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Race
The browning of America "Without race, we wouldn't have music, movies, prisons, politics, history, libraries, colleges, private conversations, motives. Dorothy Dandridge. Bill Clinton," writes essayist and journalist Richard Rodriguez in "Brown: The Last Discovery of America." And yet Rodriguez wants nothing more than to undermine race and usher in the idea of a "brown" -- impure, indistinct and contradictory -- America. For Rodriguez, the Catholic gay son of Mexican immigrants, "Only further confusion can save us."
"Confusion" might not be what readers are looking for when trying to make sense out of race and ethnicity. But "Brown," for the most part, is an optimistic, often romantic collection of essays that reflects what's already happening in America: A significant number of Americans define themselves as Hispanic, which, Rodriguez points out, is not a race. Americans continue to melt into each other, despite the census classifications and affirmative action programs that intend to deepen color lines.
Tom Tomorrow Tom Tomorrow is not only a fine cartoonist, he is a fine blogger. If you enjoy the This Modern World cartoon, you may like the This Modern World blog. A very long post about very little As readers of this space, you are undoubtedly informed and concerned, aware of all that is going on in our troubled world today and eager for new insight, insight which enriches your understanding and challenges your preconceptions, bringing that which only scant moments before seemed inchoate and incomprehensible into sudden and sharp focus, like that moment when the Nude Descending a Staircase peers out at you from a canvas of random, angular brushwork and gives you a saucy wink before continuing on her perpetually frozen journey. Yes, there are many things of which to speak, of ships and shoes and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings--though of course, that's one of those great misused quotations, by which the writer graciously invites the reader to join him on a grand journey of discovery, leaving aside that the Walrus is speaking to the Oysters, whom he plans soon to eat for lunch. Pray join me, gentle reader, says the writer and then cackles maniacally--bwaah ha ha ha ha! (Peripherally related to this is the bumper sticker which reads, "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers-- William Shakespeare," as if the Bard himself were advocating the mass extermination of the legal profession. And don't even get me started on that Star Trek movie in which the Klingon Chancellor raises a toast to "the undiscovered country...the future!"--as if Hamlet's soliloquy is, in fact, an optimistic meditation on the glorious if unknowable days which lay ahead for us all, and not a contemplation of suicide.) Ah, but we seem to have lost our way on this morning's winding path , as we make our way toward our ultimate destination--our own undiscovered country, if you will--the topic of gravity and importance we will contemplate together, in this shared journey of ours, before settling down on the beach for a well deserved lunch break.
I refer, of course, to The Bachelor.
Intelligence "(A cell of) rice appears to contain about 50,000 genes, compared with about 35,000 for humans." - The Wall Street Journal, April, 2002
HUMANS INSIST THEY ARE NOT DUMBER THAN RICE Word that genetic researchers have discovered a cell of rice contains more genes than a human cell has caused widespread outrage as people across the globe attempt to prove that humans are easily as smart as a grain of rice. In Edmonton, Canada, 34-year-old Alan Snigget was one of many average humans who devised intelligence tests to discredit the implication that rice is more evolved. The postal worker began by taping a grain of rice to a brick wall — "but lightly, so it could move if it had to" — then hopping behind the wheel of his 1994 Dodge pickup truck. After honking several times to give fair warning, Snigget drove at high speed directly into the rice. According to eyewitnesses, however, the rice never moved.
Said one Edmonton police officer who observed the scene: "Stupid rice."
Quantative analysis and the display of quantitive information David Chandler has a couple of excellent essays that visually demonstrate a couple of important points. What Happened in the Jenin Refugee Camp?
Abstract: Aerial photographs were posted on the Israel Defenses Forces web site as evidence that the destruction in the Jenin refugee camp was on a small scale, incompatible with claims that there was a massacre. However, measurement of the area of destruction shown in the same photographs, compared with the population density of the camp, actually lends credibility to claims by Palestinians (and many international observers) that hundreds of people were killed. thanks to Cursor ---------- Through teaching introductory astronomy over the years I have come to realize that most people cannot distinguish the relative sizes of millions and billions.
Big numbers aren't just for astronomers. If you can't understand big numbers you can't understand the economy and you will be at the mercy of propaganda mills when you walk into the voting booth.
We hear about the Israeli settlements but there has not been any coherent reporting on just how the settlements fit into Israeli plans. This is a series of articles that shows how the Israelis have planned against the formation of a Palestinian state. They show clearly that the Israelis have never intended to end the occupation but only intend to continually strangle the Palestinians. These articles show, in graphic and pictorial detail, why Arafat was right to turn Barak down.
The Politics of Verticality None of us have a coherent mental map of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Architect Eyal Weizman explains why. We’re missing verticality. In this series of articles and photo-essays (published daily over a week) he paints the extraordinary, three-dimensional battle over the West Bank: from settlements to sewage, archaeology to Apaches.
 Weizman introduces the experience of territory in the West Bank, which explodes simple political boundaries and “crashes three-dimensional space into six dimensions – three Jewish and three Arab”. Since the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip, a colossal project of strategic, territorial and architectural planning has lain at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The landscape and the built environment became the arena of conflict. Jewish settlements – state-sponsored islands of ‘territorial and personal democracy’, manifestations of the Zionist pioneering ethos – were placed on hilltops overlooking the dense and rapidly changing fabric of the Palestinian cities and villages. ‘First’ and ‘Third’ Worlds spread out in a fragmented patchwork: a territorial ecosystem of externally alienated, internally homogenised enclaves located next to, within, above or below each other. New and intricate frontiers were invented, like the temporary borders later drawn up in the Oslo Interim Accord, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control over isolated territorial ‘islands’, but Israel retained control over the airspace above them and the sub-terrain beneath. This process might be described as the ‘politics of verticality’. It began as a set of ideas, policies, projects and regulations proposed by Israeli state- technocrats, generals, archaeologists, planners and road engineers since the occupation of the West Bank, severing the territory into different, discontinuous layers. A new understanding of territory had to be developed to govern the West Bank. The Occupied Territories were no longer seen as a two-dimensional surface, but as a large three-dimensional volume, layered with strategic, religious and political strata.
 Two-dimensional maps, fundamental to the understanding of political borders, have been drawn again and again for the West Bank. Each time they have failed to capture its vertical divisions. episode 3: HILLS AND VALLEYS OF THE WEST BANK
 Mountains play a special part in Zionist holiness. The settlers’ surge into the folded terrain of the West Bank and up to its summits combines imperatives of politics and spirituality. Six more articles to come. ---------- An excellent compendium of articles on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Research Guide to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict thanks to BookNotes
Fireworks
Thanks for checking out my site. I have 362 labels available to see and download. Most are from my personal collection, although some have been loaned to me so that I could share them. Thanks to James Luckett at consumptive.org and also thanks to James for sharing is childhood escpades with exploding materials.
Periodic Table Somehow I made it through High School and University without ever taking Chemistry. But, even though the only chemistry I had was in 8th grade General Science, I have always thought that the periodic table was a thing of beauty. Here is one that is even more beautiful than usual. The Visual Elements Periodic Table And a little explanation of the history behind the periodic table for the chemically challenged like myself. What is the Periodic Law and how was it formulated? both thanks to rebecca's pocket
Nitey Nite It's almost 1:30 in the morning and I have to meet a customer at 7:15 this morning so I'd better cut this shit short and retire for the evening. I still need to make a post over at American Samizdat and order some Polacolor. I'll be back later today. So many links to share. Until then, get thee over to Ethel the Blog. Steve is just brimming with meaty links. And don't forget Craig at BookNotes. More thought provoking links. Actually, the links will mostly just piss you off.
Ancestors
 Fossil sheds light on early mammals A mouse-like fossil found in north-eastern China has been identified as the earliest known member of the family of mammals whose descendents include humans.
The small, furry creature lived at the same time that dinosaurs ruled the surface of the earth, 125 million years ago. thanks to plep
Environment Marine organisms ride plastic, threaten ecosystems Marine organisms traveling on flotillas of discarded plastic and other human-made rubbish are invading Antarctica and tropical islands and threatening native species, a marine biologist said Wednesday. Armies of barnacles, mollusks, sea worms, and corals are hitching rides on floating debris and moving into new areas where they can endanger native species and drastically change fragile ecosystems. Antarctica, the Seychelles, Madagascar, and areas which have the most endemic species are most at risk from the invaders.
"Rubbish at sea is much more dangerous than we had previously assumed. The problem of dumping at sea has got to be addressed," said David Barnes, a marine biologist at the British Antarctic Survey. The debris has doubled the spread of alien species in the subtropics and more than tripled it at high latitudes. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
Critters
Come explore familiar and unexpected views of the microscopic world with these colorized images from electron microscopes at the University of Hawaii. thanks to plep
Quote of the Week This is from Ethel the Blog This week's quote is one that was apparently allowed out of the White House propaganda ministry because they thought it would evoke sympathy. Talk about tin ears. "When my son is mad at me and he looks at me and says, 'Mom, don't spin me,' it just hurts me." Karen Hughes, the White House communications chief who's moving back to Texas
Sometimes it doesn't rain but what it fucking pours. After spending the last month making proposals, and having people decide they didn't want a web site after all, I have two existing customers that want major redesigns of their sites. "If I had wanted it tomorrow, I would have asked for it tomorrow." It's not quite that bad, but they do need them soon. And several potential customers that are expressing interest. On top of that, my budget medium format 17 megapixel camera system is coming together. I ordered a little soft box for my Vivitar 283 and picked up a Polaroid back which will be wonderful for testing exposure and lighting. Five rolls of Fuji NPH 120 400 Professional roll film are on there way and I now will need to order some Polacolor. My first use of this will doing some product photography on one of the site redesigns. I'm jazzed. So many links. So little time.
Globalization
Squeezing the Poor For example, Cuban President Fidel Castro informed the U.N.'s March, 2002 conference in Monterrey, Mexico that "the existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history" — not exactly a ringing endorsement of globalization-as-sustainable-development. He then stormed from the meeting, lingering barely long enough to enjoy a standing ovation. It would be easy enough to dismiss Castro's antics as just another loser's rant.
But what about that standing ovation? Castro's words must have resonated with some of the delegates. The fact is, there is more than a little evidence that Castro had a point. The real question is, why has most of the developed world ignored that evidence for so long? One answer is that over the past 25 years, the governments of market democracies, abetted by the mainstream media, have all but programmed their citizens to ignore it. thanks to wood s lot
Environment
From TR to Dubya Once upon a time there was a political party that took great pride in its environmental initiatives and conservation practices. It was the party that was responsible for signing into law the Antiquities Act, which protects special public lands and has been used by various presidents to establish over 120 national monuments and parks. It was the party that guaranteed for yet unborn generations the enjoyment of such places of natural beauty as Yellowstone National Park, The Grand Canyon, Glacier Bay, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Death Valley, and countless other national parks.
Its leaders saw fit to lay down a 37-point anti- pollution framework upon which many of today's environmental laws are based. Its philosophy was best summed up by one of its well-respected leaders who believed, "The rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh private rights and must be given first consideration." That speaker, you may be surprised to learn, was Theodore Roosevelt and his affiliation, none other than the conservative Republican Party. thanks to BookNotes
Photography Cool pictures of jelly fish.
 thanks to consumptive.org ----------
Brady's portrait of Grant
 The United States Civil War was not the first war to be photographed. It was, however, the first major conflict to be photographed with absolute thoroughness: From the battle dead to the generals, the gunboats to the chuck wagons, the bloodiest American war was recorded as no conflict had been before.
The bulk of the finest, most resonant images of the Civil War were taken by Mathew Brady and his subordinates. These images included a hasty portrait of a reluctant subject that would prove to be Brady's masterpiece and stand as one of the images essential to reshaping our national identity after the war.
Israel/Palestine The Middle East According to Robert Fisk COOPER: In your public speeches, you have been suggesting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might turn into something as apocalyptic as the French-Algerian war of four decades ago -- a horrendous war that took well over a million lives. Are things that dark?
ROBERT FISK: I think we already have reached those depths. If you go back and read the narrative history of the Algerian war, you'll see it began with isolated acts of sabotage, a few killings of French settlers, followed invariably by large-scale retaliation by the French authorities at which point, starting in the '60s, the Algerians began a campaign against French citizens in Algiers and Oran with bombs in cinemas and discotheques, which today translates into pizzerias and nightclubs in Israel. The French government kept saying it was fighting a war on terrorism, and the French army went in and erased whole Algerian villages. Torture became institutionalized, as it has by the Israeli authorities. Collaborators were killed by Algerian fighters, just as Arafat does so brazenly now. At the end of the day, life became insupportable for both sides. thanks to Unknown News ----------
Lives in ruins I decided to wait for the soldiers in my bed. I was not afraid for myself: the time of fear passed away 18 months ago, when I underwent surgery for cancer of the colon. I felt as though I had been granted extra time to accomplish little things in my life.
I now play with this extra time without fear, but I worry about my 15-year-old son. They are arresting males between the ages of 15 and 50. They humiliate and interrogate them and send them to prison. They are hunting a whole generation, not the list of 100 or 200 so-called wanted terrorists. I have tried to keep my son away from politics. Politics is blood and prison for us. But I couldn't stop him from reaching the age of 15. He is therefore threatened, although his face is very childlike, in spite of the black line under his nose. I thought of persuading him to shave to make him look younger, but I didn't because I've always asked him to take care of that young moustache. If I had asked him to shave it would have planted fear in his head. ---------- The mantra that Arafat crack down on terror has always been a fraud. Who is to do this cracking down? Obviously, Palestinian police, security forces and courts. But they are the chief target of Sharon’s murderous onslaught. Sharon’s strategy today is the same as it was in Beirut in 1982. He wants to destroy and discredit the Palestinian Authority so as to ensure the Palestinians are left without a credible leadership. Chaos and anarchy on the West Bank would then provide Israel with the justification it needs to drive out the indigenous population and render the territory governable.
This has been longstanding Israeli policy. Starting in the late 1970s Israel helped build up the most fanatical and intolerant fundamentalist Muslims as rivals to the nationalist PLO. The terrorist organization Hamas is largely an Israeli creation. A UPI story last year quoted a U.S. government official as saying: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place." thanks to al jensen at American Samizdat ---------- Beware of this ignorant and dangerous view The concept that Islam is an intrinsically violent opponent of progress in the world is both ignorant and dangerous. The new prominence of this idea in America provides a good measure of the distorted information that exists in our political environment. It's almost as though the bloody, parochial views of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the nature of Palestinians has been exalted to a worldview worthy of every statesman's consideration.
How easily we forget that the history of organized Christianity provides probably the bloodiest tale in all of human history. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA! ----------
This Modern World
War Against Some Drugs
Why drug tests flunk According to the students at rural Rushville Consolidated High School, there are a dozen ways to pass a drug test. You can march down to the local video store and buy a packet of "Karma" urine-cleansing powder. You can toss salt in your urine sample or drop in a strand of hair coated with hairspray. More often than not, it's simply a matter of choosing the right kinds of drugs, say the teens -- Ecstasy and alcohol disappear from your system within hours; marijuana can take up to 30 days.
Some of these methods -- such as the hairspray and the salt -- sound more mythic than magic, but whatever the kids are doing, it seems to work. The drug testing vans roll up to the Rushville campus every few weeks, and 25 students are randomly asked to produce a urine sample; yet hardly anybody is ever caught with drugs in their system. And it's not because they aren't doing drugs.
Mechanical Marvel
The Silver Swan is perhaps the best known and best loved object in The Bowes Museum. It is musical automaton in the form of a life-size model of a swan, comprising a clockwork mechanism covered in silver plumage above a music box. It rests on a stream made of twisted glass rods interspersed with silver fish. When the mechanism is wound up, the glass rods rotate, the music begins, and the swan twists its head to the left and right and appears to preen its back. It then appears to see a fish in the water below and bends down to catch it, it then swallows the fish as the music stops and resumes its upright position. The whole performance lasts about forty seconds. In reality the fish has been concealed lengthways on a pivot in the swan's beak and returns to this position. In real life swans do not eat fish. thanks to plep
Napoleon Remains belong to Napoleon's soldiers The remains of 2,000 soldiers discovered in a mass grave in Lithuania are from Napoleon's army.
It's believed they died of cold, hunger and disease during the French emperor's disastrous invasion of Russia in the winter of 1812. thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
War Against Some Terrorists The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9-11 Attacks A dispassionate examination of existing reliable, open-source evidence on advance warnings of the Sept. 11 attacks provides strong and sustainable grounds to conclude the Bush Administration was in possession of sufficient advance intelligence to have prevented the attacks, had it wished to do so. With a known intelligence budget of approximately $30 billion, it must be assumed there are classified files that only add to the weight of the available data presented here. Is it reasonable to assume that what is presented here is the only intelligence the U.S. possessed?
This article will focus on four primary areas where the U.S. had information that forewarned of the attacks in sufficient detail to have prompted their prevention. Those areas are: Documented warnings received by the United States Government (USG) from foreign intelligence services; Obvious and large scale insider stock trading in the days before the attacks; Known intelligence successes achieved by the USG in its penetrations of Al Qaeda; and, the case of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer jailed in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities, who -- with his attorneys -- spent months attempting to warn USG and Canadian intelligence officials of the pending a thanks to BookNotes ----------
The real war on terrorism
TestingTesting (again) I have the pictures for Lisa Toomey's TestingTesting up. Check them out. Listen to the show. Now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.
TestingTesting I have the sound archive for the Lisa Toomey show up. Great show. The pictures should be up tomorrow.
TestingTesting Not much blogging today. TestingTesting is tonight. TT is the music show I webcast from my living room every other Monday night. Tonight we have singer/songwriter Lisa Toomey with Tishia Malone. Click on in tonight. It starts at 7pm (pacific). The TT web site has the times for other time zones. You can guestbook in comments during the show which I will read to the performers in between songs. A good time will be had by all.
TestingTesting Not much blogging today. TestingTesting is tonight. TT is the music show I webcast from my living room every other Monday night. Tonight we have singer/songwriter Lisa Toomey with Tishia Malone. Click on in tonight. It starts at 7pm (pacific). The TT web site has the times for other time zones. You can guestbook in comments during the show which I will read to the performers in between songs. A good time will be had by all.
Intellectual Property
Give It Away, Now The Free Library was set up about a year and half ago, with the co-operation of Baen Books. Leaving aside the various political and philosophical issues, which I've addressed elsewhere, the premise behind the Library had a practical component as well. In brief, that in relative terms an author will gain, not lose, by having titles in the Library.
What I mean by "relative" is simply this: overall, an author is far more likely to increase sales than to lose them. Or, to put it more accurately, exposure in the Library will generate more sales than it will lose. thanks to Robot Wisdom
Israel/Palestine Sharon: My government will never evacuate the settlements Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday that a government headed by him would never evacuate settlements, especially not isolated settlements, at least until the next general elections.
The prime minister, banging on the table for emphasis, added that the government would not even discuss evacuating the settlements until the elections, set for October 2003, and possibly even beyond that should he be elected for a second term. Until the settlements and occupation go, the Palestinians will resist. The blood will continue to flow with Sharon in power ---------- It's a good thing Israel did not kill Marwan Barghouti; but it's a shame that it arrested him. Following dozens of assassinations, the Israel Defense Forces suddenly proved that when it wants to arrest someone instead of assassinating him, it knows how to do it quite well. If Israel had only adopted the same approach with Fatah activist Dr. Thabet Thabet, or the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa, plus a long list of other targeted Palestinians, the intifada's flames would be a lot lower and a lot of blood would have been spared on both sides.
Regrettably, however, Israel did not take the wiser course of action and allow the Tanzim leader to remain in hiding, the way it has done with some of the other leaders of the Palestinian security services whom, Israel says, have been involved in terror attacks. Arresting Barghouti may have been just, but it is not wise. Now he'll become the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Barghouti may be responsible for ruthless terror attacks, but Israel is likely to long for leaders like him, because his heirs will be much, much worse. Full of vengeance and hate, they will not be partners to a compromise like he would be. "You think tomorrow they'll find someone more moderate than me, someone to make [Chief of Staff Shaul] Mofaz coffee in the morning?" he quipped to me a few months ago when he feared he was on Israel's death list. Barghouti did not begin by killing. As a politician, who apparently turned into a terrorist, it cannot be said of him that he did not try the path of negotiations. He was a peace activist. Few Palestinians were as active as he in promoting peace. He was deeply involved in contacts with many Israelis - and not only ones from the left - and never hid his admiration for certain elements of Israeli life. "I wake up in the morning and look West, not East," he once told me. In those days, he marched in peace demonstrations, his arms locked with those of Meretz lawmakers Dedi Zucker and Zahava Gal-On.
That image may be surreal now, just like the days when he used to take his children to the Safari animal park in Ramat Gan. He would visit the political parties' central committees and MKs, making friends with some of them on joint delegations overseas, never missing a meeting and believing all the time in the purpose of the dialogue. "When will you finally understand that nothing frightens the Palestinians the way the settlements do?" he asked me on Land Day in 1997, while we drove around burning tires in his little car. ----------
What Israel Has Done
Despite Israel's effort to restrict coverage of its destructive invasion of the West Bank's Palestinian towns and refugee camps, information and images have nevertheless seeped through. The Internet has provided hundreds of verbal as well as pictorial eyewitness reports, as have Arab and European TV coverage, most of it unavailable or blocked or spun out of existence from the mainstream US media. That evidence provides stunning proof of what Israel's campaign has actually--has always--been about: the irreversible conquest of Palestinian land and society. The official line (which Washington has basically supported, along with nearly every US media commentator) is that Israel has been defending itself by retaliating against the suicide bombings that have undermined its security and even threatened its existence. That claim has gained the status of an absolute truth, moderated neither by what Israel has done nor by what in fact has been done to it. thanks to BookNotes ---------- Human rights abuses and horror stories The Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian cities and towns has seen a rise in incidents of alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank. Most of these relate to the curfews imposed in places such as Nablus and Bethlehem. These incidents, normally unreported in the media, are collated by human rights groups such as B'Tselem, the main Israeli group focusing on the West Bank and Gaza, and by peace activists such as Gush Shalom. Many of the incidents are in the city of Nablus, which, along with Jenin, has suffered most from the present Israeli offensive:
Qossay Abu 'Aisha, 12, was playing in his yard in the Askar neighbourhood of Nablus on Tuesday. The yard is surrounded by a two-metre high tin fence. Israeli soldiers, part of the force that has reoccupied the city, opened fire, punctured the fence and hit him with two bullets, killing him instantly. Source: B'Tselem ----------
Gimme Some Truth Now Most of the homes at the edge of the camp are somewhat intact, although doors, windows and walls are badly damaged by tank shells and Apache bullets. Each home that we entered was ransacked. Drawers, desks and closets were emptied. Refrigerators were turned over, light fixtures pulled out of the walls, clothing torn. I thought of the stories women told me, earlier that morning, about Israeli soldiers entering their homes with large dogs that sniffed at the children as neighbors fled from explosions, snipers, fires and the nightmare chases of bulldozers.
Recovery will take a very long time. ---------- Hamas threatens deadlier attacks Hamas has been Israel's deadliest foe, dispatching scores of suicide bombers in 19 months of fighting. But the Islamic group boasts it has escaped Israel's military offensive and now threatens to carry out even deadlier attacks -- with weapons-grade explosives, not fertilizer bombs. Weapons available to Hamas have increased in quantity and quality recently, with light arms and ammunition smuggled from Egypt through underground tunnels to the Gaza Strip without the knowledge of the Cairo government. At the same time, the Palestinian security forces have been largely dismantled, with facilities destroyed and personnel in hiding or detained by Israel. And Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is confined by Israeli troops to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"We are in a situation in which the capacity of the Palestinian Authority to manage security issues is greatly diminished and in some areas totally destroyed," the U.N. envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, said Friday.
Moral Clarity
Moral ambiguity Will is often worth reading if only so you can figure out why you disagree with him. Lately, he has been leading an entire phalanx of right-wing commentators in full cry over President Bush's loss of "moral clarity" in the Middle East. The sheer implausibility of finding moral clarity in the Middle East does not deter them. Better minds than Bush's are defeated by that challenge, but the moral- certainty crowd admits no shades of gray.
Since Bush himself is fond of moral certainty -- it's good-doers versus evildoers in BushWorld -- he must be uncomfortable with what Will magisterially dismisses in a recent Newsweek essay as the "intellectual confusion and moral miasma ... that now permeate U.S. policy and media coverage concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
Movies I love old industrial short subjects. Many of these are from the 40s and 50s. They give a wonderful look at a different world. Internet Moving Images Archive: Movie Collection This collection contains movies that the Prelinger Archives has digitized (about 956 now online) and donated to the Internet Archive. The films focus mainly on everyday life, culture, industry, and institutions in North America in the 20th century.(..)
Prelinger Archives is a collection of over 45,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. It is located in New York City and San Francisco. Since its beginning in 1983, its goal has been to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. The collection currently contains over 10% of the total production of ephemeral films between 1927 and 1987, and it may be the most complete and varied collection in existence of films from these poorly preserved genres. The owner is Rick Prelinger, who has presented these films through public screenings, lectures, and a number of anthologies published on CD-ROM and laserdisc by The Voyager Company. thanks to MetaFilter
Taxcuts and Healthcare The Bush administration really, really dislikes sharing information with Congress. Dick Cheney refuses to release the records of his energy task force; Tom Ridge won't testify on homeland security; and last week Thomas Scully defied a subpoena from the Small Business Committee.
Who? What? If you are an American over 65, or are considering becoming one, you should pay more attention. Mr. Scully, you see, is the director of Medicare and Medicaid. The specific issue on which he refused to testify — payments to providers of portable X-ray machines — sounds arcane. But the real story here is the collision between tax-cut myths and fiscal reality, with Medicare caught in the middle. thanks to follow me here...
Taiwangate
Taiwangate -- Time for Congress to Probe Bush-Taiwan Ties The evidence appears serious enough to warrant a call for congressional investigation of ties between the fund and the Bush administration.
The scandal began in March when Taipei police launched a ham- handed raid on the office of a weekly magazine to thwart news about the discovery of a covert $100 million fund of the government's shadowy National Security Bureau (NSB). From 1988 to 2000, President Lee Teng-hui had taken personal control of the NSB's money. The secret documents, say the Chinese press, outline Lee's efforts to procure influence abroad with the fund -- including in the United States. thanks to SmirkingChimp.com
War Against Some Terrorists
Malnutrition, Disease Rampant at Prison for Taliban They are too weak to stand for long, gaunt young Afghan men scratching at the lesions on their arms, picking at the lice in their beards and coughing incessantly. For nearly five months, they have had little more than bread and rice to eat.
Now, hundreds of these captured Taliban fighters are suffering from severe malnutrition, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Here at the prison in which they have been held since the Taliban's defeat last fall, the Red Cross today began the emergency feeding of almost 100 of the worst- off captives; up to 500 eventually will be moved into tents for medical treatment. thanks to BookNotes
War Against Some Drugs
Tulia And Beyond: Taking Drug Task Forces To Task Ever heard of Tulia? It's a little town in Texas that was the scene of one of the most shameful miscarriages of justice in modern American history -- a highly questionable undercover drug sting that in the summer of 1999 led to the arrest of one out of every six of the town's African-Americans.
But the dismissal of charges last week against Tonya White, one of the final two Tulia defendants, has finally kicked open the door on the dubious nature of the entire Tulia operation and exposed one of the many shadowy corners of the drug war: the power and abuses of drug task forces. Who are the criminals here?
Spring Cleaning Friday's rearranging of piles has degenerated to an obsessive activity that I can only describe as spring cleaning. I actually unpacked boxes from four moves ago. Then I had to deal with the unpacked stuff. This also involved moving furniture, and things on the wall, around. I also moved an increasingly decrepit couch out and an extra couch of Zoe's in. This frenzied out-of-control activity went on pretty much until the end of the Mariner's game. (They won 3-2 on a bases loaded walk in the bottom of the 11th.) Instead of tending to my blogging duties, I sat down on my new comfy couch to listen to New York Vinnie's post game show and woke up at 1:30 in the morning. So I went to bed.
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