Left I on the News  

United for Peace & Justice held a national convention, specifically voted not to cooperate with ANSWER, and called for "a day of regional, mass antiwar demonstrations in 6 to 8 cities around the country on Saturday, October 27th."

The Troops Out Now Coalition called for an encampment in Washington, D.C. from Sept. 22-29 ending with a march on the White House on Sept. 29.

And now the ANSWER Coalition, together with others including Code Pink, Gold Star Families for Peace, Latino Movement USA and the National Lawyers Guild have called for a march on the White House on Sept. 15. ANSWER has also declared its support for the UfPJ call for actions on Oct. 27, and has announced a march for San Francisco on that date.

And that's where we stand.

Fidel Castro, in response: "Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and those of presidents who ordered my assassination. The good Lord protected me."

Of the 74 Hamas legislators, 40 are in Israeli prisons.

Roeper: "And yes, we know that when he goes into the Cuban hospital well of course they're going to show how great they are for Michael Moore and his cameras."

Phillips: "Yeah, I don't buy that part about Cuba either."

Here's the video:

By the way, I think I've told this story before, but in any case: many years ago now, during the brief period of the Carter Administration when it was legal to go to Cuba, I was there and got sick. I was immediately treated by a doctor in the hotel, then taken by ambulance to a hospital for more extended examination (nothing serious, as it turned out). All free, no questions asked. Some years later, on my second legal trip to Cuba, I was riding a bike which slipped on some sand on the road and I skinned my elbow. Not only did the hotel doctor (or possibly nurse, I'm not sure what her status was) treat me at no charge, but she even refused my offer of payment to cover the cost of the dressing.

There is one small grain of truth in some of the criticisms of "Sicko" that I've heard, although it isn't really a criticism. While I, as a tourist visiting Cuba, was indeed treated for free, that doesn't mean that you can simply go to Cuba for an operation and expect to get it for free. "Health tourism" is in fact a major business in Cuba, whether paid for by private individuals (like Diego Maradona) going to Cuba for treatment, or by governments on behalf of their own citizens, like the 650,000+ Venezuelans and people from other Latin American and Caribbean countries who have had their sight restored (cataract operations, mostly) in the last few years by Cuban doctors.

Anyway, watch the video and you decide, then take the poll.

Update: YouTube pulled the video for copyright infringement, so if you haven't seen it yet, too late!

After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him.

Today's segment of "The Situation Room" (Wolf Blitzer) dealing with the release suffered the same problem, as did BBC World News, with nary a mention of any other part of the U.S. government other than the CIA. You'd get the idea that the CIA is a rogue agency, operating independently of the White House and Congress. This is complete nonsense. The CIA is an arm of the United States government, just as much as the military and the State Department, and its actions implement the policies of that government. A fact you'll be hard-pressed to know listening to the coverage of this event in the corporate media. Almost as much as you'll be hard-pressed to know that the idea that this document represents the "old" CIA and not the current CIA (and government) is pure bollocks.

Update: The New York Times is now out with its take on the story, which actually includes the following analysis, but not until the 21st paragraph of the story, well below the level at which this information makes it into the "short-attention-span" broadcast media:

Historians have generally concluded that far from being a rogue agency, the C.I.A. was following orders from the White House or top officials. In 1967, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson became convinced that the American antiwar movement was controlled and financed by Communist governments, and he ordered the C.I.A. to produce evidence.

Only two members of the House voted against the resolution, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich. A handful of others voted "present" or didn't vote. All the rest voted for this absurd resolution.

Update: Looking more closely, I find that the expression of fealty to Israel wasn't just implicit, it was explicit: "Reaffirms the strategic U.S.-Israel partnership and reasserts the U.S. commitment to defend Israel's right to exist as a free and democratic state."

Second update: Just learned a lot more from this blog (via Tom Tomorrow):

"There is reasonable doubt with regard to the accuracy of the translations of President Ahmadinejad's words in this resolution. President Ahmadinejad's speeches can also be translated as a call for regime change, much in the same manner the Bush Administration has called for regime change in Iraq and Iran, making this resolution very ironic," Kucinich said.

Kucinich attempted to insert into the Congressional Record two independent translations of the speech from The New York Times and Middle East Media Research Institute, which contain significant differences in the translations of the speech compared to the resolution before the House. However, Members objected formally and the attempt was blocked.

Headlines report "Israel freeing 250 Palestinians in peace gesture." Of course, if you read the fine print, the true story is "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that he would seek cabinet approval for the release of 250 Fatah prisoners held in Israeli jails," so whether it will actually happen or not is still a matter of conjecture. But that's not why I'm writing. It's this:

"As a gesture of goodwill towards the Palestinians, I today announced my intention to release approximately 250 prisoners who are members of Fatah who do not have blood on their hands, with their commitment not to involve themselves again in terror," said Olmert.

Update: One of the rare mainstream reporters who I've praised on several occasions, McClatchy's Dion Nissenbaum, offers a viewpoint which few others in the corporate media will:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a plan to release 250 Palestinian prisoners from Abbas' Fatah party, but hedged the offer with conditions that all but ruled out freedom for any politically prominent detainees. While it will grab many headlines, Olmert's offer fell well short of expectations for a package of goodwill gestures, including lifting roadblocks around the West Bank.

A front-page article yesterday described a crackdown in Iran that has included the jailing of three Iranian-Americans, repression or intimidation of nongovernment organizations pressing for broader legal rights, warnings to newspaper editors against articles on banned topics, arrests of advocates for women’s rights and of student leaders, and the detention of 150,000 people for wearing clothing considered not Islamic.

The headline over the article said that Iran was cracking down on dissent and “parading examples” in the streets, and one paragraph in the article also said that young men detained for wearing tight T-shirts or western-style haircuts had been “paraded bleeding through Tehran’s streets by uniformed police officers.” The Times caption on an official Iranian news agency photograph that ran with the article said that it showed a police officer punishing a young man in public for wearing un-Islamic clothing by forcing him to suck on a plastic container normally used for intimate hygiene, a punishment the article also asserted was for that offense.

But the man in the photograph, according to widespread Iranian news reports, was one of more than 100 people arrested recently on charges of being part of a gang that had committed rapes, robberies, forgeries and other crimes. The caption published on the Web site of the news agency, Fars, had said only that the man was being punished as part of a roundup of “thugs” in a Tehran neighborhood.

The current repression has made reporting in Iran difficult. In this case, The Times relied on an interview with a researcher for a nongovernment agency that no longer operates within Iran who said the photograph was evidence of a more visible police role in public crackdowns on what the authorities consider immoral behavior. The reporter then wrongly interpreted what the researcher said as applying to a crackdown on dress, and incorporated the erroneous interpretation into the body of the article, without giving any indication of the source for it.

These errors could have been avoided with more rigorous editing. The article should not have said that young men had been paraded through the streets for wearing un-Islamic dress, and the headline over it should not have said that dissenters were being paraded as part of the crackdown.

As a test, consider this sentence: "A recent article on the Baztab Web site said that about 8,000 nongovernment organizations were in jeopardy, forced to prove their innocence, basically because the government suspects all of them of being potential conduits for some $75 million the United States has earmarked to promote a change in government." Well, frankly, being the recipient of money from a country which has threatened acts of war (if not as a country, then by many of its prominent politicians) is a suspect act worthy of being investigated. But let's look further. I'd never heard of Baztab, but it appears to be some sort of independent news organization focusing on Iran. But a search on the site for the word "nongovernmental" reveals that the only articles including the word "nongovernmental" (or "NGO") were reprints of articles from papers like the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Christian Science Monitor. I didn't read them all to see if they were the source of this "8,000" number, but it certainly didn't inspire confidence that that sentence had any more factual basis than the one for which the correction was issued.

Caveat lector!

No, instead we reach into the wayback machine, to a time in 1958 when the Tokens were known as Darrell & the Oxfords, and recorded an early doo-wop hit called "Picture in My Wallet." It's definitely not a "gem," but you can hear the echoes of that high-pitched "Lion Sleeps Tonight" sound throughout. In searching for "Picture in My Wallet" with Google, I found a copy of the 45 going for $25 on eBay, so I guess somebody likes it!

"If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that airstrike would have occurred."

The Taliban launched an attack under the cover of darkness and then retreated into the village of Kunjakak in the Grishk district of Helmand. NATO commanders ordered air support, and the result was devastating.

Lt. Col. Mike Smith, a NATO spokesman, said in a written statement that perhaps 30 Taliban insurgents had been killed in the airstrike, adding that while an unknown number of innocents might have lost their lives, the fault was entirely the enemy’s. "In choosing to conduct such attacks in this location at this time, the risk to civilians was probably deliberate," Colonel Smith said. "It is this irresponsible action that may have led to casualties."

MS. PERINO: What I can tell is that these matters are very complex on how you get individuals who are picked up on the battlefield to be taken back by their home countries.

The press corps didn't pick up on this specifically, but for once the reporter (unidentified, but from the feistiness, it could well have been Helen Thomas) did react:

Q What are they charged with? What are they -- what did they do?

MS. PERINO: These are unlawful enemy combatants that intended to harm the United States or other Western civilization --

Q That we have designated -- were they defending their own country?

MS. PERINO: No, I don't think they were. They were intending to hurt innocent people.

Q This isn't a matter of thinking. Do you know?

First, an extremely informative article entitled "The criminalization of mental illness under capitalism," detailing a portion of the U.S. health "care" system which I don't believe makes it into Michael Moore's "Sicko."

Second, an equally informative article by Meteor Blades at Daily Kos on the murder of 43 years ago today of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, which, among other things, recounts the history of terrorism (including murder) against those registering black people to vote in Mississippi and elsewhere, which didn't start with Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

My contribution will be this song, by Darryl Cherney & the Chernobles, entitled "The Ghosts of Mississippi" (from his delightful album "Real American"), which links the events of 1964 to Redwood Summer and the bombing of Cherney and Judi Bari in 1990.

AP: "US may reduce forces in Iraq by spring"
Reuters: "U.S. could cut troops in Iraq next spring"

"I think if everything goes the way it's going now, there's a potential that by the spring we will be able to reduce forces, and Iraq security forces could take over," Odierno said. "It could happen sooner than that. I don't know."

He also cautioned that, because the insurgents in Iraq have proven so resilient and adaptive, making any prediction is risky. "There's so many things that could happen between now and then," he said, referring to next spring.

Reading this story, I couldn't help but thinking of something said the other day on Democracy Now! by Josh Rushing, the Marine made famous by his appearance in the film "Control Room":

"They [reporters covering the Iraq invasion] would ask me before I would go on air live, 'Are there any messages you want to get across today?' Well, yeah. My boss comes straight from the White House, and they have the messages of the day, and so they would give it to us. So I’d say, 'Sure. WMD, regime change, ties with terrorism.' And they go, 'OK. Well, I’ll ask you these questions, so we can get those answers out.'"

But then when it came to creating a new program just for Venezuela, where a range of broadcast and print media far broader than that available in the United States (speaking of mass market media, not small left-wing publications) isn't "democratic" enough for the Democrats (or the Republicans), the very same Nita Lowey immediately endorsed the proposal, and a voice vote was all that was needed for passage.

Hey, I've suddenly had an idea. I think I'll start a new television network and ask Venezuela for $10 million to get it started. Oh yeah, that won't work. Because, just as with the fate of Al Jazeera International, that great "freedom of the press" available in the United States won't actually result in it being shown. When it comes to TV, anyway, that old "freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press" isn't good enough. Now you have to own the cable company as well.

As an aside, it's also an interesting reflection of "democracy" in the United States. Not only has there been, as far as I can tell, no debate in Congress over this (the body which, last I checked, was actually responsible for voting for any money they government spends for any purpose whatsoever), but also the commitment extends over two complete terms of the next President or Presidents, no matter who that might be and how they might feel about military aid to Israel (not that I'm expecting any President elected in the next five years to offer any change in that area). Some "democracy," huh?

"We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building."

According to several officials, and contrary to previous statements, the U.S. military knew there were children at the compound but considered the target of such high value it was worth the risk of potential collateral damage.

That was the active military lying - not much surprise there, really. What about the "retired" part? Appearing in his maiden outing on MSNBC on Countdown tonight, Gen. Wesley Clark had this to say (my transcription):

"It's really hard to know what happens in battle...In this latest case, we don't know if there was misleading or not. It may be just that first reports weren't correct, and by the time they got the special forces guys back in and debriefed them, they realized they had in fact taken a calculated risk of calling in the bombs even though they saw the presence of children in the compound."

And, in the present case, the military spokesperson could have said, "We're still investigating what happened" (and then never follow up on it, following countless precedents) or "As far as we know, no children were seen." But he didn't. He stated categorically that they had watched the compound all day and not seen children. Now again, we don't know that he personally was lying; chances are in fact that he wasn't. But there's no question that the military was lying. And Wes Clark covering up that fact is itself a lie, because this is not some remarkable insight I'm offering, it's just plain common sense.

The Washington Post's William Arkin has some ideas about why they might have been lying. But that doesn't change the fact that they were.

By the way, we'll see how this develops, but as I write this, MSNBC and Arkin (the latter in an online blog, not a news article) are the only ones to report this development in the story.

Update: It's now the next day, and according to a Google News search, not a single other American corporate news organization is yet reporting this development. As compared to, say, when Matt Drudge reports something, and you can count on practically the entire panoply of corporate media quickly reporting, even without confirmation of their own, that "it is being reported that..."

Is the U.S. Army too small?

The Democrats vying to succeed George W. Bush think so. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all promise, if elected, to expand our land forces. Clinton has declared it "past time to increase the end-strength of the Army and Marines." Edwards calls for a "substantial increase." Obama offers hard numbers: His program specifies the addition of 92,000 soldiers.

Leading Republicans concur. John McCain has long advocated a bigger Army. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are now chiming in. Giuliani wants to expand the Army with an additional 10 combat brigades. Romney says that "at least 100,000" more troops are needed.

This bipartisan consensus — which even includes Bush, who recently unveiled his own five-year plan to enlarge the Army and Marine Corps — illustrates the inability or refusal of the political class to grasp the true nature of our post-9/11 foreign policy crisis. Any politician who thinks that the chief lesson to be drawn from the last five years is that we need more Americans toting rifles and carrying rucksacks has learned nothing.

In fact, this enthusiasm for putting more Americans in uniform (and for increasing overall military spending) reflects the persistence of a second consensus to which leading Democrats and Republicans alike stubbornly subscribe.

This second consensus consists of two elements. According to the first element, the only way to win the so-called global war on terrorism, thereby precluding another 9/11, is to "fix" whatever ails the Islamic world. According to the second element, the United States possesses the wherewithal to effect just such a transformation. In essence, by employing American power, beginning with military power, to ameliorate the ills afflicting Islam, we will ensure our own safety.

This is sheer twaddle, as events in Iraq have manifestly shown.

Supporters of mainstream Democrats like Edwards, Obama, and Clinton, will no doubt delude themselves into thinking that those candidates (and others) don't really want a larger military nor are they motivated by the desire to expand U.S. economic might at the point of a gun, but that they're just making such calls so they don't appear "weak" and ruin their chances of being elected. They would be wrong.

Former President Jimmy Carter accused the U.S., Israel and the European Union on Tuesday of seeking to divide the Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas' new government in the West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration's refusal to accept Hamas' 2006 election victory was "criminal."

Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas' moderate Fatah movement.
...
During his speech to Ireland's annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election that Hamas won. He said the vote was "orderly and fair" and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was "shrewd in selecting candidates," whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.

Far from encouraging Hamas' move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.

"That action was criminal," he said in a news conference after his speech.

"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.

Carter said the U.S. and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would "conquer Hamas in Gaza" — but Hamas routed Fatah in the fighting last week because of its "superior skills and discipline."

How isolated is the U.S. (and Israel)? Out of 47 members of the Council, which include a wide variety of U.S. allies such as Germany, Italy, the U.K., France, Japan, Mexico, and others, only a single country, Canada, was willing to vote against the resolution singling out Israel.

As of this moment, the official Department of Defense casualty listing of those who have died in Iraq lists 3528 dead. I'll give them a couple days to catch up (although the latest listing is for yesterday, the day Sgt. Sandoval died), but I seriously doubt we'll see Frank Sandoval's name on that list, even though, as I've pointed out before, some who die outside Iraq do appear (for example, Michael Bechert who died on 6/14/07 in San Antonio, TX). Needless to say, Frank Sandoval's name belongs there as well, along with many, many other American victims of this illegal war and occupation.

By the way, something else I've said before but bears repeating, numbers like "3528" are so hard to grasp. Go to the list of American fatalities (incorrectly labeled "casualties") and just look at your screen. Even with a big screen like I'm using, and a full browser window, the list of casualties you see on the screen without scrolling doesn't even go back past the beginning of June. Every line on that screen, every one of those names, a real person with a real (now gone) life, and with real, devastated family and friends. Then, if you can bear it, think for a minute about the Iraqis, whose list (if it existed) couldn't even fit all the ones who died today on your screen.

Update: The DoD list now does include Frank Sandoval. Maybe they were going to do it anyway, or maybe they read this post and I embarrassed them into doing it. In any case, Frank is dead.

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make do,
Do without.

I think that qualifies as "using it up," don't you?

Do individuals making personal decisions to "live lightly on the land" make a difference? Of course they do. Is that a substitute for activism to force more fundamental changes in the way society operates? Of course not. But as long as the former doesn't detract from the latter, it's a good thing.

Waste not, want not. And the planet will last just a little bit longer at the same time. :-)

Over 20,000 farmers committed suicide in India in response to identical policies [the policies of the WTO which have a destructive impact on small farmers] between 1997 and 2003.

Since I can't really endorse the book yet, having only read one chapter, I'll close with an endorsement from the book frontplate from Cindy Sheehan:

"The Bush Agenda lays out the 'noble cause' for which George Bush asked [Ed. note: and continues to ask] our sons and daughters to give their lives: to open Iraq to U.S. corporate control. All potential military recruits should read this book and then decide if Halliburton and Chevron are worth fighting for."

"The United States would 'resume full assistance to the Palestinian government and normal government to government contacts.'"

Rice did promise (and you know what that's worth) that the U.S. would contribute $40 million to the U.N. to help Palestinians. Meanwhile, the amount the Israeli government has stolen ("withhheld" is the corporate media euphemism) from Palestine has reached nearly 15 times that amount, $562 million. Not a word from Rice demanding that Israel release that money, although Israel says it's "considering" giving back ("releasing") the money. Not for the first time. The "considering" part. Not the actual "giving back" part.

"This is another example of al-Qaeda using the protective status of a mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves."

But think about it for just one second. Another "coalition" spokesperson says:

"If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that airstrike would have occurred."

Update: Lawrence of Cyberia documents Israeli use of real human shields.

I had a TV show on back in the '90s called TV Nation, and one day I just -- I thought it would be interesting to have like a race. So we sent a camera crew to an emergency room in Fort Lauderdale, a camera crew to an emergency room in Toronto, and then one to Havana. And they would each wait until someone came in with a broken arm or a broken leg. And then they were going to follow that person through and see how good the quality of the care was, how fast it was and how cheap it was. And I convinced Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad, sportscasters, to do the play-by-play of what we called the Healthcare Olympics. And so, it was a race between the US, Canada and Cuba. And to make a long story short, Cuba won. They had the fastest care, the best care, and it cost nothing.

We turn the show in to NBC that week, and we get a call from the censor. They're not called "the censor," they're called Standards & Practices. And so, this woman calls. She's the head of Standards & Practices -- Dr. Somebody. I don't know they -- she actually had a "Dr." before her name, but I forget her last name now. But she calls, and she says, "Mike, Cuba can't win." I said, "What?" "Cuba can't win." "Well, they won. What do you mean they can't win? They won." "No, we can't say that on NBC. We can't say that Cuba won." "Well, yeah, but they won! They provided the fastest care. They were the cheapest. And the patient was happy, and the bone got fixed." "No, it's against regulations here." I said, "Oh, well, I'm not changing it."

Well, they changed it. They changed it. Two days later, when it aired, they changed it so that Canada won. And Canada didn't win. Canada almost won, but they charged the guy $15 for some crutches on the way out. So it's bugged me to this day that anybody who saw that episode, you know, where it said, you know, "and Canada won the Healthcare Olympics," and in fact it was Cuba, but that couldn't be said on NBC, because God knows what would happen.

In his book, State of Denial, [Woodward] says that on June 18, 2003, three months after the Iraq war had begun, as he was on the way out of his White House office following an important meeting, Bush slapped Jay Garner on the back and said to him:

"Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?"

"Sir, the boys and I talked about that and we want to hold out for Cuba. We think the rum and the cigars are a little better...The women are prettier."

Bush laughed. "You got it. You got Cuba."

Bush was betrayed by his subconscious. It was in his mind when he declared what scores of dark corners should be expecting to happen and Cuba occupies a special place among those dark corners.

From now on, any politician from President on down claiming "progress" in Iraq is required to visit Iraq and make their itinerary public at least a week in advance. Heck, I won't even require them to walk through public markets without an armed guard or body armor!

Despite opposition from state pension board leaders, the Assembly overwhelming passed an Iran divestment measure by El Cajon Republican Joel Anderson. With an initial 68-0 vote, Assembly Bill 221 heads to the state Senate.

"This is a country looking to pick a war. We can't have our retirement (funds) there," Anderson said.

Back here in the real world, of course, just today we have ex-Vice Presidential candidates of the Democratic Party, and Republican Vice Presidents of the country (and many others), demonstrating the bipartisan nature of U.S. foreign policy by openly calling for war on Iran. And, as they do so, the media helps them along by studiously avoiding any mention of the word "war" in this context. They're only calling for "limited military strikes," don't you know. Launching any military strikes on another country, "limited" or not, is an act of war. But you'd never know it reading the articles about Lieberman or Cheney or any of the other politicians calling for such actions.

Lola, from the Kinks (1970)

But...the difference is that, in the YouTube variant, all the questions will be available online for people to at least view. Which means that a question like that, or one on Palestine, or Cuba, or a host of other issues, if not actually asked of the candidates, will at least have a chance to be heard by a much wider public than reads, say, this blog. Questions have to be less than 30 seconds, but I figure you can put together some nice little video clips framing your question in that time. So get to work! The rules are here.

O'REILLY: Do you care if another bomb if another bomb went off in Tikrit? Does it mean anything? No, it doesn't mean anything.

STEWART: MSNBC actually does not report every bombing in Iraq, but I bet each one at least, at the very least, means something to the families - American, British, or Iraqi - who have to bury their loved ones.

Let me just pause for a second and say something on behalf of the health insurance corporations in America. Our laws state very clearly that they have a legal fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders. If they don't do that, they could be put in jail. They're required by law to turn as big a profit as they can. And the only way that can turn the big profit is to not pay out the money, is to not provide the care. So therefore, there is no way that this can work. There is no way that we can continue to have these health insurance companies making these decisions. Nor should we have private profit-making hospitals making decisions. The hospital that has to make a decision based on the bottom line as to whether or not to provide care, this is absolutely antithetical to human rights. And we're the only country in the western world that doesn't believe it is a human right to provide free universal health coverage for every one of its citizens.
...
What is wrong with us? That’s not who we are, that’s not what we used to be about! This "every man for himself" attitude, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." "You got your problems, I got mine." "Don't bother me." This "Me, me, me." That’s not how they exist in these other countries – in Canada, Britain, Ireland, France, these other places. They believe in "we, we." They believe we're all in the same boat and we sink or swim together. They believe that if too many people fall between the cracks, their society suffers as a result of it. What happened to us? I think we used to believe that somewhere along the line, somewhere way, way back.

Not to mention that both he and I thought that the word "antithetical" was a perfect word to describe the situation. :-)

Massachusetts lawmakers blocked a proposed constitutional amendment Thursday that would have let voters decide whether to ban gay marriage in the only state that allows it.

The proposal, which sought to change the state's Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, needed 50 votes to advance to the 2008 statewide ballot. It got 45, with 151 lawmakers opposed.

"Years of poverty, isolation, and conflict with Israel have all helped to create this situation.
...
"For decades, Palestinians have been brutalized, pushed to the limit. There's a real chance now, that in a land of despair, a land without hope, it will be the gunmen, the extremists, who ultimately rule."

Last week the Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") released its monthly summary of penalties imposed by the agency.

In one case the agency levied a fine of $31,336 and in another the fine was $2800. One of those two cases involved violation of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations and the other involved violation of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Control Regulations. Guess which one got the bigger fine.

If you guessed the Cuba case, you win the cigar (Honduran, of course). Acme Furniture got the $31,336 fine for shipping furniture from China to Cuba. Hecny Transportation got the smaller fine for dealing with goods produced by a foreign person designated under the WMD Control Regulations.

Three of the other cases reported by OFAC involved a perennial favorite of the OFAC enforcement staff: people who buy Cuban cigars over the Internet. One particularly dangerous cigar purchaser was fined $2304, only a few dollars less than it cost Hecny to deal with a designated purveyor of WMD.

"What kind of sick, cruel system is this?...There's no room for the concept of profit when it comes to taking care of people when they're sick. That question, of how this will affect our bottom line, how will it affect our profit, is an immoral question, and it should never be asked. There's no room for compromise here. There's no room for the health insurance company in an emergency room. There's no room for a health insurance company in a hospital room. There's no room for them in the executive headquarters of their own companies, because I believe that we have to eliminate the private health insurance companies from our health care system. We have to get of them once and for all. It's time for them to go."

But getting people thinking about the question with respect to health care alone is a good start!

The numbers are staggering:

The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states - six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.

The chemical agents could pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones and none in the past 30 years.

The Army can't say exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.

The Army's secret ocean-dumping program spanned decades, from 1944 to 1970.

(Hat tip Skippy)

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday..."military detention of al-Marri must cease." Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it would ask the full Fourth Circuit to rehear the case, which could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

If "justice delayed is justice denied," what is "injustice delayed"? Even greater injustice, that's what. While the courts dither, and take years to make rulings, Mr. al-Marri continues to rot in jail. Who will give him his life back when and if he's finally set free? Who will give the Cuban Five their lives back, should they ever be set free?

"The military...exists for one purpose and that’s to apply state violence."

Incidentally, do you suppose the Swiss military, or the Cuban military, or many others, would describe their role as "applying state violence"? No, only a member of the ruling class of an imperialist power would do so.

On to gays in the military. In the Republican debate, Rudy Giuliani ("at a time of war, you don’t make fundamental changes like this") and Mitt Romney ("this is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment, in the middle of a war going on") said something almost identical to what Colin Powell said yesterday:

"Don’t ask, don’t tell" was an appropriate response to the situation back in 1993. And the country certainly has changed. I don’t know that it has changed so much that this would be the right thing to do now. My successor, General Shalikashvili has written a letter about this. He thinks it has changed sufficiently. But he ends his letter by saying, "We’re in a war right now, and let’s not do this right now." I will not second-guess the commanders who are serving now, just as I didn’t want to be second-guessed 12 or 13 years ago. But I think the country is changing. We may eventually reach that point. I’m not sure.

"The invasion of (Iran) is only going to destabilize that part of the world more," [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid said on Monday after speaking at a forum hosted by the Center for American Progress think tank.

"I know Joe means well, but I don't agree with him," the Nevada Democrat added.

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

But that's simply not true. As noted here, one of the most ominous and dramatic claims, the mobile biological weapons labs (a.k.a. "Winnebagoes of death"), came from a single source (Curveball), and now it turns out that Powell was being told by the CIA as recently as the night before the speech to leave that point out.

But in the end, it's all nonsense. Because, to repeat a series of excerpts I posted here, here are some of the "facts" presented by Powell at the U.N.:

"While we were here in this Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.

"Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

"We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile, biological agent factories.

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.

"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons." [Emphasis added]

Colin Powell was lying then, and when he says this on Meet the Press, he's lying still:

"The information was faulty, but it wasn’t faulty because people in the intelligence community were lying or trying to deceive. It was faulty because intelligence sometimes can be faulty, and it wasn’t managed properly, it wasn’t processed properly and we should have realized the inadequacy of some of our sourcing earlier. But it wasn’t venal behavior on the part of the intelligence community."

And, just a reminder - the man who told the truth to Powell's lies, Iraqi General Amer al-Saadi, continues to rot in jail to this day, and still has not been charged with any crime.

In his meeting with Bush, the Vatican said the pope raised "the worrisome situation in Iraq."

Bush (who, I emphasize, is hardly an unimpeachable source), clarified just what the Pope's "worries" are:

"He was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion," Bush explained at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi during the president's swing through Europe.

"He's worrisome about the Christians inside Iraq being mistreated by the Muslim majority."

Incidentally, I wonder if the Pope asked Bush about the fate of one particular Christian (albeit not a Catholic [Ed. note - see comments; apparently he is a Catholic]) - Tariq Aziz, last seen more than a year ago and still rotting away in prison, having been convicted of...nothing.

On a lighter note, Fidel Castro reminds us that, going into the meeting, Bush had claimed that he and the Pope "share a 'common respect for human life and human dignity.'" Of course Bush was referring to unborn life; his "respect" for human life knows no bounds -- no lower bounds.

And the press coverage as the trial of an actual terrorist reached fruition? Identical to that leading up to it - the guilty plea has been mentioned in two local papers, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and the Press-Enterprise. Period. It seems likely a slap on the wrist, and little more than time served, or perhaps another year or two, will be his fate.

Labels: Robert Ferro

"Well, this is a very important issue. This is a very, very important — a man’s life is at stake."

Has Rudy Giuliani, or any of the right-wingers pushing for a pardon for Libby, or any of the news people now spending time worrying about the justice (or lack thereof) of a 45-day sentence for Paris Hilton, ever uttered a sympathetic word about how "a man's life is at stake" when it comes to the cases of the Cuban Five, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Tookie Williams, or any of the countless other victims of the American "justice" system?

Giuliani, and all the other right-wing defenders of Libby, keep talking (incorrectly) about how "there was no underlying crime involved." Are they aware that the Cuban Five were convicted of "conspiracy to commit espionage" despite never having performed any act of espionage or even attempted espionage? Not a single classified document or piece of information was in their possession, yet they were convicted of "conspiracy to commit espionage." Talk about "no underlying crime!" Yet these men are in jail not for 30 months (not that I think Libby will serve anything like that, if anything at all), but for a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of double life!

Free the Cuban Five! Free Leonard Peltier! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! And, hell, free Paris Hilton too. Her sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment...to the American public who will be denied "news" of her partying for a full month and a half! Can't have that.

Update: Politics in the Zeros reminds us what happened when another famous woman, Martha Stewart, went to prison.

It's a question that came to mind when I read this op-ed from Los Angeles Times staff writer Tony Perry. It starts like this:

Under a sweltering Iraqi sky, the general asked for questions from his troops. Many were reluctant, but one stepped forward.

Marine Lance Cpl. Jack Kessel, 19, of Raleigh, N.C., asked about something that had been gnawing at him as he and his buddies go about the business of winning hearts and minds in Al-Anbar province.

"How are we supposed to fight a war when people back home say we've already lost?" he asked.

Before we read any further, though, isn't it obvious that there's more here than meets the eye. For starters, how many Marines, even ones capable of facing death of a daily basis, would have the courage to stand up publicly in front of a General and say, "When are we getting out of this shithole?" Not many.

Later on, the reporter shares his conclusion from five trips to Iraq:

After my fifth trip to Iraq to report on Marines, I've concluded that, at least among Marines, morale remains high - high not despite the public's disaffection with the war but possibly because of it. The declining poll numbers and rising political upheaval appear to have driven Marines closer together.

But there's more. Despite the reporter's claim about Marine morale and the quote which leads off the article, not until the 15th paragraph, 2/3 of the way through the article, do we read this:

In my many discussions with Marines, Lance Cpl. Kessel was one of the few who raised the issue of support for the war.

The irony is that this op-ed article appeared in my local paper on the very same paper that this article, about the death of a soldier from the area, appeared, carrying the headline: "Friend says slain soldier's faith in war was waning." We read:

Arnie Becker, a longtime friend of the family who knew [Army Sgt. Andrew Higgins, a Hayward soldier who died Tuesday while fighting in Iraq] since birth said Higgins fully supported the invasion of Iraq during the beginning of the war. But as time went on, he became deeply concerned that the war "was only fermenting the insurgency and creating needless deaths of both Americans and Iraqis," Becker said Higgins told family and friends.

• Richard Gott in the The Guardian says "The battle over the media is about race as well as class. The protests in Venezuela are motivated by more than a TV station. The oligarchy fears it is losing its right to run the country."
• Gloria La Riva on pslweb.org writes about how "the counterrevolution will not be televised," and how the real issue is not "freedom of the press" but "whether the Venezuelan people have the right to defend their revolution from being overthrown; whether they have the right to stop another fascist counterrevolution from being fomented over the airwaves."

Update: By the way, I didn't mean to imply that the music referenced in the article (or hip-hop in general) wasn't any good, or even that it wasn't to my taste. Only that I'm totally unfamiliar with it, so that if you're like me, this article might prove a good starting point.

Missing dog case probed as terrorist incident
Sheriff's deputies are investigating a missing golden retriever in the Santa Cruz Mountains as a possible terrorist incident after finding animal rights group propaganda where the dog was last seen.

Randy Chapel got home from a two-week trip to Europe last week and reported his dog missing, his garage door bowed and the lock busted, and an unusual sticker pasted to the side door of the garage.

The sticker - "Abuse an animal, go to jail" - piqued the interest of two sheriff's deputies trained as terrorist liaison officers, who said the incident could be the work of fringe activists not happy about how the dog was treated.

I'm treating this lightly, but this is no joking matter. Across the nation, people are being terrorized by this kind of behavior. Of course, the "people" I'm referring to in that sentence are activists, being terrorized by the possibility of many extra years in jail for minor crimes. Stephanie McMillan had a suggestion about ways to counter this trend in Minimum Security just two days ago:

By 1974, just five years later, there had already been enough movement that bills were being introduced (but not yet passed) in state legislatures to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. By the end of that year, Elaine Noble (left) had become the first open gay or lesbian elected to a state legislature in the country (as it happens, I was one of the key people who worked on that campaign - the one and only Democrat I've ever worked for, although I didn't actually vote for her, since I didn't live in her district). Barney Frank, incidentally, was already in the Massachusetts State House at the time, but in the closet; his sister, Ann Lewis (who was a top aide to Boston Mayor Kevin White), played a major role in Elaine's campaign.

But, while there were lots of things like this happening across the country, a major turning point was reached 30 years ago today, which is explored by Saul Kanowitz in the latest issue of Socialism and Liberation Magazine. Earlier that year, the Dade County (FL) government had passed an ordinance protecting LGBT people from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. Into the fray came Anita Bryant, the well-known Miss America runner-up and spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, who led a campaign to overturn that ordinance. And on June 7, 1977, the right-wing campaign she led was successful, and the ordinance was thrown out.

But the first battle doesn't always tell the story of the war. Because, even though many defeats were still to come, it was, as Kanowitz recounts, that battle in Dade County which really helped tear the doors off the closets and unleash the full force of the gay rights movement, with effects being felt until this very moment.

To accompany Kanowitz's very worthwhile article, here's a real treat - Charlie King's "Thank You Anita" from 1979, which you can listen to here:

Labels: Music

40 years later, Israel still struggling

The plight of the Palestinians? The article does deal with it, but not until the 13th paragraph: "Forty years into the occupation, the Palestinians are ground down, their hopelessness worsened by an international aid embargo imposed after Hamas' rise to power."

You won't be surprised to learn that although the word "occupation" appears in the article, the word "oppression" (or any variant thereof) does not.

But since then, discussion of the relationship of oil to the invasion and occupation of Iraq is mostly the province of leftists and the odd enlightened liberal like Dennis Kucinich. So how surprised the readers of the San Jose Mercury News must have been to read this op-ed by labor reporter David Bacon in this morning's paper, headlined "Iraqi unions fight to keep oil out of corporate hands." Iraqi unions? Who knew?

Certainly not the readers of the corporate media. The article's nexus is the appearance next Sunday of two Iraqi union leaders at a meeting in San Jose. So I did a search for "Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions." Despite the centrality of oil to Iraq (remember Paul Wolfowitz talking about how Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction" with oil money), there is exactly one article that Google could find mentioning the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions in the corporate media - an article about Kucinich in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Outside of that, nothing.

I'll let you read the article for yourself, but here are a few excerpts:

The Bush administration calls the Iraq occupation an exercise in democracy building. Yet from the beginning, many of the Iraqis who want democracy most are treated as its enemies - Iraq's unions.
...
Together with other unions in railroads, hotels, ports, schools and factories, they've gone on strike, held elections, won wage increases, and made democracy a living reality. Yet the Bush administration, and the Baghdad government it controls, has outlawed collective bargaining, impounded union funds and turned its back (or worse) on a wave of assassinations of Iraqi union leaders.

President Bush doesn't believe what he preaches. He says he wants democracy, yet he will not accept the one political demand that unites Iraqis above all others: They want the country's oil (and its electrical power stations, ports and other key facilities) to remain in public hands.

The fact that Iraqi unions are the strongest voice demanding this makes them anathema. Selling the oil off to large corporations is far more important to the Bush administration than a paper commitment to the democratic process.

And I remind readers that the Democrats are some of those insisting the most loudly that Iraq agree to the proposed oil law as a condition for ending the occupation.

Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.

And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

Before I start, one note on Wolf Blitzer and CNN (and, make no mistake, although citizens were "asking" questions during the second half of the debate, they were pre-selected by CNN, which means they were as much CNN questions as the first half): in four hours of debate (2@ for the Democrats and Republicans), the word "Palestine" was not mentioned once, despite its obvious centrality to everything going on in the Middle East. "Israel" was mentioned once in the Democratic debate, and five times in the Republican debate, but only by candidates, never in a question, and always almost in passing in references to "our allies," never in any kind of actual discussion of the situation. "Lebanon" was mentioned once briefly in an answer in the Democratic debate, never in the Republican one. Sure, they didn't have time to discuss every subject, but Wolf certainly found time to make the pressing questions of "English as the official language of the U.S." and "belief in evolution" central "discussions" in both debates. Israel/Palestine/Lebanon? Not important enough, obviously. Cuba, another matter on which the next President might actually have something important to say or do, particularly given the attention given to the "succession" in Cuba? Not one word in either debate.

On to what was said. First, the only decent thing said all night - Ron Paul's answer to the (somewhat bizarre, but typical) question, "What is the most pressing moral issue facing this country today?" Paul's answer: "I think it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war." But Paul the great "libertarian"? Forget it. "Don't ask don't tell" is a "decent policy" according to Paul (and every other Republican candidate). Build a fence across the U.S.-Mexican border? He's for it, among other things, to enforce border security (as if more terrorists have snuck across the U.S.-Mexican border than the U.S.-Canada border). The "liberty" of individuals" in Paul's world evidently doesn't allow them the liberty to live wherever they want. Roe v. Wade? That Supreme Court ruling "ruined it for the whole country." Yes, how unfortunate that states no longer have the ability to ban abortions. Apparently "libertarianism" only applies to the relationship of the national government to the individual (or perhaps only to the relationship of the national government to the states), and not to the relationship of state governments to the individual. Some libertarian.

As for the rest, their hypocrisy was most evident when it came to discussions of capitalism. No, that word wasn't mentioned, god forbid, but it certainly came up. For example, when the candidates were asked "do you have a problem at this time with these oil companies making these huge profits?" Responses? John McCain: "Sure, I think we all do. And they ought to be reinvesting it." Romney: "With regards to big oil, big oil is making a lot of money right now, and I’d like to see them using that money to invest in refineries." Gov. Gilmore [Ed. note: who?]: "I agree that if you make profits in the open marketplace that that’s an appropriate thing to do. I also believe that they should be going in, putting this additional money into additional drilling, into additional exploration." In fact, under capitalism, not reinvesting the money in refineries limits supply and increases profits, so not only are companies wise to follow that course, they might even be obligated to do so and could be sued by their shareholders if they didn't.

Or consider this answer from Tom Tancredo on whether conservatives can be conservationists:

REP. TANCREDO: Yeah. The — I think that that’s absolutely imperative, and I think so because frankly, you’ve got a conservative model to pick from. I mean, you know, Teddy Roosevelt after all put the stamp on that — the whole issue of conserving the environment, creating the national parks system. There is nothing anti- conservative about doing anything like that.

And you know what else you can do in order to foster that, you do it through conservative principles. You make it profitable for people to do exactly that — to put — to make conservation an issue that is — it hurts people in the pocketbook, or they can profit by getting involved in conservation. That’s one way the free market really works perfectly. We’ve seen it happen all over the world.

Every single candidate asked ducked the question of why Americans can buy drugs less expensively in Canada or Spain than in the United States; they all wanted to talk about their solutions for health insurance. Duncan Hunter did claim it was all about American companies reclaiming the R&D investment from Americans who can afford it, rather than Mexicans who can't. That's not true (most of their budgets that need "reclaiming" go into advertising and marketing, not R&D), but even if it were, his answer "we need to be able to buy our health care insurance across state lines," is just bizarre, and has nothing to do with lowering the cost of drugs.

And as to why the Republicans lost in 2006? You'll hear a lot of answers, but you'll search hard for anyone acknowledging that it had anything to do with Iraq.

And the final hypocrisy? Interminable talk about faith and Jesus Christ, mixed in with talk of "not taking any options off the table" with specific reference to launching an unprovoked nuclear bomb on Iran. That's some "faith" you've got there, guys.

Update: I forgot my favorite moment, Tom Tancredo claiming that "Bilingual countries don’t work." Really, Tom? Been to Switzerland lately? Canada? Belgium? Which "bilingual country" that "doesn't work" did you have in mind, exactly?

Of course, there was also Mitt Romney claiming that Iraq had not allowed in IAEA inspectors. Shades of George Bush, and just like George, no one called him on it. Not the other candidates, and not Wolf Blitzer. Romney even repeated it twice, just to see if anyone was paying attention! Evidently, they weren't.

Update 2: For those looking for more material on Ron Paul and what he really stands for, either to read yourself or to pass on to friends who might be infatuated with him, I recommend this Daily Kos diary as a good source.

Update 3: From the comments, a link to another hilarious debate pseudo-transcript.

Highly recommended.

And, as a companion piece, listen to David Rovics' powerful (lyrically and musically) "Occupation" (below). Particularly powerful is the progression of words in the chorus of the song:

And if peace is what you're after then let us not deceive
It will come on the day the tanks return to Tel Aviv

...It will come on the day the settlers return to Tel Aviv

...It will come on the day the jailguards return to Tel Aviv

...It will come on the day the refugees return to Tel Aviv

Labels: Music

Update: And while we're pushing humor...Creature Comforts, one of the funniest shows ever (based on seeing one episode).

Update 2: This is not from the series. It is footage from the series, redubbed by a YouTuber, with voices you'll instantly recognize:

"The reason we have no moral authority [in Darfur] is we're not acting. I heard the same argument with Milosevic. I went over there, found out there was genocide going on, I came to your husband, I said, 'We must act!' Now, look, we acted. Not an American was killed. We saved hundreds of thousands of lives."

And finally, the nonsense about "saving hundreds of thousands of lives," hand-in-hand with the equally specious claim about "genocide going on." As with the claims about mass graves in Iraq (not to mention claims about WMD in Iraq), claims about deaths in Kosovo before the U.S./NATO air assault were exaggerated by several orders of magnitude, and again, as with Iraq, virtually all of those deaths were the result of a civil war, not actual "genocide." Far from the fanciful notion that the U.S./NATO bombing "saved hundreds of thousands of lives," available evidence is that the bombing produced a net loss of life, a loss which continues to this day

Why do I single out this comment? Because this "performance" by Biden is being widely singled out in the media as having "distinguished" Biden (and they mean it in a good way, naturally). Fact-checking on what he had to say? You won't find it there; the alleged noble motives of American foreign policy are part of the very air that the corporate media breathe.

By the way, for a very informative discussion about Darfur, listen to or read the transcript (only partially online as I write this) of this morning's Democracy Now, featuring a professor from Columbia. Let me reproduce just one thought-provoking comment:

I was struck by the fact -- because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about sort of violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians, and there are two places that I read about -- one is Iraq, and the other is Darfur -- sort of constantly, day after day, and week after week. And I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq. And it puzzles me, because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens, and I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government's policies.

I offer this as a necessary antidote for those who watched, and recommended viewing for those candidates:

OK, I got the idea for this from a similar bit I heard on KPFA today. So sue me for plagiarism. Hey, it was my own 45 from 1960 that got digitized, straight off the "Madison" label.

Correction: Alley Oop was not sung by Dante & the Evergreens. It was sung by Danté and the Evergreens. As you can tell if you look at the label. If you have the record. Because you will not find that information online. Except here, of course. You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about the group online. Just not the correct spelling of their name. :-)

Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has awakened to the importance of developing evacuation plans that take pets into account. Cuba builds an extra measure into the island's emergency planning: Not only are pets sheltered in the face of an approaching storm, provision also is made for packing up and moving refrigerators, televisions and other hard-won possessions.

At the last minute, Washington injected a Cold-War touch by canceling permission for U.S. hurricane specialist Lixion Avila, a federal employee, to participate. Avila had flown from Miami to Dallas and was waiting for a connecting flight to Monterrey when State Department officials ordered him back to Miami.

"They told me the meeting was too political," Avila said in an e-mail message to The Times-Picayune. "They gave me no more information. I had to return, unfortunately."

State Department officials were unable to explain the reason for the order, other than to point to policy statements posted on the agency's Web site.

The location was chosen as a way around severe restrictions imposed by Havana and Washington on official exchanges between the two countries.

Rubiera confirmed that...Cuban meteorologists have had a difficult time attending some international hurricane conferences or other scientific meetings in the United States because of U.S. restrictions.

Cuba also allows flights of hurricane chase planes over the island, although it requires advance clearance of flight paths through its diplomatic service for each trip made by the Air National Guard planes that do much of the flying.

Here's the coverage:

Update: Looking at press coverage is informative. In yesterday's Washington Post, a major article by their own reporter, Juan Forero, carries the headline (and subject matter) "Protests in Venezuela Reinvigorate Opposition" (that refers to the anti-government protests, of course, not the one yesterday). Meanwhile, only an AP article, which may have not even run in the print edition, carries the news of the pro-government demonstration. It describes the attendance as "thousands," but gives no indication (as even FOX News did!) that it was much bigger than the anti-government demonstrations which preceded it. The New York Times carries only the AP article (again, possibly not even in the print edition), and my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, which like most has been regularly covering the anti-government demonstrations, has nothing at all on this one.

Blogger has struck again, and decided that I run a spam blog. It may be days before they let me back in. I can't post, but I have limited control over the template, so for the time being I'll post on my archives blog, and leave links to those posts in the right-hand column of WIIIAI. The problem is that RSS users, which amount to at least 10% and for all I know half of our readers, will never see that.

But a pretty high percentage of my readers also read your blog. Could you post a notice asking my RSS readers to check the actual site and follow the links to new posts? Thanks.

The celebrity governor known for his love of premium cigars was headed to the Ottawa airport Wednesday when his motorcade made a detour to a hotel. There, Schwarzenegger picked up a Cuban Partagas cigar in a shop, with the $14.83 bill paid by an aide traveling with him, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported.

Americans convicted of violating trade regulations can be sentenced to fines or prison, but it wasn't clear Friday if a U.S. citizen had ever been prosecuted for lighting a Cuban cigar in another country. Cuban cigars are imported into Canada legally.

"Persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction are prohibited from purchasing or importing Cuban cigars, regardless of where they are," U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said in a statement.

Criminal penalties for violation of the Regulations range up to $1,000,000 in fines for corporations, $250,000 for individuals and up to 10 years in prison. Civil penalties of up to $65,000 per violation may be imposed by OFAC.

I made a (very weak) joke in the last paragraph, but this is no joke. From the very regulations we're talking about, here's one of the qualifiers about prohibited items: "is made or derived in whole or in part of any article which is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba." And what does that mean? It means, for example, that steel made with Cuban nickel can't be imported into the United States (or even purchased by an American company and used to construct a building abroad). Which is just one of the very real aspects of the deadly serious economic warfare which the U.S. has been conducting against Cuba for nearly 50 years. Other recent manifestations of the blockade are discussed here. In all, Cuba has calculated that the blockade has cost them more than $80 billion dollars over the years.

Since "genocide" is much in the news, readers might want to go back and take a look at an article Ricardo Alarcón (President of the Cuban National Assembly) published in CounterPunch last year. In it, he revealed something rather interesting about the origins of the blockade - a U.S. State Department document from 1960, detailing U.S. policy:

"The majority of Cubans support Castro. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. It follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. It should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government".

The media are having a laugh at Arnold's expense, but the blockade of Cuba is no joke.

(And while we're mentioning Ricardo Alarcón, be sure to check out the 12-minute interview he gave to Wolf Blitzer yesterday, in which he calls for "regime change" in the United States and much more.)

The most interesting thing I found by far in searching the web for information about Meg and the song was this lesson plan for a high school course in women's liberation, which includes an entire lesson (scroll down to Lesson #3) which involves listening to "Ode to a Gym Teacher" and then discussing its lyrics and lesbianism. The lesson plan, interestingly enough, was written by a man.

This version of the song was recorded live at the Full Moon Coffeehouse in San Francisco, according to the album. The first half of the recording is Christian bantering with the audience, telling the story behind the song, which is half the fun of listening to it. Which you can do by clicking here.

Labels: Music

But 157,000 jobs added in a month isn't "job growth at all," any more than a 4% raise in a year that inflation is 4% is "income growth." The fact is that 157,000 is almost exactly the break-even point at which job growth matches population growth. It does mean that things aren't getting worse (i.e., there aren't enough new jobs for all the new job seekers), but it certainly doesn't imply things are getting better either.

But you'd have no clue to any of that reading the press reports about this "rebounding" and "healthy" economy.

Actually capturing a suspect and trying them for their crimes? How very quaint a notion.

And now (hat tip Cursor) the film is online for viewing for those of you who haven't yet seen it. It may not be the "big screen" experience, but the information is just as valuable. If you haven't seen it, now's your chance.

You can endorse the proposal here.

The artists, Jade and Sarsaparilla (Janet Hood and Linda Langford), are so obscure they don't even have a Wikipedia entry (now that's obscure these days!); this site selling old albums was one of the few references to them on the entire Internet (the others were playlists from lesbian radio shows). Their collaborator, who wrote or co-wrote many of the songs on their album (including "She's That Kind of Woman"), was Bill Russell. He has had a longer and more illustrious career, including Tony nominations and being the writer of the "official anthem of the Gay Games."

I was lucky enough to hear Jade and Sarsaparilla perform live on Cape Cod (where they were based) back in '67, which is presumably where I bought the album (their only album). Here's your chance to enjoy it.

And for bonus political content, we note that just yesterday, New Hampshire became the fourth state in the U.S. to allow same-sex civil unions. As the article notes, it was only in 1987, certainly not that long ago, that the same state legislature had outlawed same-sex marriages. Things can and do change.

Update: And in today's news, California has just changed its regulations (in response to a lawsuit) and become the first state to allow conjugal visits for gay and lesbian prisoners (registered domestic partners only).

Labels: Music