This is the last post of 2006 barring some kind of disaster between now and midnight.
James Kim
When I think about his heroic death, I think about how easily he got in a survival situation. A wrong turn on a snowy road. That's it.
Most of us don't own GPS's in our car, forget accurate map reading. And we would feel silly sticking a case of bottled water, a camping stove and freeze dried food in our car. Most of us never go father than up and down a well-travelled highway. I mean, we would be more likely to use the water to fill up the radiator than to save our lives. It would seem paranoid to drive around with that.
Until nature strikes.
What this reminds me of is how close we live to nature. We like to pretend we don't , but tragedies like this, which happen every winter, remind us that we live at the mercy of nature, not the other way around.
Mr. Kim did the best he could in the situation, and saved his family at the cost of his life.
It just reminded me how few Americans are prepared to deal with nature when it crashes into their life.
Muslimphobia
When Rashad came into my bedroom, he smiled, knowing I had fallen for his dusky Muslim ways. He roughly woke my husband, the infidel, up and shoved him to his knees, so he could properly prepare Rashad to enter all my holes.........
Most of the Muslimphobia sounds like stories adapted from Literotica, substituting Muslims for blacks. The abject hysteria over Keith Ellison winning a Congressional seat reached comic proportions. Are these people aware that Muslims have Top Secret/SCI clearance as members of Special Operations Units, the NSA and CIA. That Muslims have served this country faithfully since they have been in the US?
No. They worry about the Koran instead. A book. The whole thing is almost comic to see in print. People like Debbie Schussel think they are more than cranks with computers, when their world view is so beyond reality, one can only laugh.
Jeanine Pirro
If you don't live in the Empire State, you missed the weirdest drama of the year. Pirro, who faltered when she tried to run for Senate, was found to be using Bernie Kerik to investigate her cheating husband Al. Al is a convicted felon. Yet she wanted to run for Attorney General.
OK. But then, it turned out she refused to review a case of an innocent man who spent 12 years in jail. Oooops.
Madonna
Ah, she basically bought a baby from Africa and the poor father had to go along. Weird doesn't begin to cover this. The kid wasn't an orphan. But she has a billion dollars. At least the Portuguese used to leave salt and muskets behind.
The Birth of Suri
I've never seen such cynicism about a birth in my life. First, Cruise wasn't the father, then the baby looked Asian, then it was a test tube baby. They were hiding the child. Jesus, you would think it was Children of Men and a child of Cruise and Holmes.
The collapse of the right blogosphere
Remember how the year started? People took Powerline, Red State and Instacracker seriously.
Well, when they tried to promote Young Ben from Red State, he got gutted and exposed as a plagiarist and racist in a day or so, and from there, it didn't get any better. Mike Krempasky had problems with Wal Mart, which was quietly sending bloggers PR pieces to defend their company from facts.
But my favorite moment of impotence, showing the divergent growth patterns between right and left, is the way the right had to sit and watch how the NRCC savaged conservative Steve Laffey in Rhode Island to save a doomed Chaffee campaign. They had no power to raise money, or even rally people to their cause. Other people they raised money for lost.
They bitched and moaned about AP photos, but no one cared. When Chris Bowers raised a couple of million dollars and Matt Stoller helped campaigns draw support, the right sat at their keyboards, impotent.
Now they rage against Muslims as they lose relevancy by the day
Gossip
Ok, so tell me who acts unlike a 2o something college student?
Paris Hilton
Lindsay Lohan
Nicole Ritchie
Britney Spears
Ms. USA
With the exception of Spears, who would be returning from Iraq, the rest did nothing worthy of notice, but this, and Jennifer Anniston's dating life comprised this year's gossip.
What fallow fields we have. Once gossip used to be fun. Now, it's the dorm RA's meeting.
CBS
They sued Howard Stern and hired Katie Couric.
How did that work for them?
Stern is doing fine on sattelite and a hell of a lot happier. Couric is an embarassment.
Les Moonves, not a genius.
The World Cup
More readers posted here every day during the world cup than at any other time. I kept hearing about soccer exceptionalism, but the ratings, on ESPN/ABC were high enough to make everyone happy. Even though the US crapped out, again, I think people realized that we crossed a line in terms of how soccer is seen. It is the number 2 youth sport in the US, it has a growing fan base, and interest in soccer is growing.
It doesn't mean it's dominating American media, but it is no longer the stepchild of American sport. The Olympics, however, was a blip on the media screen, despite millions in hype. MY favorite story: Italians in Turin reading about the Italian national team, and eventual cup winners, the Azzuri.
Chief Warrant Officer Paul S. Dziegielewski and Sgt. 1st Class Don Hammons are Army officers who notify families of a soldier's death and work with the family to make funeral, financial and other arrangements.
The sacrifice has been worth it. I haven't questioned whether or not it was right to take Saddam Hussein out. I mean, I've questioned it -- I've come to the conclusion that it was the right decision. - George W. Bush
As of today, 3000 U.S. servicemen and women have lost their lives in Iraq.
The New Year will ring in for thousands of families who only know that:
The deceased Soldier’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
GOP Senator and outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar (R-IN) appeared on Fox News Sunday With Host Chris Wallace to discuss the situation in Iraq. He made a plea for Bush to spend more time consulting Congress, in particular his committee, and made the prediction that if Bush does not spend more time with Congress, he and his cabinet will face increasingly aggressive investigation and more subpoenas. After Lugar described the situation, Wallace observed, "You're saying this could get ugly." "Yes, it could," Lugar responded.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:
WALLACE: It seems pretty clear that President Bush is leaning towards some kind of 'surge,' of sending additional US forces into Iraq. Do you support sending in more troops to Iraq?
LUGAR: Well, I don't know whether I do or not. And I say that because my prayer is that President Bush will take the advice that has come frequently, and that is, with people being there on the take-off, they have to support you on the landing. In the past the administration has been inclined, not to disregard Congress, but not to take Congress very seriously. I think this time Congress has to be taken seriously, there's been an election, Republicans lost the election. There's going to be a change in leadership on my committee, and likewise on the House side. What I would advise, would be maybe a retreat, it could be right here in Washington, but for several hours, in which the Foreign Relations Committee, just to take our group, really studies, what is the President's plan? Understands, specifically, who is to be trained, how would the politics affect what we've just been talking about...the devolution of the country, the oil money, or anything else. In other words that there be at least be at least some study of this by all of us, before suddenly we are all asked to comment: 'Are you in favor or surge, are you in favor of withdrawal?' Six months, three months, all the clichés. These are not going to be very relevant.
WALLACE: But you're saying do this before the President addresses the nation.
LUGAR: Yes, that would be advisable.
WALLACE: And what if he doesn't? What if basically, you know, he calls a group of you in, has the meeting around the cabinet room...
LUGAR: Which is the usually course.
WALLACE: Yeah, then what?
LUGAR: Then he can anticipate, not endless hearings, but a lot of hearings, a lot of study, a lot of criticism. In other words, as opposed to having a Foreign Relations Committee that really now is well-informed, understands, may not agree, but understands how you get from place to place, we have an assortment of invitations, demands for subpoenas, all sorts of situations in which Administration figures perhaps reluctantly come to the committee, or don't come to the committee, or various other experts discuss..
WALLACE: You're saying this could get ugly.
LUGAR: Yes, it could. And it need not.
This is Dick Lugar, not Jim Webb or Ted Kennedy saying this.
Lugar had expected Bush to go along with the ISG and he's not.
...adding, this isn't a cranky old man "why do people go outside and spend time with other people" post. What I mean is that it looks like a no booze/high security/no bathroom nightmare. Large gatherings of partying people make me happy.
Because they are tourists or live in the 'burbs. Most real New Yorkers want nothing to do with standing in the cold for hours at a stretch. Maybe once out of curiousity, when you're in your 20's, but for the most part, no.
Here are ten moments from 2006, in no particular order
1) James Frey-100 little lies
Sure, Oprah shamed him, but it was Bill Bastone and the Smoking Gun which did the reporting on his lying little ass which nailed him cold and served him up for Oprah. We usually let liars slide in America, note Gerald Ford's praise for comity, but in this one case, just one, he got nailed hard, and a smarmy little fuck was made to apologize. Sometimes you find faith in odd places. The Smoking Gun is one of them.
2) Ossie Davis's, Coretta Scott King's and James Brown's funerals
They may have happened on different days, in different places, but they say a lot about how we got from segregated lunch counters to US Senators. Oddly enough, many of the same people showed up at all three.
Ossie Davis was a Harlem legend, in many films, but it wasn't acting which made him beloved. When no church would hold a service for Malcolm X, he made it happen. He supported the family for years when they were out of the spotlight, while Betty Shabazz rebuilt her life.
Coretta Scott King was ill served by her funeral and the manuverings of Eddie Long. They didn't invite Harry Belefonte to speak at her funeral. He kept that family fed in the days after King's death, he was in many ways, their best friend. The weakness of the children shone through. At least Joseph Lowery had the courage to tell the president the truth.
James Brown went out a hero. He was the first popular artist to say simply, that he was proud to be black, and hearing that song as a kid changed the world. He had the kind of flashy, fun, loving funeral he so deserved.
As moments go, these three tributes to three very different people say much about changing black America
3) Mel Gibson's rant
Americans like to pretend that racism, and anti-semitism is part of the past. Mel Gibson, despite being the son of one of America's most prominent Holocaust deniers, hid it well over the years. Then he slipped and the mask came off. Hollywood kept it secrets well. Until this year
4) Tom Cruise goes crazy
No one had seen this before, a major movie star go from respect to ridicule in weeks. For years, Pat Kingsley had protected Tomcat from himself. He fired her and replaced her with his sister, and it was off to the races. Cruise made enemies left and right and people questioned his marriage like it was a movie role. It is rare to see self-destruction in public like that
5) Hezbollah and the IDF
Everyone thought that the Israelis would steamroll Hezbollah and put them in their place. Well, when the flares which screwed up night vision gear kept flying and helicopter evacuations was impossible, Israel found that Nasrallah's boys could fight. Once you allowed people to reach rank without politics, their fighting ability improved tremendously. The IDF were fighting the last war. Hezbollah was not.
6) Swannick, Eaton and Baptiste
When these former generals, two commanders of units which led to higher command, refuted the DOD line before Congress, something changed. Maybe it was small, maybe big, but these were no hippies. These were former commanders, men who could have reached higher rank and retired instead. Bush's war was a fraud and they would fight no more forever.
7) The Muslim Cartoons
The European right did a little racebaiting and got called on it. They thought that they could mock Islam and Muslims would have to suck it up. The riots proved otherwise. It was a silly miscalculation by people with no sense of foresight. A lot of people bought into the free speech argument when it was really about putting minorities in their place. They want to debate burkas and homosexuality when the real issue is inclusion.
Not one US paper would touch these cartoons, in the most open press in the world, for a very simple reason: it was racebaiting. There was no great editorial outcry or protest, because the unsubtle nature of the submissions had nothing to do with freedom of speech.
8) 500,000 people
They didn't know what to make of it, when the streets of LA filled up. All those Mexicans. with kids in the Army, pride in their heritage and a willingness to protest unfair laws. They had to be illegals. The willfully blind like Lou Dobbs and the openly racist like Tom Tancredo, didn't get it. Most Americans didn't have a serious problem with immigration. They didn't like the illegals crossing over, but they didn't want to turn them into felons.
But most of them were Americans and they didn't like the second class citizenship Tom Tancredo and Jim "Kotex" Sensenbrenner wanted to impose on their relatives. It changed the way Latinos saw politics and killed the GOP outreach program dead.
9) Use it or lose it
At the end of the campaign, MyDD's Chris Bowers started a fundraising drive. He asked members of Congress in safe seats to contribute to the national committees. He raised millions of dollars. And all he did was thought it up and did it. Didn't ask permissions, didn't have to call anyone, just started asking people for money. And maybe won a few close elections by doing so. 10) Germany is like everyplace else
The one thing which happened during the World Cup was subtle, but important. The Germany baiting was gone and Germans were able to wave their flags and take pride in their team like everyone else. It's been a long time since the Germans didn't have their history wrapped around them. But when English tourists flooded the country and found the people open and friendly, a lot of minds changed. And if you have a united Europe, the past has to be let go at some point. They started out with the WWII nonsense, but when it ended, that was tossed aside for the present.
Published: December 30 2006 19:27 | Last updated: December 30 2006 19:27
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The execution is unlikely to bridge this divide, as perceptions of Mr Hussein’s hanging differ radically between Sunni Arab and Shia. Even the timing of his hanging seemed to reinforce the sectarian gap -- although Iraqi law bans executions during religious holidays, it took place just as the Sunni’s Eid al-Adha feast was beginning. Shia begin celebrations a day later.
However, Mr Hussein’s death could bolster the confidence of the Shia parties which dominate the government, who are fighting to shore up their popularity among their own constituency
Many Shia claimed to doubt that Mr Hussein would actually be executed, leaving the door open to a possible return of his ruling Baath party to power.
Even the last minutes of Mr Hussein’s life seemed to reinforce that the old order was gone for good. One of the witnesses, Judge Munir Haddad, was quoted by CNN as saying that as the noose was being tightened around Mr Hussein’s neck, one of the hangmen shouted out “Long live Moqtada al-Sadr.”
“Moqtada al-Sadr,” said Mr Hussein mockingly, of the radical young cleric Shia who could hardly have been of much consequence to him while he was president, but who now is among the most powerful men in Iraq. According to the report, those were Mr Hussein’s last words.
Who do you think drove this execution?
Shouldn't have shot his daddy like a dog, Saddam.
As justice, this was vulgar. As revenge, well, Sadr worked long and hard for it.
Nevada Smith is an old western with Steve McQueen, who goes to extreme lengths to kill the men who killed his family. Like going to a Louisiana prison and escaping with one target, who he then kills.
While I spend most of my time attacking the other side for their various misdeeds, I suppose it's only fair to point out some flaws by people "on our side" who annoy me at various times. So, here's a taxonomy of annoying people on our side: The Defeatists - Doom and gloomers who know it is all hopeless, who know that we can't win elections, or that if we do win elections nothing will improve, and who think that people who bother to try are just wasting their time. Why these people spend so much time paying attention to this stuff if there's nothing to be done I do not know. If you really feel that way go do something else with your time, otherwise I expect you're just addicted to the sweet thrill of self-righteous outrage. The Armchair Revolutionaries - People who are convinced that the only way to enable change is to take to the streets in mass protest movements, and that anyone who isn't taking to the streets is a big sellout wimp. Whatever the validity of this viewpoint, I say go ahead and do it and convince others to do so. There are, for example, small scale war protests all over the country which people attend every week. Are you attending them? Are you trying to organize more? Or are you just fantasizing about a noble struggle which you aren't really bothering to take part of. Sock Puppeteers - People who think that I, and every other blogger, exist to give voice to your personal issues.
The Narcissists - People who think politicians exist to cater to them personally. The Magical Thinkers - People who speak in semi-riddles, hinting at webs of understood secrets, conspiracies, and truth who actually are just spouting gibberish.
The Lazies - People who think its my job, or any other blogger's job, to spend time, effort, and money supporting candidates or causes even though they themselves aren't actually doing it. The Demanders - People who demand that people agree with them, rather than thinking that maybe they should try persuasion instead. The Forwarders - People who randomly add others to their personal email lists, forwarding every interesting thing and thought they have.
Assumers of Bad Faith - Those who think that people who disagree with them can't possibly have come to that opinion honestly, that they must be on the take, or have a hidden agenda, or be misrepresenting themselves, or whatever.
And, yes, this list sounds cranky but I'm really just having a bit of fun. More than that, while Time's Person of the Year was stupid and condescending, the internets do provide an easy way for people to get involved, persuade, and lead. You don't have to have a "big blog" like this to reach people. If nothing else, Daily Kos and other sites give anyone the potential to have, at least temporarily, a sizeable megaphone which you can use to reach a large audience. In meatspace there are numerous ways you can get involved in local or national politics, or join in with charitable works, or whatever. I'm not telling people they have to do these things, I'm just saying that as some guy once said, you have the power, and the tools are there for you to do so with minimal effort. We live in an age when any idiot on the internets can potentially have an impact on our national discourse, so if you have an issue, or a cause, or a candidate, or whatever, you can try to to organize and persuade and lead. Sitting around in a pool of defeatist narcissistic self-righteous fury while despairing about the grand truths only you understand is good fun, and we all do it at times, but ultimately it doesn't accomplish anything. If the world isn't to your liking, try to change it, and as some other guy suggested, you can start by being the change
A lot of people have some magical expectations of what happens in politics. Some people use it at a personal fashion statement. It isn't either. It is deadly serious work.
When people wonder why others haven't leaped into the fight the way they expect them to, they need to reflect as to why they haven't either.
But what is most fustrating is that people treat this like TV and it isn't. You can and should participate. This isn't a contest to see who is most popular. Everyone has a voice and should use it.
By ROGER COHEN International Herald Tribune Published: December 30, 2006
NEW YORK This has been a bleak year for nuanced thinking. President George W. Bush likes to speak in certainties; contrition and compromise are not his thing. Among hyperventilating left-liberals, hatred of Bush is so intense that rational argument usually goes out the window. The result is a mindless cacophony.
Bush, even after the thumping of the Republicans in November, equates criticism of the war in Iraq with defeatist weakness. Much of the left, in both Europe and the United States, is so convinced that the Iraq invasion was no more than an American grab for oil and military bases, it seems to have forgotten the myriad crimes of Saddam Hussein.
There appears to be little hope that Bush will ever abandon his with-us-or-against-us take on the post-9/11 world. Division is the president's adrenalin; he abhors shades of gray. Nor does it seem likely that the America-hating, over-the-top ranting of the left - the kind that equates Guantánamo with the Gulag and holds that the real threat to human rights comes from the White House rather than Al Qaeda - will abate during the Bush presidency.
This state of affairs is grave. The threat posed by Islamic fanaticism, inside and outside Iraq, requires the lucid analysis and informed disagreement of civilized minds. Bush's certainties are dangerous. But so is the moral equivalency of the left, the kind that during the Cold War could not see the crimes of communism, and now seems ready to equate the conservative leadership of a great democracy with dictatorship.
This kind of sad apologia fools no one outside Fox News and Washington. Gitmo is called a gulag because it is one. They hold children in custody. If that isn't Stalinesque, what is?
Every lemming on the right claims any opposition to Bush is driven by hatred. Really? Someone should ask Charles Swannick if he hates Bush. What Cohen doesn't get is that only a few pundits like him still support our colonial adventure in Iraq. Everyone else sees what a failure it is and wants it to end.
Then he brings up the Euton Manifesto, some bullshit by liberal and not so liberal hawks about defending our colonial war.
Roger, here's reality.
Americans avoid enlisting to fight in Bush's war. We're taking criminals and 40 year olds to fight because the best and brightest of America would rather work in Wal Mart than face multiple tours in Iraq.
Not one of your friends or your kids friends has one person they know serving in combat overseas. This is all abstraction to you.
But understand this: the American people have tired of your war and the cost of it. They want it to end. You and a bunch of warmongers won't change that.
Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr.
By Juan Cole
Photo: Reuters/Chris Hondros
Dec. 30, 2006 | The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare.
Saddam Hussein was tried under the shadow of a foreign military occupation, by a government full of his personal enemies. The first judge, an ethnic Kurd, resigned because of government interference in the trial; the judge who took his place was also Kurdish and had grievances against the accused. Three of Saddam's defense lawyers were shot down in cold blood. The surviving members of his defense team went on strike to protest the lack of protection afforded them. The court then appointed new lawyers who had no expertise in international law. Most of the witnesses against Saddam gave hearsay evidence. The trial ground slowly but certainly toward the inevitable death verdict.
Like everything else in Iraq since 2003, Saddam's trial became entangled in sectarian politics. Iraq is roughly 60 percent Shiite, 18 percent Sunni Arab and 18 percent Kurdish. Elements of the Sunni minority were favored under fellow Sunni Saddam, and during his long, brutal reign this community tended to have high rates of membership in the Baath Party. Although many members of Saddam's own ethnic group deeply disliked him, since the U.S. invasion he has gradually emerged as a symbol of the humiliation that the once-dominant Sunni minority has suffered under a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
(John H. White/Sun-Times) Steven Henderson, shown with his mother and sisters, was preparing to settle into married life when the Army called him up again.
Steven Henderson served his country during two tours of duty as an Army sergeant in Afghanistan -- repeatedly coming under enemy fire and seeing fellow soldiers maimed and U.S. helicopters gunned down.
The Chicago native is back home now after being honorably discharged 20 months ago. He's married and working toward a college degree -- but the Army has called upon him again.
A letter he received two weeks before Christmas orders him to report to Fort Benning, Ga., by Jan. 14. Under the order, he is required to fight in Iraq for a period "not to exceed 545 days."
But this time, Henderson says he will not serve his country.
"It would take a miracle for me to put on a uniform again and to carry a weapon in Iraq,'' he said. "I have no intentions of going to Iraq.''
Henderson, 34, mailed off an appeal to the military Wednesday in hopes he can get out of the obligation. He already completed four years of active duty, including 17 months in operations all over Afghanistan. He received several commendations and even appears in Not a Good Day to Die, a book about Operation Anaconda, a U.S.-led assault in eastern Afghanistan in 2002. The book recounts an operation where Henderson and another soldier survived heavy enemy fire. "That was the longest 18 hours of my life,'' he recalled.
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At her Olympia Fields home Wednesday, Henderson's mother, Kathleen White, teared up when thinking that her only son could end up back in harm's way.
His stepfather, Herbert White, who relies on his stepson for help around the house as he awaits a liver transplant, said he was worried about his son going abroad for potentially the third time. "How many chances does he have before something really bad happens? I'm afraid this will be the third strike.''
BY AUSTIN FENNER in Augusta, Ga. and NICOLE BODE in New York DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
William Murrell drove Brown's body 800 miles from Augusta, Ga., to Harlem. James Brown's loyal chauffeur was called into service one more time in a last-minute scramble to get the Godfather of Soul to the Apollo on time.
William Murrell, who had shuttled the music legend around for the past 15 years, drove Brown's body on an 800-mile pilgrimage from Augusta, Ga., to Harlem - a trip that took him from 10 p.m. Wednesday to 10 a.m. yesterday.
"I drove him in life, and I drove him in death," said Murrell, 47. "I can't say no to Mr. Brown."
The coffin had arrived too late at the funeral home for staff there to make a scheduled flight out of Atlanta. And the remaining flights that could carry the remains were all booked as well.
Without a second thought, Murrell yanked the backseats out of his Ford van and loaded up. He and a co-worker piloted the Ford Club Wagon van up I-95 with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the funeral home director and Brown's 24-karat gold-plated coffin in back.
"We talked the whole time," added Murrell who owns a transportation company in Augusta. "Old times, the good old days, all the fun that we had, all the people he touched, the lives that he changed. It went on and on."
And as soon as they reached New York, they flipped on the radio to find Brown's songs playing nonstop.
The incredible journey started with a frantic phone call from the C.A. Reid Sr. funeral home around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday telling Murrell there was trouble.
The custom-designed coffin - which needed its blue lining replaced with a special one of white satin - was running late.
There was no time to make the 2-1/2-hour trip from Augusta to Atlanta in time for the 7:45 p.m. scheduled Delta flight - or any other flights that night - they said.
All charter flights were booked, including Murrell's two planes. And eager crowds were already massing in Harlem to say goodbye.
"They had to get him to the Apollo. They tried everything," said Murrell, "It was my last chance to give him a ride of a lifetime."
There is an overwhelming need for temporary relief and permanent resettlement. Last year, however, America accepted only 202 Iraqi refugees, and next year we plan to accept approximately the same number. We and other nations of the world need to do far better.
Thousands of these refugees are fleeing because they have been affiliated in some way with the United States. Cooks, drivers and translators have been called traitors for cooperating with the United States. They know all too well that the fate of those who work with U.S. civilians or military forces can be sudden death. Yet, beyond a congressionally mandated program that accepts 50 Iraqi translators from Iraq and Afghanistan each year, the administration has done nothing to resettle brave Iraqis who provided assistance in some way to our military. This lack of conscience is fundamentally unfair. We need to do much more to help Iraqi refugees, especially those who have helped our troops.
Our nation is spending $8 billion a month to wage the war in Iraq. Yet to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of the refugees who have fled the war, the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the current fiscal year.
America needs to lead, but we cannot adequately respond to this overwhelming crisis alone. Because of the magnitude of the problem, we also need action by Iraq's neighbors and the rest of the world. An essential first step could be to hold an international conference on the issue -- ideally sponsored by the countries in the region and the United Nations -- to begin to deal with the growing number and needs of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons. The United States should participate in the conference and provide substantial support for the refugees. Doing so would encourage other nations to address the crisis, help the refugees and displaced persons, and assist the countries shouldering the greatest burden.
Working with Iraq's neighbors and the United Nations, we can encourage rapid action to relieve suffering and save lives. And a productive conference could lead in turn to broader discussions and greater progress on the future of Iraq
Aaron Houston for The New York Times Germania Hernandez activates a Sigo card for Buenaventura Pacheco Lopez in New Brunswick, N.J. Immigrants Wary of Banks Put Faith in New Card By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Published: December 30, 2006
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Since coming to this country eight years ago, Jose Dimas has bristled at the $8 fee he often must pay to cash his paycheck. He stews over the $10 charge he faces whenever he wires $150 home to his parents in Mexico.
Daunted by the requirements to open a bank account, Mr. Dimas had long kept his savings hidden in his apartment, and had worried that his money would be stolen.
But now Mr. Dimas, 32, a food preparer at a catering company, has a new tool that has eased his discomfort with all things financial. It is a special debit card, provided not by a bank but by a nonprofit worker center here, enabling hundreds of immigrants without checking accounts or credit cards to keep their cash somewhere safer than beneath their mattresses. The card also makes it easier to shop at stores as well as online.
“This card is better for me for a lot of situations,” Mr. Dimas said. “You don’t have to pay those big charges to send money back to Mexico. And it will be much safer. I don’t like keeping my money in my home. Someone could go steal the money.”
The worker center, called New Labor, normally focuses on preaching about worker solidarity and safety, but after seeing all the hassles that immigrants face with finances, it pioneered the new debit cards. In a survey of 480 immigrants who were members of New Labor and similar worker centers, 47 percent said they had no bank accounts.
Since November, New Labor has provided cards to 200 immigrant members, including some who are here illegally. Three other centers — in Hempstead, N.Y., Chicago and Los Angeles — have begun offering the cards as well, and organizers say they hope to make them available to tens of thousands of immigrants at 140 worker centers nationwide within the next few years.
Several financial experts said the new debit cards — named “Sigo,” combining the Spanish word for “yes” and the English “go” — are an ideal tool for 30 million workers, both foreign-born and native, who lack bank accounts and often face high check-cashing fees and frustrating obstacles in paying bills.
Sigo cards can also help so-called “unbanked” immigrants develop financial sophistication and eventually move into the banking system, these experts said, perhaps to obtain a mortgage or small business loan.
“It’s not just about reducing your financial costs and making your financial life easier, it also helps give you opportunities to get ahead,” said Jennifer Tescher, director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation in Chicago, which provided a grant to develop the program. “It saves you time and makes more products and services available to you.”
Like department store gift cards, the Sigo card has stored value, but unlike those cards, it is reloadable, meaning more money can be added. Users can reload the cards by having paychecks deposited directly into their accounts or by making cash deposits — for fees ranging from 50 cents to $5 — at a local pharmacy or worker center.
The Sigo card requires a PIN number and is affiliated with MasterCard, and can be used wherever MasterCard is accepted.
The first step would be to make it clear that the United States will tolerate no action by any state that endangers the international flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz. Signaling our determination to back up this statement with force would be a deployment in the Gulf of Oman of minesweepers, a carrier strike group’s guided-missile destroyers, an Aegis-class cruiser, and anti-submarine assets, with the rest of the carrier group remaining in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy could also deploy UAV’s (unmanned air vehicles) and submarines to keep watch above and below against any Iranian missile threat to our flotilla.
Our next step would be to declare a halt to all shipments of Iranian oil while guaranteeing the safety of tankers carrying non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. We would then guarantee this guarantee by launching a comprehensive air campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s air-defense system, its air-force bases and communications systems, and finally its missile sites along the Gulf coast. At that point the attack could move to include Iran’s nuclear facilities—not only the “hard” sites but also infrastructure like bridges and tunnels in order to prevent the shifting of critical materials from one to site to another.
Above all, the air attack would concentrate on Iran’s gasoline refineries. It is still insufficiently appreciated that Iran, a huge oil exporter, imports nearly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign sources, including the Gulf states. With its refineries gone and its storage facilities destroyed, Iran’s cars, trucks, buses, planes, tanks, and other military hardware would run dry in a matter of weeks or even days. This alone would render impossible any major countermoves by the Iranian army. (For its part, the Iranian navy is aging and decrepit, and its biggest asset, three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, should and could be destroyed before leaving port.)
The scenario would not end here. With the systematic reduction of Iran’s capacity to respond, an amphibious force of Marines and special-operations forces could seize key Iranian oil assets in the Gulf, the most important of which is a series of 100 offshore wells and platforms built on Iran’s continental shelf. North and South Pars offshore fields, which represent the future of Iran’s oil and natural-gas industry, could also be seized, while Kargh Island at the far western edge of the Persian Gulf, whose terminus pumps the oil from Iran’s most mature and copiously producing fields (Ahwaz, Marun, and Gachsaran, among others), could be rendered virtually useless. By the time the campaign was over, the United States military would be in a position to control the flow of Iranian oil at the flick of a switch.
An operational fantasy? Not in the least. The United States did all this once before, in the incident I have already alluded to. In 1986-88, as the Iran-Iraq war threatened to spill over into the Gulf and interrupt vital oil traffic, the United States Navy stepped in, organizing convoys and re-flagging ships to protect them against vengeful Iranian attacks. When the Iranians tried to seize the offensive, U.S. vessels sank one Iranian frigate, crippled another, and destroyed several patrol boats. Teams of SEALS also shelled and seized Iranian oil platforms. The entire operation, the largest naval engagement since World War II, not only secured the Gulf; it also compelled Iraq and Iran to wind down their almost decade-long war. Although we made mistakes, including most grievously the accidental shooting-down of a civilian Iranian airliner, killing everyone on board, the world economic order was saved—the most important international obligation the United States faced then and faces today.
But the so-called “tanker war” did not go far enough. In the ensuing decades, the regime in Tehran has single-mindedly pursued its goal of achieving great-power status through the acquisition of nuclear weapons, control of the Persian Gulf, and the spread of its ideology of global jihad. Any effective counter-strategy today must therefore be predicated not only on seizing the state’s oil assets but on refusing to relinquish them unless and until there is credible evidence of regime change in Tehran or—what is all but inconceivable—a major change of direction by the reigning theocracy. In the meantime, and as punishment for its serial violations of UN resolutions and of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran’s oil resources would be impounded and revenues from their production would be placed in escrow.
Obviously, no plan is foolproof. The tactical risks associated with a comprehensive war strategy of this sort are numerous. But they are outweighed by its key advantages.
First, it would accomplish much more than air strikes alone on Iran’s elusive nuclear sites. Whereas such action might retard the uranium-enrichment program by some years, this one in effect would put Iran’s theocracy out of business by depriving it of the very weapon that the critics of air strikes most fear. It would do so, moreover, with minimal means. This would be a naval and air war, not a land campaign. Requiring no draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq, it would involve one or two carrier strike groups, an airborne brigade, and a Marine brigade. Since the entire operation would take place offshore, there would be no need to engage the Iranian army. It and the Revolutionary Guards would be left stranded, out of action and out of gas.
In fact, there is little Iran could do in the face of relentless military pressure at its most vulnerable point. Today, not only are key elements of the Iranian military in worse shape than in the 1980’s, but even the oil weapon is less formidable than imagined. Currently Iran exports an estimated 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Yet according to a recent report in Forbes, quoting the oil-industry analyst Michael Lynch, new sources of oil around the world will have boosted total production by 2 million barrels a day in this year alone, and next year by three million barrels a day. In short, other producers (including Iranian platforms in American hands) can take up some if not all of the slack. The real loser would be Iran itself. Pumping crude oil is its only industry, making up 85 percent of its exports and providing 65 percent of the state budget. With its wells held hostage, the country’s economy could enter free fall.
Fucking idiot.
What does he think the Mahdi Army would do? Watch this happen?
Once the Iranians see this unfold, their Iraqi friends take over from the criminal gangs and blow the bridges the US needs to supply their units. They start going after convoys. Baghdad explodes in protests.
Fucking assclown. A Marine brigade? An Airborne Brigade? From where? When Iranian commandos reach out to their Shia friends in Saudi Arabia and blow the pipelines, what happens then?
Because the Iranians are not morons, they have countermoves planned and 140,000 hostages in Iraq.
Although news reports everywhere are contradicting themselves during this fluid situation, the truth is Saddam might be hanged very soon, within the next few hours or days.
This comes at a time when the Bush project is collapsing in Iraq. On the American side, the number of U.S. troops killed will reach to 3000 in the next few days. On the Iraqi side, new attempts to create a pro-occupation coalition in the Iraqi government (led by Hakim, Hashimi, and Talbani-Barazani) failed after Sistani rejected the idea and refused to give his blessings. At the same time, an anti-occupation coalition is emerging inside and outside the Iraqi government and will include everyone except the failed pro-occupation alliance.
Clearly, there are problems.
* At the same time that millions of Iraqis were and are still being killed, injured, and displaced because of the U.S. interventions;
* At the same time that the Iraqi social fabric is being destroyed and turned into fragments;
* At the same time that the state Iraq is being literally "wiped off the map" and cut apart;
* At the same time that everyday in Iraq is worse than the day before;
* And at the same time that tens of thousands of U.S. solders are being killed, injured, and traumatized for the rest of their lives and trillions of the U.S. taxpayers' money wasted -
--the one and only victory that the Bush administration can claim is hanging the former dictator.
The U.S. administration will use Saddam to distract public opinion from the atrocities going on by parading this fake "victory." It will then also bury the executed body of Saddam along with all the secrets we're not supposed to know, continuing to leave us in the dark.
The crimes of Saddam
With all due respect to the 158 victims of Al-Dujail - where an assassination attempt was made against Saddam -- and their families, this incident was minor when compared to the other major atrocities committed during Saddam's era and supported by the U.S.,
These atrocities included the War on Iran (and the U.S. military support), the dirty political deals (like giving the green light to Saddam's attack on Kuwait and the following written permission to the Iraqi government in Safwan to crush the southern revolution in 1991). They also included the chemical weapons sold to Iraq (like the ones used against Iran on the war fronts, and Iraqi Kurds in the north of Iraq). And there were many more political and economical secret deals and crimes against Iraqis and other people in the region.
There are many people, like Mr. Tareq Aziz, the former Iraqi Vice President and Prime Minister, who are still asking to testify in cases related to Al-Dujail and Al-Anfal (the attacks against Kurds). Aziz said that he has information that will "embarrass many people inside and outside Iraq". But there were people were denied the chance to let us all know the truth, because this truth is not convenient to the Bush administration.
Saddam indeed was a brutal dictator.
The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.
What happens next
Iraqis don't miss Saddam, but they miss their national government that was inherited by the Baath regime and was destroyed under this occupation.
Saddam's life or death is irrelevant to the current Iraqi situation. Iraqis are fighting to hold their country together and get it back from the foreign occupiers. Saddam's recent trial and imminent execution are nothing more than evidence of how foreign interventions to change political regimes will destroy entire countries and split entire nations. The current situation in Iraq is a good indicator for how Iran and Syria, or other countries, would look if the U.S. administration went ahead and interfered and changed their political regimes.
Iraqis were besieged by more than eight revolutions and coup d'états since the end of the British occupation in 1921. Yet, none of those events destroyed Iraq the way the current U.S.-led occupation has and continues to.
These devastating events, the senseless deaths and political skulduggery, and the annihilation of an independent state have proven that Iraqis are the only ones who have the capability, and the right, to change their political regime without destroying their country.
The only way a certain regime can be changed, or enhanced, without destroying the rest of the country is when the change comes from within; when the people are given the chance to change their own regimes by themselves. Otherwise, we'll end up having other Iraqs around the region and the rest of the world.
1.The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
2.Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
3.The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
4.The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
5.An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
6.Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
7.For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
8.Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
9.People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.
A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.
2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It's like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.
That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.
The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.
Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.
This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.
Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.
What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.
Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.
This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is "Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We're hanging him- he symbolizes you." And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).
That is, of course, why Talbani doesn't want to sign his death penalty- not because the mob man suddenly grew a conscience, but because he doesn't want to be the one who does the hanging- he won't be able to travel far away enough if he does that.
Maliki's government couldn't contain their glee. They announced the ratification of the execution order before the actual court did. A few nights ago, some American news program interviewed Maliki's bureau chief, Basim Al-Hassani who was speaking in accented American English about the upcoming execution like it was a carnival he'd be attending. He sat, looking sleazy and not a little bit ridiculous, his dialogue interspersed with 'gonna', 'gotta' and 'wanna'... Which happens, I suppose, when the only people you mix with are American soldiers.
My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn't look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?
Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.
Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.
Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.
Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?
he provisional Russian government at first kept Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children confined in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, 15 miles south of St. Petersburg. Attempting to remove them from the vicinity of the capital and so from possible harm, the Kerensky government moved them east to Tobolsk, in Siberia in August 1917. They remained there through the Bolshevik October Revolution in November 1917, but were then moved to Red Army and Bolshevik-controlled Yekaterinburg. The Emperor and his family, including Botkin, Kharitonov and Trupp were executed at 2:33 A.M. on the morning of July 17, 1918. According to Yurovsky he read to Nicholas a letter from the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet saying:
In view of the fact that your relatives continue their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has decided to sentence you to death.
According to Yurovsky, Nicholas II cried:
Lord, oh my God! Oh my God! What is this? I can't understand you.
The bodies were disposed in a truck which Yurovsky ordered at midnight and taken to the forest to be disposed. The execution was covered up as a disappearance for a while. Soon after, the Bolsheviks announced that only Nicholas had been shot, but that the members of his family had been spirited away to another place. Most reports showed that they had all been executed by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky, a watchmaker from Perm. Other witnesses swore to have seen the Empress and her daughters in Perm. King Alfonso XIII of Spain negotiated with the new Soviet government interceding for the remaining members of the family that he thought alive.
Then in 1989, Yakov Yurovsky's own report was published, which seemed to show conclusively what had happened that night. The execution took place as units of the Czechoslovak Legion, making their retreat out of Russia, approached Yekaterinburg. Fearing that the Legion would take the town and free him, the Emperor's Bolshevik jailers pursued the immediate liquidation of the Imperial Family, arguing that there was "no turning back." [2] The telegram giving the order on behalf of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow was signed by Jacob Sverdlov, after whom the town was subsequently renamed. Nicholas was the first to die. He was executed with multiple bullets to the head and chest.
The bodies of Nicholas and his family, after being soaked in acid and burned, were long believed to have been disposed of down a mineshaft at a site called the Four Brothers. Initially, this was true — they had indeed been disposed of there on the night of July 17. The following morning — when rumors spread in Yekaterinburg regarding the disposal site — Yurovsky removed the bodies and concealed them elsewhere. When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, Yurovsky made new arrangements, and buried most of the bodies in a sealed and concealed pit on Koptyaki Road, a cart track (now abandoned) 12 miles north of Yekaterinburg. Their remains were later found in 1991 and reburied by the Russian government following a state funeral. The process to identify the remains was exhaustive. Samples were sent to Britain and the United States for DNA testing. The tests concluded that five of the skeletons were members of one family and four were unrelated. Three of the five were determined to be the children of two parents. The mother was linked to the British royal family, as was Alexandra. The father was determined to be related to Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. British scientists said they were more than 98.5% sure that the remains were those of the Emperor, his family and their attendants. Relics from the Otsu Scandal (a failed assassination attempt on Tsesarevich Nicholas (future Nicholas II) in Japan) provided enough blood stains to make a negative identification possible.
A ceremony of Christian Burial was held in 1998, and the bodies were laid to rest with State honors in a special chapel in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.
Joe Lieberman has an op-ed in The Washington Post which is so filled with lies and errors that it is impossible to correct.
What he calls extremists led by Iran are the people who met with Bush this month, they're known as the Badr Organization. There are no moderates in power, no democrats. Just Hakim, Sadr and Sunni guerrillas.
But in the end, this is our last year in Iraq.
What needs to be understood is that Iraq is in a civil war and the Sadrists are winning. Any US attempt to attack them not only could undermine any effort against Al Qaeda in Iraq, but place our supply lines in peril, starving and isolating our troops.
The Bush Administration has no plan for anything but doing the same. The idea of sending US troops into Sadr City should be called negligent homicide at it's best. People like Lieberman believe that if we just get to work, we can crush the bad guys. Well, the "bad guys" aren't just an army but a social movement and they have the loyalty of millions.
The inept recent attempt to isolate Sadr, kind of like trying to work past the IRA in 1919, failed before it started. Sistani said no dice. He may not like Sadr, but he likes the Americans even less, and Hakim showed his true colors sucking up to Bush. Which means he's for sale. He may have his Army formations, but I would bet when push comes to shove most of his guys would be loyal to Sayyid Sadr. Why? Because when the Sunni death squads came, it was the Mahdi Army who showed up to save their families.
Lieberman thinks we can win this war by relying on "moderates". You mean people who live in London? Because the people running things in Iraq are pretty firm on their views of the world. The fact is that this is our last year in Iraq, and Bush would do well to be in the Oval Office a year from now.
The US Army is close to collapse. Four tours borders on being assigned to punishment battalions. How many times can you send a man to die and expect him to come home alive? What happens to his family, his life? Not much except a divorce and years of counselling. Recruiters are now telling the most ridiculous lies to teenagers to get them to the Sandbox.
The 109th Congress may be the worst Congress in American history. And that would take some doing. They failed their reposnibilties as a legislative body to find out the truth of our war in Iraq. They chose party over duty at every turn.
The 110th Congress will do no such thing. Just asking basic questions about the conduct of the war will expose it's failure.
While Lieberman thinks our army is made up of automations, the reality is that it is crumbling before our eyes. How many men have gone UA? How many are in Canada now? We don't know and the Army doesn't want to find out. How many men have been chaptered out after a combat tour or two?
The destruction of the Army is slow, but visible. Death penalty murder trials, declining enlistment rates, divorce rates climbing. Reporters are just now asking these questions. What happens next. When is some happy talk colonel embarassed because his grunts have to gun down Iraqi soldiers drawing down on them or refuse one more pointless patrol.
We're coming fast towards 1970 and the Army which stopped fighting. Humans can only take so much. The people who have enlisted have gone above and beyond what is expected of them. But that cannot continue. Bush's war will come to an end. When is no longer the issue. The only question is how.
New Orleans police officers face charges The Danziger Bridge shooting incident, six days after Hurricane Katrina, left 2 dead and 4 seriously wounded. By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer December 29, 2006
HOUSTON — A grand jury on Thursday indicted seven New Orleans police officers on murder and attempted murder charges for their role in a chaotic post-Katrina shooting that left two dead, including a mentally disabled man.
The criminal charges against the officers, who had been cleared of any wrongdoing by the New Orleans Police Department, come after widespread public criticism of what has become known as the Danziger Bridge incident. The police shootings have, for many in the city, come to symbolize the lawlessness and disorder that marked the days after the hurricane.
"We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs," Orleans Parish Dist. Atty. Eddie J. Jordan Jr. said in a statement Thursday. "The rules governing the use of lethal force are not suspended during a state of emergency. Everyone, including police officers, must abide by the law of the land."
Six days after Katrina hit New Orleans, police on Sept. 4, 2005, commandeered a truck and responded to what they initially reported as two officers down during an armed attack on the Danziger Bridge linking the Gentilly and New Orleans East neighborhoods.
In the fusillade that followed, Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man who had refused to leave his dogs during the storm, and James Brissette, 19, were killed. Four others were seriously wounded.
From the outset, the shooting's survivors have said that they were simply crossing the bridge and ran in panic only after a pack of men they thought were criminals opened fire for no apparent reason.
Follow-up media reports found that no officers had been wounded prior to the gunfire that killed Madison and Brissette, casting doubt on the officers' version of events, which was backed by the department. An autopsy found that Madison was shot in the back several times, contradicting a sergeant's claims that the man, who had no prior criminal record, had come toward the officers and reached into his waistband before being shot.
In response to public criticism, Jordan convened a special grand jury to examine evidence in the case. On Thursday, it indicted two sergeants, Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, and two officers, Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon, on first-degree murder charges in Brissette's death. Faulcon also was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Madison. The charges carry a potential death sentence.
Will the Queens DA have the ability to make a similar decision?
You Tube Not only did they sell out to Google before the lawsuits, it became a clever subversive tool to send video around the world. You could track campaigns because they could upload their ads.
Sasha Baron Cohen-Borat was probably the slickest auteur act since Kevin Smith made Clerks. Not only is the movie incredibly funny, but he made his movie, his way and made fans along the way. It also is a brutal expose of racism in America without the preaching of American filmmakers.
Morgan Spurlock- 30 Days was in some ways much better than Super Size Me, it proved that he was more than a one trick pony. Seeing people trying to live on minimum wage is compelling TV.
Ned Lamont-No, he didn't win, but he proved you could run and run hard, and people tend to forget thatls possible
Jon Stewart-At some point, maybe when he was interviewing Ted Koppel, the Daily Show crossed the last line between parody and news. Yeah, they still write jokes and we still laugh, but it has, in effect replaced Nightline for informed commentary. Stewart is my kind of guy, a no-bullshit, straight up questioner. He will not be subtle if he dislikes you or think you an idiot. Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak are still shocked that he really holds them in contempt, no bullshit, actual contempt.
Stephen Colbert-When he got on the stage at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, they thought he was going to do one of those house nigger comedy routines comics like to do for the famous. Instead, he came out like a ninja, subtle, deadly and by the time he was finished, it was the verbal equivilent of the end of Kill Bill pt 1, blood and bodies everywhere. And at the end, Colbert walked off as if he had gone for a drink.
The two men are a very effective team. Stewart comes out swinging, when he finishes, you know you've had your ass kicked. With Colbert, he's standing on you before you realize what happened. But the result is the same. You got beat
Keith Olbermann-He was famous before Stewart had a regular job. Aaron Sorkin had based a character on him on his show Sportsnite. He was renowned for being a pain in the ass around the industry. Most of his employers were glad to see the back of him at some point.
But his real problem is that he's smart, maybe too smart. He can smell the bullshit and then calls it. And that does not make you a hero with bosses. His last boss, Rick Kaplan, freaked when he went on his anti-smoking jihad after the death of Peter Jennings. If he could have, he would have consigned him to ESPN radio with Dan Patrick, his long time partner in crime. Replacing him with Dan Abrams gave Olbermann needed support while consigning Rita Crosby into the outer pits of hell.
But, you can say two things about him, he is loyal to his crew, and he has balls. Maybe when he realized he wasn't going to be a network anchor, or maybe when he got the freedom to do what he wanted, something in him clicked. He stopped playing the game and invented his own.
Which mean he had the freedom to go after that pompous asshole Bill O'Reilly. At every turn, he fucks with him and does it for real. And unlike Terry Gross, he can't be bullied. At well over 6 feet, if O'Reilly had the balls to step to him, he would get his ass kicked. Instead, he runs like the bitch he is.
It wasn't that he did commentaries, but that he was informed. He mixed anger and information with outrage. There's always a risk of staging them, doing them for effect, feeling forced, but the one he did on 9/11 meant the most to me, because it was something only a New Yorker could say and could understand. Those buildings and the people in them were real, as real as grass and rain. Not too many people got that. He did.
Kirsten Gillibrand- Few candidates deserved to win more than she did. John Sweeney was an arrogant clown who thought he could bully newspapers. Instead, a candidate who might actually work for her district and not drink with frat boys will now serve them
Joe Sestak- Well, he was the candidate who deserved to win even more. Curt Weldon was scum and may well be a crook. He attacked Sestak's sick five year old daughter. He deserved to lose. Badly. And he did.
Bob Menendez- They called him a crook when he wasn't. Even some inside the Democratic party wanted the seat held by someone different (white). But he ran hard and ran that prick Kean down like the dog he was.
Matt Stoller-Most of you don't know Matt, or have heard of him obliquely or through the mail list which does not exist, but let me tell you something, while the media calls Atrios and Kos, it's Matt Stoller doing the day in, day out work which makes a lot of what happens online possible. Matt's blog, MyDD, is the center of a lot of what happens online without people noticing it.
Juan Melli and CT Blogger-They do the dirty work of local and state poliitcs, which will never lead to glory or riches, but is needed because if you think federal government has problems.....these guys are heroes to me
Amanda Marcotte-There are a lot of female bloggers, there are a lot of good writers, but Amanda doesn't get credit for walking into Pandagon when Jesse Taylor went off to work for Ted Strickland. It's hard to take over someone else's idea and make it your own. She's got that forthright, honest, funny voice which needs to be heard more often and given more credit. Mike Stark-I know his antics embarassed some of you. Y'all need a cup of shut the fuck up. Because he did what needed to be done, and what the Webb campaign hadn't the balls to do. He exposed a sitting US senator as a loon and put everything he had in it. And will get no reward, little praise. But he's the kind of citizen we need when facing someone as nuts as George Allen. He's a hero to me, because he decided to challenge a US senator with questions and words. And that takes balls.
Howard Dean-Karl Rove would still be bossing around Denny Hastert if it wasn't for Dean. He went to 50 states and got people elected.
What was his reward? Jim Carville's insane rant calling for his firing. Something no one else thought made sense, but he spewed it out.
Howard Dean is bringing back the Democratic party to the people who elected it. And some people in Washington don't like that.
For helping return both Houses of Congress to the Democratic Party,
James Brown gave one last show in Harlem yesterday, three days after his death, in a golden coffin lined with white velvet, on the flower-bedecked stage of the famed Apollo Theater, before a crowd of thousands who had lined up for blocks to see him.
Thousands of fans and mourners — some singing and dancing, some crying and praying — gathered at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to pay respects to James Brown.
A white carriage drawn by two white Percheron horses carried the Brown's coffin to the Apollo Theater.
Mr. Brown’s body arrived beneath the Apollo’s red-neon sign just before 1 p.m. in a white-painted carriage pulled by two white horses with feathery plumes atop their heads. The carriage was small, with tall windows and white curtains with silver fringe. Two solemn men sat atop it, guiding the horses, and Mr. Brown’s friends and associates and Harlem dignitaries walked alongside and behind it.
Hundreds who lined 125th Street outside the theater on a chilly, overcast afternoon cheered and applauded. Helicopters hovered. Photographers aimed their cameras from the surrounding rooftops. A guy hawked commemorative T-shirts for $10. Mr. Brown’s cries and exultations filled the street, blaring from one of his concert videos playing on a beat-up television mounted above a sign for Uptown Tattoos. A chant rose up: “James Brown! James Brown! James Brown!”
When the theater’s doors finally opened, people began streaming in for a public viewing. They walked up a few stairs and stepped onto the red-carpeted stage, where Mr. Brown’s body lay in an open coffin, washed in white and gold stage lights. The coffin was made of 16-gauge steel with a gold paint finish. Mr. Brown was wearing a cobalt, sequined satin suit with white gloves and pointed silvery shoes. Loudspeakers played his breakthrough album, “Live at the Apollo,” recorded Oct. 24, 1962.
Women wearing veils approached. A man in a suit dropped to his knees and crossed his heart. One couple broke into a brief dance. “Right now,” Mr. Brown said on the loudspeakers, in a snippet of between-song banter, “I’m going to get up and do my thing.”
Mr. Brown did his thing yesterday: he put on a show. Throughout the day, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, formed two lines on 125th Street outside the Apollo, one to its east and one to its west, each one filling up 125th Street, reaching the corner and then stretching for blocks up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, forming a giant U. Some had been waiting since midnight Wednesday.
“We’re sending him out in the style he lived,” said Nellie Williams, 58, of Greer, S.C., who stood near the front of one line. “He was a man that had to be seen and heard.” She brought her daughter, and a copy of an oil painting her brother did of Mr. Brown, his pompadour perfectly teased, his shirt open, his smile wide. “I want to show my last respects for his last show in New York,” Ms. Williams added.
Mr. Brown, 73, died of congestive heart failure early Monday in Atlanta. He was remembered, during a private ceremony for family and friends at the Apollo, and amid the lines of fans standing outside for the public viewing, as a singer, dancer, bandleader, funk pioneer, entrepreneur, black-pride icon and entertainer who many said transformed American pop music and African-American culture.
They closed the doors at 9:30 and had to turn people away. Thousands of people viewed the body.
He was beloved, despite his antics, the drugs, the wives. No words meant more to Harlem than James Brown live at the Apollo.
BAGHDAD, Dec. 28 — Preparations for the execution of Saddam Hussein began taking on a sense of urgency late Thursday as American and Iraqi officials suggested that he could be hanged within a span of days rather than weeks.
After upholding the death sentence against Mr. Hussein on Tuesday for the execution of 148 Shiite men and boys in 1982, an Iraqi appeals court ruled that he must be sent to the gallows within 30 days. But Mr. Hussein may not have even that long to live, officials said.
A senior administration official said that the execution would probably not take place in the next 24 hours, but that the timing would be swift. “It may be another day or so,” the official said.
Another senior administration official said later Thursday night that Iraqi officials had told the White House to expect the execution on Saturday, Baghdad time.
In Iraq, where the Constitution requires that the Iraqi president and his two deputies sign all execution orders, officials said it was unlikely that legal formalities would stand in the way. The president, Jalal Talabani, had not received the documents by late Thursday.
But a government official familiar with the process said that little objection would be raised if the execution took place almost immediately. “Even if it happens tonight, no one is going to make an issue out of the procedure,” the official said.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, said there would be no advance notice of the execution because of fears that any announcement could set off violence. When asked who would be invited to attend the hanging, Mr. Rubaie said: “No television. No press. Nothing.”
He said that the execution would be videotaped but that it was unlikely the tape would be released.
Even with the security fears, there was little appetite among Iraqi officialdom to spare Mr. Hussein for much longer. “I hope the decision should be implemented very soon,” said Qasim Daoud, a former national security adviser. “Sooner is better because it sends a message that we are determined — we want to get ahead step by step to building a new Iraq, and these messages will help.”
So, after a flawed legal process, they plan to murder him in secret.
How......night and fogish.
If they're men enough to murder him, murder him before the world. If you think hanging is justice, why hide it?
This is revenge, pure and simple. Saddam may well deserve it, but don't insult us by calling it justice. A trial in the Green Zone is little better than one in Gitmo.
If you want to prove a man evil, you must use justice to do so, not a hanging in the night. This should have been in Europe, without the fear in Iraq, and he should be in UN custody, as befitting his many crimes. With the evidence before the world, in a process which could be trusted by everyone. Where the victims could testify without fear and the documents available to everyone.
Bush may celebrate this, but this is murder, pure and simple.
Rumsfeld is one of the most articulate advocates of the two major wars the U.S. has embarked upon since 2000, and he had earlier made it plain to George Bush when he took office as Secretary of Defense that he would be "forward-leaning." September 11 was an opportunity to realize dreams of heroism and success. He and Vice-president Dick Cheney are soul mates, their careers have been intertwined, but Cheney seeks to keep out of the limelight and Rumsfeld adored the publicity that his cleverness attracted. He is best known for his desire to make the military both meaner and leaner, relying on high tech rather than manpower, and "shock and awe" became his slogan. But to do so, national defense spending, which had been stable in the 1990s, increased from $294 billion in 2000 to $536 billion in 2006, and as a percentage of the GNP it grew 37 percent from 2000 to 2006. All kinds of weapons, many the futuristic products of junk science concocted by well-placed manufacturers, were funded for eventual production – a dozen years being a short delivery time for many of them.
Rumsfeld's military dream was technology-intensive, even more now than 40 years ago, and it failed abysmally in Iraq. Army manpower, however, was reduced and it was left unprepared in countless domains, under-funded and overstretched even before the Iraq war began. Since then its "readiness" in terms of available troops and equipment has only fallen precipitously. And while Rumsfeld made the Army his enemy, even the Air Force now has to cut manpower to raise funds for new equipment.
He always premised his ambition, which various defense secretaries had attempted before him and failed, on the notion that the secret of military success was better and more weapons – "more bang for the buck" as an illustrious predecessor phrased it. More bucks also made the Pentagon requests that much more palatable to a pork-hungry Congress eager to increase spending in their districts. Politics and complex diplomacy never interested people like Rumsfeld, even after the abysmal failure of the Vietnam War. Delivering bad news, which meant serious assessments, was the best way not to advance in the hierarchy, and careerism was crucial to what people said. The name of the game was the game.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq he learned that realities were far more complex and he managed to shock and awe himself and the neoconservatives who shared his naïve assumptions. Reliance on high tech did not prevent warfare from becoming protracted, and it guaranteed that it would become far more costly. Both wars produced stalemates that have become the preludes to American defeats now staring the Bush administration in the face.
Rumsfeld showed at various times that in certain ways he was a person of superior intelligence notwithstanding the basically erroneous premises of the military system he led and the imperatives of ambition that demanded he share them. But like his peers, he learned far too slowly. He suffered from the typical contradiction between intelligence and ambition, and the latter requires an ideology and assumptions which most men-of-power come to believe. He admitted in a confidential memo in October 2003 that "we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror"; even then key members of the Bush Administration were far less confident of what they are doing.
His November 6, 2006 memo on the Iraq war admitted that "what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." There are some anodynes he advocated too, but it was rightly interpreted as his concession to the Baker-Hamilton panel view, which is the voice of the traditional foreign policy Establishment, that the Iraq war was going disastrously – in effect, was being lost. Since then, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has declared there is a civil war raging in Iraq and there should be a drawdown of American troops, to begin by the middle of next year – a step that even Rumsfeld favored with modest withdrawals that would compel the Iraqis "to pull up their socks."
Rumsfeld and his peers know the American military cannot win the war in Iraq. Just as during the Vietnam war, they have the quixotic hope that a solution for the profound and bloody turmoil that reigns there can be found politically – at first the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds were to have parliamentary elections and then make a political deal. They did not. Then they were to write a constitution, which they eventually managed to do but it changed nothing. Now they are hoping that the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, can miraculously cobble together some kind of consensus that will produce peace, but Bush's closest advisers think it is very likely he will fail. They have no one else to turn to. Politics, like military power, will not prevent the United States from losing control over events in Iraq – thereby losing the war. A "surge" in American troops in Iraq, as even the Joint Chiefs of Staff now argues, is only a recipe for greater disasters. Attacks against U.S. coalition forces, their Iraqi dependents, and civilians have now reached a peak and are over twice that two years ago. The Bush Administration today confronts disaster in Iraq, and probably the worst foreign policy failure in American history. Futility is the hallmark of all its efforts
Originally I intended to put up another post within a week or two, but two things caught me up: the usual pressures of teaching--grading papers, sending out reports, planning classes, dealing with bureaucratic nonsense--accompanied by a slipping back into a "down time" of my PTSD cycle. I learned to deal with the former early in my career; I'm still learning to deal with the latter.
Entering the holidays is a tough time for combat-zone veterans. My VA counselor (who was expressing her concern for how I was going to manage it) said that it's a given that these vets more often than not struggle with holidays regardless of how much time has passed. Fortunately, I didn't have go out to do any shopping (my wife tries to steer me away from crowds anyway, and I've made good use of the 'net), and family is too far away to visit. Although I love Midnight Mass, I knew the crowded church would be difficult, so I skipped that. I avoided all the holiday tripe on TV. And I have a family that loves me understands this condition. So I made it through Christmas pretty well--I even enjoyed most of it.
I have been able to take some time to reflect on the holidays in light of my experiences, and so that will be the topic of this (long) post.
The central problem that I and other vets seem to have with the holidays is an extension of the feeling of dislocation. That's not to say that specific events don't trigger other responses, though. In my group meeting last week, all of spoke of us avoiding shopping malls and parties. Crowded malls are awful; there's too much activity. In a combat zone, one learns very quickly to always be taking in the surroundings for signs of danger: "on alert." The worst place to be is someplace crowded, for who can watch every face, every look, every movement, every corner, every rooftop? It puts the brain on overload, and triggers the fight or flight response. When I visited a mall last year shortly before Christmas, I lasted about 20 minutes and then left shaking, soaked in sweat, and nauseous. (It was after that experience that I finally agreed to start taking medication for anxiety attacks.) Although I've gotten a lot better over the past year--I can manage the mall on quieter days--it's nothing I want to push.
Parties, including family get-togethers, are also a problem. Happily, I'm past the partying age, and my closest family is 1500 miles away, so it's not a major issue for me. But I listen to other vets, particularly the younger ones in my therapy group, and parties seem recipes for disaster, especially if there's alcohol or other substances around. Most of us seem to go through a period of "self-medicating" after we come back. As we all know, alcohol & drugs provided that temporary escape that someone who's experienced trauma craves. Of course, these also have depressive qualities, so at best they push the vet deeper into his or her depression and anxiety. Worse, with the lowered inhibitions, the anger that most of us carry inside comes closer to the surface, and any little thing can trigger a violent response. One member of my group remarked about how just having his personal space invaded by being bumped sets him off. Another told about the "stupid questions" (this is a category vets are familiar with), like "did you kill anyone?" or even "what was it like?" would send him into a rage. Some are able to walk away or go off in a quiet corner and accept another ruined social event; others wind up in verbal or physical fights that never turn out well. (I'm the only one in the group who hasn't been in jail.)
I imagine, though, that these issues make sense to those who at least try to understand what a combat-zone veteran is trying to deal with. However, what I've found the most difficult to come to terms with is more existential. The effects of the physical and emotional changes one undergoes are amplified by the resulting sense of not belonging anywhere. I know that I didn't belong in the Iraq war--and that I'll not go back under any circumstances--but having been there, I don't feel a part of this world either. My friends and colleagues treat me differently, either as someone who did something heroic (which is annoying because I didn't) or as the "emotionally wounded veteran" (which is depressing because I guess I am). I can't really talk about my experiences to either group; I'm not even sure they really want to hear about them. This has been true since the day my plane landed back here in the States, not just in December. The holidays, though, seem to have the effect of lemon juice on a cut, aggravating what can often just be ignored. Seeing everyone getting caught up in the "holiday mood" while you can't underscores how cut-off you still are.
The most pervasive feeling is one of "people just don't get it." Some of it's personal: "How can everyone be happy when I feel like sh--?" But it's also more general: "Don't people know there's a war going on? That right this moment someone's dying?" I doubt many of us begrudge anyone happiness and the normal banality of life--it's what so many of us long for--but from many of our perspectives, our society seems especially cold and unfeeling at the holidays. I've spoken with many vets from Vietnam up to Iraq & Afghanistan who express how much they dislike holidays because people seem so unaffected by, even indifferent to, what has been for us a life-changing event.
I've found it easier to cope with these thoughts this year. I know from my public speaking that many people really do care about this war, and to cast them as cold & indifferent is simply a projection of my own anger, frustration, and hurt. What I think I will always have a problem with is the hypocrisy this season brings into focus. As a practicing Christian (of the Catholic persuasion), the Christmas holiday has always been a reminder of our shared humanity, of the imperative to love one another, of the call to work for peace and justice. The warm & cuddly Christmas of the past has been replaced, for me, by a more immediate, anxious, activist Christmas; a prophetic call to work against the forces of chaos, destruction and brutality that seem to occupy positions of governmental and corporate power. That so many of my brother and sister Christians can celebrate this holiday and still feel unmoved to take action to end the suffering that this war (and all the others) has caused is deeply disturbing. It has certainly tested my Christianity.
On a final note, I'd like to thank everyone who posted comments to my last (& first) entry. I wish I could respond to all, but time doesn't permit. I did, however, read them all, and very, very much appreciate the kindness they expressed. It does matter.
I take it back: one more comment. Several people asked why I haven't identified myself on either this blog or my website. The answer is simply this--that there are those whose opinions differ from mine, but who are unwilling to engage in civil discourse. I, and my family, have been verbally attacked in person and online with hateful, abusive, and threatening comments. I've even had people with whom I served try to smear me with hateful distortions and untruths. I'm choosing for now to avoid these as much as possible.
Again, thank you all, and let's all hope and/or pray for a resolution to this war in 2007.
Peace!
Let Misha, Captain Ed, Instacracker and the rest of those assholes trade places with this guy for a day and see if they would spout the same bullshit.
By Megan Greenwell Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 27, 2006; Page B02
Army Reservist James E. Dean had already served 18 months in Afghanistan when he was notified three weeks ago that he would be deployed to Iraq later this month. The prospect of returning to war sent the St. Mary's County resident into a spiral of depression, a neighbor said.
Despondent about his orders, Dean barricaded himself inside his father's home with several weapons on Christmas, threatening to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed yesterday by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, police said.
Wanda Matthews, who lives next door to Dean's father and said she thought of the younger man as a son, described him as a "very good boy."
"His dad told me that he didn't want to go to war," Matthews said. "He had already been out there and didn't want to go again."
Dean, 29, was shot once after a confrontation with officers that began when a member of Dean's family asked police to check on him about 10 p.m. Monday, police said. Dean stated his intention to kill himself several times late that night and yesterday morning and had fired at officers multiple times, St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said. A handful of bullets hit police cars, but no officers were injured.
Say ONE fucking word to me about how we need to leave the Bush girls alone, I will smash your teeth down your fucking throat. I don't want to hear it any more. Bush should be asked every day, so should Tony Snow, that if this war is so important, why is not one member of the Bush family bearing ANY burden. In fact, the State Department has to cover for them.
A reservist on a second tour. A reservist.
Some people don't get to spend Thanksgiving in Argentina. They get to spend it in fear of going back to combat and then commit suicide by cop.
BAGHDAD Many of the American soldiers trying to quell sectarian killings in Baghdad don't appear to be looking for reinforcements. They say a surge in troop levels some people are calling for is a bad idea.
President Bush is considering increasing the number of troops in Iraq and embedding more U.S. advisers in Iraqi units. White House advisers have indicated Bush will announce his new plan for the war before his State of the Union address Jan. 23.
In dozens of interviews with soldiers of the Army's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment as they patrolled the streets of eastern Baghdad, many said the Iraqi capital is embroiled in civil warfare between majority Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs that no number of American troops can stop.
Others insisted current troop levels are sufficient and said any increase in U.S. presence should focus on training Iraqi forces, not combat.
But their more troubling worry was that dispatching a new wave of soldiers would result in more U.S. casualties, and some questioned whether an increasingly muddled American mission in Baghdad is worth putting more lives on the line.
Spc. Don Roberts, who was stationed in Baghdad in 2004, said the situation had gotten worse because of increasing violence between Shiites and Sunnis.
"I don't know what could help at this point," said Roberts, 22, of Paonia, Colo. "What would more guys do? We can't pick sides. It's almost like we have to watch them kill each other, then ask questions."
Based in Fort Lewis, Wash., the battalion is part of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division. Deployed in June, its men were moved to Baghdad from Mosul in late November to relieve another Stryker battalion that had reached the end of its tour.
"Nothing's going to help. It's a religious war, and we're caught in the middle of it," said Sgt. Josh Keim, a native of Canton, Ohio, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "It's hard to be somewhere where there's no mission and we just drive around."
Capt. Matt James, commander of the battalion's Company B, was careful in how he described the unit's impact since arriving in Baghdad. "The idea in calling us in was to make things better here, but it's very complicated and complex," he said.
But James said more troops in combat would likely not have the desired effect. "The more guys we have training the Iraqi army the better," he said. "I would like to see a surge there."
During a recent interview, Lt. Gen. Nasier Abadi, deputy chief of staff for the Iraqi army, said that instead of sending more U.S. soldiers, Washington should focus on furnishing his men with better equipment. "We are hoping 2007 will be the year of supplies," he said.
Some in the 5th Battalion don't think training will ever get the Iraqi forces up to American standards.
"They're never going to be as effective as us," said 1st Lt. Sean McCaffrey, 24, of Shelton, Conn. "They don't have enough training or equipment or expertise."
Ok, we're doing our year end series on winners and losers
Let's start with the losers in no particular order Karl Rove- Once the king of Washington. Now, how's that math working for you? Rove refused to see the bleeding of the GOP as something which could actually cost them seats. When it did, Bush didn't take it too well. George H.W. Bush- Your family lies shattered. Your second oldest son is headed for a University presidency, your oldest son rejects your counsel like you're a doddering old man, your grandchildren suck. This was not the legacy you had in mind. At least your adopted son, Bill Clinton, isn't embarassing you. Laura Bush- Sure people still like you, but Condi is who your husband confides in (and does god know what else with), but the three women in matching dresses? How un Jackie Kennedy could you be? Dull, uninspiring, unoriginal. Reduced to catty comments in women's magazines about your rival? Your husband forcing her on you for Thanksgiving. And your daughters? Do they have jobs yet?
Ken Blackwell-Did you really think a black wingnut could win? In Ohio? Wasn't gonna happen
Michael Steele-Mike Tyson? You think him wearing a Steele t-shirt was smart
Then you lied to your supporters on election night, claiming the race was close. It wasn't. Which is why Sen. Cardin will be going to Washington and Bush won't hire you. They want you to shuck and jive on TV. Good luck with that, Simple Sambo. It's so nice to be proven right, so flamboyantly.
Bill Hillsman- Oh, man, those were the best fucking commercials. Funny as hell. Too bad they never directly tied Lieberman to Bush. You know, for the better part of a year, Kos defended you to the DC insiders, claiming you were blackballed because you were too clever. Well, you are, too clever by half. Your commericals were great on You Tube, but Ned Lamont should get his money back. Why? Because while you were playing cute and talking to the internet over the voters, the Menendez campaign and DSCC ran a simple ad campaign against Tom Kean, Jr. Kean=Bush.
Which is why Sen. Menendez kept his seat and your guy lost. How in the fuck could you let Lieberman say he was against the war. Crashing cars doesn'tr refute that, black and white ads don't refute that. Only tying Bush to Lieberman, which should have been as simple as tying your shoe, would have done that.
Ken Mehlman-Wow, where to begin, the black candidates, the race baiting ads, the gay GOP underground? It's so much to dealt with. But in the end, you just failed
Rahm Emmanuel- Good planning there. How many of your handpicked candidates won? Tammy Duckworth? How much money did you toss after her? Let's just say that you're lucky there was a 50 state strategy and blogs
Liddy Dole-You failed. Badly.
Lincoln Chaffee-You had to know you were going to lose, right. You could have switched parties and had that seat for life. Now, it's Sen. Whitehouse. Well, maybe they'll let you run the Smithsonian or something.
The loser of the year: George Allen
When you started out 2006, people were talking about you running for president. When it ended, you faced legal action from a law student.
What simply happened is that the truth came out. You are a racist. Not by birth, but by choice. People no longer lied for you. And the truth is, Jim Webb barely ran a race until the end. He had funding issues, personality issues, support issues. But he's Sen. Webb and you're a bum.
Why?
Macaca.
You called that boy a nigger and got caught. Simple as that. Just for filming you. You tried to be cute about it, but there was nothing cute about Macaca which translates nicely into nigger. Too bad he was born and raised in Virginia, unlike you.
And then you fucked with Mike Stark. Jesus, sending goons after him? Unlike you, he can defend himself. But he let that become an issue on the last weekend of the campaign. Are you kidding me? You let him draw you into an argument? Why?
The most holy Emperor Misha I, who features a crusader's cross on his website, reacts to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia:
Splendid! And when you get there, please feel free to level the entire piss hole of a "city", then cover it in gasoline and set it on fire. And don't bother being too meticulous about killing the inhabitants first. Let them crackle, hiss and sizzle while the rest of us laugh ourselves silly.
[...]
As is always the case whenever the followers of Mohammed the Pedophile are getting butchered. I'd suggest strapping the diplomats to the outside of your tanks, then finding a nearby building to run over. Or, better still, strap them to the exhaust grill. Nothing smells quite as wonderful as a set of striped pants on fire while the worthless bag of skin inside screams himself to death.
If this useless piece of shit was in a hospital, he'd faint. Forget the little scene of dead black people he's conjured up.
Who is he trying to impress with this tough talk? His fellow chickenhawks? If he'd ever seen anything like this in real life, he'd go mad.
Does it make him feel like a man to write such nonsense. People who see these things usually wind up with PTSD. But, hey, if it helps another cheetos sucking slob feel like a man, write away. It's not like you can afford a Corvette
I bought Jen a PSP for Christmas, for two reasons. One, she really likes tech toys, two, I am a lazy bastard. It takes little effort to buy a PSP.
Which is good.
As we sat in Continental Bar, now live music free, and Jen's favorite bar, Jen gave me my gifts, and I gave her mine. She had also hunted down a ceramic chef's knife for me.
She opened the PSP and her game, which was Loco Roco.
I opened my game, and it was Loco Roco.
Great minds think alike.
I could not stop laughing.
As I laughed, she asked why I had bought her a PSP.
I told her that it was easy.
The truth being is that she loves when I give her tech toys, she considers them the best gifts she's ever gotten.
"It could have been worse," I said.
"How?"
"You could have wanted something from Bond 9"
She laughed. Yes, I hate perfume stores.
And then, oh lord, she gave me the best gift of all. She released me from buying jewelry.
"I'm really picky and like to buy my own, so you never have to worry about that."
This is amazing. The whole process was designed to provide cover for him and he tossed it aside like garbage, just stunning. He looked at it, and then chose the worst option possible
2) The Democratic Congress
Who thought the GOP would be so obliging with Mark Foley and the inept Dennis Hastert. Well, it wasn't that simple, but at the end of the day, the GOP lost
3) The rise of You Tube
A simple, copyright infringing technology not only made streaming video online work, but work well. It allowed a window into campaigns across the country. And that is why George Allen is looking for work today.
4) The failure of New Orleans
Our national shame
5) E coli fever
Gee, maybe cutting the FDA budget was a bad idea.
6) Immigration
Except for Lou Dobbs, one can say the immigration plans from Congress was well, unpopular. 500,000 in the streets
7)The fall of the Black Republican
Three races, three landslide defeats. Maybe getting Mike Tyson as a supporter is dead fucking stupid
8)Gay Republic
Mary Cheney with baby, Mark Foley and Jim Kolbe, Oh, the GOP was having a gay old time.
9) Steroid America
Ah, Barry, is that butanol or are you just happy to see me
BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 — The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.
“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.
The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.
For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.
“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.
A two-day reporting trip accompanying Major Voorhies’s unit and combat troops seemed to back his statement, as did other commanding officers expressing similar frustration.
“I have personally witnessed about a half-dozen of these incidents of what I would call political pressure, where a minister or someone from a minister’s office contacts one of these Iraqi commanders,” said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad.
“These politicians are connected with either the militias or Sunni insurgents.”
Whatever plan the Bush administration unveils — a large force increase, a withdrawal or something in between — this country’s security is going to be left in the hands of Iraqi forces. Those forces, already struggling with corruption and infiltration, have shown little willingness to stand up to political pressure, especially when the Americans are not there to support them. That suggests, the commanders say, that if the Americans leave soon, violence will redouble. And that makes their mission, Major Voorhies and Colonel Miska say, more important than ever.
They added that while political pressure on the Iraqi Army is great, the influence exerted on the police force, which is much more heavily infiltrated by Shiite militia groups, is even greater.
Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, Colonel Miska said.
“It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding the area they control,” he said.
The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight.
“I believe everyone, to some extent, is influenced by the militias,” Colonel Miska said. “While some Iraqi security forces may be complicit with the militias, others fear for their families when confronting the militia, and that is the more pervasive threat.”
Looking at a map he had his intelligence officers create, which highlights current battle zones and details the changing religious makeup of neighborhoods, Colonel Miska noted just how many different forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles Thursday December 28, 2006 The Guardian
The Washington Post described Jessica Cutler as "our blog slut". The National Enquirer opined that she was "beautiful, untalented and morally corrupted".
Now the blogger who wrote about her attempts to juggle affairs with six men while keeping a job as an aide to a senator has a new role: as the star defendant in a case that could help define what can and cannot be published in a blog.
Writing under the pseudonym Washingtonienne, Cutler described in detail the sexual intricacies of her life on the Hill. The blog, which Cutler claimed was intended to keep her friends up to date on her social life in Washington DC, achieved notoriety, and its author fame and a book contract, after it was brought to a wider public by another blog, Wonkette. ....................................
While Cutler lost her job with Republican senator Mike DeWine, Mr Steinbuch moved to a teaching post in Arkansas and filed a lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy and seeking $20m (£10.1m) in damages.
..................
Mr Steinbuch's attorney, Jonathan Rosen, told a judge in a pre-trial hearing that his client, who teaches in Arkansas, wants to restore his good name. "It's not funny and it's damaging," Mr Rosen said. "It's horrible, absolutely horrible."
Cutler's attorney, Matthew Billips, had a different view: "I have no idea what he wants," he said. "He's never said, 'This is what I think should be done.'"
The judge, too, seemed bemused by the case. "I don't know why we're here in federal court to begin with," Judge Paul Friedman told attorneys in April. "I don't know why this guy thought it was smart to file a lawsuit and lay out all of his private, intimate details."
Why is this a case? He's going to be humiliated, while Cutler could give a shit. She's admitted to being a whore, so what's left? He, otoh, could lose his reputation. Idiot. You never sue over your sex life.
Daniel Taylor Thursday December 28, 2006 The Guardian
Manchester United and Chelsea are being lined up for an end-of-season showdown at Stamford Bridge which Premier League and television executives anticipate could represent a winner-takes-all title decider.
United are currently scheduled to visit Stamford Bridge on Saturday April 14. That, however, has also been designated as the weekend for FA Cup semi-finals and, if either club make it to that stage, the league game will be postponed until the final week of the season, with May 8 or 9 the most likely dates.
Article continues Sky is acutely aware of the interest that would exist around such a match and the possibility has already been floated of rearranging the fixture with the intention of recreating a game that will have similarities to Arsenal's visit to Liverpool in May 1989 - when Michael Thomas's last-minute goal sent the title to Highbury on goal difference.
The Premier League confirmed last night that it is a "possibility" but for now, at least, it remains dependent not only on United or Chelsea progressing to the last four of the FA Cup but on them still being within touching distance of each other in April. United are currently four points ahead after the Boxing Day fixtures, when United overcame Wigan 3-1 while Chelsea could manage only a 2-2 draw at home to Reading.
United also have a far superior goal difference, having scored 44 goals and conceded 11 in their 20 league games. Chelsea have scored 35 with 15 conceded and Ferguson felt sufficiently emboldened yesterday to predict that the 13-goal advantage would not be clawed back and effectively counted as another point.
"The goal difference helps us," said the United manager. "There is no doubt about that. I have always believed that 10 or 12 goals makes up another point and, if it remains that way, it is something we will have to fall back on. Hopefully we won't have to but it is there anyway."
Ferguson believes that Chelsea, despite their recent problems, still have the strength in depth to sustain a challenge for the remainder of the season but he has said more than once that he will be happy for it to go down to the final week of the season and a "photo-finish".
The "All-Star Panel" segment on the December 21 edition of Fox News' Special Report contained a clip from This Is DNN, a "satirical video" in which World War II-era "Congresswoman and House leader Ancy Lagosi" attacks the war and then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the segment of This Is DNN that aired on Special Report, "Lagosi" says that "250,000 of our finest [have come] home in wooden boxes ... [t]o support a lie." When "Lagosi" asks, "What has Germany and Italy got to do with Pearl Harbor?" the audience at her speech responds, "Nothing!" and then chants, "Roosevelt lied, millions died." Special Report host and Fox News Washington bureau managing editor Brit Hume described the film as "filled with sepia-toned scenes from ... what purports to be an old newsreel of modern-style coverage of World War II." He then asked the panel, "[I]s that a realistic picture of what it might have been like if today's politics and today's news media coverage had prevailed in World War II?"
As panelist and Roll Call executive editor Morton Kondracke noted during the discussion, Adolf Hitler's Germany, an ally of Japan, declared war on the United States after the United States declared war against Japan on December 8, 1941. The United States then declared war against Germany as well.
This Is DNN: What if Today's Media Covered WWII was produced by Clear Glass Productions and featured at the recent 2006 Liberty Film Festival, which, as Media Matters for America has noted, is meant to "provid[e] a forum in the heart of Hollywood for conservative and libertarian filmmakers." At the festival, ABC Vice President of Synergy and Special Projects Judith Tukich was presented with the festival's "Freedom of Expression Award" for her role in assisting the production and promotion of the factually challenged ABC "docudrama" The Path to 9/11. The screenwriter of The Path to 9/11, Cyrus Nowrasteh, an outspoken conservative, was also given a "Freedom of Expression Award."
This Is DNN has been promoted on right-wing weblogs, including Little Green Footballs and Michelle Malkin's Hot Air. On November 20, Malkin featured This Is DNN in the first edition of Hot Air at the Movies, a series she said showcased "conservative and anti-jihad documentarians and film producers." The film is also being sold on the book service of the right-wing magazine World Net Daily.
These fucking assclowns so want to drape themselves in the mantle of WWII over and over with no understanding of what they represent.
They are NOT the men who went to Canada and England to fight the Germans, they are the American Firsters who refused to support Britain in 1940. If Charles Lindburgh had not let the cat slip out of the bag with his speech in 1940, this line of thinking would have been deemed credible to this day.
It is almost amusing to hear these people chatter about sacrifice when they have done nothing for the cause they support. They act as if their words would mean as much as taking your ass on a train to Montreal and then taking a ship on U-Boat infested seas to wind up buring to death over the English Channel.
Instead, they would be like the Afriakaaners, who sabotaged their own country during the war. Or the cowardly Joseph Kennedy, eager to bow before the Germans. They would be the ones wondering why we're fighting Hitler.
The Germans has a name for these kinds of people "Golden Pheasants". They sat in their office in their party uniforms, screeching about how the war should be fought. When Ivan and the boys came knocking, they couldn't run fast enough. Pick up a gun? Nope. Tell other people how to die? Sure.
But they no longer live in Berlin, but in Washington and sit at think tank desks
As a President, he was mediocre. As a Congressional leader, he was a reliable Nixon supporter. Before WWII, he helped found the anti-semitic America First while American pilots were dying over England in RAF and Canadian uniforms.
But he only matters in history for one reason: pardoning Richard Nixon.
We can debate his other acts, but this is the sole reason he matters in American history.
The question is whether he should have.
1975 was a difficult year. The US military was dysfunctional, American society was shattered, there was a real question if the US could have survived the trial of Richard Nixon for his various crimes.
Once he had slunk off, to everyone's relief, there was no great appetite for punishment among Congress.
But, by pardoning Nixon, he helped save the GOP, by not exposing the criminal nature of that enterprise. It was allowed to reform as a right wing party, catering to small business and backwoods rednecks. The Dems never really pressed the advantage they could have had by exposing Nixon and his crimes.
Such bloodletting ends more like the movie Z than in heroic triumph. Nixon was a crook, he was stained by his actions. A trial may have led to more disorder. Nixon lived in ignominy afterwards, Ford with his golf game.
In a world of two bad choices, maybe Ford made the least bad choice
A number of people are commenting on the report that the US is considering the establishment of overseas military recruiting stations. Some people may be wondering whence the idea sprang, and whether it’s a good one. The answer to the first question supplies the answer to the second.
The idea was first floated in a February, 2005 Los Angeles Times op-ed column by neoconservative Nostradamus Max Boot. Boot, a dogged proponent of American Empire who regards Rudyard Kipling as the premier foreign policy thinker of the modern age, suggested modeling the new enterprise after the French Foreign Legion — he dubbed it the “Freedom Legion” — in what must surely be the only recorded instance of a neoconservative publicly offering anything remotely resembling praise for that most obstinate of nations.
As you might expect from the source, it’s an unequivocally bad idea on any number of levels, as is the practice of basing one’s Grand Strategy on Kipling.
Recruiting from among our own citizens and legal residents is tres expensive. The Congressional Budget office estimated a few years ago that adding 20,000 troops to the Army would cost $100 billion in the first five years and $10 billion annually after that, which numbers you can mulitply to account for many more troops and the difficulty of training and commanding a corps of soldiers for whom English might be a second, third or unknown language.
While we probably can find any number of willing recruits overseas, we might possibly encounter some resistance from local populations who hold both our government and its various military adventures in less than high regard, and from governments that may balk at the idea of US military training for those among their own citizenry who might eventually return to use that training against those governments. So, to the expense of recruiting, training, maintaining and commanding the Freedom Legion you can add that of protecting the recruiters and recruits in the far-flung lands we attempt to mine, exhaustively screening recruits to forestall the inevitable attempts to obtain the best military training in the world by people who wish us ill, and bribing the host governments into allowing us to do this.
Beyond the practical difficulties, which would be enough to scuttle the plan in any sane country, recruiting abroad would indelibly stamp the United States as an empire in official thought and deed. Boot thinks that’s a fine idea; one of his favorite Kipling quotes is “Ye dare not stoop to less,” from, appropriately, The White Man’s Burden. He once said of the US imperative to take up that burden that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
And that, really, is all you need know about Max Boot and his ideas of what’s good for this country.
It's a horrible idea and illegal in many countries. I doubt Mexico will welcome this with open arms.
Oh yeah, how do their get their benefits if they are wounded overseas?
Horrible on every level. Cannon fodder for America.
BAGHDAD, Dec. 26 — An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein and ruled that the man whose brutal reign began in 1979 and ended with the American-led invasion in 2003 must go to the gallows within 30 days.
It was the court of last resort for Mr. Hussein, who received his death sentence on Nov. 5 from the Iraqi High Tribunal, a court set up specifically to pass judgment on his years in power. No further appeals are possible, and his final legal recourse appears to be a clause in the Constitution stating that the Iraqi president must approve all death sentences.
That clause offers Mr. Hussein only the slenderest of hopes. Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, has said he is formally against the death penalty, but he has permitted the hangings of many Iraqis convicted of capital crimes. And the Constitution may be trumped by an article in the charter of the tribunal stating that its sentences may be commuted by no one, not even the president.
The appeals verdict, covering one case involving the execution of 148 men and boys in the northern town of Dujail in 1982, came even as Mr. Hussein was facing trial on charges that he ordered the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds, whose bodies have in some instances been exhumed from grisly mass graves and minutely described in the courtroom.
The decision of the nine-judge appeals court was announced on short notice by the chief judge, Aref Shahen, after another day of the numbing violence that has gradually engulfed this country after the bursts of optimism that followed Mr. Hussein’s fall from power in March 2003 and his capture by American forces in December of that year.
Judge Shahen delivered the verdict to a few reporters assembled at the Council of Ministers building within the heavily guarded Green Zone as the rest of the country settled into its nighttime curfew. There were none of the theatrical outbursts contrived by Mr. Hussein to disrupt the trial and the appeal, because he was not present to hear the verdict.
This should have been done under the International Criminal Court in Holland. Not in the Green Zone, so there would be no question as to the verdict. Now? Just drop him in Sadr City and be done with it.
We all know about Bad Bosses. But this summer, when Working America held its first-ever My Bad Boss Contest, the roaches really crawled out of the woodwork.
Like the boss who told his part-time staff person she had to work longer hours—even though she wanted to spend more time with her dying mother.
And the boss who “Googles™” employees to dig up dirt on their personal lives and spends time walking around the office barking like a dog, whinnying like a horse and making cicada noises.
More than 2,500 employees submitted their bad boss stories to Working America, an AFL-CIO community affiliate. Visitors to the My Bad Boss Contest site voted for the worst boss of the week, and the embattled grand prize winner got a much-deserved week’s vacation getaway and $1,000 toward airfare, compliments of the AFL-CIO membership benefit organization, Union Privilege.
The winning entry described her boss as a millionaire dentist who, because so many patients canceled appointments on Sept. 11, 2001, took the money he would have made that day out of his employees’ paychecks.
Al Franken and other notables commented weekly on the state of working America as reflected in the general disregard, disrespect and downright ugliness U.S. employers displayed toward those who spend a third or more of their lives working for them.
Economist, author and commentator Julianne Malveaux pinpointed the real story behind bad boss b
ehavior. Co-author of Unfinished Business: A Democrat and A Republican Take on the 10 Most Important Issues Women Face, Malveaux was among guest panelists commenting on Bad Boss entries:
When people talk about their bosses, they are really talking about imbalances of power, the absence of civility, and a disrespect for working people that is reflected in the fact that the average CEO makes more than 800 times as much as a minimum wage worker. Lots of folks have good jobs with good pay, but an increasing number have good jobs with good pay and poor working conditions. The numbers suggest that the job market is healthy and robust.… The stories that people tell about the way they work are discordant notes in the gleeful song of prosperity and success.
The Bad Boss Contest is a lot of fun and highlights how far we still must go to improve the nation’s workplaces. But Working America doesn’t stop at just pointing out injustice at the workplace.
Since it was created in 2003, the organization has signed up more than 1.5 million members—and has done so by sending canvassers door to door, day after day in middle- and working-class neighborhoods where people are hungry to become part of a dynamic movement in which they can take action and make a difference.
Working America enables workers who do not have the benefit of a union on the job to join forces with 9 million union members in the AFL-CIO to work for good jobs, health care, retirement security and more.
The majority of Working America members identify themselves as politically moderate (54 percent), and 32 percent own guns. But when Working America canvassers come to their doors and discuss how the policies of the Bush administration affect them and their families, they make the connection—and divisive social issues like abortion and gay marriage that may have impacted their vote fade when compared with the benefits of voting your pocketbook.
In the 2006 elections, Working America membership translated into big-time political action, with members being instrumental in the union movement’s get-out-the-vote efforts. More than 400,000 Working America members live in the 20 congressional districts that were considered the highest priority House races.
Election night polling by Peter D. Hart Research Associates showed that 80 percent of Working America members who had not voted in 2002 said they turned out to vote this year. Non-2002 Working America voters supported Democratic candidates for Senate by 80 percent to 20 percent; non-2002 voters supported Democratic House candidates by 77 percent to 23 percent.
In the union movement’s “Final Four” days of the election, Working America members knocked on 153,000 doors in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota in a final push to get out the vote.
Working America members are joined in an online community where they regularly vote on the issues that most concern them, issues like health care they want Working America to focus on. Working America members can get free workplace advice through Working America’s Ask a Lawyer option. And they can access Job Tracker, which provides data on job exporting and health and safety records of 250,000 employers in a huge database that indicates where jobs have been outsourced in their communities.
Through regular e-mail updates, Working America members take action throughout the year. In 2006, they sent 500,000 e-mail and fax messages directly to elected officials and corporate leaders.
Earlier this year, activists in Washington state took the offensive and won a major victory when the state Legislature passed a state family leave act. Working America members generated 724 letters to state legislators supporting the bill, which was signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire (D). The state leave act is necessary because the Bush administration’s Labor Department recently has been threatening to gut the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for a personal illness, to care for an ill family member or to care for a new baby.
Bad bosses don’t just happen. We let them happen. Taking action through Working America is one way to change the laws and elect the politicians who will create an environment in which neither workers nor bosses are forced to buy their own chairs.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG Published: December 25, 2006
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 — President Bush marched into his year-end news conference last week with the usual zip in his step. As always, he professed little worry about his legacy or the polls. As always, he said the United States would win in Iraq. The nation might despair, but not Mr. Bush; his presidential armor seemed firmly intact.
Yet a longtime friend of Mr. Bush’s recently spotted a tiny crack in that armor. “He looked tired, for the first time, which I hadn’t seen before,” this friend said.
Mr. Bush has never been one for introspection, in public or in private. But the questions of how the president is coping, and whether his public pronouncements match what he feels as he searches for a new strategy in Iraq, have been much on the minds of Bush-watchers these days.
Can the president really believe, as he said on Wednesday, that “victory in Iraq is achievable,” when a bipartisan commission led by his own father’s secretary of state calls the situation there “grave and deteriorating?” Is he truly content to ignore public opinion and let “the long march of history,” as he calls it, pass judgment on him after he is gone? Does he lie awake at night, as President Lyndon B. Johnson did during the Vietnam War, fretting over his decisions?
Mr. Bush addressed the sleep issue in a recent interview with People magazine, saying, “I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume.”
Yet the president can never really escape the rigors of his job, Laura Bush, the first lady, said in an interview on Sunday on the CBS news program “Face the Nation.” “Sure, he lives with it, 24 hours a day,” Mrs. Bush said. “You don’t have his job and not live with it 24 hours a day.”
But as to whether he second-guesses himself, Mr. Bush gives little quarter, reducing such inquiries to the broad-brush question of whether it was correct to topple Saddam Hussein. Nor does the president seem to question his handling of the postwar period.
His friend, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bush still believed that Donald H. Rumsfeld “did a great job over all” as the secretary of defense, despite the president’s decision to replace him after Democrats swept the November elections.
“I think he knows it’s bad over there,” this person said, “but I’m not quite sure he fully appreciates the incompetence of what’s gone on.”
I was watching this White House Christmas special last night, and after a couple of minutes, I realized that people would have their Christmases killed by two guys in uniform showing up to tell them their kin was dead.
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 24 — Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.
On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.
The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site. That would make it possible for an attacker to inject rogue software into the Vista-based computer, according to executives at Determina, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that sells software intended to protect against operating system and other vulnerabilities.
Determina is part of a small industry of companies that routinely pore over the technical details of software applications and operating systems looking for flaws. When flaws in Microsoft products are found they are reported to the software maker, which then produces fixes called patches. Microsoft has built technology into its recent operating systems that makes it possible for the company to fix its software automatically via the Internet.
Despite Microsoft assertions about the improved reliability of Vista, many in the industry are taking a wait-and-see approach. Microsoft’s previous operating system, Windows XP, required two “service packs” issued over a number of years to substantially improve security, and new flaws are still routinely discovered by outside researchers.
On Friday, a Microsoft executive posted a comment on a company security information Web site stating the company was “closely monitoring” the vulnerability described by the Russian Web site. It permits the privileges of a standard user account in Vista and other versions of Windows to be increased, permitting control of all of the operations of the computer. In Unix and modern Windows systems, users are restricted in the functions they can perform, and complete power is restricted to certain administrative accounts.
“Currently we have not observed any public exploitation or attack activity regarding this issue,” wrote Mike Reavey, operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center. “While I know this is a vulnerability that impacts Windows Vista, I still have every confidence that Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date.”
Last month, Jennifer Freeman sat in a Chicago coffee bar, counting her blessings and considering her problem. She had a husband with an M.B.A. degree, two children and a job offer that would let her dig out the education degree she had stashed away during years of playdates and potty training.
But she could not accept the job. After weeks of searching, Ms. Freeman, who is African-American, still could not find a nanny for her son, 5, and daughter, 3. Agency after agency told her they had no one to send to her South Side home.
As more blacks move up the economic ladder, one fixture — some would say necessity — of the upper-middle-class income bracket often eludes them. Like hailing a cab in Midtown Manhattan, searching for a nanny can be an exasperating, humiliating exercise for many blacks, the kind of ordeal that makes them wonder aloud what year it is.
“We’ve attained whatever level society says is successful, we’re included at work, but when we need the support for our children and we can afford it, why do we get treated this way?” asked Tanisha Jackson, an African-American mother of three in a Washington suburb, who searched on and off for five years before hiring a nanny. “It’s a slap in the face.”
Numerous black parents successfully employ nannies, and many sitters say they pay no regard to race. But interviews with dozens of nannies and agencies that employ them in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Houston turned up many nannies — often of African-American or Caribbean descent themselves — who avoid working for families of those backgrounds. Their reasons included accusations of low pay and extra work, fears that employers would look down at them, and suspicion that any neighborhood inhabited by blacks had to be unsafe.
The result is that many black parents do not have the same child care options as their colleagues and neighbors. They must settle for illegal immigrants or non-English speakers instead of more experienced or credentialed nannies, rely on day care or scale back their professional aspirations to spend more time at home.
“Very rarely will an African-American woman work for an African-American boss,” said Pat Cascio, the owner of Morningside Nannies in Houston and the president of the International Nanny Association.
Many of the African-American nannies who make up 40 percent of her work force fear that people of their own color will be “uppity and demanding,” said Ms. Cascio, who is white. After interviews, she said, those nannies “will call us and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me’ ” the family is black?
A lot of this, quite bluntly, comes from a slave mentality. It is easier for some blacks to serve whites than work for other blacks. Oddly, this isn't an issue in day care, where my mother wortked for 14 years.
West Indians often look down on American blacks and see them as losers. American blacks see West Indians as overtly servile to whites.
Libby Copeland is the person that is dumb but smart. She is dumbfounded to learn that Monica Lewinsky has received a master's degree in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. Lewinsky's thesis was "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."
There are moments that make you question your fundamental assumptions about the world. One of them took place a few days ago, when news emerged that Monica Lewinsky had just graduated from the London School of Economics.
She did not!!
Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond.
What a crock of bullshit!! Did Ms. Copeland watch Lewinsky's deposition before the House Manager's torquemadic inquisition? Doesn't she remember how Ms. Lewinsky ran loops around the slow-witted Rep. Bryant? If anyone came away from l'affair Lewinsky thinking Monica was dumb, then they are themselves dumb.
This is just one more example of how women are treated with a double standard. For Ms. Copeland it is simply unthinkable that a woman could be simultaneously smart and sexually attracted to the most powerful man in the world. I'm beginning to wonder whether it is possible to be simultaneously smart and write for the Washington Post.
This is bullshit. Lewinsky is a graduate of Reed Lewis and Clark College, which is a well regarded school, and worked for the Pentagon. Lewinsky may have poor choice in men, but stupid , she isn't. This idea that she had to be a bimbo was prepretrated by the media. Not reality.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S.-backed plan to form a political coalition of Iraq's Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds - a glimmer of hope in a nation torn by sectarian violence - failed to win the crucial support of the top Shiite cleric Saturday.
Lawmakers who presented the plan to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf said they were told the unity of Shiites, who have the largest bloc in parliament, had to come first.
By shunning the coalition plan, al-Sistani sought to unite the Shiite's fractured 130-member United Iraqi Alliance. But his decision - which carries great weight with the country's Shiite majority - significantly weakens American hopes for a national unity government and strengthens the hand of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Al-Sistani's decision may not doom the proposed coalition, but it significantly reduces its chances.
``There are obstacles in the face of forming this coalition, because al-Sistani does not support it,'' said Hassan al-Suneid, a top aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
An official close to al-Sistani, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the cleric ``will not bless nor support any new bloc or front. He only supports the unity of the Shiites.''
The proposed coalition - which would not have included al-Sadr's supporters - could have isolated the militant cleric, commander of a militia army blamed for many sectarian attacks.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday in separate roadside blasts near Baghdad, the U.S. military said. One bomb exploded southeast of the capital near a patrol searching for ``suspected terrorists,'' it said. That blast also wounded four other U.S. soldiers. The other bomb exploded southwest of Baghdad, near a patrol delivering supplies to units in the area.
Police in Baghdad said they discovered 47 bodies - apparent victims of violence between Sunni and Shiites.
Meanwhile, President Bush met with his new defense secretary Robert Gates at his presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., to discuss military options for Iraq including a proposal to send thousands more troops to the 140,000 already in Iraq to try to quell escalating violence, particularly in Baghdad.
The president is expect to announce a revamped Iraq strategy in a speech to the nation between New Year's Day and Jan. 23, when he gives his State of the Union address.
In Iraq, the focus was on politics. Several weeks ago, 30 Iraqi lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers who support al-Sadr launched a boycott of the government. They were protesting a meeting between the prime minister and President Bush.
Now the 275-member Iraqi parliament is in virtual paralysis.
Sistani just chopped the legs out from SCIRI. They no longer have his support.
Hakim went to the US to beg for support, thinking Sistani would play along.
Wrong.
SCIRI can't protect their supporters, they allied themselves with the Americans, now, Sistani rejected their plan out of hand.
Think Tehran is reconsidering their support as well?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: December 25, 2006
ATLANTA (AP) -- James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured ''Godfather of Soul,'' whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a giant of R&B and an inspiration for rap, funk and disco, died early Christmas morning. He was 73.
Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music.
Copsidas said the cause of death was uncertain. ''We really don't know at this point what he died of,'' he said.
Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's ''Fame,'' Prince's ''Kiss,'' George Clinton's ''Atomic Dog'' and Sly and the Family Stone's ''Sing a Simple Song'' were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.
''He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown,'' entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Brown's, told MSNBC. ''A great treasure is gone.''
If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.
''James presented obviously the best grooves,'' rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told The Associated Press. ''To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.''
His hit singles include such classics as ''Out of Sight,'' ''(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,'' ''I Got You (I Feel Good)'' and ''Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud,'' a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An American-led initiative to sideline militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr by bolstering support for his political rivals has gained little traction here and may even have strengthened al-Sadr's hand, according to interviews Friday with several Iraqi politicians and clerics involved in the talks.
The effort to assemble a political bloc of so-called moderates to counter al-Sadr's growing influence was one of the recommendations National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley made in a secret White House memo that was leaked last month. U.S. officials hope such a coalition would ease Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's dependence on support from al-Sadr, whose followers, U.S. officials say, are responsible for much of the violence now convulsing Baghdad.
But few Iraqi politicians have been willing to go along with the plan, which was riddled with problems from the onset, Iraqi officials said. U.S. backing for a new coalition has allowed al-Sadr to portray his opponents as American lackeys, they added.
"This idea was a non-starter," said Haider Abadi, a lawmaker and senior member of al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. "The U.S. administration is under pressure. They want to win public opinion by showing some form of progress, without knowing the situation on the ground. . . . It caused more problems than it solved."
The proposal to form a moderate contingent has been under discussion for months, but took on new urgency with the release of the Hadley memo, in which he suggested that the United States help form "a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities."
Only five groups were to be included in the bloc: the Dawa Party, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the two leading Kurdish factions, and the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Iraq's largest Sunni party.
Leaders from three of the five parties - SCIRI's head, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim; al-Maliki, a member of the Dawa Party; and Tareq al-Hashemi, Iraq's vice president and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party - have met with President Bush in recent weeks.
Since those meetings, however, even politicians who initially supported the effort have distanced themselves, mindful of crossing the powerful and popular Sadr or incurring the wrath of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shiite cleric, who has withheld comment on the proposal.
Ah, yes, a plot to go after Sadr discussed in public. Bound to succeed.
What was that about sending Sadr into exile or shoving him aside?
Maybe Hakim should have stopped those Sunni death squads, instead of leaving that to the Mahdi Army
BY ETHAN ROUEN and DON SINGLETON DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The Rev. Al Sharpton blasted authorities yesterday for revealing how much alcohol was in Sean Bell's bloodstream when he was shot dead by cops on his wedding day.
"The only toxicology report that is relevant is the toxicology report of the people that were shooting on that day," Sharpton said at his weekly rally in Harlem.
Toxicology tests done during Bell's autopsy showed he was twice the legal limit when he left the Kalua Cabaret in Jamaica, Queens, early Nov. 25.
The information is being used by the cops' defenders to argue that Bell recklessly backed his car into a police vehicle before the 50-shot barrage that killed him and wounded two buddies.
"Whether or not Sean Bell and [the two others who were shot] had a drink that night is totally irrelevant - they ended up getting shot," Sharpton said.
The (Somewhat Belated) Holiday Office Party Thread
About 1/100th of what I've seen my colleagues go through this year
Jen here. I know that Gilly and I ususally do a great big, morality-taling, finger-wagging, ass-laugh-offing big ol' article on what to NOT do during your company holiday party (or if you're really (un)fortunate, holiday parties).
However, this year, circumstances have made us tardy. Gilly had a minor medical thing which messed up his arm for a bit, and until a few days ago I was laid up with either the worst head cold I've had in 5 years or a mildish case of flu--and taking care of Round 2 of Holiday Shit (Chanukkah was round 1). Now, Gilly is on the road and I am about to get on the ol' Metro North myself for too much booze and not enough sleep at Dad's. As such, I propose a novel way to handle this thread:
You have all heard Gilly and I rant on this subject for a few years now. Instead, why not share YOUR lurid tales of company holiday party excess here? If you have an especially long/lurid post, please email it to me at jenonymous@gmail.com and I'll tag them up--with names changed to protect the guilty--when I get back post-Northern European Tree Cult Festivities. Just be sure to put "Holiday Party Thread" in the subject line so that I don't think it's another Nigerian currency scam email. Otherwise have fun tagging up your do's and don'ts in the comments, and I will try to contribute more upon my return.
Happy Holidays, all, whatever you celebrate. Keep fighting the good fight, and if you're not of the Dead Evergreen Pursuasion, take the next two days as a chance just to chill, eat, sleep, and enjoy the relative quiet.
CHICAGO — Byron Hurt takes pains to say that he is a fan of hip-hop, but over time, says Mr. Hurt, a 36-year-old filmmaker, dreadlocks hanging below his shoulders, “I began to become very conflicted about the music I love.”
Byron Hurt is showing his film at high schools and colleges.
A new documentary by Mr. Hurt, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” questions the violence, degradation of women and homophobia in much of rap music.
Scheduled to go on the air in February as part of the PBS series Independent Lens, the documentary is being shown now at high schools, colleges and Boy’s Clubs, and in other forums, as part of an unusual public campaign sponsored by the Independent Television Service, which is based in San Francisco and helped finance the film.
The intended audiences include young fans, hip-hop artists and music industry executives — black and white — who profit from music and videos that glorify swagger and luxury, portray women as sex objects, and imply, critics say, that education and hard work are for suckers and sissies.
What concerns Mr. Hurt and many black scholars is the domination of the hip-hop market by more violent and sexually demeaning songs and videos — an ascendancy, the critics say, that has coincided with the growth of the white audience for rap and the growing role of large corporations in marketing the music.
Ronald F. Ferguson, a black economist and education expert at Harvard, said that the global success of hip-hop had had positive influences on the self-esteem of black youths but that children who became obsessed with it “may unconsciously adopt the themes in this music as their lens for viewing the world.”
With the commercial success of gangsta rap and music videos, which portray men as extravagant thugs and women as sex toys, debate has simmered among black parents, community leaders and scholars about the impact of rap and the surrounding hip-hop culture.
“There’s a conversation going on now; a lot more people are trying to figure out a way to intervene that’s productive,” said Tricia Rose, a professor of Africana studies at Brown University.
At one extreme are critics, both black and white, who put primary blame for the failures and isolation of urban black youth on a self-destructive subculture, exemplified by the worst of hip-hop. But many of those critics, Dr. Rose said, fail to acknowledge the deeper roots of the problems. At the other extreme are people who reflexively defend any artistic expression by young blacks, saying the focus must remain on the economic and political structures that hem in minorities.
“That’s the real catch,” Dr. Rose said. “The public conversation about hip-hop is pinned by two responses, neither of them productive.”
If you stoppedf treating Diddy and Jay-Z like heroes and demanded some accountabilty, this might not be the case.
Someone needs to tell these kids this music is a fantasy, it isn't their lives, will never be their lives.
I'm travelling and Jen is busy, so this is the post of the day
A few things:
Duke: I was astonished that the DA didn't firm up his rape case. Without ironclad proof, they should have never been charged with that. I disliked the Bill Bennett media campaign, but to find out today she was unsure? That was unfair to the defendents in a gross way. If three black athletes were facing rape charges similiar to this, first, they would be in jail, but the demand for a civil rights prosecution would explode.
Now, she was honest enough to admit she was unsure, which makes her a lot more than the scheming stripper people have embraced. But the reality was that it was going to be hard to convict. Because it is hard to get rape convictions, period. With a sex worker?
What annoyed me is the presumption that she was lying. She was intoxicated, she was among strangers of another race, she was obviously frightened. Any ID would be a guess. People who are asked to make cross-racial identifications are often wrong according to studies.
And lets not forget that there was a recent California case where a woman was drugged, raped on camera and they had to have a second trial. If the woman was out to get paid, this would have ended months ago.
Rape cases are hard to prove under most circumstances. The pernicious idea that she was lying, instead of confused and wrong, should have been disproven yesterday. When asked, she didn't confirm her ID. Why? Maybe having her life turned inside out by Bob Bennett's DC thugs, with Duke cheering them on was too much. Maybe she just wasn't sure.
Also, hiding that there was other DNA on the woman's panty's was also wrong.
The Washington City Paper Mike Lenehan, editorial director Erik Wemple, editor Jason Cherkis, reporter
These are bad, bad people.
(And if you're wondering what this is about -- in short, the Washington City Paper is running a story about how Murray Waas' battle with cancer has left him bitter and angry -- trashing him for his battle with cancer -- as part of some bizarre feud Mike Lenehan has with Waas.)
Fucking freakshow. These people are despicable. Scum is a nice work for this collection of the should have been aborted. Web loser gets ax as pol's aide
BY HELEN KENNEDY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
A man who became an Internet joke when he tried to hire computer hackers to boost his college transcript has been unmasked as a top aide to a Montana congressman.
Todd Shriber, 28, was fired as communications director to Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg after an Internet blogger revealed his identity and he confessed, the congressman's office said.
"He just wasn't exhibiting the kind of veracity that we need and demand out of our employees," said Erik Iverson, Rehberg's chief of staff.
Shriber had been held up to widespread online ridicule when the "hackers" strung him along with silly requests, including demanding photos of squirrels to "prove his identity," and posted all his dopey e-mails on the Internet.
The California native first e-mailed the operators of a computer security Web site in August, asking them to break into the database at Texas Christian University and change his GPA.
"It's for grad school admissions so I would need any modifications made to definitely become 'official' and part of any transcript the school would mail out on my behalf," he wrote. "The pay would be good."
"Let's be clear. You are soliciting me to break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a federal offense and multiple felonies," someone calling himself Jericho wrote back.
"I assure you no one will ever hear about this from me. I'll take this to my grave," Shriber wrote.
He went to hackers for this? White hats?
Two names: Kevin Mitnick and John Lee.
That is what happens when you illiegally hack systems, you get a felony conviction.
I'm sure Slashdot was rollicking with merriment over this.
BY ROBERT F. MOORE and ADAM NICHOLS DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The unarmed bridegroom killed in a 50-shot police barrage on his wedding day was driving drunk, sources said yesterday.
Sean Bell had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood when officers opened fire, killing him and wounding two of his friends after they left his bachelor party at a Queens strip club, toxicology reports show.
The alcohol level is being used to back claims Bell's vehicle lurched into an officer and rammed an unmarked police van as cops started firing.
"[This report] gives some insight into why Sean Bell acted the way he did behind the wheel," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association. "His behavior was reckless and life-threatening to the officer he hit. If the reports are true, his judgment was impaired."
It is unclear if the reports, which a source in the medical examiner's office said were turned over to prosecutors, would have any bearing in a potential criminal case against the cops.
But a lawyer for Bell's family yesterday dismissed the findings as "totally irrelevant."
"No matter what his blood-alcohol level was, he is a victim," said attorney Sanford Rubenstein.
Palladino is an idiot of tremendous proportions. The real question is how many of the cops were drunk. And that we will never know.
Of the countless New Yorkers who flooded the Macy's on Queens Blvd. in the wee hours yesterday, most took the saying "Shop till you drop" figuratively.
Then there was Angelina Cedena.
The 14-year-old was sprawled across the department store floor, her head tucked in, mounds of white plastic Macy's bags held close as though they were blankets.
"It's like a sleepover!" gushed the Middle Village teen, admitting that fatigue had gotten the best of her.
"We'll be back tomorrow night," she added. "There's less people."
Don't count on it.
The sleep-deprived shoppers easily numbered in the thousands, taking advantage of the shopping marathon that began at 7 a.m. Thursday and won't end until 6 p.m. tomorrow, Christmas Eve - 83 hours of retail madness.
"I have no time. I didn't think I was going to be able to shop at all," said Angelina's mother, April Cedena, 31, showing off four Vera Wang perfume box sets. "This is a godsend!"
Retail experts believe that the 24-hour, open-door policy - a staple of places like Wal-Mart - was a first in New York. And aside from a small glitch that briefly hampered credit card sales at about 3 a.m., everything went smoothly, as though it were a normal shopping day.
"Twenty-four hours! Isn't that something!" said Takiya Hanley, 30, an MTA station clerk from Crown Heights who was examining a pair of DKNY Jeans.
"We were at the Macy's on Flatbush. It closed at 11, so we came here. In a big city like New York, more stuff should be open 2-4/7."
When it comes to adding jobs & housing, majority rules with a winning plan
The most interesting and least-reported story behind the final state approval of the $4 billion Atlantic Yards project this week is the emergence in Brooklyn of a pro-development coalition of private-sector builders and black working-class residents who are leading a tenacious fight to bring jobs and housing to the borough.
Standing in the path of progress are middle-class civic groups whose mostly white leaders profess concern for low-income New Yorkers - and even claim to speak for them - but shed the illusion of liberal compassion the minute the poor folk get uppity and start negotiating their own deals for the future of their families and communities.
Recognizing this dynamic is the only way to understand several high-profile development battles going on in Brooklyn.
The recent opening of a Fairway supermarket in Red Hook and the scheduled opening of an Ikea superstore were both made possible because of a link between low-income public housing residents and developers.
After years of playing a relatively passive role in neighborhood affairs, public housing leaders broke with local civic groups and began negotiating directly for jobs and other benefits.
This led to friction between leaders from the Red Hook Houses, the public housing development whose residents make up about 70% of the neighborhood's population, and the Red Hook Civic Association, which fought tooth and nail against the creation of a Fairway in Red Hook and resumed the fight with a lawsuit when Ikea came knocking.
A similar dynamic is at work in the case of Atlantic Yards, which will consist of an 18,000-seat arena, retail space, a hotel and 16 glass towers with office space and 6,430 housing units. ...........................
This year, when I asked the project's sponsor, Forest City, for the names of the community groups backing the project, I was sent a list of more than 200 block associations and other organizations. These are mostly the kinds of groups that don't have the money to create fancy Web sites, daily blogs or press conferences to push their views, but their support for the project has been rock-solid.
Every reasonably objective indicator of neighborhood sentiment demonstrated local approval. Opinion polls sponsored by the New York Observer and Crain's showed local residents favoring the project, and candidates for local offices who ran on a platform of halting or slowing the project this year went down in flames at the polls.
And the race baiting in this article is fundamentally dishonest. Forest City Ratner basically told working class black people that they would get jobs and shiny new homes. Which is probably not going to happen.
Atlantic Yards is overscale, ugly and will destroy the character of the neighborhood. But more importantly, those jobs will not materialize, because they never do. Unless there are firm committments, nothing happens.
The "white" people opposing this could have been rich in supporting this plan. They could have been bought off. They own homes. Why doesn't Louis mention that Charles Barron, who is as black as you can get, opposes this plan, as does Yvette Clark.
What Ratner did was buy support. What they did not do, is project what will happen in the years ahead.
You see the scale of those red buildings? Notice everything around them. How long you think that lasts? The people who approve this project today will be driven out by rising prices and gentrification. The surrounding blocks will see their value climb, but for small business owners, the character of the neighborhood will shift. They're being told that they will benefit. Please. Compare Hoboken 1985 to 2006. If you didn't own a home, you live somewhere else. The character of the businesses will change. As will the color of the owners.
As for jobs: construction? How binding are any training and apprentice agreements? If they aren't enacted. what happens? My guess, nothing.
Lets understand something. Most of the people Ratner bougtht off want jobs and have ZERO power to enforce any deal. The people who are opposing this have a very good idea of what comes next. They aren't seeing the follow on of having those large, ungainly buildings in their midst. Which is a very different, very white neighborhood, the new Hoboken.
Why? Because prices will rise, it's close to the city, and the sea of young white professionals which changed Hoboken will fill those buildings.
Why did the locals want a Fairway and Ikea? Besides the jobs, they don't drive. They need the jobs and don't care about the traffic. The new homeowners know what a parking lot jam is like. The residents of Red Hook houses will learn the hard way.
Now, about the stadium: what an insane idea.
No one in New York cares about the Nets. Their fan base is in Jersey. Their fans will drive in. Atlantic Avenue with massive traffic jams three nights a week. Drunk Nets fans roaming the streets, filling bars. Remember, unlike Knick fans, Nets fans drive. They aren't going to stop.
A limited use building, for a team most Brooklynites will root against, filling the streets with traffic.
The Jets made the same promise, but the insanity of their plan was obvious. Here, Ratner went to people without the resources to check his promises and offered them money and support. The people who had the resources opposed the plan or it's scale.
Why do you need this monstrosity in downtown Brooklyn? Who does it serve? The five Nets fans in Brooklyn? Or rich developers, gullible "community activists" and even more gullible newspaper columnists.
BY ERNIE NASPRETTO and JOHN MARZULLI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Only in New York would a Mafia associate nicknamed The Irishman allegedly provide a bomb used to destroy a Pakistani immigrant's deli that was competing with a bagel store protected by the mob.
................
"Cowards threw a firebomb into an occupied grocery store and then ran away," said William McMahon of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Deli owner Hamim Syed was warned by an acquaintance that his plan to open a second convenience store would not sit well with "two strong Italian partners" with ties to a nearby bagel store.
In what may have been a staged extortion scheme, Syed was paid a visit by "Sonny" and "Vinny" - later identified as Luchese crime members - who warned him "things could get ugly," according to court papers.
The plot thickened when Syed sought help from a Pakistani businessman with ties to the Genovese crime family who arranged a sitdown with two other gangsters at the Hooters restaurant in Staten Island in the summer of 2001.
Syed thought the matter was resolved and went ahead with his expansion plans.
...........
Fisher, a retired city Sanitation worker known as The Irishman, was allegedly tasked to give a bomb to another Gambino associate, Salvatore Palmieri. On Dec. 22, 2001, at 4:50 a.m., truck driver Anthony Maniscalco held My Deli's door open while Palmieri tossed in a bowling bag containing the device.
The deli was destroyed, but Syed, a founding member of the borough's Pak-American Civic Association, later reopened. The bombers pleaded guilty and are serving jail sentences.
Fisher, 54, facing at least 35 years in prison, was ordered held without bail. His lawyer denied the charges.
BY CORKY SIEMASZKO and JONATHAN LEMIRE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
The head of the NYPD detectives union boldly predicted yesterday that the cops who fatally shot Sean Bell on his wedding day would not be indicted.
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, also blasted the Rev. Al Sharpton for making the shooting a "racial incident."
"When the dust settles and the smoke clears, reasonableness will prevail in that grand jury," Palladino said on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC 93.9 FM, "and we'll be able to articulate that the shooting, although tragic, was not criminal and was justified."
Palladino praised the investigation led by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown into the Nov. 25 event, when officers unleashed 50 shots on Bell and his friends outside a Queens strip club.
Palladino's prediction angered Sharpton, who called it evidence of a too-cozy
................
Palladino and Sharpton - who verbally sparred after last week's protest march down Fifth Ave. - traded barbs again yesterday, as the union chief accused the civil rights activist of trying to tamper with the potential pool of grand jurors by making the shooting about race.
"Race has nothing to do with it," Palladino said. "In fact, three of the five people who discharged their weapons are people of color ... [but] now if you're a cop, you're a racist."
Sharpton shook off the accusation and claimed that "if all of those officers were black, I'd still be there demanding justice."
"It doesn't matter about the race here," he said. "It matters about the deed.
If they don't indict the cops, don't expect to go anywhere in New York City in January. This isn't 1999. People will not just turn their back and let this happen. You cannot shoot at three men 50 times and walk away. Giuliani is no longer mayor. Bloomberg was elected with black votes, twice.
This city will turn into strike-bound Paris if those cops, who have not testified to anyone, are not charged with murder in the second degree. Nothing less is going to fly. People believe Sean Bell was murdered by the NYPD. Saying it's an accident will not fly without a ton of evidence. And even then, the demand for a Special Prosecutor and FBI probe will bring city politics to a halt.
Palladino is a fucking idiot. He dragged Steven Pagones down here, a man who many people think was paid for raping Tawana Brawley. And now he complains about race? But the unions think it's about Sharpton. It isn't. The family wants a special prosecutor, and if Brown doesn't indict, Spitzer is going to HAVE to appoint one, leaving a large turd on Bloomberg and Kelly's desk.
The media said a few hundred people protested on Wall Street. It's the Thursday before Christmas.
You want a repeat in January, with no indictment, it won't be 300 people.
What Palladino misses is people see it as racial because the victim was black. It doesn't matter what the cops were.
But what he doesn't get is that is way past Sharpton. Bill Thompson, likely to be the next mayor of New York, the heads of the major unions, all marched Saturday. While they're letting the radicals do their daily protests, make no mistake, Sharpton is only one player here. I would look closely at Roger Toussaint and Calvin Butts. They are recently energized from various issues, and bring a great deal of weight to any protests. The UFT and SEIU are also major players here.
Attacking Sharpton is a mistake. He's not leading the band here. Because he doesn't have to.
Sean Bell was a middle class black New Yorker. He had a family, a job and one hell of a fiance. He is what people want their kids to be. If there were bumps, he was moving towards a responsible life. Not that they proved any. His parents don't speak with accents, there is no exile community politics, and black and Latino New York is united behind them like nothing I've ever seen. There is a depth of resolve which simply didn't exist under Giuliani, partly because there were too few people willing to stand up to him and the media was on his side.
The Transit strike changed that. The Daily News realized that their readers were, uh, minorities and their coverage changed the day after they saw polling backing the workers. The White ethnic rule of New York was over.
Now, make no mistake, no indictment, a wave of protests we have not seen in years. Not riots, but well planned, well orgainzed, city grinding protests, which will force Ray Kelly from his job as the first step.
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN Published: December 22, 2006
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein yesterday appointed the former president of Edison Schools Inc., the world’s largest for-profit operator of public schools, as a deputy chancellor, perhaps the boldest move yet in the Bloomberg administration’s effort to increase the role of the private sector in managing city public schools.
The former Edison president, Chris Cerf, is a longtime friend of Mr. Klein and has been a consultant to the city’s Education Department since early this year, paid with private donations. He is part of a team that has been re-evaluating virtually every aspect of the overhaul of the school system in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s first term.
The consulting deal ends Dec. 31, after which Mr. Cerf will be deputy chancellor for operational strategy, human capital and external affairs — a $196,571-a-year post that will formalize his role in Mr. Klein’s inner circle and make him the system’s top official for labor relations and negotiations, principal and teacher recruitment and training, media relations and political affairs.
The chancellor, who is 60, and his new deputy, who is 52, have much in common. Both clerked at the United States Supreme Court — Mr. Cerf for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — and both worked as lawyers in the Clinton White House. Both spent time in private law practice in Washington. They even share the astrological sign Scorpio.
But it is their shared view that the private sector should play a major role in public education that may be most significant to their work in the nation’s largest school system. Mr. Cerf has been deeply involved in the “empowerment initiative,” the recent effort to free principals from the oversight of superintendents provided that they sign an agreement to meet performance targets.
Some officials believe the logical next step in that process would be to hire private groups to manage networks of schools run by such principals. The private groups, which officials said might be nonprofit groups or for-profit companies like Edison, would oversee schools, would be responsible for results and could be fired if test scores lagged.
Shouldn't there be SOME public input into this plan. Edison was rejected once already.
Robin Hayes has the solution to the Iraq war: have our soldiers convert all Muslims to Christianity.
Having won the election by only a hair’s width and almost getting himself kicked out of Congress seems to have had some profound psychological effects on poor Mr. Hayes. A speech that flip-floppin’ Robin gave last week at the Concord Rotary Club seems to prove he has finally gone off the deep end.
Our local weekly newspaper the “Concord Standard and Mount Pleasant Times” reported on Mr. Hayes speech in his hometown:
First there’s the usual talk of how we’re “winning” over there: “The war in Iraq has got to be won; it’s being won” (A couple of months ago Hayes said that the rise in violence in Iraq was an indication that we’re winning.)
Then comes the real kicker: “Stability in Iraq ultimately depends on spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior.
Stars and Stripes | Jeff Schogol | December 20, 2006
ARLINGTON, Va. — Army suicide rates in Iraq and Kuwait doubled between 2004 and 2005 but were still below the 2003 rate, officials said Tuesday.
But Armywide, the 2005 saw the highest rate of soldiers taking their own lives since the beginning of the Iraq war, officials said.
Officials spoke about the suicides Tuesday as the Army released a report on the third Mental Health Advisory Team Survey of troops in Iraq. Data for 2006 is not yet available.
In 2005, the number of soldiers in the Iraq theater who killed themselves was 22, double the 2004 figure of 11, but below the 2003 figure of 25, Morales said.
Armywide, the number of reported suicides was 88 in 2005, up from 67 in 2004 and 78 in 2003, said Walter E. Morales, Army suicide prevention manager.
Of the 2005 downrange suicides, five had been deployed more than once, said Dr. (Col.) Edward Crandell, who was in charge of the survey team to Iraq.
Crandell said suicide rates can vary up to 40 percent in a given year.
Asked about the increase in suicides in Iraq and Kuwait between 2004 and 2005, Crandell replied, “There’s no way to predict suicides.”
The Army’s Surgeon General, Dr. (Lt. Gen.) Kevin Kiley, said he does not see a trend in the suicide rates.
“It only takes a few to shift the numbers,” Kiley said.
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER and CAROLYN MARSHALL Published: December 22, 2006
Four marines were charged yesterday with murder in the killings of two dozen Iraqi civilians, including at least 10 women and children, in the village of Haditha last year, military officials said at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Military prosecutors also charged four officers, including a lieutenant colonel in charge of the First Marine Regiment’s Third Battalion, with dereliction of duty and failure to ensure that accurate information about the killings was delivered up the Marine Corps’ chain of command. A military investigation has found evidence that Marine officers may have obscured certain facts in the case.
The Marines could punish other ranking officers administratively in weeks to come. But the criminal charges filed yesterday against Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, 42, and three other officers reflect an unusually aggressive judicial reaction by military prosecutors to a massacre that has damaged the military’s credibility with Iraqi officials and civilians, military justice experts said.
“This is very aggressive charging — wow,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University Law Center and at West Point. “I think this illustrates the deep seriousness the Marine Corps takes with these events.”
He added, “I definitely think the Marine Corps is sending a message to commanders, to those in authority of combat troops, that they better pay close attention to the activities of their subordinates to ensure that there was no wrongdoing.”
Though this was not the first instance of American forces being charged with killing Iraqi civilians, the charges announced yesterday, including 13 counts of murder against one sergeant alone, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 26, suggest that military prosecutors view the Haditha killings as being among the most serious breaches of military rules in the nearly four-year war. The charges are a result of two military investigations into the actions of members of Company K, Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment after a roadside bomb killed one of their comrades shortly after 7 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha, a village in a region northwest of Baghdad that is rife with Sunni Arab insurgents.
A total of 24 Iraqis, nearly all of them unarmed, were killed by several marines in a series of attacks on a car and three nearby homes over the next several hours, military officials said.
The four enlisted men charged with unpremeditated murder, all members of a squad of Company K, Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment, are: Sergeant Wuterich of Meriden, Conn.; Sgt. Sanick De La Cruz, 24, of Chicago; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, 22, of Carbondale, Pa.; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, of Edmund, Okla.
This is the Iraq War Slovik case. They have six murder trials for soldiers serving in Iraq. The government is going to try and kill all of the defendents charged with murder.
Why?
In January, 1945, Private Eddie Slovik was executed for desertion under fire. There had been 10000 cases, but they had to do something, and Slovak was that something.
JONAH GOLDBERG Giuliani: the man to defend American culture To win the GOP nomination, socially liberal Giuliani must burnish to conservatives the tough-guy credentials he earned as New York mayor. Jonah Goldberg
December 21, 2006
AMERICA NEEDS a Pym Fortuyn, and Rudolph Giuliani may be the man for the job.
Pim Fortuyn, you may recall, was the gay, flamboyant sociology professor turned "right-wing" Dutch politician who took a hard-line position against immigration and Islamic extremism — two issues inextricably linked in a country where whole communities have become enclaves of Sharia law. Fortuyn was labeled as right wing by identity-politics leftists for his unapologetic view that the Netherlands should stay both liberal and libertine.
His basic view was that the Netherlands has a culture too, and there's no shame in defending civil liberties, free expression and tolerance against their opponents, even if those opponents exploit liberal guilt by casting themselves as victims. In other words, Fortuyn wanted to keep the party going, and that meant taking a strong line against the killjoys. That Fortuyn could be both libertarian and tough-minded caused great cognitive dissonance in the media and on the left — there and here. He was assassinated by a left-wing extremist.
..................
Giuliani needs to tell a story of how he beat Al Sharpton at every turn. Giuliani's cheery immigrant story and his personal liberalism make him a particularly formidable spokesman for such a vision. Yes, taken piecemeal, his views on social issues could be a real albatross in GOP primaries (though it's worth noting that Giuliani, while personally pro-choice, signals that he would appoint judges in the mold of Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas). But if Giuliani can make those sorts of issues seem secondary to a broader defense of American civilization, he's got a chance to go all the way.
If America needs a vile, divisive bigot, Giuliani is your man.
But Goldberg is on crack if he thinks Sharpton lost ground to Giuliani. In 1993, Sharpton was known, but he certainly couldn't command the power of the city's black politicians.
By 1999, he was the most powerful black politican in New York. You simply could not mobilize people without his support. But once you did, you could shut the city down. It was Sharpton's direct action which forced Giuliani to meet with black politicians.
Sharpton played Giuliani and forced his hand more than once. He never called him a racist, and made sure to be around who ever challenged him, from cab drivers to gays. Goldberg lives in DC, right? Because if he said that to Mike Bloomberg, he would laugh in his face. Giuliani made Sharpton a national figure.
Article Tools Sponsored By By SHARON WAXMAN and JULIE BOSMAN Published: December 21, 2006
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 20 — Judith Regan, the publisher who was fired last week by HarperCollins in the wake of what executives called anti-Semitic remarks, was investigated and reprimanded three years ago for making an anti-Semitic remark at work, two top executives at HarperCollins have said.
According to the executives and another person involved in the incident, Ms. Regan was investigated in the spring of 2003 after an editor complained that she had boasted of removing the scrolls from her neighbors’ mezuzas and replacing them with torn pieces from dollar bills.
A mezuza is a small slender case containing a scroll inscribed with a prayer that many Jewish families place beside their front doors.
The two executives said the company’s investigation had corroborated the employee’s account and Ms. Regan was reprimanded at the time.
A spokeswoman for HarperCollins, Erin Crum, declined to confirm the account. “We do not comment on personnel issues,” she said.
A lawyer for Ms. Regan, Bert Fields, denied that she had made the remark. The story, he said, stemmed from testimony given by a witness during Ms. Regan’s divorce from Robert Kleinschmidt but she had had nothing to do with the incident.
Mr. Fields said Ms. Regan had not been investigated or reprimanded over an anti-Semitic remark at work.
The furor over Ms. Regan began last month after the News Corporation, the parent company of HarperCollins Publishers, canceled a planned book and television special featuring O. J. Simpson discussing how he hypothetically might have killed his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman.
Last week, Ms. Regan was abruptly fired after a heated telephone conversation with Mark Jackson, a lawyer for HarperCollins, in which she reportedly made anti-Semitic remarks.
On Monday, Mr. Fields promised to sue HarperCollins for breach of contract. “She would never issue any anti-Semitic remark, and she didn’t,” Mr. Fields said at the time. “It’s an outrageous lie to cover the fact that they have no possible basis for terminating Judith.
One of IAVA's most thoughtful members is Ray Kimball, who served in Iraq as an aviation officer for the Army. I offer to you a fantastic piece by Ray discussing all the recent hollow talk of troop numbers and increasing the size of the military. I am sure you find it interesting.
Now that the President has officially gotten behind the idea that we need a larger Army and Marine Corps (and better late than never, I say), it's worth casting some thought to just who and what those extra warm bodies should be.
Nothing sets my teeth on edge more than reading some egghead's report calling for some half-assed troop increase with a nice, round number, and no further detail on exactly what that increase should look like. This only confirms one of Rumsfeld's worst bon mots, "people are fungible." And please don't give me the old chestnut of "we'll let our generals figure out when and where they need the troops" - that's not the way our system works, and hasn't for a long time. The last military officer who had that much autonomy in translating raw numbers into force capabilities was George Marshall, whose like is nowhere to be found today. Any troop increase authorized by Congress is going to have to be specific and detailed - below is my shot at it.
I'll put a warning up front - anyone looking for a huge increase in combat arms capability (infantry, armor, artillery) is going to be sorely disappointed. The fact of the matter is, our current capability in warfighting overmatches anyone else on the planet by a significant margin, and is likely to stay that way. It's not the strain of war that is breaking our military - it's the strain of winning the peace, and while our square peg combat arms can be forced into that round hole, the forces below are far better equipped for it.
My Troop Wish List:
1. An Africa Command (AFRICOM) We have Unified Commands all over the world, who are responsible for the employment and operations of US forces in that part of the globe. These commands are uniquely tailored to the specific demands of their part of the world - except for Africa, which is currently an added responsibility to the European Command. This makes about as much sense as having the elected US Representatives from Massachusetts pull double duty as voting for the residents of Texas. The staffing should be comparable to PACOM's current setup, with a single staff supplemented by additional support elements. Troops required: 2100.
2. MP Brigades Every overseas Unified Command (including the Africa Command, above) needs an Military Police (MP) brigade over and above what they've got right now. In our current structure, these are the units best suited for the three-block war currently underway in so many parts of the world. Once of many advantages of this unit is that it's designed with decentralized operations in mind, a must for future ops. Yes, I'd love to design the perfect unit, with just the right mix of linguists, vehicles, etc., but the current requirements for building a TO&E are so cumbersome that you'd finally get your units in, oh say, 2030. Exact numbers for this type of unit are not readily available on public domain websites, but 5500 troops seems to be a common estimate. Four of these brigades (one each for PACOM, SOUTHCOM, AFRICOM, and CENTCOM) would therefore need a total of 22,000 soldiers. Yes, I left out EUCOM, largely because any surge of forces needed for that part of the world should come largely from our brethren in NATO, seeing as how it's their backyard.
3. Engineer Brigades Our current rhetoric talks a lot about "clear, hold and build" - the problem is that, while our trigger-pullers are exceptional at clearing, holding and building are two other things entirely. The MP brigades, above, are intended to be the holders - the engineer brigades are the builders. Or, more specifically, the folks who can partner with host nation capabilities to help them build the infrastructure and capabilities they need for representative institutions to flourish and take root. Again, the strength of this organization is its capability for decentralized operations. Public numbers seem to be somewhere in the vicinity of 9500 soldiers. Again, four brigades translates into a total of 38,000 soldiers.
4. Support Elements None of the above are self-sustaining or a unit unto their own. Each has specialized equipment and vehicles with unique support and maintenance requirements. Pinning down the exact numbers is problematic - as a rough thumbnail, I'd call it 12,000 soldiers, or roughly 20% above the manning of the units above. These would not be new units, but additions or supplements to units already in place to support those Unified Commands. 5. Permanent MiTT Teams Finally, I'd give every Unified Command a permanent MiTT structure, similar to what's operating in Iraq now. Think of this as preventive medicine - these folks could be crucial in training local militaries and police, and helping to prevent problems before they start. Each structure has about 4200 soldiers, so this translates into 16,800 troops.
So, the grand total is 90,900 additional troops---if we're really serious about this Long War. At current costs for salary and benefits, that translates to an additional $9 Billion per year in personnel costs, to say nothing of the costs of purchasing and maintaining their equipment.
If you disagree with the numbers or the picked units, well, that's to be expected. My larger point is this - anyone (and that includes the President, Senators, Representatives, DoD types and folks in uniform) who just sling around numbers with no thought as to what they represent or how they're going to implemented should be treated like the mindless dilettantes they are. When talking about troops, numbers just aren't enough.
I would argue that the Army needs to decide who they train for jobs long before they do anything else. It has long been an advantage to promote supply service jobs to gain enlistees, when most of these troops are virtually combat ineffective.
We need less artillery and air defense, more infantry and civil affairs.
What we also need are more rapid reaction units. Maybe adding on another airborne Brigade to the four we have now, units based on the French 6th light division, able to move with armored cars quickly. Iraq is the anomoly to our future wars. We will face more civil disorder than anything else.
We also need to look hard at the Marines as well. They have a completely different tactical philosophy and are restrained by naval requirements. What are their roles? What do they do? It isn't just adding more bodies, it's using them effectively
As far as the expansion of specials forces, we need to decide what they're going to do as well. Is it direct action, or reconnaisance, or counter-terrorism. One of the things the Army should consider is reestablishing long range reconnaissance as a special operation force and not splitting the job between the Rangers and Special Forces.
We need to think about a real 21st military, not just patching together the one we have
Christian leaders seek to help pastors battle desires Gay-sex controversies have led not to new theology but to a call for the church to help pastors fight their urges. By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer December 21, 2006
DENVER — Recent gay-sex scandals involving evangelical pastors have prompted much soul-searching among conservative Christian leaders.
No one has proposed rethinking the theology that homosexuality is a sin. Instead, there's a growing consensus that the church must do a better job of helping pastors resist all immoral desires, such as a lust for pornography, an addiction to drugs or a lifelong same-sex attraction.
Seminary professors, Christian counselors and veteran clergy say the best way to help pastors fight temptation is to get them talking — even about their most shameful secrets. They don't want a sordid tell-all from the pulpit each Sunday. But they would like pastors to bare their weaknesses and admit their lapses before a small group of "accountability partners" — friends committed to listen with empathy, then rebuke or advise as needed.
"Our current environment demands perfection of pastors," said Craig Williford, president of the Denver Seminary. "It doesn't allow leaders to struggle, to be human, to deal with their issues without fear of losing their ministry. We need to help them find safe harbors."
Williford recently attended a conference with 50 seminary presidents; most, he said, had pushed this issue to the top of their agenda after the scandals.
The most recent involved the Rev. Paul Barnes, 54, who resigned Dec. 10 as pastor of a large church in suburban Denver after confessing to repeated trysts with men. In a tearful goodbye video, Barnes told his congregation he had struggled with homosexuality since he was a boy. "I can't tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away," Barnes said, according to the Denver Post. One of its reporters viewed the video before the church sealed it last week.
The confession in many ways echoed a farewell letter the Rev. Ted Haggard, 50, wrote his Colorado Springs mega-church last month after admitting to contact with a male prostitute.
Both men described their lives as a decades-long battle against their desires. They said they had tried numerous strategies to overcome their feelings but did not succeed.
Some gay-rights activists had hoped these accounts would prompt a reevaluation of the widespread view among evangelicals that homosexuality is a choice — and that it can be overcome with prayer and discipline. "If one of these guys in power would say 'I've been wrong,' that would change the world," said the Rev. Mel White, who runs a faith-based gay-rights group called Soulforce.
But many evangelicals have drawn a very different lesson from the scandals.
They note that Barnes and Haggard said they felt alone in their struggles, unable to confide in anyone. And they blame that isolation — at least in part — for the pastors' falls.
"We don't know how to deal with what's going on inside us, so we stuff it, or deny it, or adamantly preach against it," said the Rev. Kurt Fredrickson, who directs the doctorate program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.
The Rev. H.B. London, who runs a clergy counseling program for the Focus on the Family ministry in Colorado Springs, said: "There's a loneliness, even though you're surrounded by lots of people, and that often drives you to try to fill your life in another way."
"Oh, faith partner, is it wrong to imagine Heath Ledger pounding my ass in a tent?"
"Why yes it is, just as it is wrong to imagine blowing Lance Bass backstage"
By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 21, 2006; A01 ....................................
They question whether Hakim can counter Sadr's growing street power without worsening the chaos. As President Bush ponders limited alternatives in forging a new approach in Iraq, some wonder whether the United States is overestimating Hakim's ability.
The U.S. embrace of Hakim "will deepen their rivalry," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish legislator. "And it will deepen the rifts between the United States and the Sadrists."
....................................... 'Pouring Their Poison In'
Inside the Sayyed Idris mosque, a large shrine in Karrada with an ornate blue-and-yellow tiled minaret, Haji Abbas al-Zubaidi is a witness to this changing world.
For years, the picture of Hakim's white-bearded brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was killed by a car bomb in 2003, hung in the mosque's library along with images of Sistani and a collection of revered Shiite saints. Now, pictures of Sadr and his father hang along with them.
Baghdad's sectarian strife now rules Zubaidi's life. In recent weeks, car bombs and mass kidnappings have rocked his neighborhood. Zubaidi, who has lived in Karrada for 35 years, sees the Mahdi Army, not the Badr Organization, as his main source of protection. It has created "popular protection committees" that watch over blocks, as they do in the Mahdi Army's stronghold of Sadr City.
"The terrorists are pouring their poison into our neighborhood," said Zubaidi, slim with long, slender fingers and a narrow face, as he sat on a large red carpet inside the mosque. "The sons of Karrada who have joined the popular committees and the Mahdi Army are now 98 percent in control. We have noticed that many of the attempts have been foiled."
Zubaidi and other educated Karrada residents continue to obey Sistani's pacifist vision and view him as their preeminent leader. But younger Shiites, while still revering Sistani, have switched their allegiances.
"We imitate and follow Sayyed Sistani," said Zubaidi, using an honorific for Sistani. "As for the field commanders and the young men, they are followers of Moqtada Sadr."
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In many circles, Iraqis question whether Hakim and other so-called moderates can curb the growing power of Sadr.
"I have serious doubts about Mr. Hakim's influence among the Shiites, and I have serious doubts of Hashemi becoming the leader of Sunnis," Nadhmi said.
It's a sentiment shared in Karrada. "Al-Hakim is not loved by the people," said Abdul Amir Ali, a burly Shiite shopkeeper. "People love the Islamic Dawa Party and Maliki because they don't have militias."
In the sidewalk restaurant where Sadr's poster hangs, its owner, Ali Hussein, points at clusters of young men nearby. They are all Mahdi Army, he said. And so is he.
Hakim, he said, made a fatal mistake by meeting Bush. In today's Iraq, credibility and power are measured by opposition to the United States.
"At this time, whoever has his hands with the Americans or Jews is not an Iraqi," said Hussein, as he chopped up cubes of lamb. "So how could Hakim put his hands with the Americans? There will be tensions because Sayyed Moqtada Sadr is a revolutionary man, like his father. Even if Hakim tries to come back to Sadr, Sadr will never receive his hand."
If the rift between Hakim and Sadr deepens, moderate Shiites fear, all Iraqis may suffer. "It should not leave any shadow on a fragile situation on Iraq," said Dabbagh, the government spokesman. "Iraq cannot absorb such a shock."
A street gang member who boasted of bloodshed and invincibility in his amateur rap lyrics was found guilty yesterday of capital murder for shooting two undercover detectives in the back of the head during a weapons sting on Staten Island.
The convicted man, Ronell Wilson, 24, known by the street name Rated R, cocked his head to watch sidelong and deadpan as the jury foreman announced the verdict, which could lead to his death by lethal injection. The same anonymous panel will reconvene next month in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to decide whether to impose a death sentence.
The verdict, after three and a half years of legal machinations, concluded an agonizing chapter for the Police Department. The two detectives, James V. Nemorin and Rodney J. Andrews, were killed on March 10, 2003, the first two officers killed by gunfire in a single day since 1988.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly called the decision a victory for police officers and for the people of New York. “They need to know that cop killers will be brought to justice,” he said in a written statement, adding that he hoped the verdict would provide a measure of comfort to the detectives’ families. “We will never forget them or their sacrifice.”
Why didn't people march about this? Because we all knew he would go to jail. Where he belongs.
Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., left, said Keith Ellison’s decision to use a Koran in a private swearing in for the House of Representatives was a mistake
ASHINGTON, Dec. 20 — In a letter sent to hundreds of voters this month, Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, warned that the recent election of the first Muslim to Congress posed a serious threat to the nation’s traditional values.
Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., left, said Keith Ellison’s decision to use a Koran in a private swearing in for the House of Representatives was a mistake.
Mr. Goode was referring to Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and criminal defense lawyer who converted to Islam as a college student and was elected to the House in November. Mr. Ellison’s plan to use the Koran during his private swearing-in ceremony in January had outraged some Virginia voters, prompting Mr. Goode to issue a written response to them, a spokesman for Mr. Goode said.
In his letter, which was dated Dec. 5, Mr. Goode said that Americans needed to “wake up” or else there would “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”
“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” said Mr. Goode, who vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office.
Mr. Goode declined Wednesday to comment on his letter, which quickly stirred a furor among some Congressional Democrats and Muslim Americans, who accused him of bigotry and intolerance.
Why don't you tell the men and women on Ward 57 and the parents of the dead how unpatriotic Muslims serving in the US Army have been.
You know, it's kind of amusing to listen to people like Max Boot and Michelle Malkin babble about shit they do not understand.
But I have fucking had it.
When people use the comparisons to Vietnam, they miss one central point. The US ALWAYS had enough combat power to save their asses in a jam. John Paul Vann made a NVA battalion disappear under a sea of Arc Light strikes outside Pleiku in 1972.
Twisted motherfucker that he was, he had the power of the US behind him.
Look at the ridiculous fucking debate we're having: whether to attack Sadr or not. Uh, why are we telling him this? Because no one around speaks English? What if the Sunni and the Sadrists say "fuck Bush, let's attack first"
We're telling him we're coming for him. Why wouldn't he strike first?
We do not have the practical power to make JAM disappear. If they come hard, we could be fucked. Just by attacking the roads north of Basra could turn this into a fiasco. One unit defection would cripple this entire plan.
Imagine the impact of an Iraqi unit walking away from their US trainers and declairing their loyalty to the Sadrist movement.
We are talking brigades when we need to discuss divisions which we don't have.
What if Sadr just kills his rivals before Bush's incompetent plotting takes effect. What happens then?
Kagan, Kristol, all these assclowns who precidict easy victory, even now, don't get that the US could leave Iraq with thousands more dead and Sadr in charge.
This is the worst option, the worst plan, and the media reports it as if it isn't insane. Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck is wrong with these people. Bush was clearly being led to leave Iraq, he now has given the entire country a massive fuck you.
Sistani, timid until the end, stupidly draws a line against Sadr as if he's a neer do well. He is anything but.
Failure. Do these people think of how to plan for failure? No, they fail and ignore it.
Bush cannot survive this. He will not see 2008 as president. He will be forced from office in disgrace. He has created a confrontation, and this Congress will have to meet it or hand him a crown and walk away.
Digby is having a fundraiser over at Hullaballu. Do yourself and the world a favor by keeping the doors open over there and contribute to the support of one of the finest voices in the blogosphere.
Carry on.
One of the best blogs in the blogosphere. If she needs help, giver her some help. It's holiday time and you just can't steal Santas and stab Frosty the Snowmen because they annoy you. It's time to give back
Jen and I haven't written much lately becase we've been sick, in my case, my left shoulder was so sore I could barely sleep, forget write. But we keep chugging along.
We are in a very dangerous time.
This surge bullshit, it's neither a surge or escalation, but reenforcing current units, is all about going after Sadr. Which will fail. Like trying to smash jello with a mallet. They are going to try and attack Sadr, who is a fucking folk hero to most Iraqis, who are Shia, while the Sunni insurgents are free to roam about the country.
Jean Larteguy described the kind of officer Bush is relying upon, the kind who would rather be in camoflauge in the jungle with his men, than shining his general's turds.
Now, it may be seductive to listen to Dave Petreus, Pete Chiarelli and Harry McMasters. They are fine men and fine leaders. But they have failed and do not see their own failures. They think they can refight the war as if Sadr and his team, and the Sunnis are little more than monkeys. They're media savvy, well trained and lavishly armed.
They are problem solvers. But this is not a problem to be solved.
There is no one more push, no one more effort to get Iraqis on our side. Sadr, for good or ill, despite fumbling on camera, represents a dedicated movement of millions of people who will die to protect their faith.
What few troops which actually hit the battlefield will quickly be swallowed up. Bush ignored the ISG report, even the most conservative DOD reports to embrace the most reckless plan possible.
He needs more troops? Look for some kind of draft to hit Congress next year. Not Charlie Rangel's spite draft, but releasing ROTC to the Army or federalizing the reserves. If Bush can still go after Social Security after the defeat of the GOP, he can do anything.
Because Bush, like a degenerate gambler, cannot resist betting higher and losing more.
Congress, from day one, has got to demand answers about these plans.
What happens when units start refusing assignments? Like in Vietnam, or become combat ineffective after 4 tours. What does the boy genius do then?
Top general in Mideast to retire Abizaid opposed calls for more troops in Iraq. His departure could clear way for a more aggressive strategy. By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer December 20, 2006
WASHINGTON — Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, has submitted plans to retire and will leave his post in March, a step likely to make way for a change in military strategy at a time the Bush administration is seeking a new plan for Iraq.
Abizaid has been the primary architect of U.S. military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since becoming head of the U.S. Central Command more than three years ago. He has strenuously resisted calls to increase troop levels to quell rising violence in Baghdad, arguing it would increase Iraqi dependence on Americans.
But a growing number of current and former officers have embraced the idea, some of whom have briefed President Bush as part of his monthlong review of Iraq policy, and the White House is believed to be considering the move.
"If you're going to change the strategy, in fairness to [Abizaid], let him go," said a former senior Pentagon official who has worked closely with the general. "He's given it all he's got, in terms of personal sacrifice."
Abizaid's planned departure clears the way for new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to recommend his own commander, a decision current and former Defense officials say is nearly as important as the new administration strategy expected to be unveiled by Bush in January.
These officials said Gates faces a clear choice between generals who have agreed with Abizaid's push to quickly hand over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces and a small but increasingly influential coterie of officers backing a more aggressive U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign.
According to Defense officials, Abizaid submitted his retirement documents just over a month ago, shortly before Donald H. Rumsfeld was pushed out as Defense secretary. One recently retired Army general said Abizaid had wanted to retire earlier but that Rumsfeld blocked the move, insisting his war commanders stay in place.
"Going to war isn't like having a regular job," said the retired general, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity because Abizaid's plans had not been made public. "It's extremely stressful, it's heavily responsible. I can understand why he'd want to retire."
Abizaid's four-year term as chief of the Central Command, or Centcom, was to end in July. But some close to the Army have speculated in recent weeks that his term might be extended to see through implementation of the administration's new Iraq strategy. However, a Centcom spokesman said that earlier this year, Rumsfeld asked Abizaid to stay only until "early 2007."
"He does not intend to extend beyond that period," the spokesman said. "Gen. Abizaid became commander in July 2003 and has served longer in this position than any previous commander."
In Gates' search for a successor, the candidate most closely associated with Abizaid's strategy is Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who is also expected to leave his current assignment early next year. Although Casey was considered the favorite to become the next Army chief of staff under Rumsfeld, Gates could decide to move him to the Central Command for continuity, officials said.
Critics of the current war effort say making Casey either chief of staff or Centcom commander would send the wrong signal — essentially endorsing a strategy that the president acknowledges has failed.
"It would be a terrible thing," said one military analyst with close ties to the Pentagon. "He's the guy who's losing the war."
The leading candidate from the counterinsurgency advocates is Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, a highly respected military thinker who led the 101st Airborne Division during the Iraq invasion in March 2003.
In his current job as head of the Army's leading military schools, Petraeus oversaw the rewriting of the Army and Marine counterinsurgency field manual, which was issued last week and argues that while killing insurgents is often important, the most vital task in a counterinsurgency is winning the support of the population.
The manual also argues for moving soldiers out of large bases into smaller outposts among the local population. Such manpower-intensive tactics run counter to those now used by Abizaid and Casey. Currently, troops clear dangerous Baghdad neighborhoods with regularity but, because of their limited numbers, must quickly turn over long-term security responsibilities to unprepared Iraqi units, which frequently results in backsliding.
Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who last week left Iraq as the head of day-to-day military operations, is also closely associated with such tactics, having implemented them when he was commander of the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad's Shiite slums. He is also seen as a top counterinsurgency candidate if Petraeus is chosen for another job in Iraq, such as replacing Casey.
God, these guys, McMaster, Chiarelli, Petreus, remind me of the French Para generals in Algeria. They don't get that no matter what tricks you come up with, you cannot win. Smaller bases? Please
Tal Afar was an illusion. Half the time McMaster had to keep the Sunnis and Shia from each other's throats.
Maha Adel Mehdi, 32, is an Iraqi legislator representing Shiite cleric and militia commander Muqtada al Sadr. Mehdi was a Sunni who converted to Shiite after becoming a devotee of Sadr's father, a revered ayatollah who was killed in 1999.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Maha Adel Mehdi's awakening came during her college years. She'd ached to hear a voice - just one - that dared to criticize the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the policies that stifled the dreams of her generation.
Mehdi found her "light of righteousness" in Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, a Shiite Muslim cleric who openly called for political reform and religious freedom until he was killed in a hail of gunfire, along with two of his sons, in 1999.
"There was something in his voice I couldn't resist. I found myself listening until the very end. His speeches were something different," Mehdi recalled. "At the time, I needed someone to set me on the right path. Sadr did that."
Millions of Shiites sought solace in Sadr's words, but Mehdi's story was different: She was a Sunni Muslim when she first heard Sadr's call. Now a 32-year-old mother of two, Mehdi is still serving Sadr, as one of the 11 female legislators loyal to his son, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is at the forefront of Iraq's violence.
Mehdi prides herself on the rebellious streak that compelled her to give up her family, her sect and her safety to begin a new life. Her journey helps explain the broad appeal of a militant movement that's able to turn even the unlikeliest of supporters into devotees prepared to face death.
"I read many books until I reached a very clear point that the Shiite way is my way," Mehdi said. "I am ready to sacrifice my life for this path."
Critics accuse the younger Sadr of sullying his father's reputation by sending adolescents to their deaths in two bloody uprisings against U.S. forces, fielding death squads to carry out revenge attacks on Sunnis and turning the family's venerated name into a synonym for thuggery.
Diehard followers such as Mehdi, however, view the younger Sadr's brand of resistance as a natural words-to-deeds progression of his father's defiance. Now, however, the cause isn't toppling a dictator but driving out the American troops who once were hailed as liberators.
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 20, 2006; Page A19
U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.
More than 650,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 -- including more than 170,000 now in the Army who have served multiple tours -- so the survey's finding of increased risk from repeated exposure to combat has potentially widespread implications for the all-volunteer force. Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent.
The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.
"When we look at combat, we look at some very horrific events," said Col. Ed Crandell, head of the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, which polled 1,461 soldiers in Iraq in late 2005. "They come back, they know they're going to deploy again," and as a result they don't ever return to normal levels of stress, Crandell said.
Overall, soldiers in Iraq are facing a greater exposure to some key traumatic events than in the past, according to the report, the Army's third mental health survey conducted in Iraq since 2003. Seventy-six percent of soldiers surveyed, for example, said they knew someone who had been seriously injured or killed, and 55 percent experienced the explosion of a roadside bomb or booby trap nearby.
The proportion of soldiers who reported that they suffered a combination of anxiety, depression and acute stress rose to 17 percent, compared with 13 percent in the last survey in 2004.
Fourteen percent of soldiers surveyed said they have taken medications, such as antidepressants, for mental health problems.
Combat stress is significantly higher among soldiers with at least one previous tour -- 18.4 percent, compared with 12.5 percent of those on their first deployment, the survey found.
By MATT LEE and TED LEE Published: December 20, 2006
TO Southerners like us, the apotheosis of pork is country ham — the hind leg of a pig that has been immersed in rock salt, hung in a smokehouse, then aged for many months to prosciutto-like firmness. We have hallowed country ham in national magazines, clucked over the decline of its mostly artisanal production and driven close to a thousand miles for a particularly fine Kentucky specimen. We have spent more on these hams in some years than we have on health insurance. We’ve even given them as wedding gifts.
So our dirty little secret, the one that may cost us our invitation to the next Southern Foodways Symposium, is that we are not, in fact, pork purists: we’re suckers for a glazed baked ham, those brine-plumped, brown-sugar-encrusted pork bombs that anchor the buffet line in all 50 states at this time of year. Their rosy sheen, firm salt quotient, flaky texture, sweet edge and bacony, clove-scented flavor invariably bring us back to the table for thirds and fourths. There, we’ve said it: we love regular baked ham.
We were surprised (and perhaps even vindicated) by our recent odyssey through the best of New York City’s homegrown hams — city ham, if you will. Where a country ham might be cured for weeks in dry salt, then smoked, then aged for a year (or two), city hams seem like a shortcut. They are soaked in or injected with a brine of water, salt and sugar before being cooked and then smoked for a few hours. The whole process may take less than two days.
As you might expect, there are differences in taste and texture, too. Country hams have the leathery texture of serrano ham and an earthy flavor that comes from long aging. But in many cases, the New York hams we tasted — and we sampled more than 25 of them, from 10 producers — delivered pork sensations every bit as nuanced, rich and magnificent as their country kin.
Tucked away at the back of meat markets that blend in with storefront real-estate agencies and baby boutiques or in low-rise industrial buildings in residential neighborhoods, the smokehouses of New York City tend to be invisible, their secret discernible only upon stepping through the front door and deeply inhaling. And, in fact, some producers seem to prefer it that way.
“I don’t show anybody what we do,” said Jerry Kurowycky (pronounced kur-VITZ-kee), the owner of Kurowycky Meat Products, as he ushered us past refrigerator cases of hot mustard and Polish butter at the front of his store, on First Avenue in the East Village. “But I’m happy to give you a general idea.”
So we followed Mr. Kurowycky, who on a balmy December day wore shorts and flip-flops, through a narrow passageway to a tiled preparation area with a brick floor. Recessed into the back wall were four soot-black smoking chambers with heavy iron double-doors. A shovel leaned against a large paper bag of hardwood chips at one end of the room.
Mr. Kurowycky, whose grandfather Erast bought the store from a former employer in 1955, claims he makes hams exactly the way his grandfather did in the Ukraine before World War II, by hand-rubbing fresh hams with salt and sodium nitrite, then letting them cure in pans for two weeks. He then rinses them, cooks them for six hours, and hangs them in the smoker overnight. Finally, they are glazed with brown sugar. “But that’s strictly for decoration,” he said.
Mr. Kurowycky’s ham may be unique among the city hams we sampled for its dry cure; most cured hams today are immersed in or injected with a liquid brine, which speeds the process.
Indeed, his ham appeared a shade drier and more muscular than the wet-brined New York City hams we tasted, but its silky texture and prominent smoke flavor stood out, too. It had a decent layer of fat and some marbling, with a sweet nuttiness, and an appetizing but unobtrusive saltiness.
Miss USA Tara Conner, who had come under criticism amid rumors she had been frequenting bars while underage, will be allowed to keep her title, Donald Trump announced Tuesday.
“I’ve always been a believer in second chances,” Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization with NBC, said with Conner at his side.
He said he and Conner met earlier Tuesday morning.
“She left a small town in Kentucky and she was telling me that she got caught up in the whirlwind of New York,” Trump said. “It’s a story that has happened many times before to many women and many men who came to the Big Apple. They wanted their slice of the Big Apple and they found out it wasn’t so easy.”
Conner won the title in April and has been living in New York. Recent media accounts of heavy drinking brought a storm of criticism, since she was underage at the time. She turned 21 on Monday.
In a tear-choked voice, Conner said, “In no way did I think it would be possible for a second chance to be given to me.” Turning to Trump, she said, “You’ll never know what this means to me, and I swear I will not let you down.” Trump said Conner would be entering rehab.
If she had been dethroned, her title would have been taken over by first runner-up Miss California Tamiko Nash.
Conner, a 5-foot-5 blonde, has been competing in pageants since age 4. After winning the Miss USA title in April, she finished fourth in the Miss Universe pageant in July.
Donald Trump sank even below his own lowest standards by humiliating that girl.
She's from a small town, they cut her loose in New York, what the fuck did they think was going to happen? It happens at NYU and Columbia every fucking year.
And so how does Trump handle it?
He fucking humiliates her in a crass, evil way for doing what unsupervised kids do. God, this made me angry. No reason for it. None.
Incidentally, People finally popped the question the White House press corps has been too timid to ask.
"This year, we invited readers on our Web site to ask you questions. Here's one: Nina Frazier of New Braunfels, Texas, asks: If you believe in the war, why didn't you encourage your own daughters to fight for your country? Or did you?
"THE PRESIDENT: I believe Americans can contribute to the security and well-being of our country in a variety of ways. That's why we have a volunteer army. What we say to young people is that if you want to serve your country you can do so in the military, or you can do so by teaching children in inner-city Washington, D.C., like one of our daughters did. Or you can help form education programs in New York City, like our (other) daughter. There are all kinds of ways to serve."
Later, a follow-up, of sorts:
"Are your daughters coming home for Christmas?
"Mrs. Bush: They are. Jenna is working with an international organization in Central and South America about education policy. And Barbara is working for a museum in the education department."
BAGHDAD — The men with laptops sat around an unadorned conference table, chatting amicably about their plans and operations.
The scene on the newly launched Al Zawraa satellite television channel could have been footage from the boardroom of any company, if it weren't for the ski masks the men wore and the subject of the meeting: future mortar attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.
The renegade, pro-insurgent Al Zawraa channel, with a 24-hour diet of propaganda against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government, has become something of a sensation throughout the country. It has drawn condemnation from U.S. officials, Iraqi politicians and Friday prayer leaders.
Most hours of the day it plays footage of U.S. soldiers in Iraq being shot and blown up in insurgent attacks, often with religious chants or Saddam Hussein-era nationalist anthems in the background. There are segments warning Iraq's Sunni Arabs to be wary of Shiite Muslims, and occasional English-language commentary and subtitles clearly meant to demoralize U.S. troops.
"Your new enlisting qualifications are kind of comical," an announcer says in slightly accented American English, over an image of a U.S. soldier in a field hospital, a bandage on his newly amputated arm. "I mean, what are you doing? Thirty-nine years old? That's the new age of recruiting? Are you recruiting nannies? I guess if we are patient, we might witness crippled people enlisting for the Marines."
The station attempts to present an alternative to images of the war appearing in U.S. and other Iraqi media. It shows footage of Americans abusing Iraqis and Baghdad government officials collaborating with the "occupier." Even Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911," the 2004 documentary critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy, gets drawn into the commentary.
"After all, there are honest guys in America," the announcer says in comments directed at President Bush. "If Mr. Moore can talk to you like that, so can I."
It's not clear how big an Iraqi audience Al Zawraa captures. But its very presence demonstrates the insurgency's abilities. Despite 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and intense diplomatic pressure on Iraq's neighbors, the station is able to circumvent U.S. and Iraqi forces and stage round-the-clock broadcasts, complete with news bulletins, graphics and commentary.
Al Zawraa started out several months ago as an aboveground hard-line Sunni channel, but it was shut down by the Iraqi government Nov. 5, the day Hussein received the death penalty. Iraqi police raided the station's headquarters after broadcasts criticized the verdict.
At the time, Mishaan Jaburi, a member of parliament said to be behind the station, disputed the sanction.
"If Saddam had ordered the killing of some hundreds of Iraqi people, the current officials in Baghdad deserve 1,000 death sentences because they cause the daily killing of more than those killed by Saddam," Jaburi, who has been accused of embezzling state funds, told the Associated Press from Syria.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had warned stations in July not to broadcast footage that would jeopardize the nation's stability. But the attempt to stifle Al Zawraa backfired. It quickly reemerged as an underground station with violent, no-holds-barred content clearly meant to incite Sunnis.
Broadcast staples include images of U.S. soldiers manhandling Iraqi women, photos from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and footage of Iraqi children burned and injured in alleged U.S. attacks.
Giuliani's Primary Hurdle Polls Aside, Skeptics Say GOP Won't Nominate a Social Liberal for President
By Michael Powell and Chris Cillizza Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A01
NEW YORK, Dec. 18 -- His national poll numbers are a dream, he's a major box office draw on the Republican Party circuit, and he goes by the shorthand title "America's Mayor." All of which has former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani convinced he just might become America's president in 2008.
He is showing the early signs of a serious candidacy: Giuliani's presidential exploratory committee throws its first major fundraiser in a hotel near Times Square on Tuesday evening, and he recently hired the political director of the Republican National Committee during 2006. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week found that Republicans give Giuliani an early lead over Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is far ahead of the former mayor in organizing a national campaign.
Despite that lead, conservative party strategists and activists in key primary states are skeptical and warn that the socially liberal Republican faces a difficult campaign. They question whether a Republican who has had one marriage end in annulment and another in divorce, and favors abortion rights, gun control and immigrant rights, has much retail appeal in the evangelical and deeply conservative reaches of the GOP.
"If the Republican Party wants to send the social conservatives home for good, all they have to do is nominate Rudy Giuliani," said Rick Scarborough, a Southern Baptist minister and president of Vision America. "It's an insult to the pro-Christian agenda. . . . He's going to spend a lot of money finding he can't get out of the Republican primaries."
Giuliani is reticent about how he would overcome these obstacles -- he declined to be interviewed before the fundraisers, which are closed to the news media. But members of his intensely loyal inner circle said they expect him to run and campaign aggressively.
His strategy will be to capitalize on his status as a tough and plain-talking hero of Sept. 11, 2001. He believes, say advisers, that his tough views on national security -- he supports the USA Patriot Act -- and on Iraq, where he opposes withdrawal of troops, will overshadow his liberal social views. He will frame some of those positions as libertarian -- government has no business interfering in the bedroom.
Many Republicans say no. The party has grown steadily disenchanted with liberal members of the party, and it was Republican moderates in the Northeast who suffered many losses in last month's elections.
"For us to nominate him, we have to say those issues are not really important to us [and] we care more about winning regardless of the philosophy of our candidate," GOP consultant Curt Anderson said. "I don't believe that a majority of Republican primary voters will make that choice."
But in a measure of the party's divisions, other Republicans, such as California financier Bill Simon and talk show host Dennis Prager, say his social liberalism is of less concern. They are among a group of conservative activists who see in Giuliani a Reagan-like figure, sometimes wrong but possessed of unshakable conservative beliefs.
You mean the two mistresses, the payoff to one and the savage way he treated his family. The more you know about Giuliani, the less you like him.
A Serie A match between Palermo (white) and Roma in Rome on 17 December 2006 The Vatican wants its team to compete with Serie A's best A senior Roman Catholic cardinal says he hopes the Vatican may one day field a football team good enough to compete with Italy's top sides.
Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone envisaged a team that might challenge famous Serie A clubs like Roma, Inter Milan and Sampdoria.
He said the Church's seminaries and Catholic youth clubs around Italy were full of talented footballers.
He said they would gladly pull on the Vatican's yellow-and-white colours.
.....................................
"I do not preclude the possibility that the Vatican, in the future, could put together a football team of great value, that could play on the same level as Roma, Inter Milan and Sampdoria," he said.
In a football league that has been mired in corruption and controversy, this is perhaps a timely intervention.
By SHARON WAXMAN and RICHARD SIKLOS Published: December 18, 2006
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 — With Judith Regan’s authors still reeling from their publisher’s abrupt dismissal, the sparring between the headline-making Ms. Regan and her former employer, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, grew more intense, more personal and more specific today over allegations of anti-Semitism.
The News Corporation released what it described as notes from a heated telephone conversation on Friday between Ms. Regan and Mark Jackson, a top lawyer for HarperCollins, the company publishing division which included her imprint, ReganBooks — a conversation that News Corporation officials said was instrumental in her dismissal.
According to the notes, taken down by Mr. Jackson as the conversation unfolded, Ms. Regan protested that the publishing house had not supported her during last month’s firestorm over a confessional book by O.J. Simpson and related television program, which the News Corporation canceled in the wake of public protests and unease by some affiliate television stations.
“‘Of all people, the Jews should know about ganging up, finding common enemies and telling the big lie,’” Ms. Regan said, according to a transcript of Mr. Jackson’s notes provided by Gary Ginsberg, an executive vice president of the News Corporation.
According to the transcript, Ms. Regan went on to say that the literary agent Esther Newberg; HarperCollins’s executive editor, David Hirshey; HarperCollins’s president, Jane Friedman, and Mr. Jackson “constitute a Jewish cabal against her.”
A lawyer for Ms. Regan, Bert Fields, denied that Ms. Regan had said there was a “Jewish cabal against her,” saying she used only the word “cabal” in the conversation, and it came in response to a question from Mr. Jackson. But he acknowledged that she had made some version of the first statement, drawing attention to the fact that her boss and others involved in the controversy over the aborted O.J. Simpson project were Jewish.
He denied, though, that this reflected any anti-Semitism. “There is nothing insulting to Jewish people in saying that Jews should particularly understand what it is to be victims of the big lie,” Mr. Fields said. “They were looking for an excuse to fire her, and they fired her and called it anti-Semitic. It ain’t anti-Semitic.”
She is way over her head here,
She is a very angry woman and she lost her judgement
This is New York business and Fields is the wrong lawyer for this. News Corp isn't playing with her after years of her antics.
By Robin Wright and Peter Baker Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A01
The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.
Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.
But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.
The chiefs have taken a firm stand, the sources say, because they believe the strategy review will be the most important decision on Iraq to be made since the March 2003 invasion.
At regular interagency meetings and in briefing President Bush last week, the Pentagon has warned that any short-term mission may only set up the United States for bigger problems when it ends. The service chiefs have warned that a short-term mission could give an enormous edge to virtually all the armed factions in Iraq -- including al-Qaeda's foreign fighters, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias -- without giving an enduring boost to the U.S military mission or to the Iraqi army, the officials said.
The Pentagon has cautioned that a modest surge could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda, provide more targets for Sunni insurgents and fuel the jihadist appeal for more foreign fighters to flock to Iraq to attack U.S. troops, the officials said.
The Joint Chiefs are facing the same dilemma Clifford did in 1968. Someone has to say no.
NEW YORK Marine Maj. Megan McClung, a public affairs officer who became the highest-ranking woman killed in Iraq when she died two weeks ago, had been escorting Oliver North and a FOX News crew through Ramadi just moments before a roadside bomb took her life, a military spokesman told E&P on Monday.
When the explosion occurred on Dec. 6, McClung was in the midst of escorting a Newsweek staffer, according to Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a public affairs officer stationed at Camp Fallujah. He said he did not know the identity of the Newsweek employee or the reason for the escort.
"My understanding is that Newsweek was with her at the time of the explosion, in a different vehicle," Salas said. "She had just dropped off the Fox News crew."
McClung, 34, had just left North, a Fox contributor, and his crew at the Ramadi Government Center following a 10-minute escorted drive from Camp Ramadi, a U.S. Army base there, Salas said. "It was her first and only escort with him," Salas told E&P. "He was covering the Marines in Ramadi." Many journalists go out without any military escort, even in dangerous areas.
A Fox News spokesperson said she could not confirm North's involvement, while Newsweek did not immediately return a call seeking information.
Salas said McClung, who has been widely praised by former embeds since her death for her efforts to help reporters and others involved in coverage of the war, offered such escorts for a wide variety of media representatives, not just the more high-profiles such as North. "It wasn't uncommon for her to escort different types of journalists," Salas said. "She made her own decisions on who and where and when to escort."
Dec. 15, 2006 — President Bush has spent the last few weeks engaged in complex briefings with senior military officers, State Department officials and outside experts as he tries to come up with a new plan to achieve victory in Iraq.
But a young captain serving in Iraq's violent Al Anbar Province has offered a simple explanation of what the problem was in Iraq and how to solve it. Among his observations is the importance of having a moustache in Iraq.
In a military known for its sleep-inducing, graphically dizzying PowerPoint presentations, the young captain's presentation, which has been unofficially circulating through the ranks, stands out. Using stick figures and simple language, it articulates the same goal as the president's in Iraq.
The creator of this PowerPoint presentation, "How to Win in Al Anbar," was Capt. Travis Patriquin.
But Patriquin will not see victory in Iraq. He was killed by the same improvised explosive device that killed Maj. Megan McClung of the Marine Corps last Wednesday.
So why was an Army Captain with her when she died?
Regardless of your feelings or beliefs about sending more U.S troops to Iraq, you must accept the painful truth that anything we do to salvage or strengthen the existing Shia-dominated government in Iraq redounds to the benefit of Iran. If we weigh in on the side of the Sunni insurgents we run a serious risk that the Shias will attack us in strength and, at least for the short time, cut our supply lines that run through the heart of Shia territory. Moreover, anything we do to militarily challenge Iran will weaken our influence in Iraq and jeopardize the mission of our forces in Iraq.
George Bush has made his choice and it is calamitous. He rejected out of hand the proposal to "Go Home". And dismissed the "Go Long" course of action, which would have emphasized counterinsurgency, public works vice combat, and diplomatic overtures to Iran and Syria. Instead, he has thrown his weight behind "Go Strong".
The key elements of the "go strong" plan are outlined in the accompanying analysis by Pat Lang (see Stalingrad on the Tigris?). What is not yet announced, but implicit in the plan, is a direct attack on Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, the Jayshi al Mahdi (JAM). During their meeting in Jordan last month, George Bush reportedly told Maliki in no uncertain terms that he would have to separate himself from al Sadr or become a casualty in the upcoming offensive against the bearded cleric. Ironically, Moqtada al Sadr has discouraged sectartian strife rather than egged it on and, among the various Shia clerics, is more receptive to working with Sunni counterparts to rebuild Iraq.
It is no surprise that Maliki returned to Iraq and is making a desperate bid to align himself now with Hakim and the "moderates" in the current government and is signaling he will abandon al Sadr. Bush, in his zeal for a deal in Iraq, is either ignorant or oblivious to the fact the al Hakim (a recent visitor to the White House) is closely aligned with Iran; in contrast to al Sadr who is more independent. Notwithstanding these facts the "'Decider'-in-Chief" has rolled the dice and will try to rub out Sadr's JAM. He also is betting he can do so without provoking a full-scale revolt among the Shia.
Ah, but here's the rub. When you attack al Sadr you elevate his status. He becomes the face of the Iraqi opposition. Unlike the Jordanian Zarqawi, who met his end in June, a martyred al Sadr becomes more powerful in life than in death. It is not a question of "will the Shia retaliate"? They will. And in the process U.S. forces will once again "make" news destroying neighborhoods and civilians in Sadr City as the insurgent forces melt away; just as we did and they did in Fallujah.
But unlike Fallujah, the Shia can hurt us and hurt us bad. The vast majority of the supplies--the food, water, bullets, and bandages--sustaining our troops in Iraq flow from Kuwait in the south along the highway the runs through the middle of Shia-controlled territory in Iraq. If the Shia retaliate, as they have in the past, our lines of communication will be in jeopardy, at least over the short term.
This is more serious than going without toliet paper for a couple of days. With the anticipated surge in troops to Baghdad the logistics demands will increase. That makes the supplies from the south more, not less, critical. The tactical challenge of keeping the resupply line open is daunting. In June of this year one in every 20 convoys was attacked while heading from Kuwait to Baghdad. Now that figure is approaching one in every five. Most of these attacks appear to be the work of criminal gangs intent on filling their pockets. But the ease and frequency of these attacks should keep military commanders up at night. A concerted effort could effectively shut down our resupply effort. Any one remember Jessica Lynch and her ill-fated colleagues?
We also need to accept the fact that the ethnic partitioning of Iraq is underway and the battle is focused in and around Baghdad. The Shia essentially control the east half of Baghdad. The Sunni control the west half. Scattered throughout the city (but primarily on the outer suburbs) are mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods. That's where the fighting is occuring So far the Shia appear to have the upper hand.
Early last week President Bush was touting the body count of insurgents and implying things were getting better in Iraq. But he failed to report that notwithstanding the insurgent bodies we are stacking up that the level of violence has continued to soar. The last three months in Iraq--September, October, and November--have been the most violent since George Bush announced Mission Accomplished. And December is on track to keep pace with this disturbing trend. With more troops headed into the fray more of our boys and girls will be added to the casualty lists.
Now that Bush has taken the Go Home and Go Long options off of the table we also should acknowledge that whether intended or not (and I believe it was intentional) the President has tied Bob Gates' hands, much to the relief of the neo-cons. Gates faces a senior military leadership roiled by dissent and disgust. Many are appalled that they are being blamed for the fiasco in Iraq because they followed the orders and dictates of Bush and his political appointees. Some, like Pete Schoomacher, have seized the initiative and are going to speak candidly without regard to the effect on their careers. Schoomacher, who was called back from retirement, really does not give a shit if he is rocking the boat as long as he his certain that he is acting in the best interest of his soldiers and his country.
I am waiting for the Congress to wake up and realize that no one in the military has done an assessment of our "progress" in the war. So far the only written assessments have come from the CIA and the National Intelligence Council. No one in either CENTCOM, SOCOM, JCS, or DIA appears to have done an analysis of the trends. If they have it is the best protected secret in the U.S. Governement. I think the Generals learned from the fate of the two CIA station chiefs who provided their stark assessment in the early days of the insurgency (they sent back what is known as an AARDWOLF) about the disastrous course of the war and wound up losing their jobs. So much for rewarding candor. The military leadership got the message and has shied away from putting in writing what many concede in private to be the case.
For now the focus is on Iraq, but do not imagine for a second that the neo-cons and their patrons in the Bush Administration have given up their quest to take down Iran. The dream is alive. Iran is the longterm obsession. What the Bushies in their zeal fail to realize is that their efforts to get control over events in Iraq are destined to backfire and will make it more difficult to contain the threat they claim we face from Iran. Bush and Cheney don't have a learning curve, it is a flat line.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Fewer than a third of Americans still support the war in Iraq, and more than half say they want U.S. troops out of the country within a year, according to a CNN poll released Monday.
Support for the conflict fell to a new low of 31 percent in the poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, while a record 67 percent expressed opposition to the nearly 4-year-old war.
Nearly three-quarters said Bush administration policy needs a complete overhaul or major changes. But only 11 percent of those polled backed calls to send more American troops to Iraq, as President Bush is said to be considering.
Pollsters interviewed 1,019 adults for the survey, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
But only 32 percent of those questioned in Monday's poll said they would support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq "as long as necessary" to hand over control to a new Iraqi government. By comparison, 21 percent said they wanted to see Americans leave immediately, and 33 percent said they wanted to see a U.S. withdrawal within a year.
Despite that opposition to a continued conflict, a solid majority -- 59 percent -- said they opposed any move by Congress to end the war by cutting off spending for the U.S. deployment.
There are hundreds of children in the trailer camp that is run by FEMA and known as Renaissance Village, but they won’t be having much of a Christmas. They’re trapped here in a demoralizing, overcrowded environment with adults who are mostly broke, jobless and at the end of their emotional tethers. Many of the kids aren’t even going to school.
“This is a terrible environment for children,” said Anita Gentris, who lost everything in the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina and is living in one of the 200-square-foot travel trailers with her 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. “My daughter is having bad dreams. And my son, he’s a very angry child right now. He cries. He throws things.
“I’m desperately trying to find permanent housing.”
The television cameras are mostly gone now, and the many thousands of people from the Gulf Coast whose lives were wrecked by Katrina in the summer of 2005 have slipped from the national consciousness. But like the city of New Orleans itself, most of them have yet to recover.
After the poor kids next door took advantage of me, I felt sympathy for the people of Houston, who've suffered crime and violence because of struggling Katrina exiles.
By Debra J. Dickerson
Neighborhood gossip, to which I was necessarily not privy until it was too late, was that the "Smiths" were living in the house via Catholic Charities. Maybe it was Catholic Charities, maybe it was Section 8 -- who knows and what's the difference? In any event, and given the blur of any move, it took me a few days to notice that black people lived next door (we were the only two black families) and that a never-ending stream of children ebbed and flowed from their house at all hours of the day and night. After two weeks or so, I calculated that there were seven kids (plus one mom and four surnames) next door. Their house, like mine, has three bedrooms, one bath. It was, of course, the male teenagers that most caught my eye.
As a single mom of two tots, the young men worried me, mostly because they were so idle, sauntering aimlessly down the center of our busy street, lolling on their tiny porch, riding seatless bicycles in languorous, unpredictable, traffic-snarling circles. They were going nowhere very slowly. The yard overgrown, untended and strewn with litter in a neighborhood where the men often came home for lunch to tend already manicured lawns and plant new shrubbery. Why no team uniforms on these kids, no backpacks, no school projects carted home in cardboard boxes?
Unsmiling, they watched me, never crossing the driveway to help with my packages like the other families did, hip me to the garbage schedule, introduce themselves. Growing up, I learned the primary lesson of inner-city survival: Never show fear. Grown, I also knew that ghetto toughness is a necessary mask its purveyors are all too ready to shed; I made eye contact and was proactively nice from Day One. If I didn't give them the benefit of the doubt, who would?
I learned all their names and gave each a friendly smile -- Mom, too, when she took her rare TV breaks for air. Surprised and grateful, whenever they saw my soccer mom minivan pull up (carless, they were ferried about by a succession of white ladies with the lanyards of various social service agencies dangling round their necks), whoever was lolling about greeted me warmly. I thought we were off to a good start when they called me "Miss Debra" unprompted. Ah, I thought. Poor, but with home training, just as I had been. I can work with this. And the youngest two became instant playmates with my own. Alas, I relaxed too soon.
Sadr movement sheds light on turmoil in Iraq Shiite group has grown in sophistication with its political ties and social service network that helps families in war-torn nation By Hannah Allam MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The day seemed tranquil at Muqtada Sadr's headquarters for western Baghdad. Pigeons flew overhead, swooping down to perch on palm trees that dotted the courtyard. Uniformed Iraqi police officers and soldiers sipped tea with rugged militiamen or exchanged customary kisses with black-turbaned clerics. Women came to plead for assistance.
But calm is always fleeting in Baghdad. At midday, about 50 gunmen stormed the courtyard and ordered everyone inside to stay put and to stay silent.
Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen responded immediately, drawing automatic rifles and pistols from under their winter coats and gathering in a cluster to face the unidentified gunmen. The assailants closed ranks, brandishing shiny revolvers and battered machine guns.
The groups walked toward each other as if in a high-noon duel. A voice from the crowd called for blessings in the name of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Sadr's soldiers began to shout age-old prayers for the prophet and his descendants, then added the Sadr camp's innovation: "Bring salvation soon, and damn their enemies!"
With the air filled with the clicking sound of weapons being prepared, visiting McClatchy journalists fled.
The sudden intrusion of the gunmen into one of Sadr's most secure strongholds exposed a paradox that dogs the Sadr movement and contributes to the daily bloodletting here: The Mahdi Army is growing larger and more sophisticated, with politicians in the government and a vast social services network that serves thousands of poor Shiites, but the anarchy of the streets makes it hard for the militia's commanders to rein in their men, much less prevent attacks from rival factions.
Even as Sadr presses for more land and power, his grasp over Baghdad remains tenuous. .......................... These days, the safest route to Sadr's west Baghdad office runs through an obstacle course of both legal and dubious checkpoints in an area known for kidnappings and car bombings.
On Tuesday, there were eight: The first was an imposing roadblock manned by Iraqi army soldiers in camouflage. The next four were guarded by Iraqi police in mismatched uniforms. Then came a couple of apparent militiamen standing in the street with guns, and next, a vehicle search by more plainclothes sentries. Finally, another batch of unidentified guards stopped pedestrians at a coil of razor wire to peer into women's bags and pat down men for weapons.
Gone are the peaceful seminary days. In their place, men in long overcoats hover, casting steely glares on anyone who enters the compound. The courtyard brims with new faces and dialects. Some were distraught Iraqis seeking financial or security help; others were militiamen or workers from Sadr's social programs.
A large poster hung on the wall showing Sadr, the firebrand cleric-turned-commander, alongside fellow Shiite Muslim leader Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's Hezbollah. Sadr stood on an American flag; Nasrallah on an Israeli one. The caption read: "Their arrogance is under your feet."
An elderly blue-eyed woman shuffled in and beseeched Sadr's representatives for medical assistance for her three sons. Two of them had been shot by U.S. troops, she said, and the third had fallen off a motorcycle while fighting Sunni gunmen.
"Are they in the imam's army?" a tall, stern man asked.
"Yes, they all are," the woman replied.
"OK, just give me their names and papers and we'll sponsor them," he said.
..........................
"If we talk about the word 'militia,' the Mahdi Army doesn't fit the description. We are a group of people with a belief," said Araji, now national director of Sadr's social programs and a local militia commander. "We call it an army, but it's not just an army of gunmen. We protect our neighborhoods and provide services for our people."
Araji said he had visited Lebanon and Iran recently to check on the welfare of Iraqis in prisons and refugee camps. When asked whether he had met with Hezbollah chief Nasrallah in Lebanon, he smiled, shook his head and steered the conversation back to his two trips to Iran. On those jaunts, he evaluated the needs of 90,000 Iraqis in exile.
At home, he said, his time is consumed with the displacement of tens of thousands of Iraqis in what he called "one of the biggest crises in modern history."
When told that Sunni Web sites accused him of fielding death squads, Araji scoffed.
"Let them bring proof," he said. "We still have many Sunni families in Kadhemiya. No one has been displaced here, but in the hot spots of Karkh, of course, there are problems. It's the same for Sunnis and Shiites." Karkh is how residents of Baghdad refer to the largely Sunni side of the city that lies west of the Tigris River.
'Weak government'
Araji said the government had failed so miserably in providing basic services that his office petitioned the local council six months ago to take over the distribution of cooking gas and other supplies. Now, he said with pride, the Mahdi Army delivers gas and kerosene to families throughout Kadhemiya and other heavily Shiite districts.
Funding for the projects, he said, comes mainly from 2,000 donation boxes throughout Iraq that are stuffed with cash every week after Friday prayers.
"It's a weak government," he said. "They're supposed to do this, but we do it."
Araji said the Mahdi Army doesn't seek to replace the Iraqi government, but that it's obligated to step in until elected officials show results.
..........................................
Five minutes later, the gunmen arrived. Araji's black turban was lost in a tangle of uniformed and plainclothes gunmen, the swish of black robes as women ran for cover, and the glint of sunshine on weapons.
In a phone call later that night, he dismissed the showdown as "a tribal matter" and emphasized that no one was injured. Kadhemiya was still safe.
"It was a private matter," he said, and offered no further explanation
Denise Parsons “Being an artist is a solo endeavor, and this is a safe way to see what others are doing,” says Denise Parsons, an art student in San Francisco who shows her work, above, on the Saatchi site.
Julie Ann Travis , 23, a graduate student at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, is curious to see what her peers are up to and to share some of her latest work. So recently she posted a self-portrait in which her head is buried in a pile of dirt at Stuart (saatchi-gallery.co.uk/stuart)
The brainchild of the London-based advertising magnate and collector Charles Saatchi, this social networking outlet — a kind of MySpace knockoff for artists — is causing something of a sensation, boosting traffic at the gallery’s Web site overall to more than three million hits a day.
In May Mr. Saatchi, famed for spotting young unknowns and turning them into art-world superstars, created a section on his Web site for artists of all ages to post their work at no charge. It is called Your Gallery, and now boasts contributions by about 20,700 artists, including 2,000 pieces of video art.
Everything there is for sale, with neither the buyer nor the seller paying a cent to any dealer or other middleman. About 800 new artists have been signing up each week.
And since Stuart (shorthand for “student art”) went online last month, some 1,300 students (including 450 in the United States) have created Web pages there. No one vets the quality or style of the art.
With dealers and collectors scouring student shows for undiscovered talent and students hunting for dealers to represent them, Mr. Saatchi has tapped a vein that can’t stop gushing. If Stuart gains anything like the cachet of MySpace, it has the potential to morph from a nonprofit venture into a gold mine for Mr. Saatchi.
For now, he said, he is simply enjoying the role of spectator. “When I launched the site, I took the view that the best thing was to leave it alone for the first year and purposely not buy anything, because I didn’t want to compromise what the site was supposed to do: appeal to a wide group of students,” he said.
His office, meanwhile, is fielding e-mail messages and calls from dealers, museum curators and directors, and collectors around the world who have discovered new work at the site and want to meet some of the artists in their studios. (Of the 20,700 or so artists at Your Gallery, roughly 6,000 are from Britain and 6,000 from the United States, with the rest scattered across the world.)
But for students visiting Stuart, the main attraction for now is linking up with their peers.
In addition to lists of her favorite artists, books, films and television shows, Ms. Travis has posted the name of a new friend on her page at Stuart: Erhan Ozturk, a photography student at T. C. Maltepe University in Istanbul whose work she viewed at the site.
When I saw this story, I was semi-interested, but after playing around on it, I realized it had a kid's section which you could do your own paintings with. Since my niece is a budding artist, I found that fascinating.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artroom/drawing/
Keep it handy for your kids over Christmas week, so they can use them on their new boxes.
It happened before we were together, but he can't handle it and he's being a real jerk.
By Cary Tennis
Cary Tennis
Dec. 18, 2006 | Dear Cary,
When I started dating my current boyfriend, it was as if everything fell into place. It finally felt like what I thought a relationship should feel like. I was incredibly happy, but also afraid that my boyfriend would find out something about my past that would change how he felt about me. He seemed uncomfortable with the number of people I had slept with, but it wasn't a huge issue.
One night, after talking about a friend of ours who met his girlfriend in a threesome, he asked me if I had ever been in one. It didn't occur to me to lie, particularly about something I consider so minor, so I answered honestly and told him yes.
After that, everything changed. The night I told him I'd had a threesome, he cried and said he felt sick. He became so angry with me that he began to pick at me, and it seems like everything I do is wrong. Overnight, I went from being in a relationship that made me even more confident and happy with myself to being in a relationship that brings me down and constantly reminds me of my shortcomings.
It's been six months since he found out. I asked him to get therapy, and he saw two people. He said none of their suggestions helped (one suggested that he laugh it off and make it into a joke), and they seemed to run out of ideas. Now it's like he's given up. We hardly ever have sex anymore, because when we have sex, he thinks about my past. He says that he sees sex as sacred, and even though he's not religious, he has all of these rules on what is right and what is wrong. I'm not asking for his approval of my past actions, just understanding and forgiveness. I've tried explaining my past and why I did the things that I did, and I've tried to make him understand how much he means to me and how much I value sex with him, but nothing seems to make any difference. I'd made a couples therapy appointment for us, but he "has something to do then" and says he wouldn't feel comfortable talking about this stuff to a therapist in front of me.
I can't keep feeling so ashamed of a past I had come to terms with, but I also can't bring myself to give up on someone that I love so much. Before the threesome fiasco, we'd been talking about marriage and our future, and now I wonder how he could have meant any of that. If he loved me so much, how could his love and respect for me be so conditional? Is there anything he can do to get over this, or am I going to have to forget about how good things used to be and move on? It's Christmastime, and here I am trying to figure out where to live and who gets the cats and how on earth I can handle all of this hurt.
Regretting Telling
Dear Regretting,
This guy is nuts. What's wrong with having a threesome?
No, don't marry him. Get away from him. He sounds crazy. Not to be too judgmental, but really.
OK, so let's say it triggered something in him, some deep-seated fear or whatever. Fine. So the loving thing to do would be to admit to you that he's acting crazy and irrational and commit to work on it and forgive you for what you did as if you even needed forgiving but most of all since he's the one who needs forgiving he should ask for your forgiveness for being such a jerk about something that happened before you were together, and if you suggest to him that you're going to go to couples therapy to work with it then FOR GOD'S SAKE HE SHOULD AGREE TO GO. Not say he has something to do that day. That's lame. He's being a jerk about this.
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer Sun Dec 17, 1:22 PM ET
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. - "SNAKE!" Hearing this shout, Skip Snow slammed on the brakes. When the off-roader plowed to a halt, he and his partner, Lori Oberhofer, leaped out and took off running toward two snakes, actually — a pair of 10-foot Burmese pythons lying on a levee, sunning themselves.
After slipping, sliding and tumbling down a rocky embankment, Snow, a wildlife biologist, grabbed one of the creatures by the tail. The python, Oberhofer says, did not care much for that.
"It made a sound like Darth Vader breathing," she says, "and then its head swung around and I saw this white mouth flying through the air."
Snow saw the mouth, too — the jaws open 180 degrees, the gums an obscene white, the needle-sharp teeth bared in an almost devilish grin. He let out a shriek, then blinked, and when his eyes opened the python's head was hanging in mid-air, less than a foot from his own.
Oberhofer, with a Ninja-like thrust, had snared the python in mid-strike.
"I snagged it right behind its head, on its neck," the 43-year-old wildlife technician recalls. "It was pure reflex — a defensive move. I don't know if I could ever do it again."
The python hadn't succumbed yet, however. "They defecate on you, on purpose, hoping to make you reconsider what you're doing," Oberhofer says. "It's not pleasant."
In the end, the humans were victorious, if not sweet-smelling: Both snakes were bagged, trucked off to the Everglades Research Center, euthanized and necropsied — meaning their innards were dissected, then meticulously inspected, for the benefit of science.
So goes python control in the Everglades, a painstaking, around-the-clock slog against a voracious, foreign snake species that has established a stronghold in this watery wilderness and put native wildlife at risk.
Critters that pythons find most delectable — raccoons, possums, muskrats and native cotton rats — are already under attack, as are birds such as the house wren, pied-billed grebe, white ibis and limpkin.
Scientists also worry that these slithery giants — which have been known to grow as long as 26 feet — may soon start to feast on native species whose survival is in doubt.
"The Everglades doesn't work by itself anymore," says Leon Howell, 58, who has been associated with the park for the last 21 years as a visitor, naturalist, fishing guide and, presently, park ranger. "This whole landscape has to be managed today: water, fire, exotics — you name it."
Which explains the evolution of Snow and Oberhofer into a human firewall against non-native exotics. Without them, Howell figures, "there'd be pythons all over the place."
WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Forces teams sent overseas on secret spying missions have clashed with the CIA and carried out operations in countries that are staunch U.S. allies, prompting a new effort by the agency and the Pentagon to tighten the rules for military units engaged in espionage, according to senior U.S. intelligence and military officials.
The spy missions are part of a highly classified program that officials say has better positioned the United States to track terrorist networks and capture or kill enemy operatives in regions such as the Horn of Africa, where weak governments are unable to respond to emerging threats.
But the initiative has also led to several embarrassing incidents for the United States, including a shootout in Paraguay and the exposure of a sensitive intelligence operation in East Africa, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter. And to date, the effort has not led to the capture of a significant terrorism suspect.
Some intelligence officials have complained that Special Forces teams have sometimes launched missions without informing the CIA, duplicating or even jeopardizing existing operations. And they questioned deploying military teams in friendly nations — including in Europe — at a time when combat units are in short supply in war zones.
The program was approved by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and is expected to get close scrutiny by his successor, Robert M. Gates, who takes over today and has been critical of the expansion of the military's intelligence operations.
Senior officials at the CIA and the Pentagon defended the program and said they would urge Gates to support it. But they acknowledged risks for the United States in its growing reliance on Special Forces troops and other military units for espionage.
"We are at war out there and frankly we need all the help that we can get," said Marine Maj. Gen. Michael E. Ennis, who since February has served as a senior CIA official in charge of coordinating human intelligence operations with the military. "But at the same time we have to be very careful that we don't disrupt established relationships with other governments, with their liaison services, or [do] anything that would embarrass the United States."
Ennis acknowledged "really egregious mistakes" in the program, but said collaboration had improved between the CIA and the military.
"What we are seeing now, primarily, are coordination problems," Ennis said in an interview with The Times. "And really, they are fewer and fewer."
The issue underscores the sensitivity of using elite combat forces for espionage missions that have traditionally been the domain of the CIA.
Delta Force otherwise known as the Unit, the TV show is based on the memoirs of one of early members and who also consults on it.
The point is that Rummy unleashed other teams to do the same thing and it backfiring because the skill sets are different.
The Army handpicks the Unit. They aren't handpicking all these other teams.
The coalition of labor, elected and civic leaders that organized yesterday's march called for the following actions at the local, state and federal levels:
Improve internal and external monitoring of the New York Police Department by strengthening the Civilian Complaint Review Board and conducting independent audits of the department's Internal Affairs Bureau.
Establish an independent special prosecutor to probe alleged cases of police misconduct and corruption.
After a police shooting, immediately test officers for drug and alcohol use.
Report the number of stop-and-frisk incidents by race and gender quarterly to the City Council, as required by law.
Improve salaries and benefits for police officers.
Recruit and promote more minorities and women.
With input from independent experts, develop comprehensive program to train officers in racial and cultural sensitivity.
Increase participation with community councils and community boards in each precinct.
Ensure positive police relations with students and independently review all charges against children for resisting arrest.
The U.S. Justice Department should honor its commitment, made after the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, to issue annual reports on police misconduct.
Andrew Gombert for The New York Times Isiah Thomas, the Knicks’ coach and president, far left, has been accused of ordering the hard foul that started a melee Saturday night.
The N.B.A. is investigating whether Isiah Thomas, the president and coach of the Knicks, ordered a hard foul that touched off a brawl with the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, several people involved in the investigation said yesterday.
The Nuggets, according to those people, are pointing to an exchange between Thomas and the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony — part of which was captured by the MSG Network — that seemed to convey a threat. None of the people who spoke about the exchange were willing to be identified.
Ten players were ejected after the fight, which started when Mardy Collins, a Knicks rookie, clobbered J. R. Smith of the Nuggets as he was driving for a basket.
Some of these players, and possibly Thomas, are expected to receive suspensions today after a review of the videotape and interviews of players, coaches and security personnel.
The league is certain to punish Anthony, its leading scorer and one of its brightest young stars, for throwing a punch at Collins. As for Thomas, a Hall of Fame guard who is now fighting to hold on to his job, the situation is unusual because there is no known precedent for a team’s coach, let alone its president, to be punished for instigating a fight.
With 1 minute 32 seconds left, the MSG broadcast focused on Thomas while Denver’s Marcus Camby shot free throws. The Nuggets were leading, 117-100. Thomas, standing on the sideline, his arms folded and his jaw tight, bites his lip and starts talking to a Nuggets player. The player is not in the camera shot, but the broadcaster Mike Breen notes that Thomas is talking to Anthony.
There is no audio of Thomas, but in repeated viewing of the video he appears to say: “Hey, don’t go to the basket right now. It wouldn’t be a good idea.” Seconds later, Thomas cocks his head, holds out his right palm and, with a slight smile, adds, “Just letting you know.”
The broadcast did not capture the entire exchange, however, as the network toggled between cameras. Thomas also told Anthony that he “shouldn’t be in the game right now,” because the score was lopsided and the Knicks had removed most of their starters, according to an associate who spoke with Thomas yesterday. The message was intended as a plea not to embarrass the Knicks further. The associate was not authorized to speak on Thomas’s behalf and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Calvin Andrews, Anthony’s agent, confirmed that Anthony said Thomas had told him to stay away from the area under the basket. Andrews indicated that Anthony gave that account to N.B.A. officials. Thomas also spoke to league officials.
The issue for N.B.A. officials is how to interpret Thomas’s words, and his intent. Was Thomas merely advising a young star that he should not embarrass the Knicks by running up the score? Or was he issuing a warning?
After the game — but before Thomas’s comments came to light — Thomas gave reporters his account of that conversation with Anthony.
“I just said to him: ‘You’re up 19 with a minute and a half to go. You and Camby really shouldn’t be in the game right now.’ We had surrendered. And those guys shouldn’t have been in the game at that time,” Thomas said. “They were sticking it to us pretty good. They were having their way with us pretty good. I think J. R. Smith had just made one dunk where he reverses it and spins in the air. I thought that Mardy didn’t want to have our home crowd see that again and he fouled him.”
The Knicks were off yesterday, and team officials declined to comment on the incident or Thomas’s actions. Neither James L. Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden, which owns the Knicks, nor Steve Mills, the Garden president, will be commenting on the matter at any point, a company spokesman said.
HARTFORD, Conn. — James F. Jones Jr. had been president of Trinity College for two years before a black student pointed out to him that he always ate lunch on the side of the dining hall where white students gather.
Since that day last month, Mr. Jones, who is white, has made a point of taking a table on the other side, with the minority students.
He also bought the book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” for his office, and recently handed out 45 copies to the college’s trustees and senior administrators as “required reading.”
“I didn’t even know I was eating on the white side,” Mr. Jones said.
Trinity officials, professors and students have been forced to reexamine their daily interactions with one another this semester after a series of racially polarizing events that have drawn widespread complaints from minorities over what they see as a climate of incivility and intolerance within their privileged campus of Gothic spires.
From classrooms to hip-hop concerts, the angry dialogue has led to some student protests and focused an unusual level of scrutiny on the college’s practices and policies.
Since October, two minority women have reported that racial slurs were scribbled on message boards outside their dorm rooms.
Another student, who is white, painted himself black for a Halloween fraternity party and then posed for pictures that turned up on a popular Web site, Facebook.
In addition, many of Trinity’s minority students said they had long felt discriminated against.
Some black students said they were regularly stopped at the campus library and asked to show identification while their white classmates just walked in, and at least one Hispanic professor complained to his colleagues of being mistaken for a janitor.
Minority students and their supporters have staged protests, including one in which students spread out in the dining hall to desegregate it for a night, and called upon college officials to improve social relations by taking steps such as spelling out a racial harassment policy in the student handbook, incorporating race issues into the curriculum, and providing more financial aid as a way to broaden the socioeconomic diversity of the student body.
“I feel more tension here than ever before,” said Ashlei Flemming, 19, a junior from West Palm Beach, Fla., adding that white students have avoided making eye contact and turned away from her because she is black. “There are times when I want to feel good about Trinity, and then I walk out and I’m reminded of the underlying disgust that we have here for each other.”
But other students like Chandler Barnard, who is white, said that they have not seen any discrimination against minorities on campus. “I kind of think it is blown out of proportion a little bit,” said Mr. Barnard, a 20-year-old junior who said his hometown, Lubbock, Tex., is much more conservative on such social issues. “I don’t see it as that big of a problem.”
KEARNY, N.J. — Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.
shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.
“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”
The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.
Since Matthew’s complaint, administrators have said they have taken “corrective action” against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.
“I think he’s an excellent teacher,” said the school principal, Al Somma. “As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past.”
Staci Snider, the president of the local teacher’s union, said Mr. Paszkiewicz (pronounced pass-KEV-ich) had been assigned a lawyer from the union, the New Jersey Education Association. Two calls to Mr. Paszkiewicz at school and one to his home were not returned.
In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.
Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.
On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”
While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.
“This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. “He’s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that’s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible’s view of creation as well as evolution.”
Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.
“It’s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. “You can’t step across the line and proselytize, and that’s what he’s done here.”
Well, it would be a rare week indeed during the Bush administration that didn't find me in front of the television screaming "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR F**KING MIND?" at least once. And this week was no exception. With their poll numbers dropping faster than Britney Spears' panties, the Bushes and their "friends" have been in top form, highlighting their mental disconnect from reality with a rococo flourish. In an interview with People Magazine this week, the Bushes revealed far more about themselves than I think even they might have intended.
Laura Bush, in fine Tupperware party fashion, managed to cut off her husband's other wife at the knees:
The President also said there is no doubt in his mind that a woman candidate could be president, and the First Lady agreed. Mrs. Bush referenced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and noted that while she would be a "really good candidate", Rice is not interested in the job.
"Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she's an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job," the First Lady said.
Oh, hiss-meow, Laura. You really have been listening to your mother-in-law, haven't you. Setting the women's rights movement back about fifty years, speaking for others who are, at last check, capable of speaking for themselves, disapproving and condescending while trying to appear concerned, and failing to come across as anything other than small-minded, parochial, provincial.
I think it has more to do with her attentions towards her husband than politics. I guess maybe she's still pissed about Thanksgiving
A protest march cut a solemn swath through crowds of Christmas shoppers and the joyous mood of the holiday season in Midtown Manhattan yesterday in a rebuke to the police for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Queens on his wedding day last month.
Three weeks after Sean Bell was killed and two friends were wounded in a hail of 50 police bullets, a coalition of civil rights groups, elected officials, community leaders, clergymen and others marched down Fifth Avenue and across 34th Street in a “silent” protest that sputtered scattered chants, but was largely devoid of shrieks, speeches and most of the usual sound-and-fury tactics of demonstrations.
Billed as a “Shopping for Justice” march and led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the army of protesters, many carrying placards, moved grim-faced between hordes of holiday shoppers and tourists clogging the sidewalks of two of the city’s busiest commercial arteries.
The police had set up metal barricades to confine the marchers to a single traffic lane, but the throng quickly swelled beyond expectations and the barricades were shifted to widen the line of march to four of the five lanes on Fifth Avenue and five of the six on 34th Street. Traffic on side streets leading to the march was halted as the protesters swept on. .............................
A sampling of shoppers found many against the protest. “We just came here to go shopping at the American Girl store and go see the Rockettes,” said Cherrie Ostigui, 38, of Odenton, Md. “Now we can’t even cross the street to get our lunch.”
Steve Diomopoulos, 22, a student from Livonia, Mich., called it “a weird time to be doing this,” and added: “It’s an inconvenience to people like myself who came from out of town and want to get some Christmas shopping done. It’s almost like a hostile atmosphere. I don’t think that’s what people came here to see.”
But Seleah Bussey, 22, a Brooklyn College student, said, “I think it’s good because it’s a tourist area and tourists need to know what’s really happening.”
Mr. Sharpton, who called the Queens shooting a case of excessive force, said the march was a moral appeal to the city to change police policies. ........................ Besides the complaints of annoyed shoppers, the march generated two negative responses that were aimed at Mr. Sharpton.
Before the march, Steven A. Pagones, a former assistant prosecutor in Dutchess County who won a defamation suit against Mr. Sharpton and two others in 1998, showed up near the marchers’ rendezvous point.................
“I want people to understand that for years he’s made reckless allegations in furtherance of his own agenda,” Mr. Pagones said of Mr. Sharpton.
Michael J. Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, also cited Mr. Sharpton’s role in that matter. “I think it’s all about credibility, something the Rev. Al had forsaken a long time ago in the Tawana Brawley case,” Mr. Palladino said. “He’s trying to deny our police officers their civil rights and due process. But in the end, a grand jury will hear the evidence and they’ll come to a decision.”
The protesters, many of whom arrived in buses from Queens, Brooklyn and elsewhere, were joined by Representative Charles B. Rangel, City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr., and other politicians; by the singer Harry Belafonte; by leaders and members of the N.A.A.C.P.; the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network; and relatives and friends of Mr. Bell, Mr. Guzman and Mr. Benefield.
The group included Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, who has taken the surname Bell, and one of their two children, Jada, 4, and Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant sodomized with a broomstick by a police officer in a station house nine years ago. Mr. Benefield rode in a wheelchair, but Mr. Guzman, shot numerous times, remained at a rehabilitation center.
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Palladino is an especially stupid man. Pagones didn't say shit when Sharpton ran for president, now he has something to say. Too bad for him and Palladino, most of the protesters think he got paid for raping Tawana Brawley. Bringing him out only has one effect, to enrage people. They think he's a criminal who raped a little girl, lied and got paid for it.
Now, that isn't my opinion, but the fact that opinion is out there and matters, should been factored in. And it wasn't. The city has changed, and the police unions don't get that. I'll discuss more of that later, but for now there is one central fact, they marched down fifth avenue without a permit.
Bloomberg and Kelly have dicked around marchers since 2003. When United for Peace and Justice wanted a similiar march, they were offered the West Side Highway. Then refused the use of the Great Lawn. Leslie Cagan never got a straight answer from City Hall, They have terrorized Transportation Aletrnatives.
When the unions took over the streets, arrests followed.
But this time, Sharpton, flanked by the city's unions and minority leaders, said they were going to march down 5th Ave. No one asked about any permits.
The Arabic URL for this story on Aswat al Iraq is here:
So far what is known is that at least 28 (males) were kidnapped from the the Red Crescent's Offices in Karadah. The modus operandi was identical to previous mass kidnappings including the one in al-Sanak during the week and the November attack on the health ministry. It's worth repeating what I said back then because an extremely clear pattern has emerged:
1. A worker at the Redcrescent Office reacts to the kidnapping. 2. A relative of one of the kidnap victims.
There's really not much to be said about this. You're well capable of working out why a ministry under Sadrist control came under attack. The health ministry complex is in central Baghdad.That area is under green zone government Ministry of Defense contro. Which is to say that it's under SCIRI control.
[snip]
The attack was very well coordinated it was very well planned it consisted of a concerted mortar barrage followed by in the region of 100 gunmen storming the complex. Snipers covered their attack and shot at people trying to escape the complex.
In broad daylight in Bab al-Mu'adham for crying out loud 100 masked gunmen were able to storm a major ministry complex with in the region of 2,000 people inside. To get to Bab al-Mu'adham you have to go through checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint. And that's not including the checkpoints in Bab al-Mu'adham itself
The pattern is identical and very very blatant, in each case it has been in an area that's heavily patrolled by SCIRI controlled forces. In each case it has been in an area to which to gain access you have to go through checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint controlled by SCIRI forces. In each case it has been in an area in which to move around you have to go through checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint controlled by SCIRI forces. In each case it has been in an area in which to leave you have to go through checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint controlled by SCIRI forces.
Here's what happened today you can see very easily how it fits the pattern. It's important to know that SCIRI control Karadah.
A large convoy of SUVs identical to those used by Interior Ministry forces arrive at the building. In this case there were at least 10 SUVs. Even by current standards that's a pretty hefty convoy.
A large number of gunmen storm the building - in other words there was shooting, a lot of shooting, between them and those guarding it. Nobody came to investigate the shooting. Both the SCIRI controlled Interior ministry and the SCIRI controlled Defense Ministry deny that anyone reported it. The SCIRI controlled police deny that anyone reported it.
In this particular "incident" the gunmen also attacked the Dutch Embassy and captured three of the embassy guards. Are we supposed to believe that the embassy didn't call for help?
The kidnappers go through the building fairly quickly but very thoroughly - in other words they knew the layout of the building - the plans for buildings such as the Red Crescent Building are on file, you get absolutely no prizes whatsoever for guessing which ministry has those files.
According to people present in the Red Crescent building the gunment "in the uniforms of" the SCIRI controlled special forces took the time to confiscate all the mobile phones they could find.
They even recorded on video cameras brought along for the purpose what they were doing. Don't believe me?
"A woman who was present at the scene when the gunmen stormed the building told VOI 'the kidnapers took all the mobiles found with the people present at the office while one of the attackers was recording the kidnapping with a video camera.' "
The gunmen then drove off taking their victims with them.
Brigadier Abdul-Karim Khalaf (appointed by SCIRI), denies all knowledge of any details of the incident, despite the fact that those detail are being broadcast on several radio stations and carried on Iraqi news sites.
Brigadier Abdul-Karim Khalaf (appointed by SCIRI), makes a statement saying that the SCIRI controlled Interior ministry and the SCIRI controlled Defense Ministry, and the SCIRI controlled police, are busily engaged in setting up check points, roadblocks, and "making investigations." - Yeah right. The good brigadier doesn't have far to look. Neither do the American advisers in the Ministry to whom he reports directly.
Let it not be forgotten that a senior Red Crescent Official complained on Friday that the biggest problems the organisation have are with the American invaders.
Now lets look at the Dental Hospital Attack. (URI (Arabic on Aswat Al Iraq)) You'll notice the same MO. This time it didn't work. And yes it's Sadrist controlled nearly all the health facilities are:
The Dental faculty is in Bab al-Muaadham very close indeed to the Sadrist controlled Health Ministry.
I repeat the area is massively under the control of SCIRI and that to get into, out of, or around, the area you have to go through innumerable checkpoints all manned by heavily armed forces loyal to SCIRI controlled ministrys.
This time heavy fire from the guards drive them off
So they withdraw - somehow or another managing an impossible feat which is to get out of the neighbourhood avoiding all the SCIRI controlled roadblocks to say nothing of any American roadblocks and patrols. I'd love to know how they managed that trick.
No don't bother I already know how they managed that trick:
Press Release 06/144 ICRC calls for immediate and unconditional release of Iraqi Red Crescent staff abducted in Baghdad The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called today for the immediate and unconditional release of all persons abducted from one of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society offices in Baghdad.
Geneva (ICRC) - Some 30 persons, most of them Iraqi Red Crescent workers, were kidnapped by unidentified armed men in the morning of 17 December from their duty station in the Iraqi capital.
Shortly thereafter, ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Krähenbühl appealed for the unconditional and immediate release of the Iraqi Red Crescent personnel and of all others abducted with them. "I call upon those who carried out the kidnapping at the Iraqi Red Crescent office to immediately release all the abducted persons unharmed," he said. "Iraqi Red Crescent workers provide vital help for all Iraqis in need. They do so with devotion and with humanity. They must be respected and supported, not harmed."
The Iraqi Red Crescent offices are clearly identified by the red crescent emblem. The staff working for this humanitarian organization are entitled to full protection under international humanitarian law.
Below you will find a Power Point (what else?) presentation on the recent AEI analytic meeting run by one of the Kagans. The cast of contributers at the end reads very much like one of the great neocon "papers" done up before their return to power under Bush 41'. I have in mind the "Clean Break" paper which contained so much of "future history. The military men listed among the supposed authors are a mystery to me. I know who some of them are but I question how much they really understood what was going to be said in their names.
The paper urges a "surge" of many thousands more US troops into Baghdad beginning in March, 2007 for one more grand roll of the iron dice. The concept seems to be based on the notion that Shia militias exist because of Sunni violence against them rather than as expressions of a Shia drive to political dominance in Iraq. Based on that belief the authors seem to believe that if the additional US and Iraqi forces to be employed in the Capital area defeat (destroy?) the Sunni insurgent groups, then the Shia militia armies will "wither away" from a lack of need. I do not think that belief is justified.
The authors assert that contrary to General Schoomaker's appraisal below in"State of the Army," such a surge will not "break the Army."
They also assert that with an increase in recruiting the brigades that would be missing from the present rotation queue because of this "surge" could be replaced with the one year or so period of the 'surge.' I doubt that this is a realistic appraisal of how long such a process of unit creation would take.
One of the tasks to be accomplished by the "surged" force would be to disarm the Mahdi's Army and the other Shia militias. The authors seem unclear as to whether or not the militias will fight to avoid being disarmed.
This concept is a recipe for a grandand climactic battle of attrition between US and Iraqi forces on one side and the some combination of Sunni and Shia forces on the other. The Sunnis and Shia would not necessarily "ally" themselves to each other, but a general co-belligerence against our people would be bad enough.
President Bush may well accept the essence of this concept. He wants to redeem his "freedom agenda," restore momentum to his plans and in his mind this might "clear up" Iraq so that he could move on to Iran.
The carnage implicit in this concept would be appalling. The authors have much to say about the consequences of defeat in Iraq, but, I wonder if they have contemplated what it would be like to fail in their climactic battle and still be required by '43 to stay in Iraq. pl
Recriut? To do what? Play Vazili Zaitzev in the streets of Baghdad? Jude Law didn't look like he was having all that much fun in Enemy at the Gates and no one was shooting at him.No one is going to sign up for that but the born soldiers and the desperate
A battlefield called school Iraq violence threatens teachers and students. Campuses are closing. By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer December 16, 2006
BAGHDAD — Iraq's schools, long touted by American officia
