian whose tagline was ““the devil made me do it”  Read my thoughts?

   Imo, here’s the money quote:

   The same administration that alleges it should be able to listen to our phone calls at will for national security purposes deliberately undermined US security for petty political purposes, making us all much less safe.

   The likelihood is that the crimes of Bush, Cheney, Libby and Rove so far revealed are only the tip of the iceberg.

   go read. You’ll thank me later.

   http://www.juancole.com/2006/02/cheney-authorized-libby-to-disclose.html

   Note: btw, in 2005, Cheney’s Halliburton stock options value increased by 3,281%. It’s working very well for him, isn’t it? That’s called “in-the-money.”

9. 

   Nag on February 10, 2006 at 8:29 am

   link

   This is short, so here’s the whole release:

   February 9, 2006

   KENNEDY ON REPORTS CHENEY AUTHORIZED LIBBY TO LEAK CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

   These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interests being placed above national security. The Vice President’s vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious. If he used classified information to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility. President Bush has clearly said he would ‘clean house’ of everyone who had anything to do with the Plame leak.

   The American people are also entitled to know whether the President knew that classified information was being used for this purpose, and whether he authorized it himself.

   In addition, they are entitled to know that the case will not be scuttled by the administration when the decisions are made on declassifying documents necessary for the trial.

   Oh, how I love Teddy Kennedy!

   • 

     CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 8:47 am

     Go, Ted!

10. 

    CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 9:15 am

    Worst.nightmare.ever. HuffPo

    • 

      sybil on February 10, 2006 at 12:14 pm

      President George W. Bush 2001 – ______

      Left blank because he may be impeached before his term is up.

11. 

    americanforliberty on February 10, 2006 at 10:01 am

    A Kansas City man dies while his Health Insurance Company refuses to pay for a bone marrow transplant because it is  experimental. And refuses to pay for cancer treatment that proves 70% effective because it was not necessary.
    A man dies because and insurance company puts profit before this mans health.

    http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/money/6882159/detail.html

    • 

      CabinGirl on February 10, 2006 at 10:22 am

      What they did to him is criminal.  From the same article:

      Even as he was dying, for more than a week, his insurance company denied him oral morphine, which had been prescribed to reduce his pain.

      “That’s unacceptable because in this day and age, no one should be in pain,” Pierce said.

12. 

    IndyLib on February 10, 2006 at 10:10 am

    Bigots in Connecticut won’t be happy unless they can testify in court as to how icky the gays are while the gays are just trying to get our equal rights.

    [Family Institute of Connecticut] also said that it wants to present evidence that it say shows children are hurt by living in gay and lesbian homes. “Not arguing about what’s in the best interests of children is essentially conceding the case,” Brian Brown, the group’s executive director, told reporters after the arguments.

    Did everyone get that? Now it’s about the children again. One of the primary arguments against marriage equality for gays has been for the conservo-lobby to screech about how marriage is entirely about children and gays don’t have children. Now, I should probably cut them some slack since they were probably those kids whose parents wouldn’t sign the sex ed permission slips so they had to sit out in the hall and play paper football while the rest of us learned a thing or two about how the reproductive system actually works, and how being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with whether one’s reproductive bits are functional, but I can’t help shaking my head and wondering how these people connect the complex thoughts required to tie their shoelaces each day. I mean, at this point, this aspect of the argument has boiled down to: Gays don’t have children so we can’t let them marry — plus, if we let them marry, it would really screw up their kids.

    Alrighty then.

    Also, big thanks go out to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski for being pissed off that his lege is having “issues” passing gay-friendly legislation, and choosing to respond by organizing a special task force to study anti-gay discrimination in the state.

    • 

      AndiF on February 10, 2006 at 11:28 am

      To bad they aren’t more concerned about the children who are hurt by living in heterosexual homes where the vast majority of child neglect and abuse occurs.

      This American Psychological Association study concludes:

      [T]here is no evidence to suggest that lesbians and gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that home environments provided by gay and lesbian parents are as likely as those provided by heterosexual parents to support and enable children’s psychosocial growth.

      • 

        IndyLib on February 10, 2006 at 11:58 am

        Yeah, I suspect their “evidence” will be nothing more than a Paul Cameron-fest, or some such similar bullshit.

    • 

      Cali Scribe on February 10, 2006 at 12:20 pm

      there are plenty of heterosexual couples that either can’t have children or choose not to (the spouse and I are sort of in both categories) — are we going to have full medical exams with people who can’t bear children declared ineligible for marriage licenses, and marriages that have not produced progeny within 5 years annulled? (I actually started a science-fiction story with just that scenario, but trashed it as too realistic…)

13. 

    Knoxville Progressive on February 10, 2006 at 11:35 am

    There’s lots o’ news that’s why it’s late edition (no, really it’s my boss’ fault again, LOL)

    Tomb find stuns Egypt – Archaeologists have discovered an intact, ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the first since King Tutankhamun’s was found in 1922. Archaeologists found a shaft leading to the previously unknown tomb – complete with unopened sarcophagi and five undisturbed mummies – only five yards from the opening to Tut’s tomb.

    Climate warmest in 120 years – In the late 20th Century, the northern hemisphere experienced its most widespread warmth for 1,200 years, according to the journal Science.  The findings support evidence pointing to unprecedented recent warming of the climate linked to greenhouse emissions.  (Additional coverage here)  However, as a result of the shortened winters, rates of some respiratory illnesses have declined, British doctors report.  I’m sure Exxon-Mobil will be running ads lauding this effect soon…

    And volcanoes are good for you, too: Ocean temperatures might have risen even higher during the last century if it weren’t for volcanoes that spewed ashes and aerosols into the upper atmosphere, researchers have found. The eruptions also offset a large percentage of sea level rise caused by human activity.

    Formation of lunar “seas” explained – Titanic impacts on the back side of the moon formed bulges and cracks on the side facing Earth, which then filled with dark magma.

    Safety of radwaste transport examined – Thousands of shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste can be conducted safely, a panel of scientists concluded Thursday, although they warned that significant radiation might be released if a shipment becomes engulfed in a lengthy and intense fire.

    Scientists rediscover idea of Erwin (“cat-in-a-box”) Schroedinger, causing rethinking of ideas on statistical mechanics in physics textbooks.  Interesting, but don’t worry if you don’t understand it, LOL.

    This is even more interesting:A unifying physics principle that describes design in nature in terms of energy flows predicts, in surprisingly straightforward fashion, the basic features of global circulation and climate, according to researchers. They said the new approach to climate may have important implications for forecasting environmental change.

    From the “I’ve been telling you this all along” Department:  The BBC is reporting that the huge profits reported by oil and gas companies would turn into losses if the social costs of their greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account.  [Sigh.  Nobody listens…]

    […except maybe these investors…]  Deserts are becoming hot spots for solar thermal power in which futuristic troughs concentrate the sun’s rays and create steam to run power-producing turbines at power plants.  As oil, natural gas and electricity costs soar, companies are racing to build commercial solar thermal plants that are the size of conventional power plants.

    More details of additional troubling budget cuts at EPA here.  [But Just 4 Today, I’m not going to let them raise my blood pressure.  I’m going to lunch now…]

14. 

    Arminius on February 10, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    Fare you well, my honey
    Fare you well, my only true one
    All the birds that were singing
    Have flown except you alone

    Going to leave this broke-down palace
    On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll
    Make myself a bed by the waterside
    In my time – in my time – I will roll, roll, roll

    In a bed, in a bed
    by the waterside I will lay my head
    Listen to the river sing sweet songs
    to rock my soul

    River gonna take me
    Sing me sweet and sleepy
    Sing me sweet and sleepy
    all the way back home
    It’s a far-gone lullaby
    sung many years ago
    Mama, Mama, many worlds I’ve come
    since I first left home

    Going home, going home
    by the waterside I will rest my bones
    Listen to the river sing sweet songs
    to rock my soul

    Going to plant a weeping willow
    On the bank’s green edge, it will grow, grow, grow
    Sing a lullaby beside the water
    Lovers come and go – the river roll, roll, roll

    Fare you well, fare you well
    I love you more than words can tell
    Listen to the river sing sweet songs
    to rock my soul

    Brokedown Palace — Robert Hunter

    • 

      BooMan on February 10, 2006 at 12:06 pm

      i heard the Dead do that song as an encore 20-something times.  It’s a great song, but it got old after a while.

      • 

        Arminius on February 10, 2006 at 1:55 pm

        Nah. None of it ever got old! Of course, I typically had herbological assistance.

      • 

        Denim Blue on February 10, 2006 at 5:30 pm

        I’ve been listening to the Dead for over 25 years now (yes, I missed out on the early years, but love those albums, especially Europe 72) and I never get tired of their music.  Brokedown Palace is one of my favorites.

15. 

    Cali Scribe on February 10, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    Great piece in Salon (you’ll probably need a Day Pass to view this article). The author relates his experiences taking photos at two different airports to illustrate a freelance article.

    One little tidbit:

    …He makes sure to remind me, just as his colleague in New Hampshire had done, that next time I’d benefit from advance permission, and that “we live in a different world now.”

    Not to put undue weight on the cheap prose of patriotic convenience, but few things are more repellant than that oft-repeated catchphrase. There’s something so pathetically submissive about it — a sound bite of such defeat and capitulation. It’s also untrue; indeed we find ourselves in an altered way of life, though not for the reasons our protectors would have us think. We weren’t forced into this by terrorists, we’ve chosen it. When it comes to flying, we tend to hold the events of Sept. 11 as the be-all and end-all of air crimes, conveniently purging our memories of several decades’ worth of bombings and hijackings. The threats and challenges faced by airports aren’t terribly different from what they’ve always been. What’s different, or “too bad,” to quote the New Hampshire deputy, is our paranoid, overzealous reaction to those threats, and our amped-up obeisance to authority.

    The spouse and I run in a crowd of photographic hobbyists. Some have beautiful pictures of planes on the tarmac, with many “fallen flags” (airlines no longer in existence). Others are rail enthusiasts, getting up at the crack of dawn to go chase down a special freight consist or sitting trackside with their scanners to find out when the Amtrak train with the private railcar on the end will be coming through. I’ve heard reports of railfans being hassled (and granted, some do skirt safety regulations); I’m not surprised that airplane/airport enthusiasts are as well.

    We live in a culture of fear. Children are getting fatter because their parents are afraid to let them go out and play, so they stay inside with the computer, TV and video games. We look at people who aren’t the same race as us with suspicion, expecting them to mug or rape us, blow up our towns, or plant anthrax in our water supply. What’s next — no longer being able to take pictures of our famous monuments, because we might be planning to blow them up? (Oh, but we’ll be able to buy the “official” photographs for $5 each…)

    “9/11 changed everything…” Bullcrap. All 9/11 did was give the Powers That Be a handy-dandy excuse to play on our fears and take control of our country’s soul…

16. 

    Arcturus on February 10, 2006 at 1:53 pm

    Preval Likely Will Win Haitian Election:

    Rene Preval, a former president seen as a champion of Haiti’s poor, appeared headed Thursday to a first-round election victory, even before official results were announced . . . A campaign official said Preval had won almost 68 percent of the 359,000 votes counted so far.

    Leslie Manigat, believed to be Preval’s strongest rival in the field of nearly three dozen candidates, said early returns showed Preval has surged ahead.    

    “There is a tiny chance that we will have a second round, but I fear Preval has made a clean sweep of the votes,” Manigat said.

17. 

    Arcturus on February 10, 2006 at 2:14 pm

    Rough Trade: Diamond Industry Still Funding Bloody Conflicts in Africa:

    The global diamond trade is continuing to fund vicious civil wars in countries such as Ivory Coast and Liberia, despite international efforts to blacklist stones from regions at war.

    Human rights campaigners warn, in the approach to Valentine’s Day, that an international system of regulating the gem trade is being systematically bypassed. Millions of men, women and children are being killed, injured and made homeless as a result. According to a Global Witness and Amnesty International report released today, “conflict diamonds” from Liberia are being smuggled into neighbouring countries for export, and stones from strife-torn Ivory Coast are also finding their way on to the British and other European markets.

18. 

    James Benjamin on February 10, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    Mickey Z asks:

    How is it that some of those now defending a Danish newspaper’s free speech right to publish anti-Muslim cartoons were screaming “treason” when Ward Churchill exercised the same right?

    Lenin’s Tomb on the asymetry of free speech:

    So, isn’t the real political correctness (if I may call it that) as follows: you may dispense insults, racism, lies and innuendo against Muslims or Arabs, but the second you attempt to behave as if they are humans beings too, there is a strict prohibition in operation. Discourse does not take place in a neutral space, in which everyone’s speech is equally efficient: torturers and victims are not equally empowered to speak, for instance (about which, more later). … few people are actually consistent in how they weigh human suffering. What Derbyshire’s comment reveals is the precise contours of the ideological screen separating privileged Westerners from the suffering Other. It is this which facilitates the blase dismissal of mortality figures from Iraq, for instance. It is this which allows one to tuck the mortality figures from Afghanistan which, one some estimates, were close to double those accrued on 9/11, safely away from one’s purview. Zizek noted in Welcome to the Desert of the Real that Americans, having had their fantasy of immortality and reposeful seclusion ripped apart, would have to decide whether to take another step and identify with the rest of the world or to retreat back into the ‘innocence’ of identification with the status quo, nationalism and an aggressive reassertion of US power. Clearly, American reactions have polarised along these lines, with a large number of people sympathising with the suffering of Iraqis and, in increasing numbers, Palestinians, and another group of people preferring to revel in a religious and nationalistic reflux whose guiding principle is death-dealing aggression toward the Others whom ‘we’ had been simply too soft on in the past. However, what is noticeable is that even while American reactions have changed, at an official level the discourse remains exactly the same. When mainstream news organisations speak of war casualties, they are almost always referring to the number of US soldiers being returned in caskets or on stretchers. The Washington Post specifically accentuates its commitment to American nationalism in exactly this fashion.

    And, of course, that screen is flexible, so that the suffering of New Orleans and the immense burden of the crimes committed there by the US government can be made sort of invisible. If you paid attention to the mainstream news organisations in America, you would have no idea that the residents of New Orleans have just had to fight a lengthy battle to force the state to comply with the law, to even enforce their property rights. And so it is unsurprising that when Ray Nagin instructs officers to kill looters and refuses to provide help for the city’s poor despite foreknowledge of the likely effects, he is just seen as doing his job – but when he says New Orleans must be “chocolate brown” (which basically means allowing the city’s residents to keep their homes and what is left of their property), suddenly he’s an anti-white racist who must be roundly condemned. There again, a radical right-wing bigot who described New Orleans residents as “scumbags” is rewarded for his efforts with a CNN contract, while Bill Bennett remains in his job with the same network after remarking that “you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down”, and is allowed the freedom to continue to defend those remarks. But Kanye West says George Bush doesn’t care about black people, a fairly mild way to put it, and outraged gasps abound.

    Free speech, then, is in material terms, in this climate, and at this conjuncture, the freedom to denigrate black people, Muslims, Arabs and just about anyone liable to come on the wrong end of Western power.

    • 

      DuctapeFatwa on February 10, 2006 at 2:36 pm

      This should be its own diary, James. I would like to incite you or sbj to write it. Yesterday’s thread touched on it a bit, I will post a snip from a reply to sbj for the benefit of those who can no longer open it. (I had to close all other windows and reboot, so I’m probably not going back there, so one of you please make a new diary about this larger issue.)

      (the threat of imprisonment)…does not deter people from practicing their culture, whether we are talking about FGM or animal sacrifices, or taking peyote or making a fire in the yard inside city limits, or a thousand other things. It does encourage communities to close more tightly, to, quite rightly, distrust the mainstream society and devote a large part of their time and energy as a community in reducing the need to engage in any contact with outsiders at all.
      Now while I don’t think this would be your desired result, and while I am certainly no fan of the “assimilation” cult, neither is it my desired result.

      I think you raise a larger question, though, that should probably be its own diary, and that is that it appears that this social ghettoization is what the mainstream society desires.

      That frees it up from having to trouble itself too much with these unpleasant subjects, or question its own mores, values, priorities, as well as all the other scary stuff that goes along with the Presence of the Other. It has, after all, done its duty, sent a strong message of being arrested and sent to jail.

      As the Other, we are not part of the barn-raising. Oh, occasionally one of us may be invited to this or that, as the Token symbol of somebody’s idea of “liberalism,” but if our barn should need raising, it will be most likely that somebody who has smiled in our face will have burned it, and it will not be the larger community who comes to raise our new one.

      What will be raised for us are a succession of deterrents.
      probably inaccessible link

      • 

        James Benjamin on February 10, 2006 at 11:20 pm

        I’ll see what I can do in a bit, to turn what was cut n’ paste into a proper diary.

      • 

        James Benjamin on February 11, 2006 at 3:14 am

        Done. Some tentative thoughts to ponder.