Monday, March 9, 2009

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Baratunde Thurston: Let's Talk About Race: With Baratunde and Cenk (Part 3) Top
And we're back. Sorry for the delay. This is my response to Cenk's last video in which he explained that calling something "racist" is a bad strategy for having an actual conversation. We should say it's "questionable" and ask "can you see how this might be racist?" instead. He also agrees with me that people of color have carried most of the burden of racial dialogue and fights for justice, but says that's the way it is, and that the target audience for this dialogue needs to be the majority of white people who don't think they're racist. I disagree. Check it out. You can follow responses to this video on Jack and Jill Politics and on YouTube . More on Barack Obama
 
Join HuffPost's Media Monitoring Project Top
Greetings Huffington Post readers! My name is Jason Linkins, and I am here to recruit you. As many of you know, I'm the editor of the Huffington Post's Eat The Press , and one of the things we do at Eat The Press every week is a Sunday morning liveblog, where I attempt to distill the week-ending political discussion in an enjoyable way. Of course, my eyeballs and my TiVo alone can't keep track of everything that gets said on Sundays. Time and again, it's been the readers who have risen to fill that gap. If I'm not able to observe a controversial point being made on CNN because I'm watching NBC, I've learned, happily, that there's always a participant passionate enough to fill me in and make sure that the HuffPost readership gets the news. Today, we're expanding our media monitoring efforts to cover more networks and more shows, I hope you'll come along for the ride . You can sign up here . Here's how it works: when you sign-up , you'll be asked to check off the shows that you typically watch (that helps us make sure as many shows as possible are being monitored, and if we know that something notable is going to happen on a show that you watch, we'll give you a heads up). After that, you've got one assignment: email us at tv@huffingtonpost.com to report anything you've seen that would make a great story on HuffPost. That means everything from cringe-worthy gaffes and error-prone pundits to superb, hard-hitting reporting that deserves another airing. To repeat, whenever you catch a great moment, send us an email at tv@huffingtonpost.com . Include the name of the show, a description of what happened, and the precise time it happened (not just the time that the show airs). We'll do the rest and credit you with the find. Over the past year, I've gone from regretting that I have only my two eyeballs to cast on the media to understanding that there is an army of people who care just as passionately about the state of the world that they're willing to keep an eye on it with me. If this sounds like you, please consider participating in our media monitoring project.
 
Marty Kaplan: The Stem Cell Slippery Slope Fallacy Top
Of all the arguments against stem cell research, the lamest has to be that "it would put us on a slippery slope." But since this case comes from the same precincts that gave us "gay marriage will lead to incest and man-on-dog sex," I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The anti-stem-cell slippery slope argument goes like this: If you permit scientists to destroy human embryos for the purpose of research, it's a slippery slope from there to killing human fetuses in order to harvest tissue, and from there to euthanizing disabled or terminally ill people to harvest their organs, and from there to human cloning and human-animal hybrids, and if making chimeras is okay, well then Dr. Frankenstein must also be okay, and Dr. Mengele, too, and before you know it, it's one long hapless inevitable slide from high-minded medicine to the Nazis. This is not the same as the argument over when human life begins. If the answer to that is, when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg, then a single-cell zygote is a already a tiny human being with a soul, and anything that stops it from becoming a fully-developed person is evil and must be outlawed. This way of thinking leads not only to ruling out exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest, a fatal genetic disorder or a threat to the mother's health; it also means a ban on in vitro fertilization, because that technique also leads to the destruction of superfluous embryos, unless of course you're the octo-mom, but let's not go there just now. The when-life-begins argument is about logical consistency. Life is life, period, and no compromise, even for the most compassionate of reasons, is possible. How then do its adherents justify, say, killing people in self-defense, or in war? The answer is that those circumstances are sanctioned by the Bible, every word of which was divinely written. If that's fundamentally what you believe, then there's no slippery slope to be concerned about, because you never need to make exceptions to the rules, because all the rules come straight from the Creator. But the slippery slope argument is all about exceptions. It doesn't require believing that legal rules come from moral rules that in turn come from on high. Instead, it's about what you believe coming from down below, from our innards and our evolutionary forebears. Call it hardwiring, or call it psychology; it doesn't matter. What counts is a fundamentalism about human nature. This view of how people are, deep down, is implicit in the metaphor itself. Picture a person on a steep mountaintop. Then imagine him taking a step off the summit and onto an ice-covered slope. (Please don't be offended that I'm not saying "him or her"; this guy has got to be pretty stupid to take that step.) And following that step comes a cartoonish blur of whirling legs and arms, and before you know it the guy is tumbling ass over teakettle down the slope, a human snowball banging into trees, helplessly accelerating toward the fatal crevasse below. What this case against stem cell research is saying is that people are basically animals, slaves to their appetites, incapable of restraining themselves, biologically unequipped to make complex rules, or draw fine distinctions, or debate exceptions, or enforce differences. If we make one exception, and permit a scientist to culture stem cells from discarded human blastocysts, then when that scientist wants to make cowumans and humabbits, society will be totally flummoxed, completely paralyzed, incapable of drawing a legal line and saying no. If this were actually true, then the message society sends when police don't stop everyone over the speed limit on the freeway is that it must also be okay to be a hit-and-run driver. You know, there's a slippery slope between not arresting someone for smoking a joint and letting drug cartels destroy our cities. If you can restrict the sale of semi-automatic rifles, then you can ban the right to bear arms. If a shoplifter gets off easy, what's to stop a Bernie Madoff from being allowed to walk? If you make hate speech a crime, then it won't be long before free speech is a crime. During George W. Bush's long summer vacation in 2001 - the summer when he dismissed the CIA briefer who told him that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States with "All right, you've covered your ass now" - the big news out of Crawford was his Solomonic decision to permit federally-funded research only on the 78 stem-cell lines already created in privately-funded labs. Those murders, he signaled to his base, had already been committed, so we might as well get some good out of the crimes. It turns out that only about 20 of those lines were actually usable in laboratories. As a result, over these last 7 1/2 years, when stem-cell researchers might have been racing toward therapies for diseases like juvenile diabetes, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, they have instead had federal anvils chained to their ankles. Today, some of those protesting President Obama's reversal of President Bush's limits are saying that we don't need any new lines of embryonic stem cells, because recently discovered techniques, like reprogramming human skin cells into iPS - induced pluripotent stem cells - make it unnecessary to depend on embryos. But the potential of iPS is still unclear; at least as promising and worth pursuing are the hundreds of stem cell lines that were created without federal funding during the Bush years, but have not yet benefited from the kind of balls-to-the-wall research that only the National Institutes of Health can support. If God is dead, Dostoevsky had Ivan Karamazov say, then anything is possible. This turns out to be exactly wrong. In fact, you can build a just society on the basis of the rule of law, and you can build a good society on the basis of human culture and humanistic values. Despite what Bill O'Reilly says, a secular society is not the same as an immoral society. Every American has the right to choose a God to believe in, or not. But no Americans have the right to impose their own theistic absolutes, or their own dark views of human nature, on anyone else. That's what it means to be a pluralistic democratic society. And the last time I looked, being a democracy is not the first step down a slippery slope. This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles . You can read more of my columns here , and e-mail me there if you'd like.
 
Drew Barrymore On Rehab, Her Ex And Her Estranged Mom Top
Drew Barrymore is on the cover of W magazine's April issue and inside she gives a revealing interview on her new role, her mom, her ex, and rehab. On feeling liberated to play the darker character of "Little Edie" Beale in Grey Gardens, airing in April on HBO ... "I was excited to bring my own pain to something. I mean, contrary to my happy-go-luckiness, I have so much darkness in there. Playing Edie, I felt like s---. I thought, I'm afraid beyond anything I've ever known. I'm miserable; I'm scared; I feel sick all the time. And I was like, Good! At least I have somewhere to put it. You know what? I'm not f---in' happy all the time. I like making people feel good, but it was great not to have to please anybody. I was out there for myself and for her." On how isolating herself to prepare for THE dramatic role as "Little Edie" Beale reminded her of being in rehab as a kid... "I got institutionalized as a kid, and I felt like I was back there. A lot of times I found myself unhappy and isolated, and the only other time I felt that way was when I was in there. It was absolutely trying to relearn to live. You are learning to become someone else." On her 5 year relationship with ex - boyfriend Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes... "One of the most, if not the most, important relationships I've had in my life. We're still very close. I'm just learning who I am and how relationships work and how to make them function. No different from anyone else." On her relationship with her own mother being "the polar opposite" of a love story... "My mother and I split ways when I was very young and have never really reconciled." Read the whole thing
 
Jesse Jenkins: What the Press Didn't Tell You About the Largest Youth Movement in Decades (Part Two) Top
Part Two: Strength in a Diversity of Tactics By Jesse Jenkins, reporting for the Energy Collective and WattHead - Energy News and Commentary This is the part two of a three-part series taking an in-depth look at the youth climate movement and the stories the mainstream media missed at Power Shift 2009 . For the introduction and links to the rest of the series, head here or see links at end of this post. On display at Power Shift 2009 was the diversity of tactics employed by the youth climate movement. From rallies and protests in the streets, to well-informed citizen lobbyists penetrating the halls of Congress, this movement finds strength in a diversity of tactics. In their efforts, these young leaders draw on time-tested community organizing techniques as well as a suite of cutting-edge, 21st century technologies to unite the movement, grow at a rapid pace, and secure climate and clean energy victories. From the Streets to the Halls of Congress At 1:30 pm on Monday, March 2nd, I stood in the back of a congressional hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building, listening to powerful testimony from five young leaders briefing the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming [ watch highlights from the hearing here ] As the briefing commenced in the halls of the Rayburn House Office Building, thousands of students were in the process of holding over 350 lobby visits with elected officials from all fifty states. At 2:00 pm, I got a text message informing me that just blocks away, hundreds more Power Shifters had joined an estimated 2,500, both young and old, and taken to the streets of D.C. to march for an end to the injustices of our current dirty energy system. The march was the start of the Capitol Climate Action , and the assembled protesters soon surrounded the Capitol Plant, which heats the U.S. Capitol Building and the complex of congressional offices by burning a mix of coal and natural gas. The event's organizers said they targeted the plant in a symbolic stand, calling for an end to dirty energy and a transition to a cleaner, more just energy system. Image Credit: Franziska Seel "This power shift, it has begun, we'll get our energy from wind and sun!" chanted protesters, calling for an end to coal. Groups of protesters illegally blocked every gate to the plant and rallied in the streets surrounding the plant for hours, as speakers including Robert F. Kennedy Jr, author Wendell Berry, and outspoken climate scientist James Hansen addressed the crowd. These more well-known figures were joined by activists and citizens from regions affected by coal's mining and use, including residents of Appalachian states and Navajo living near Black Water Mesa in New Mexico. The speakers all cited the many impacts and injustices of today's dirty energy system - from asthma and mercury poisoning to the destructive impacts of surface mining and mountaintop removal, and of course, coal's massive contribution to climate change. While there were no arrests made, the organizers of the event declared the action a success. "The police said so many demonstrators showed up that they had no hope of jailing them all," writes author and activist Bill McKibben in his account of the day's events . "So we merrily violated the law all afternoon." The coincidence of Monday's lobby day, hearing and civil disobedience evidences the diversity of tactics employed by this growing movement. "Youth are willing to lobby in the halls of Congress, but we're also not afraid to get arrested in the streets," said Jaime Henn with 350.org , one of the more than forty groups sponsoring the Capitol Climate Action . "It's this diversity of tactics that will continue to make us effective." Not Just Protesters of Injustice, But Practitioners of Solutions Energy Action Coalition executive director Jessy Tolkan has spent years registering and turning out voters, organizing events like Power Shift and campaigns like Power Vote , and fighting for a seat at the political table for today's youngest generation. But as proud as she is of these efforts to amplify the movement's political voice, she makes sure to point out that the efforts of this movement do not stop at lobbying the political process for change. "Over the course of the last three days, 12,000 of us gathered here in our nation's capitol ... and 24 million of went to the polls in November" Tolkan said at the Select Committee hearing. "But we are also in our communities as practitioners of the innovative solutions we are calling for." In fact, the tactics employed by many in this movement may not even look like activism to the outside eye. What occupies much of Timothy Den-Herder Thomas 's activism, for example, looks a lot more like a new brand of socially and environmentally conscious entrepreneurialism. Thomas is a senior at Macalaster College and a leader with the Sierra Student Coalition . He wields financial spreadsheets and non-profit business models in addition to traditional tools of community organizing. On March 2nd, Thomas told Chairman Markey's committee about his successful efforts to establish a revolving clean energy loan fund at Macalaster. The fund enables investments in energy efficiency and clean energy projects at the Minnesota college, pooling the resulting energy savings to reinvest in more projects. The fund has been a huge success, cutting energy use and emissions at the campus while netting a forty percent annual return on investment in its first year. "That's four times what the stock market performs," said Thomas, pausing for a moment, "when it's NOT collapsing!" Thomas is now working with students as part of a program called Summer of Solutions to take the revolving fund model off campus and launch a new effort to "futurefit" entire neighborhoods - that's Thomas's word for the energy efficiency and clean energy retrofits that prepare homes and businesses for a clean, efficient energy future. "There are billions of dollars just sitting on the table," Thomas said, referring to profitable energy efficiency opportunities in millions of American homes and businesses. "But we're not picking that money up. We're letting it sit there." Summer of Solutions will be organizing efforts in at least a dozen communities this coming summer and similar initiatives are underway in other locations. All across the country, innovative young social entrepreneurs like Thomas are working to transform their campuses and communities, set up green jobs training programs and otherwise get busy creating the clean energy future they are calling for as activists. Their message: while we call on our elected officials to change laws, give us more resources, and invest in a clean energy economy, we're not going to wait to get started building the future ourselves. A 21st Century Networked Movement This savvy youth movement draws from the long history of community organizing in the United States and the wisdom of past social movements, combining these time-tested tactics with cutting-edge 21st century digital organizing and communication tools with remarkable effectiveness. "Each one of you is a walking technological superpower," said green jobs advocate Van Jones, speaking to the Power Shift crowd packing the cavernous main hall at the DC Convention Center on the event's opening night. "You have more technology on your person right now than the U.S. government had when we put a man on the moon." "Just think: ten years ago when a person could just sit on a bench and pull all of the knowledge of the world onto their laps, they'd be considered a god. Now, that's just you, with a laptop, and Google!" Jones said, urging the crowd to "cease using those technologies as toys and start using them as tools." The most networked generation in history, the members of this youth movement are already utilizing 21st century technologies to unite online and strengthen their offline organizing. Last April, as part of an annual nationwide day of action called Fossil Fools Day , hundreds of young activists traveled to stand with communities in Appalachia to protest the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining . Through online networks, these activists were able to unite with students located about as far away from the coal fields of Appalachia as you can get: Washington state. Student organizers with the youth-led Cascade Climate Network quickly launched a "photo petition" to stand in solidarity with their allies in Appalachia, snapping digital photos of hundreds of students at more than a dozen campuses holding signs reading "We can do better than coal!" and "Solar energy leaves the tops on mountains." Through email, they collected the digital photos streaming in from across the state and quickly designed and produced a photo petition "yearbook" which students then delivered to members of Washington's congressional delegation [ click here to download the photo petition (PDF) ]. The Cascade Climate Network students urged Congressman Dave Reichert , a Republican, to co-sponsor legislation that would curb mountaintop removal by reinstating environmental regulations gutted by the Bush Administration. "Congressman Reichert had actually seen mountaintop removal flying from Washington DC to Seattle, but that was most likely the first time he had heard about mountaintop removal from his own constituents," said JW Randolph, Legislative Associate with Appalachian Voices . "Students in Washington took up an issue that's devastating communities in Appalachia thousands of miles away, and made it clear they weren't going to tolerate injustice like that anywhere in this great nation. That's what makes our elected officials take action." Thanks in large part to the efforts of the Cascade Climate Network students, Congressman Reichert agreed to be one of three chief sponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act , which was re-introduced in the 111th Congress last Wednesday with a record 117 co-sponsors. The unprecedented, networked nature of this movement allows young activists across the country to connect with their peers, share information and best practices, discover and harness synergies, and grow in size and power faster than past movements. And they'll have to do so quickly. As we'll explore in Part Three of this series, the movement has a challenging road ahead. It'll take the best combination of time-tested tactics and cutting-edge techniques, as well as a big dose of old-fashioned people power to win the battles ahead. Stay tuned for Part Three... The rest of the three-part series: Introduction Part One Part Three [ Editor's note: part three coming tomorrow ] More on Climate Change
 
And Finally Tonight...Jesus (VIDEO) Top
Local news outlets love a few things: giant pumpkins, animals that raise each other across species, and inanimate objects that may or may not look like the son of God. The latter is the subject of the following video. The folks over at Everything Is Terrible , have compiled dozens of clips from news coverage of pancakes, bark, spoons, TVs, moths, cats, waffles, frying pans, cheetos, rocks, grapes, and sinks that look like Jesus to their owners. The question of the day: "Did a cinnamon bun leave behind a message from above?" WATCH: (via Videogum) More on Funny Videos
 
From Clinton To Obama: Why Climate Is Different Now Top
From an interview with Carol Browner: What's changed in the country since you were last in government? I think the American people have a better understanding of why we need an energy transformation. That may be the experiences of, whether it was oil prices that are not predictable or reliable, the impact on their own pocketbook. People understand that we can't continue to think about energy in the way we did in the past. It was sort of, you know, available without a lot of thought. And most Americans now know that as we look toward an economic recovery, an important part of that is going to be an energy transformation. Are people more optimistic that this can be done? I think there's also this great belief that we can do better, that [with] American innovation, American ingenuity, we really can build wind farms and power our cities with clean energy, with homegrown, American, renewable energy. We look around the world, and we see these things starting to happen in other parts of the world, and I think for many Americans the question becomes, why not here? And what President Obama is saying [is], absolutely here, that we can do this. More on Barack Obama
 
Marjorie Cohn: Memos Provide Blueprint for Police State Top
Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide "legal" rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state. Who wrote these memos? All but one were crafted in whole or in part by the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the so-called "torture memos" that redefined torture much more narrowly than the U.S. definition of torture, and counseled the President how to torture and get away with it. In one memo, Yoo said the Justice Department would not enforce U.S. laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. What does the federal maiming statute prohibit? It makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent. The two torture memos were later withdrawn after they became public because their legal reasoning was clearly defective. But they remained in effect long enough to authorize the torture and abuse of many prisoners in U.S. custody. The seven memos just made public were also eventually disavowed, several years after they were written. Steven Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Bush's Department of Justice, issued two disclaimer memos -- on October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009 -- that said the assertions in those seven memos did "not reflect the current views of this Office." Why Bradbury waited until Bush was almost out of office to issue the disclaimers remains a mystery. Some speculate that Bradbury, knowing the new administration would likely release the memos, was trying to cover his backside. Indeed, Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury are the three former Justice Department lawyers that the Office of Professional Responsibility singled out for criticism in its still unreleased report. The OPR could refer these lawyers for state bar discipline or even recommend criminal charges against them. In his memos, Yoo justified giving unchecked authority to the president because the United States was in a "state of armed conflict." Yoo wrote, "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." Yoo made the preposterous argument that since deadly force could legitimately be used in self-defense in criminal cases, the president could suspend the Fourth Amendment because privacy rights are less serious than protection from the use of deadly force. Bybee wrote in one of the memos that nothing can stop the president from sending al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured overseas to third countries, as long as he doesn't intend for them to be tortured. But the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a party, says that no country can expel, return or extradite a person to another country "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." Bybee claimed the Torture Convention didn't apply extraterritorially, a proposition roundly debunked by reputable scholars. The Bush administration reportedly engaged in this practice of extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005. The same day that Attorney General Eric Holder released the memos, the government revealed that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubaida and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, both of whom were subjected to waterboarding. The memo that authorized the CIA to waterboard, written the same day as one of Yoo/Bybee's torture memos, has not yet been released. Bush insisted that Zubaida was a dangerous terrorist, in spite of the contention of one of the FBI's leading al Qaeda experts that Zubaida was schizophrenic, a bit player in the organization. Under torture, Zubaida admitted to everything under the sun -- his information was virtually worthless. There are more memos yet to be released. They will invariably implicate Bush officials and lawyers in the commission of torture, illegal surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and other violations of the law. Meanwhile, John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law School and Jay Bybee is a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. These men, who advised Bush on how to create a police state, should be investigated, prosecuted, and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached. Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent, which will be published this spring. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com .
 
Greg Mitchell: Ticking Time Bomb (Literally): Man Who Murdered Pastor Was Profiled By Paper Last Summer As Lyme Disease Victim Top
Terry Joe Sedlacek, the 27-year-old Illinois man who apparently shot and killed an Ilinois pastor yesterday, was the subject of a major piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last August 6 which covered his startling bout with Lyme Disease which had led to years of treatment and mental illness (along with lesions on his brain). It has kicked off speculaton about severe Lyme Disease leading to insane violence -- following the murderous attack on a woman by a trained chimp last month who also had been bitten and suffered from Lyme. The remarkable Post-Dispatch story from last August also reveals that fundraisers had been held on Sedlacek's behalf. Sedlacek could barely speak due to the ravages of the disease, which no one had IDed for several years. No cause for his attack on the pastor has yet emerged. The Belleville News-Democrat , the local paper in lllinois, published a list of "mental impacts" of sever Lyme Disease today: "Extreme cases have been reported in the scientific literature of panic attacks, disorientation, hallucinations, extreme agitation, impulsive violence, manic, or obsessive behavior, paranoia, schizophrenic-like states, dementia and eating disorders. Several patients have committed suicide." On the other hand: "Lyme disease doesn't cause people to shoot people," Dr. Eugene Shapiro, a Lyme disease expert at Yale University, told the Associated Press. The gunman is now in the hospital after cutting himself with a knife in the incident. A parishioner he knifed is also still hospitalized. Before properly diagnosed he nearly expired in 2003. A few years later he was put into a coma to treat him. His family publicized his plight last year attempting to draw attention to the need for proper diagnosis in areas where Lyme Disease is not common. The article last August noted: These days, Sedlacek, now 26 and living in Troy, Ill., with Abernathy, has difficulty speaking. He's got lesions on his brain. He's taking several drugs, including anti-seizure medication. "He takes enough medicine at night to knock a cow out, but he only sleeps two or three hours a night," Abernathy said... The funds raised are helping pay for treatment in Florida in a hyperbaric chamber that has helped others with his symptoms. He's now about halfway through the month of treatments, and his mother said in an e-mail that he is doing well and doctors have been able to reduce some of his medications.
 
U.S. Finishes A 'Strong Second' In Iraq War Top
BAGHDAD--After 19 months of struggle in Iraq, U.S. military officials conceded a loss to Iraqi insurgents Monday, but said America can be proud of finishing "a very strong second." "We went out there, gave it our all, and fought a really good fight," said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "America's got nothing to be ashamed of. We outperformed Great Britain, Poland, and a lot of the other top-notch nations, but Iraq just wouldn't stay down for the count. It may have come down to them simply wanting it more." American tanks and infantry surged out to an impressive early lead in March 2003, scoring major points by capturing Baghdad early in the faceoff. The stage seemed set for a second American victory in as many clashes with Iraq, with commentators and generals alike declaring the contest all but decided with the fall of Tikrit in April 2003. More on The Onion
 
Jonah Lalas: Time Running Out For Filipino Veterans Top
Many thousands of Filipinos answered Roosevelt's call to join the U.S. forces fighting Japan in the Philippines, but had been denied the benefits they were promised until last month. When Obama's stimulus package passed, it contained a provision for a lump sum payment for these Filipino WWII veterans, which I wrote about as a " Victory for the Asian-American Community ." I later got messages from friends and fellow activists who have been working on the issue, deriding the provision as "hush money" and a "shallow gesture" because it falls tremendously short of the full equity we demanded. But such is the nature and dilemma of reparations campaigns, whether it be for Japanese interment, the ethnic cleansing of American Indians, or slavery -- you never get the big number you want. And in the case of African Americans, they still have not gotten their "40 acres and a mule." However, it doesn't mean we don't recognize the significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or celebrate the election of our first African American president. While anger is what helps drive people into social justice movements, victories are part of what help people stay. Still, I wanted to hear directly from a Filipino veteran who has been fighting for this issue for decades. I went to visit 87-year-old Faustino "Peping" Baclig, who lives in Los Angeles and got me involved in the Filipino Veteran's movement as a student. When I asked him how he felt about the lump sum payment, his response was sobering. "Having gone through Bataan, the death march, and concentration camps, we are more realistic than idealistic," Manong Peping stated. "If there is something to help me during my old days, I need to pick it up, with reservations of course." He told me that the issue of finding justice for the Filipino veterans was something that brought the entire community together. Given that, the government's recent action represents "not so much a victory for us [the veterans], but a victory for the Filipino community." Manong Peping is still hurt by the "double blade" America brought on the veterans by denying them the same benefits and privileges received by others who shared the same trench and fought the same enemy. He said the provision "did not evoke any special feeling" because he had always expected America to make amends. "We still have faith in democracy," he told me. Now, Manong Peping said he and his fellow veterans plan to start working on issues of family reunification and extending the benefits to the widows of deceased veterans. I also spoke with the executive director of the Filipino-American Service Group, Inc. , Susan Espiritu Dilkes, who told me about the family of a dying veteran who recently contacted her about the lump sum payment. She brought the Veterans Affairs application form to his hospital bedside, where he was too ill to even sign his name. After notarizing his thumbprint and assisting his family in completing the forms, she hand-carried it with about 50 others to the VA building to begin processing. That was four days after Obama signed the stimulus package. Six days later, he passed away with the knowledge that his family would receive the money he should have gotten many years ago. Ms. Dilkes told me of another family who came to see her to ask about the forms. Their veteran grandfather passed away three days after the bill was passed. They came to see her two days after his death. It was too late. The stories she told me highlighted a larger potential dilemma. The Filipino veterans have only one year to claim the $15,000. There are over 18,000 veterans left, and Manong Peping estimates at least 4,000 in the United States. In order to ensure some justice is served, we need to make sure these veterans get the forms. Manong Peping walked alongside American GIs in the Bataan Death March over 67 years ago -- these are very elderly men who could certainly use assistance in paying for the medical bills and other costs that come with being nearly 90 years old. Some may only have a few months, or even days left. It would be a grave injustice for this bill to have passed and only a small number of veterans claim what should have been given to them years ago. Mrs. Dilkes' organization does not have the funding to do a full fledged outreach program. There are other challenges. I contacted the VA and according to the person at the call center, they carry no statistics or lists of eligible veterans and are "relying on the veterans and their families" to contact them. They also have not posted the claim forms on the VA website and could not tell me the time-line for processing or what the next steps would be past sending it in. I then asked her how many calls she herself has gotten since passage of the bill. "About one per day," she responded. That means it is up to us who know Filipino veterans or people who might know veterans to get the word out and put the forms in their hands. The window for this small measure of justice will close very soon. Our communities need to worry less about protesting the lump sum payment and unite to ensure that men like Manong Peping and their families receive the lump sum payment. As Mrs. Dilkes asked me, "What will happen if you keep fighting, and there are not veterans left to fight for?" Many of us will live to fight another day, but for those who may not, we must act now. (Click on this link to download a copy of the claim form the Filipino veterans need to send out immediately).
 
Court Upholds Homeless Candidate's Removal From Oak Park Ballot Top
A Cook County judge says a suburban Chicago homeless man can't run for the village board because he doesn't have an address. The judge on Monday upheld a decision by the Oak Park electoral board to bar Daniel Fore from the April 7 ballot. An attorney for Fore is reviewing the decision and the possibility of an appeal. Judge Patrick McGann says there's no question a homeless person can be a resident of a municipality. But the judge says the issue in this case is whether Fore had met the requirements in the election code that asked candidates to specify their residence on paperwork. On his paperwork, Fore said he was homeless and gave a post office box number where he receives mail.
 
Shakespeare Portrait Unveiled Top
LONDON — Scholars studying the life and times of William Shakespeare unveiled a portrait Monday believed to be the only authentic image of the Bard painted during his lifetime. Experts at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust believe the painting was used as the basis for the enduring engraving of Shakespeare that graces the cover of the First Folio collection of his plays. Paul Edmondson, the group's director of learning, said it was also used as a basis for the famous portrait of the playwright that hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. "What makes it so important is that it's a portrait of William Shakespeare made during his lifetime," he said. "We think it was painted in 1610 and several copies of it were made early on, including the engraving. So our portrait is the primary version of one of the greatest portraits of Shakespeare." The other images were all made after Shakespeare's death in 1616, he said, making the newly unveiled portrait unique. Edmondson said experts are confident that the handsome, bearded man in the portrait is the author of some of the most enduring words ever written in the English language. "We're 90 percent sure that it's Shakespeare," he said. "You'll never be entirely certain. There will always be voices of dissent." He said scholars are convinced it is Shakespeare because so many copies of the painting were made, including the one at the Folger, and because the painting was handed down through the generations along with a portrait of the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's main patron. He said the portrait had long been part of the Cobbe collection owned by the Cobbe family, but had not been connected to Shakespeare until 2006, when one of the family members saw the Folger Shakespeare painting on display at a traveling exhibition in London and realized the similarity between the two. The disclosure was made on a bumper day for Shakespeare fans and devotees throughout the world: the Museum of London also announced that the foundations of the theater where Shakespeare's plays were performed, and where he himself performed as an actor, had been found in Hackney on the eastern outskirts of London. The Museum's archaeologists had also found a piece of pottery with an image of a man who resembles Shakespeare, said spokesman Tim Morley. "We are 99 percent certain this is the theater, it's in the right place and the brickwork is the right age," he said. Museum officials said the rudimentary playhouse, called The Theatre, was built in 1576 by James Burbage. The site, where Shakespeare performed from 1594 to 1597, now houses an abandoned warehouse. Experts believe Romeo and Juliet was performed there. Officials hope to build a small new theater on the site. The newly identified portrait of Shakespeare is to be put on public display at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-on-Avon from April 23 until Sept. 6. More on England
 
Citi's $13 Million Broker Payout After Cancelling Corporate Junkets Top
According to Bloomberg , Citigroup paid 1,900 insurance brokers at its Primerica Financial Services unit a total of $5,000 each after it scrapped a trip to a Bahamas resort. The $9.5 million payout came after Primerica canceled the Bahamas jaunt for its top-performing brokers after receiving $45 billion in government rescue funds. In a related story, some 2,000 Smith Barney brokerage advisers got debit cards valued at $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000 for various canceled getaways for an additional $3.5 million in total compensation, the New York Post reported . More on Citibank
 
Prince Charles To Push Green Agenda In Latin America Top
Prince Charles dived into the first full day of a Latin America tour Monday, visiting Chile's capital and preparing a speech set to highlight his concern over climate change. The prince's speech on climate change in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday is being presented as one of his keynote presentations. Climate change "is one of the UK government?s highest foreign policy priorities in 2009," the British embassy in Brazil said in a statement announcing Prince Charles's visit. More on Latin America
 
Justin Callaway: The Ugly Side of Progressive Politics Top
While I wish I wasn't looking for additional part-time work outside of my current full-time employment, I have been browsing the occasional job site as I ponder this inevitable necessity of additional income in raising a young family. Even in these "economic times," I have tried to maintain the "audacity of hope" of finding something that might be flexible, yet align with my ideals. Needless to say, over the past few months I have come across a range of absurd job expectations along with a host of suspect "phishing-like" employment posts. There has been one repeated posting for an organization called Grassroots Campaigns Inc that has really raised my ire. This organization claims to have roots in working with the Democratic National Committee in the past and professes to "partner with groups and campaigns to advance good issues, raise money for progressive causes." What's the big deal? Well, as a card-carrying, Union member who is not making ends meet, I am scratching my head at this ubiquitous job post wondering where Oregon's 2009 Minimum wage of $8.40 factors in with a written job description that claims it will pay you $24,000 a year for 60-80hrs/wk. Perhaps my math is wrong and my widget calculator has been hacked, but I reckon this breaks down to roughly $7.69/hr or $5.77/hr for a 60 and 80 hour work week, respectively. I recognize there are some complexities with exempt vs non-exempt + overtime being glossed over for dramatic purposes. But as someone who was routinely subjected to 60-100+ hour weeks in a salaried position during Oregon's last recession, I used to joke helplessly that I'd be better off working for less in a menial retail job with good benefits once you weighed my de facto hourly rate with the high out-of-pocket cost of my anemic benefits. Now it's the next recession and I'm to struggling to keep the flicker of hope aflame when this is the business model for an organization that offers "strategic consulting, fundraising, and field organizing for good causes." I look at who they claim as past and present clients and I start losing a lot of faith really quickly: the Democratic National Committee, MoveOn PAC , Environmental Action , the League of Conservation Voters , the ACLU , the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee , Amnesty International , The Center for American Progress , Working America , Common Cause , Save the Children , and so on. While transparency is a virtue, a written job description that expects to compensate hours worked with less than minimum wage is a poor reflection on all of these organizations when they've hired Grassroots Campaigns to do outreach on their behalf. It's no wonder people are angry. But instead of just complaining, I shall present a solution as well: I'll start a non-profit called Save the Adults. First order of business, I'll hire Grassroots Campaigns Inc to raise money. After they take their fund-raising fee, I'll then donate to them what's left. Then they can pay their employees "bonuses" to raise their pay to minimum wage for each hour worked. Now that's what I call strategic fund-raising. Madoff and Merill Lynch would be proud!
 
Chicago Police Chief Scolded By Judge For Defiance Top
A federal judge in Chicago scolded the city's police superintendent for initially defying a court order to turn over the list of officers who have repeated complaints filed against them. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman held Superintendent Jody Weis in contempt last week for refusing to give up the list. Weis ultimately relented and gave the list to attorneys for a woman who claims an officer beat up her children while arresting them in a playground incident. During a hearing Monday, the judge hammered at Weis, telling him defying a court order is "absolutely intolerable" and ordered the city to pay attorneys fees for the woman's lawyers. Attorney G. Flint Taylor says he plans to ask for $100,000. Weis says his concern was that the list would ultimately be made public and would have officers not doing their jobs out of fear they would end up on it. -------- Weis told the judge that it was not his intention "to offend the court in any way," but that did little to placate Gettleman, who called the police chief's action's "intolerable" and, according to NBC Chicago's Phil Rogers , compared him to famously well-intentioned criminal: Quoting a ruling from another case, Gettleman declared, "Robin Hood may have been a noble criminal, but he was still a criminal." Watch a CLTV report on the battle over the reported officers list: More on Video
 
Tim Giago: Native Sun News to Debut on April 1, No Fooling Top
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) © 2009 Native Sun News Native Sun News to Debut on April 1, No Fooling March 9, 2009 Some would say I am crazy, but I think what is needed in Indian country is a good Indian newspaper. Let me explain. The condition of the newspaper business seems to go from bad to worse. Perhaps it didn't ruffle a feather in New York City when the Rocky Mountain News bit the dust, but out here in the west it shook up an entire region. With the Seattle Post Intelligencer sinking in the wake of the Albuquerque Tribune, it would appear that newspapers will soon go the way of the dodo bird. Let me say this about the death of the newspaper business using the words of Mark Twain: "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Perhaps the near death of many newspapers will cause the publishers and editors to take a hard look at this business of news reporting. We can't blame it all on the Internet although by putting their newspapers online, newspaper publishers helped to give it a shove toward the open grave. But when newspapers suddenly became attachments to a chain with the bottom line becoming more important than good news reporting, the readers responded by dropping their subscriptions. Conglomerates with offices in faraway places forgot that local people wanted to read local news. In order to write local news the paper had to have reporters that knew the territory and the people. Yes, national news is important because so many things that happen in Washington, DC eventually comes back to bite the local people in the butt. But please consider that the newspapers that maintained a balanced sense of community are still doing well. A classic example is the Mitchell (SD) Daily Republic. It is a small daily serving a small community that continues to grow. They are succeeding because they never lost that sense of "community." I have been in the newspaper business for more than 30 years, first with the national Indian newspaper Wassaja, as a reporter with the Rapid City (SD) Journal, and as a regional editor with the Farmington (NM) Daily Times. I started my own newspaper, The Lakota Times, in 1981. The Times morphed into Indian Country Today in 1991. I then started The Lakota Journal in 2000. I thought I had retired in 2004. But there are always pieces of news floating around out there about Native Americans that are downright degrading, erroneous and misleading. Whenever I saw this kind of news reporting I shuddered, especially when I saw it in so-called "Indian newspapers." When the newspaper I sold to the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe folded its tent in January of this year I realized that there was not a statewide Indian newspaper to keep the residents of the nine Indian reservations in South Dakota informed and educated to events that would shape their daily lives. My phone began ringing from longtime Lakota friends asking and yes, urging me, to get back into the business. Let me say that retirement isn't all it is cracked up to be. If one has a job that is not a job, but a joy, leaving it is difficult. Admittedly I was tired, and ill, but 5 years of rest and relaxation have brought me back to good health and a positive outlook on life. Last week I opened an office in Rapid City that will be the home of the brand new Native Sun News. Many of my old reporters will be writing articles for me and the investigative articles that were a weekly menu of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today (when I owned it) will once again become a weekly staple. For too many years some tribal governments have run roughshod over their members without recourse. Indian country needs a watchdog, one that does not fear turning over a rock to see what is under it. You won't find us on the Internet. So many of my Indian readers do not have computers or do not even have access to them. Native Sun News will go back to the traditional way of providing news for Indian country. The paper will have serious news, but we will never abandon that Indian sense of humor that so many non-Indians accuse us of not having. You will be able to hold our newspaper in your hands, sip on a hot cup of coffee, and read the news you used to love to read in The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today. I decided to keep my annual subscription rate low because of the hard times so, except on the newsstand where the paper will sell for $1.00, a subscription will cost less than $1.00 per issue. But even for $1.00, it is the best dollar you'll ever spend. To subscribe call Michele at: 605-721-1266 or email her at: sales@nsweekly.com. You can write to me at: editor@nsweekly.com or to the newspaper at: Native Sun News, 1000 Cambell St., Suite 1A, Rapid City, SD 57701. I am excited and looking forward to serving the Indian nations of America with a newspaper they will truly enjoy reading. Hece tu yelo! (Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was the founder and publisher of Indian Country Today, the Lakota Times, and the Lakota Journal. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com)
 
Weekend Late-Night Joke Round-Up: Octo-Mom, Gray Obama, AIG, Barbara Bush Surgery & More (VIDEO) Top
In this weekend's best late-night jokes, Bill Maher scores two one-liners, Seth Myers hits a "Weekend Update" trifecta, and NBC's late-nighters each come in with a zinger. Maher joked that the economic situation has grown so dire that "Octo-Mom took all her sperm out of Citibank." He also spoke about Obama going gray, saying, "Now his hair isn't black enough." Myers mixed topics serious and light, mocking everything from AIG to Square Root Day to Iran. Meanwhile, Jay Leno found a tasteful way to joke about Barbara Bush's surgery and Jimmy Fallon scored a dig at Larry King, by way of Dr. Sanjay Gupta. WATCH: More on Jimmy Fallon
 
Kanye, Paul McCartney And Salma Hayek All Loved Up At Stella McCartney Show (PHOTOS) Top
Stella McCartney showed her fall-winter 2009 collection to an audience dotted with famous faces, including her father, some newlyweds and a royal. Paul McCartney came out to support his daughter with girlfriend Nancy Shevell, who he has been seeing for well over a year. Another couple was Kanye West and bald girlfriend Amber Rose. Also there were newlywed Salma Hayek and husband Francois-Henri Pinault. Pinault works for the family company PPR, which owns Stella McCartney's label. See NSFW runway photos of the vegan-friendly, sheer clothes Rounding out the front row were pop singer Pink, actress Thandie Newton and Grace Kelly's granddaughter Charlotte Casiraghi. PHOTOS: More on Paul McCartney
 
Stella McCartney Shows Sheer, Animal-Friendly Collection In Paris (NSFW PHOTOS) Top
PARIS — Stella McCartney played with opacity and transparency in her sexy, lingerie-inspired 2010 winter ready-to-wear collection Monday. McCartney, a dedicated vegetarian, also continued to highlight animal-friendly alternatives to fur and leather, sending out oversized rock star coats in piles of shaggy lambs wool and stiletto boot-cum-leggings treated to look like second-skin leather. Pop star Pink _ one of a host of A-list guests that also included rapper Kanye West and McCartney's Beatle father, Paul _ praised her commitment to the cause. See a slideshow of celebrities sitting in the front row. "She proves that you can be wildly successful and creative and still have moral values," Pink told reporters at a post-show event organized by animal rights group PETA _ which has staged protests outside displays by other Paris labels, including Christian Dior and Jean Paul Gaultier. Mostly, McCartney's collection hinged around delicate black lace panels that gave a provocative edge to light spaghetti strap nighty dresses and flowing ankle-length gowns. The lace "is nice to remind you there's a human element underneath the clothes, nice to get skin," McCartney told reporters backstage. "It's a nice way of finding femininity and sensuality and delicacy, but when it's black lace, there's something a little edgy about it, as well." Lacy details dressed up the necklines of breezy, bouffant-sleeve blouses while lace panels in a starburst pattern revved up a light silk dress. Other standout pieces included a glam rocker coat entirely covered with thin, silver beads and cropped, swingy tuxedo jacket. At the end of the show _ which was held in a glass-roofed former market in central Paris _ Paul McCartney leapt to his feet to give his daughter a standing ovation. Another front-row guest, actress Salma Hayek, praised the collection as "so sexy and so feminine." Asked whether she thought the naughty nighty dresses were wearable, she demurred, saying, "for some people, I think definitely." More on Photo Galleries
 
Real Shakespeare Portrait: Stanley Fish Claims Only Picture Ever Painted Of Shakespeare While He Was Still Alive Top
In London today the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stanley Fish, unveiled a portrait that he claims is of the famous playwright. Even more, he believes it to be the only one ever to be painted while the Bard was still alive. Fish makes a compelling argument, which the New York Times helpfully breaks down . The portrait unveiling was attended with much fanfare. CBS News was there ; watch their report from London below. More on Video
 
Jim Lichtman: Fat on a Hot Tin Roof - Rush Limbaugh's Real Plan Top
I don't think Rush Limbaugh really likes being called an entertainer. What's wrong with being an entertainer, Rush? Jay Leno's an entertainer. He entertains millions and makes a lot of money doing it, too. Jerry Seinfeld's an entertainer and makes a lot more money doing it! The problem is that Rush thinks he's something else. He thinks he's Big Daddy from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," when he's really Jabba the Hut from "Star Wars." He thinks he's Henry V, when he's really Richard III. Now, he thinks he's the Great, White, Conservative Hope. And why wouldn't he think so? Without any substantive financial background, El Rushbo has an editorial run in the Wall Street Journal touting his "Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan" (Jan. 29): "Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. ...under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me." As a result, he's interviewed by CNBC's Mark Haines and Erin Burnett. Look out, now Rush thinks he's Warren Buffett! But the real Limbaugh plan started four days before Obama's Inauguration: "I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: 'Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.' Somebody's gotta say it." Limbaugh on Obama's health care plan: "[it is] highly visible... plus it has the great liberal lion Teddy Kennedy pushing it. Before it's all over, it will be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill." Rush, you're not the great, white anything . You're the Rage-aholic-in-Chief! RNC Chair Michael Steele got a big dose of the Rush rage after appearing on CNN's D.L. Hughley saying what most people already know: "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer... Yes, it's incendiary, yes, it's ugly." Less than 48 hours later, Steele recants: "I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership." Memo to Steele : Now, you're branding him as a voice of leadership ? But I have a more important question: WHY is the media giving this guy all this attention? Why CNN, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, even the Sunday morning talk shows? Why are all these people taking part in promoting the Limbaugh plan? What is "The Limbaugh Plan" you ask? The Rush Limbaugh plan is simple: anything, everything that Rush Limbaugh thinks, says, or does is in service to advance one thing: Rush Limbaugh . Forget about T-shirts, hats or mugs. Rush wants more, a lot more. Limbaugh is the Bernie Madoff of the media, complete with his own Ponzi scheme and it works like this: the more media he enlists to spread his incendiary phrases, half-baked ideas, and ugly jokes, the more credibility he builds with people who either, (a) have barely heard of him, or (b) have marginalized him as the crackpot, conservative entertainer that he is, but are now taking a second look because maybe, just maybe they missed something. After all, he's getting all this attention from the mainstream media! But there's another voice out there, Mr. Limbaugh. He's a new voice; a voice of intelligence and hope, of reason and respect. At thirteen years of age, Jonathan Krohn is the Anti-Limbaugh who gave a rousing address to the same CPAC conference that you did, Mr. Limbaugh. In three-minutes, young Mr. Krohn demonstrated that rational, civil rhetoric can succeed over chest-thumping, arm-waving Rush Almighty. Jim Lichtman's commentaries can be found at www.ethicsStupid.com More on Barack Obama
 
Jeff Schweitzer: Our Dangerous Addiction to Immediacy Top
A sad fact of modern life is that our ability to plan for long-term energy independence is stymied by fluctuating oil prices. At $150 per barrel and $4.00 per gallon, gas-guzzling SUVs were being dropped faster than quarters at a slot convention in Las Vegas. Panic selling of large cars was fueled by punditry calling for permanently high fuel prices, with some talking heads ruminating about $200 per barrel. Politicians were falling over each other to demand a switch to renewable energies. We wondered with pious regret why the country had not invested more heavily in solar and wind power. How quickly we forget. At $40 per barrel, we have developed an intense case of amnesia and have quickly mortgaged our future for more immediate gratification. We learned exactly nothing from the oil crisis of the 1970s or from any subsequent spike in oil prices. With every peak we express regret at our shortsightedness and promise to reform, never to drink again, and then with every valley we forget our commitment to a better future, and pick up the bottle once more. We are behaving like alcoholics oscillating between bouts of sobriety and weakness because that is precisely what we are: oil addicts. Exhibit A is the precipitous decline in hybrid values, which are down almost 24% from the peak last summer simply because fuel is now cheaper. That rational market response is a rather pathetic reflection of our collective obsession with the short-term at the expense of a healthy future. We need an intervention. We need to change our ways. We need help. Like all addicts, we will not get sober alone. Market forces alone will not come to our rescue. Ronald Reagan famously said that government is the problem, not the solution. He could not have been more wrong. The immediate demands of the market cannot properly anticipate our longer-term future needs. The current price of oil, for example, does not incorporate the value of energy independence, and with that the commensurate benefits to national security. The cost of gasoline fails to include the future costs of climate change. Refineries do not consider the costs of protecting sources of oil in the Middle East in their price structure. The temporal gap between market forces and societal goals cannot be bridged by appealing to the magic of free enterprise. Government must play a catalytic role. The time has come for society to pay the true environmental and national security price tag of burning fossil fuels. Even during these times of economic crises, gasoline must be taxed so that the actual costs to society are recovered and properly reflected in the price of fuel. The revenue generated from such a carbon tax must then be used to fund renewable energy infrastructure development and research. Reliance on foreign oil from the world's most unstable regions is one of our greatest national security threats. Dumping six billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year is one of our greatest environmental threats. We can solve both problems with an aggressive move to renewable energies. To do so, we must not fall prey to the bad habits of our addiction every time a bottle of our poison comes down in price. We have a moral obligation to bequeath to our children a world that is at least as good as the one we inherited from our parents. We will not meet that obligation if we cannot see past the next fiscal quarter. Our government policies and personal actions must look toward a more distant horizon. We have to move beyond our ridiculous propensity to abandon our quest for energy independence with every dip in the price of oil. We can do better than this. More on Energy
 
Reagans Cheer Obama Stem Cell Order -- But Not Invited To Ceremony Top
Monday's White House ceremony lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research marked a major departure from the Bush administration and a turning point in the intersection of science and politics. With the stroke of a pen, the president pledged, in his own words, to "lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research," "vigorously support scientists who pursue this research," and "aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield." But two of the main principles who have long fought for the lifting of the ban, Ron Reagan and his mother, former first lady Nancy Reagan, were not in attendance. Their absence was noted by at least one observer who wondered whether the non-inclusion of such fierce proponents of stem cell research -- Ron called the country to arms on the issue during his Democratic National Convention address in 2004 -- constituted a "diss." In an email to the Huffington Post, Ron confirmed that he and his mother were "not invited" to the event and added that his mother, at 88 years-old, "doesn't do much traveling" anyways. Nevertheless, the former first family had high praise for the president's actions, with Nancy Reagan's office issuing the following statement: "I'm very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. These new rules will now make it possible for scientists to move forward. I urge researchers to make use of the opportunities that are available to them, and to do all they can to fulfill the promise that stem cell research offers. Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases - and soon. As I've said before, time is short, and life is precious." Added Ron, when asked for his reaction to Monday's decision: "Yes [I'm] pleased -- though, as the New York Times points out, the larger issue of research using embryos is being left to Congress. One point that never seems to be brought up is the distinction between IVF embryos -- unique genetic entities created by introducing sperm to egg -- and the 'embryos' created in a lab -- a skin cell placed in a donor egg, the nucleus of which has been removed to create a cellular clone of the skin cell donor. Somehow, many members of Congress have been induced to assign greater moral value to the latter. This makes little sense. Just goes to show that scientific illiteracy among elected officials can be problematic."
 
Steve Ralls: Change, Coming from the Heartland Top
During his campaign for the White House, President Obama was often fond of reminding Americans that "change doesn't come from Washington; it comes to Washington." Significant change, he told the country, doesn't usually originate in the halls of Congress, but rises up from the heartland of America, when voters demand their elected leaders do something drastic and change the course of our country and our collective history. That fundamental lesson, about the power of an effective "community organizer" to usher in change on a national level, may also be a key component of an effective campaign to "turn the corner" on our national debate about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By understanding that change won't necessarily come from the corridors of power in D.C., but may begin with a shift in the thinking of both blue and red state America, we may be able to build the foundations today that will spell victory for our families tomorrow, when we once again face ballot box battles like Proposition 8 in California or a vote on federal hate crimes legislation on Capitol Hill in Washington. Indeed, making in-roads in places like North Carolina (where lawmakers are moving forward on an anti-marriage amendment), Illinois (where advocates have been putting in long hours and a lot of energy to establish recognition for same-sex couples) and Indiana (where the legislature has blocked an anti-marriage bill, but where allies fear their one-vote victory could someday disappear) can pay significant dividends for families across the country. And even in California, where some smaller communities almost unanimously supported Proposition 8, there is much community organizing left to be done. And, as columnist Stephanie Salter points out in this morning's Star Tribune in Terre Haute, Indiana, there is a much-needed grassroots movement that is picking up steam in the weeks and months following the passage of Proposition 8 and other anti-equality initiatives in other states. More and more people in America's heartland, she reports, are beginning to reach out to their neighbors, co-workers, community leaders and clergy by establishing a local chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). "It is 2009 in the United States of America, and a young man on his way to a college degree still believes it is funny -- and commendable -- to use his fists like hammers on the faces of homosexuals," she writes, recounting the rhetoric she recently spouted by a young man who publicly bragged about attacking a gay couple. "Talk about work to do." That work, she notes, is increasingly being taken up by PFLAGers, who are mobilizing straight allies - in places like Terre Haute and elsewhere in America's heartland - to change the hearts and minds of red state voters and be a critical lifeline for those who often have nowhere else to turn when homophobia rears its head in small town America. "As one of those straight allies, I have long believed in the power of PFLAG," Salter writes this morning." That is because the organization is based on personal relationships -- familial, collegial, among friends. It is always the personal level at which the most effective consciousness raising occurs." And in the most unlikely of places, PFLAG chapters are changing the consciousness of our country and planting the seeds that, in the future, could lead to a substantial change in the way voters, and lawmakers, see gay Americans and our families and allies. Following the passage of Proposition 8, and films like Lifetime's Prayers for Bobby ¸ which told the true story of a PFLAG mother's journey from rejecting her son to becoming a vocal advocate for gay rights, the organization's Chapter Services Coordinator, Erin Cranford Williams, has reported a noticeable spike in the number of people who have inquired about starting PFLAG chapters. Many of those chapters are in areas where there is virtually no other voice speaking out for same-sex families, like in Terre Haute, where a new PFLAG chapter is the subject of Salter's column in this morning's paper. PFLAG chapters like the one in Terre Haute bring together not just activists, but also other community leaders who are instrumental in changing the political and personal landscape for LGBT equality. Salter notes, for example, that the Terre Haute chapter is the brainchild of a local same-sex couple, but has also inspired other community members, including clergy and straight allies, to be part of PFLAG's work. "Unitarian member Doddie Stone proposed to her church's board that the UU's sponsor the chapter," Salter notes. "Unitarians being 'a welcoming congregation,' the board gave its assent." "One of the chapter's founding members is David Howard, who taught in Indiana State University's College of Nursing, Health and Human Services, and thoroughly qualifies as one of those 'straight allies,'" the paper reports. "Raised in Salt Lake City, Howard was in graduate school at Brigham Young University when his father confided he was gay. Although his mother knew, Howard was asked to keep his father's secret from his three younger siblings and the family's friends for several years, until his dad could retire from his BYU job with pension intact. The situation caused tremendous strain on Howard's own marriage." Howard, Stone and countless others in Terre Haute are founding, and finding, a home in PFLAG. That home, in turn, becomes a community center for the consciousness change that Salter credits PFLAG for doing. In Kings County, California, where Proposition 8 passed with by a bigger margin, percentage-wise, than anywhere else in the state, a local PFLAG chapter was recently on the front page of its local newspaper , putting a face on the LGBT community and encouraging their neighbors to come learn about local families who were impacted by the measure's passage. In Dayton, Ohio, the local PFLAG chapter recently hosted a standing-room-only crowd to hear from actor Ryan Kelley about his work on Prayers for Bobby, and what he learned about the power of PFLAG to change minds and help families cope. And in Oklahoma City , the local PFLAG chapter made headlines - and doubled the number of people attending its monthly meeting - when it took on State Representative Sally Kern after she called gays a threat worse than terrorism. Those are all "red state places" many people would not automatically associate with gay rights and big picture change. But, as a community organizer recently reminded us, they are the very places we must look to for change. As the organizer of PFLAG Terre Haute movingly told Salter, ""I can't let those that come after me down. I feel like, now, it's almost my duty. You look at the city of Terre Haute -- there are a lot of families going through what mine is. We all just need some place to be able to relate to each other." That's change we can believe in, coming right out of America's heartland.
 
US Troops May Stay Longer In Mosul Due To Fighting: Odierno Top
Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said that continuing the fight against insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul might lead to U.S. troops remaining in the city past a June 30, 2009 deadline for all U.S. combat troops to leave Iraqi cities, but only if the Iraqi government made such a request. More on Iraq
 
Disgrasian: Rep. Cao Admits He's a Closet Case Top
On Tuesday, in front of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Rep. Joseph Cao, the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress, admitted to being a closet case . A "closet Democrat" that is. His exact words were: "Don't tell the Republicans, but I might be a closet Democrat," said Cao to a round of laughter. Now, this sounds like a prime example of Rep. Cao, who comes from a heavily Democratic district, panda-ring -- what you'd call pandering to our people -- but methinks there is another explanation. Translation: "The GOP ship is sinking. We've got the head of the RNC kow-towing to that guy Rush Limbaugh and my re-election in 2010 is a hair's breath away. Abort, Abort! Meowww, Mrs. Cao ! More on Michael Steele
 
Even With Severe Budget Gap Voters Oppose Tax Hikes, Politicians Behind Them: Poll Top
SPRINGFIELD - Illinois voters largely oppose raising taxes to balance the state's budget or improve roads and say they will vote out lawmakers who support tax hikes, a newly released poll finds. One quarter of those polled said they would support raising the state's 3 percent income tax to help close an estimated $9 billion budget hole.
 
Jessica Catto: Apocalypse Now? No, but the Camel Needs Rescuing Top
By Jessica Hobby Catto Apocalypse awaits us or so says the Book of Revelation and the Mayan calendar. Man has been fascinated by the end of days since the beginning of them. But it is not the end of days we are sensing now; it is the end of systems. Seismic shifts are shaking our body politic, and life-changing anxiety hangs in our air like vapor from a sulfur cave. When systems break down, strife breaks out. Times of instability begin. Uncertainty is an unwelcome guest. The list of institutions affecting our fate is short but potent. Are we up to the adjustments ahead? That is the question and the challenge. We are at an historical turning point; we will rise or fall depending on how we respond to an irresponsible past. Excess was fun but clean up is hell. Many banks have grown from lending institutions to moneychangers in the temple: passing accountability for loans down into a potpourri of untraceable semi-worthless paper. They have literally passed the buck until the buck has evaporated from exposure to the elements. In the recovery package, where is the regulation to eliminate these hand-me-down bad debts? Without that restriction, our trust in banking will not be restored. That single act would cause the lender to accept responsibility for his loan, and the borrower to have the security of knowing where his buck stopped. Mr. President and Congress, just do it. Corporations have lost any vestige of soul or hint of responsibility. Breakdown in goodwill for the auto industries, AIG and the Wall Street brokerage firms is pandemic. What respect and faith there were for these giants have shriveled with their mismanagement and bad party manners. On the one hand, we want the companies to survive because of the unemployment consequences, and the pain that causes. On the other hand, we think poorly run companies should disappear if they cannot sustain themselves. Hobson's choice. Our main source of energy, petroleum, is both finite and fungible. It is also harmful to our health and long-term survival. Renewable energy sources are out there. Now we need to reinvent old fading companies into new ones. Rebirth of a nation. Let the auto giants restructure in chapter 11, and come out with fuel saving models of electric, battery operated and hybrid vehicles. Industrial Darwinism at work. Dollars are in the recovery package for renewables. Bring them on. Climate change is here, and as Tom Friedman quotes, "Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts." Indeed, she will have the last word, and it will be caustic. Time is a-wasting to reverse carbon levels in our atmosphere. Failure to do so will result in more water shortages, drought, changes in agriculture production, changes in sea levels and a host of unpredictable results. When push comes to shove, good air and good drinking water are the highest of priorities. Along with the slack-jawed banks, defense costs and the war in Iraq are co-culprits for the deficits. The good news is that revising how defense contracts are awarded, as the president has directed, will be a bonus for us, the taxpayers. A central tenet of our financial structure is based upon buying just one more car, refrigerator, jacket or widget. Hence our predicament. We made one widget too many and the whole camel (us) collapsed. It was inevitable. Infinity is not a sustainable market concept; supply and demand is. We just kept loading supplies onto the poor camel even though his capacity clearly had been exceeded: not very clever or observant of us. So we have these institutions and climate change to blame for our new reality. Basic systems are destined for fundamental change. That reality is both frightening and exciting. Our own life styles and patterns will change. New industries create new opportunities. Birth is painful, and joyous and dangerous, but we have no choice. History teaches us that we can make a brave new beginning or that we can fall into disarray. This is America, and we have the innovation and character to take this critical turning point and remake ourselves into a country of new energy, new frugality, new standards of fiscal practices, and new optimism. More on Climate Change
 
Tim Giago: Native Sun News to Debut on April 1 (No Fooling) Top
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) © 2009 Native Sun News Native Sun News to Debut on April 1, No Fooling March 9, 2009 Some would say I am crazy, but I think what is needed in Indian country is a good Indian newspaper. Let me explain. The condition of the newspaper business seems to go from bad to worse. Perhaps it didn't ruffle a feather in New York City when the Rocky Mountain News bit the dust, but out here in the west it shook up an entire region. With the Seattle Post Intelligencer sinking in the wake of the Albuquerque Tribune, it would appear that newspapers will soon go the way of the dodo bird. Let me say this about the death of the newspaper business using the words of Mark Twain: "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Perhaps the near death of many newspapers will cause the publishers and editors to take a hard look at this business of news reporting. We can't blame it all on the Internet although by putting their newspapers online, newspaper publishers helped to give it a shove toward the open grave. But when newspapers suddenly became attachments to a chain with the bottom line becoming more important than good news reporting, the readers responded by dropping their subscriptions. Conglomerates with offices in faraway places forgot that local people wanted to read local news. In order to write local news the paper had to have reporters that knew the territory and the people. Yes, national news is important because so many things that happen in Washington, DC eventually comes back to bite the local people in the butt. But please consider that the newspapers that maintained a balanced sense of community are still doing well. A classic example is the Mitchell (SD) Daily Republic. It is a small daily serving a small community that continues to grow. They are succeeding because they never lost that sense of "community." I have been in the newspaper business for more than 30 years, first with the national Indian newspaper Wassaja, as a reporter with the Rapid City (SD) Journal, and as a regional editor with the Farmington (NM) Daily Times. I started my own newspaper, The Lakota Times, in 1981. The Times morphed into Indian Country Today in 1991. I then started The Lakota Journal in 2000. I thought I had retired in 2004. But there are always pieces of news floating around out there about Native Americans that are downright degrading, erroneous and misleading. Whenever I saw this kind of news reporting I shuddered, especially when I saw it in so-called "Indian newspapers." When the newspaper I sold to the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe folded its tent in January of this year I realized that there was not a statewide Indian newspaper to keep the residents of the nine Indian reservations in South Dakota informed and educated to events that would shape their daily lives. My phone began ringing from longtime Lakota friends asking and yes, urging me, to get back into the business. Let me say that retirement isn't all it is cracked up to be. If one has a job that is not a job, but a joy, leaving it is difficult. Admittedly I was tired, and ill, but 5 years of rest and relaxation have brought me back to good health and a positive outlook on life. Last week I opened an office in Rapid City that will be the home of the brand new Native Sun News. Many of my old reporters will be writing articles for me and the investigative articles that were a weekly menu of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today (when I owned it) will once again become a weekly staple. For too many years some tribal governments have run roughshod over their members without recourse. Indian country needs a watchdog, one that does not fear turning over a rock to see what is under it. You won't find us on the Internet. So many of my Indian readers do not have computers or do not even have access to them. Native Sun News will go back to the traditional way of providing news for Indian country. The paper will have serious news, but we will never abandon that Indian sense of humor that so many non-Indians accuse us of not having. You will be able to hold our newspaper in your hands, sip on a hot cup of coffee, and read the news you used to love to read in The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today. I decided to keep my annual subscription rate low because of the hard times so, except on the newsstand where the paper will sell of $1.00, a subscription will cost less than $1.00 per issue. But even for $1.00, it is the best dollar you'll ever spend. To subscribe call Michele at: 605-721-1266 or email her at: sales@msweekly.com. You can write to me at: editor@msweekly.com or to the newspaper at: Native Sun News, 1000 Cambell St., Suite 1A, Rapid City, SD 57701. I am excited and looking forward to serving the Indian nations of America with a newspaper they will truly enjoy reading. Hece tu yelo! (Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was the founder and publisher of Indian Country Today, the Lakota Times, and the Lakota Journal. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com)
 
Steve Rosenbaum: Media Depression Amplifies Unhappiness Top
I find that I'm living in two worlds - inhabiting a sort of bi-polar media-verse in which some of my information sources bombard me with an unrelenting firehose of terrible news. You've read the stories and seen the reports. Stocks - Down. Jobs - Down. Consumer Confidence - Down. Faith in government - uncertain. Ok, so that's one view. But then, in the fast emerging world of web media, ecommerce, and content entrepreneurs - there's a very different set of memes. Businesses that are growing faster than their projections, entrepreneurs who are finding customers willing to embrace and even evangelize new paradigms. Yes, things are changing. And yes, there are broken old models that employ hundreds of thousands of real people with real rent to pay and real kids to feed. The "re-boot" as my friend Jeff Jarvis calls it, is happening in a way that impacts every corner of our society. But why does it seem that the emergence of new paradigms, businesses where the US could once again lead and dominate in the world market, end up on the feature pages of national magazines rather than on the front cover? It is - I'm afraid - because journalists are human. And humans, as much as we may try and be objective and impartial, can't really help but bring their own personal fears and trepidation to this fast emerging new world. They look in the mirror and ask themselves, does the future include them? So, here's a meme that I'd propose to writers in search of a 'good news' or 'light at the end of the tunnel' story line. America has always been a country of inventors, innovators, dreamers, and builders. We didn't name the Industrial Age, it just happened. Today, we're in the Digital Age. No doubt. Physical is being replaced by digital at a staggering pace. Consider this list: Now this isn't all simple of course. As was mentioned numerous times at a daylong roundtable conference at the Yale Law School I participated in recently, trading current media dollars for internet media dimes has the potential to have a dire impact on the current media companies that are central to our current information ecosystem. And yet, it's hard to argue that building a information-based society that gives individuals access to view, participate in, and publish to a collective open-architecture platform is a good thing. It's just that it challenges the economics of things we are fond of, and arguably things that crowd sourcing can't replace. Which brings me back to media. Music isn't dying. The delivery system that was owned by record labels and that relied on scarcity of resources and expensive production is being replaced by low cost creation and distribution. But just look on the street, or on the subway, or anywhere and you'll see music is being listened to more, not less. So, journalists have, for a long time, known that they're hardly going to be in a secure field. These are not cradle to grave jobs. You're always doing four jobs, writing a book, writing for some magazines, teaching a class, etc. Journalists are, in their DNA, entrepreneurs. And while the institutions that currently house them may be wobbly, it's time for a bit of confidence and leadership and enthusiasm among those of use whose job it is to give readers and viewers a road map that includes both the current problems and the emerging opportunities. If etail eclipses retail, where are those opportunities going to show up? If factory jobs continue to decline, but cottage creation and distribution continues to grow thanks to sites like etsy, how can unemployed turn their job hunts into participation in emerging and increasingly successful home-based businesses? The challenge for all of us is that the changes we're now experiencing have been on the horizon for long enough that we should have made some provisions for all this. From the moment that the web arrived, print was going to be under pressure to evolve. From the moment that TiVo was born, broadcast television was a model ripe for change. So, for those of you who aren't sure where to start - the answer is easy. Take what you do, what you love, what you know, and invent a digital version. And, take a look at the check list of tools and solutions that are already 'mainstream' and make sure you've got at least a rudimentary knowledge of what they are and how they work. The good news is, if you've got a computer and an internet connection (you're reading this, right?) you can use them all - today. The bad news is that the evolution of media is now in fast forward, and if you don't engage and embrace what's happening, you could find yourself unable to connect your readers or your career with the future. A JOURNALISTS "TOOL-CHEST" CHECK LIST:
 
Betsy Gotbaum: Governor Jindal, Governor Sanford ... Mayor Bloomberg? Top
President Obama's stimulus package is expected to bring billions of dollars into New York City at a time when we desperately need it. Included in this package is a provision that will suspend the limit on how long able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDS) can receive food stamps through September 30, 2010--it is a provision designed to address hunger during a time of high unemployment. However, we recently learned that Mayor Bloomberg has refused to accept the provision without conditions, a decision that could cause the city to miss out on millions in federal funds for the local economy. This is nothing new for Mayor Bloomberg: New York City, as a locality with high unemployment, had previously been eligible for a waiver to extend the time limits, but despite the urging of myself, other elected officials, and hunger advocates--and even the advice of his own appointees--the mayor has never accepted the ABAWD waiver. Mayor Bloomberg refuses to extend federally funded benefits to hungry, out-of-work New Yorkers while they look for jobs, but when it comes to another group of able-bodied adults--his friends in the financial sector--he isn't so strict. He has announced that he is willing to spend millions of dollars in city money to retrain and support former financial services workers. Yet according to a recent Moody's analysis , Food Stamps were found to provide the most bang for the government buck in stimulating the economy. For every dollar the government spends on food stamps, it produces $1.73 in GDP. Clearly, Food Stamps are an essential part of the stimulus. According to an estimate produced by my office - and referred to in a NY Times Editorial last week - New York City could lose the opportunity to bring roughly $155 million in federal funds into the city because of its refusal to accept this provision without conditions. This past week, a number of elected officials and advocates have joined with me to take the matter into our own hands. We are urging Governor Paterson to overrule the Mayor by accepting this provision on behalf of the entire state. More on Financial Crisis
 
Rachel Dunn: Are We Depressing Ourselves Further into a Depression? Top
Maybe it's just me but lately it's all I can do to avoid the news. Where I was once a self-admitted news junkie, I now find myself hiding from the reality of the day behind reruns of Will & Grace and Frasier . While they are shows that stand on their own merits, they are now my escape from what has become a daily deluge of bad news, dire circumstances and fatalistic pundits. I'm starting to think that our media is depressing us into a further depression. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not some sheltered Pollyanna. I know things truly are bad. Trust me. I am a real-life casualty of the economic downturn: laid off and uninsured. I am a statistic. It doesn't get more real than that. Yet, even I think that we've gone off the bad-news deep end. Watching President Obama's Congressional Address the other week, I felt that hope that he sold us on during the election. I loved hearing about what he's going to do and where he's going to take us. More than that, I was moved by hearing about the owner of a bank that gave his bonus to his current and former employees, about the young girl that demands a better education from her government and about the town that came together to rebuild after a natural disaster. It was a welcome departure from the last eight years of fear mongering. Why hadn't the news covered any of this? Maybe they were just getting to it? I turned on the news the next morning anticipating some interesting coverage that was ushered in with this new administration but was met with the same cynical feuding pundits that have been assaulting us for years. So concerned with representing their "side" and feeding us pithy little sound bites are they that I'm not sure they actually even know what they think. Aren't these the same people that traumatized us with the news that we'd never never see gas prices drop below $4 again in our lifetimes? Aren't they the ones that told us another terrorist attack on our soil was imminent shortly after 9/11? Who of us isn't still a bit scarred by the bird flu epidemic that was going to sweep across this nation and wipe us out? Enough already. I don't know about you but I'm exhausted from all the teeth-clenching and anxious nights worrying about the end of the world. We voted in change. Shouldn't we settle for nothing less than change... everywhere? The President says we all have a part in progress. I think that should include our media. Yes, today the failures are outweighing the accomplishments but there are accomplishments. Why must we bury them in the back of newspapers? I guess lauding the good doesn't pay as well as panning the bad. But all this negativity has got me wondering, "Why should I invest money, time or energy in helping to stimulate the economy when I keep being told it's hopeless." Makes me feel helpless... Now, that's depressing. More on Economy
 
Richard Klass: Keeping Promises, Getting Out Top
There is some unhappiness with President Obama's plan to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But those criticisms are not justified. Let's look at what candidate Obama promised and what he is doing. During his campaign, President Obama talked repeatedly of removing all combat forces from Iraq in approximately 16 months at a rate of one to two brigades per month. This position was staked out during the "surge" when there were 20 brigades in Iraq and withdrawing one to two per month fit a 16-month timetable. Today, in the wake of the surge, there are approximately 14 brigades in Iraq. However, the President has stuck by the 16-month timetable. This situation provides more flexibility than has been recognized. Candidate Obama did not say he would remove all U.S. forces from Iraq within 16 months. Rather, he spoke of removing all combat forces and specifically said some support troops would remain to provide logistical assistance and training for Iraqi forces, to hunt down al Qaeda in Iraq, and to protect the U.S. embassy and other U.S. personnel and assets. Military planning to meet the president's objectives began before the inauguration, albeit reluctantly. The CENTOM commander (General David Petraeus) and the U.S. commander in Iraq (General Raymond Odierno) appear to have developed a 24 month option cued to a slower redeployment timetable probably aimed at compliance with the so called status of forces agreement (SOFA) signed by the United States and Iraq in late 2008. The actual name of the agreement, which goes far beyond a normal SOFA is far more comforting: "Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq." Unlike the President's 16-month timetable for removing combat forces, the SOFA mandates the removal of all U.S. forces -- combat and non-combat -- by the end of 2011. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are likely to have adopted a position somewhere between the President's campaign pledge and the field commanders' plan for slower redeployment. The approved 18-month timetable seems to be their recommendation. If the President's timeline -- with normal caveats about circumstances on the ground -- is to be implemented, the review process, completed at the end of February 2009 and a two month period to finish the detailed planning needed, would mean that the 16-month timeline would begin in May and carry through August 2010. So the much-criticized 18-month timetable is in reality, I would argue, the 16 months promised by the president plus time to review and plan. Did anyone really expect that the redeployment would begin at noon on 20 January? The pace of the redeployment is critical. It must begin soon, before the July plebiscite on the SOFA, to show the Iraqi people that the occupation is ending. And it must leave enough combat power in place to help quell any violence during the parliamentary elections in December. Within those parameters, there is sufficient flexibility for an orderly redeployment. And what about the force levels after the combat forces are redeployed? What will the estimated 35-50,000 military personnel do and for how long? They will be there for another 16 months until the end of 2011 when the SOFA requires their withdrawal and they will do the missions specified: training and logistics, hunting alQaeda, and protecting U.S. personnel and assets as candidate Obama stated. Clearly, even in this scenario there still would be hundreds -- not thousands -- of U.S. military personnel in Iraq after 2011 in the form of Marine guards at the U.S. embassy, defense attaché personnel, and, perhaps, a Military Assistance Advisory Team. So the president's plan fits his pledge to be as careful getting out of Iraq as Bush was careless getting in. It meets, in my view, his plan to redeploy all combat troops within 16 months. And it will leave Iraq with their sovereignty and their chance to make a country worthy of the sacrifice of our brave men and women. More on Iraq
 
Stephen Zunes: Obama and Israel's Military: Still Arm-in-Arm Top
In the wake of Israel's assault on heavily populated civilian areas of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, Amnesty International called for the United States to suspend military aid to Israel on human rights grounds. Amnesty has also called for the United Nations to impose a mandatory arms embargo on both Hamas and the Israeli government. Unfortunately, it appears that President Barack Obama won't be heeding Amnesty's call. During the fighting in January, Amnesty documented Israeli forces engaging in "direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza, and attacks which were disproportionate or indiscriminate." The leader of Amnesty International's fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and southern Israel noted how "Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes." Amnesty also reported finding fragments of U.S.-made munitions "littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people's homes." Malcolm Smart, who serves as Amnesty International's director for the Middle East, observed in a press release that "to a large extent, Israel's military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with U.S. taxpayers' money." The release also noted how before the conflict, which raged for three weeks from late December into January, the United States had "been aware of the pattern of repeated misuse of [its] weapons." Amnesty has similarly condemned Hamas rocket attacks into civilian-populated areas of southern Israel as war crimes. And while acknowledging that aid to Hamas was substantially smaller, far less sophisticated, and far less lethal — and appeared to have been procured through clandestine sources — Amnesty called on Iran and other countries to take concrete steps to insure that weapons and weapon components not get into the hands of Palestinian militias. During the fighting in early January, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization initially called for a suspension of U.S. military aid until there was no longer a substantial risk of additional human rights violations. The Bush administration summarily rejected this proposal. Amnesty subsequently appealed to the Obama administration. "As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights," said Malcolm Smart. "The Obama administration should immediately suspend U.S. military aid to Israel." Obama's refusal to accept Amnesty's call for the suspension of military assistance was a blow to human rights activists. The most Obama might do to express his displeasure toward controversial Israeli policies like the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories would be to reject a planned increase in military aid for the next fiscal year and slightly reduce economic aid and/or loan guarantees. However, in a notable departure from previous administrations, Obama made no mention of any military aid to Israel in his outline of the FY 2010 budget, announced last week. This notable absence may indicate that pressure from human rights activists and others concerned about massive U.S. military aid to Israel is now strong enough that the White House feels a need to downplay the assistance rather than emphasize it. Obama Tilts Right Currently, Obama is on record supporting sending up to $30 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel over the next 10 years. Such a total would represent a 25% increase in the already large-scale arms shipments to Israeli forces under the Bush administration. Obama has thus far failed to realize that the problem in the Middle East is that there are too many deadly weapons in the region, not too few. Instead of simply wanting Israel to have an adequate deterrent against potential military threats, Obama insists the United States should guarantee that Israel maintain a qualitative military advantage. Thanks to this overwhelming advantage over its neighbors, Israeli forces were able to launch devastating wars against Israel's Palestinian and Lebanese neighbors in recent years. If Israel were in a strategically vulnerable situation, Obama's hard-line position might be understandable. But Israel already has vastly superior conventional military capabilities relative to any combination of armed forces in the region, not to mention a nuclear deterrent. However, Obama has failed to even acknowledge Israel's nuclear arsenal of at least 200-300 weapons, which has been documented for decades. When Hearst reporter Helen Thomas asked at his first press conference if he could name any Middle Eastern countries that possess nuclear weapons, he didn't even try to answer the question. Presumably, Obama knows Israel has these weapons and is located in the Middle East. However, acknowledging Israel's arsenal could complicate his planned arms transfers since it would place Israel in violation of the 1976 Symington Amendment , which restricts U.S. military support for governments which develop nuclear weapons. Another major obstacle to Amnesty's calls for suspending military assistance is Congress. Republican leaders like Representatives John Boehner (OH) and Eric Cantor (VA) have long rejected calls by human rights groups to link U.S. military aid to adherence to internationally recognized human rights standards. But so have such Democratic leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who are outspoken supporters of unconditional military aid to Israel. Even progressive Democratic Representative Barney Frank (MA), at a press conference on February 24 pushing his proposal to reduce military spending by 25%, dismissed a question regarding conditioning Israel's military aid package to human rights concerns. Indeed, in an apparent effort to support their militaristic agenda and to discredit reputable human rights groups that documented systematic Israeli attacks against non-military targets, these congressional leaders and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of their colleagues have gone on record praising "Israel's longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and…efforts to prevent civilian casualties." Although Obama remained silent while Israel was engaged in war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza, Pelosi and other congressional leaders rushed to Israel's defense in the face of international condemnation. Obama's Defense of Israeli Attacks on Civilians Following the 2006 conflict between Israeli armed forces and the Hezbollah militia, in which both sides committed war crimes by engaging in attacks against populated civilian areas, then-Senator Obama defended Israel's actions and criticized Hezbollah, even though Israel was actually responsible for far more civilian deaths. In an apparent attempt to justify Israeli bombing of civilian population centers, Obama claimed Hezbollah had used "innocent people as shields." This charge directly challenged a series of reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These reports found that while Hezbollah did have some military equipment close to some civilian areas, the Lebanese Islamist militia had not forced civilians to remain in or around military targets in order to deter Israel from attacking those targets. I sent Obama spokesperson Ben LaBolt a copy of an exhaustive 249-page Human Rights Watch report that didn't find a single case — out of 600 civilian deaths investigated — of Hezbollah using human shields. I asked him if Obama had any empirical evidence that countered these findings. In response, LaBolt provided me with a copy of a short report from a right-wing Israeli think tank with close ties to the Israeli government headed by the former head of the Israeli intelligence service. The report appeared to use exclusively Israeli government sources, in contrast to the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, which were based upon forensic evidence as well as multiple verified eyewitness accounts by both Lebanese living in the areas under attack as well as experienced monitors (unaffiliated with any government or political organization) on the ground. Despite several follow-up emails asking for more credible sources, LaBolt never got back to me. Not Good for Israel The militaristic stance by Congress and the Obama administration is hardly doing Israel a favor. Indeed, U.S. military assistance to Israel has nothing to do with Israel's legitimate security needs. Rather than commencing during the country's first 20 years of existence, when Israel was most vulnerable strategically, major U.S. military and economic aid didn’t even begin until after the 1967 War, when Israel proved itself to be far stronger than any combination of Arab armies and after Israeli occupation forces became the rulers of a large Palestinian population. If all U.S. aid to Israel were immediately halted, Israel wouldn't be under a significantly greater military threat than it is today for many years. Israel has both a major domestic arms industry and an existing military force far more capable and powerful than any conceivable combination of opposing forces. Under Obama, U.S. military aid to Israel will likely continue be higher than it was back in the 1970s, when Egypt's massive and well-equipped armed forces threatened war, Syria's military rapidly expanded with advanced Soviet weaponry, armed factions of the PLO launched terrorist attacks into Israel, Jordan still claimed the West Bank and stationed large numbers of troops along its border and demarcation line with Israel, and Iraq embarked on a vast program of militarization. Why does the Obama administration believe that Israel needs more military aid today than it did back then? Since that time, Israel has maintained a longstanding peace treaty with Egypt and a large demilitarized and internationally monitored buffer zone. Syria's armed forces were weakened by the collapse of their former Soviet patron and its government has been calling for a resumption of peace talks. The PLO is cooperating closely with Israeli security. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel with full normalized relations. And two major wars and a decade of strict international sanctions have devastated Iraq's armed forces, which is in any case now under close U.S. supervision. Obama has pledged continued military aid to Israel a full decade into the future not in terms of how that country's strategic situation may evolve, but in terms of a fixed-dollar amount. If his real interest were to provide adequate support for Israeli defense, he wouldn't promise $30 billion in additional military aid. He would simply pledge to maintain adequate military assistance to maintain Israel's security needs, which would presumably decline if the peace process moves forward. However, Israel's actual defense needs don't appear to be the issue. According to late Israeli major general and Knesset member Matti Peled, — who once served as the IDF's chief procurement officer, such fixed amounts are arrived at "out of thin air." In addition, every major arms transfer to Israel creates a new demand by Arab states — most of which can pay hard currency through petrodollars — for additional U.S. weapons to challenge Israel. Indeed, Israel announced its acceptance of a proposed Middle Eastern arms freeze in 1991, but the U.S. government, eager to defend the profits of U.S. arms merchants, effectively blocked it. Prior to the breakdown in the peace process in 2001, 78 senators wrote President Bill Clinton insisting that the United States send additional military aid to Israel on the grounds of massive arms procurement by Arab states, neglecting to note that 80% of those arms transfers were of U.S. origin. Were they really concerned about Israeli security, they would have voted to block these arms transfers to the Gulf monarchies and other Arab dictatorships. The resulting arms race has been a bonanza for U.S. arms manufacturers. The right-wing "pro-Israel" political action committees certainly wield substantial clout with their contributions to congressional candidates supportive of large-scale military and economic aid to Israel. But the Aerospace Industry Association and other influential military interests that promote massive arms transfers to the Middle East and elsewhere are even more influential, contributing several times what the "pro-Israel" PACs contribute. The huge amount of U.S. aid to the Israeli government hasn't been as beneficial to Israel as many would suspect. U.S. military aid to Israel is, in fact, simply a credit line to American arms manufacturers, and actually ends up costing Israel two to three times that amount in operator training, staffing, maintenance, and other related costs. The overall impact is to increase Israeli military dependency on the United States — and amass record profits for U.S. arms merchants. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires a cutoff of military aid to recipient countries if they're found to be using American weapons for purposes other than internal security or legitimate self-defense and/or their use could "increase the possibility of an outbreak or escalation of conflict." This might explain Obama's refusal to acknowledge Israel's disproportionate use of force and high number of civilian casualties. Betraying His Constituency The $30 billion in taxpayer funds to support Israeli militarism isn't a huge amount of money compared with what has already been wasted in the Iraq War, bailouts for big banks, and various Pentagon boondoggles. Still, this money could more profitably go toward needs at home, such as health care, education, housing, and public transportation. It's therefore profoundly disappointing that there has been so little public opposition to Obama's dismissal of Amnesty International's calls to suspend aid to Israel. Some activists I contacted appear to have fallen into a fatalistic view that the "Zionist lobby" is too powerful to challenge and that Obama is nothing but a helpless pawn of powerful Jewish interests. Not only does this simplistic perspective border on anti-Semitism, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any right-wing militaristic lobby will appear all-powerful if there isn't a concerted effort from the left to challenge it. Obama's supporters must demand that he live up to his promise to change the mindset in Washington that has contributed to such death and destruction in the Middle East. The new administration must heed calls by Amnesty International and other human rights groups to condition military aid to Israel and all other countries that don't adhere to basic principles of international humanitarian
 
Cuomo, Frank To BofA's Lewis: You "Fuel Distrust And Cynicism" Top
NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Rep. Barney Frank on Monday sent a joint letter to Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive, Ken Lewis, demanding he immediately disclose details about individual bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch & Co. employees in December. Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America acquired Merrill on Jan. 1. The letter from Cuomo and Frank, D-Mass., comes as Cuomo's office and Bank of America fight about whether details of individual bonuses should be made public. On Friday, Cuomo asked a judge to reject a request from Bank of America to keep information confidential about the bonuses. Bank of America on Thursday requested a temporary confidentiality order be expanded to cover anyone who testifies on individual bonuses granted by Merrill. The order originally applied just to the testimony given by former Merrill Chief Executive John Thain. Bank of America was not immediately available to comment on Monday's letter. During his first deposition, Thain refused to provide information about individual bonuses, claiming he was worried about a potential lawsuit from Bank of America. He was forced to return for a second round of questioning, though it is unclear if he gave details about the bonuses then. BofA CEO Ken Lewis testified about the bonuses two weeks ago, but did not reveal information about individual bonuses. Bank of America has been adamant throughout the investigation about not publicly disclosing details about individual bonuses. It has said in the past it would provide the information if Cuomo's office guarantees it remains confidential. Monday's letter demands the information be made public because Bank of America has received $45 billion as part of the government's bank investment program. As a recipient of the funds, Bank of America must provide better transparency and disclosure to taxpayers about where their money is being spent, Cuomo and Frank assert in Monday's letter. Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other law makers have been insistent on knowing how financial institutions are spending taxpayers funds. Cuomo's office has been investigating the timing of $3.6 billion in bonuses New York-based Merrill paid to employees in December. His office is trying to determine if Merrill and Bank of America failed to provide adequate disclosures to shareholders about them and the more than $15 billion in losses Merrill incurred during the fourth quarter. Bank of America has repeatedly said Merrill Lynch was an independent company last year, and its board of directors had ultimate approval over how much to pay employees. But the bonuses apparently were a point of contention for Bank of America. The initial reports of the bonuses came just days after Bank of America received an additional $20 billion from the government that the bank said it needed to help offset the losses it was absorbing from the Merrill acquisition. The additional support was provided to Bank of America as Lewis showed trepidation about completing the deal to acquire Merrill. Thain resigned as head of global wealth management at the combined company in January just as news of the bonuses broke. The government helped orchestrate the acquisition of Merrill by Bank of America over the same weekend in September that another investment bank, Lehman Brothers, went under, setting off the most intense period of the financial crisis. _____ Ieva M. Augstums reported from Charlotte, N.C.
 
Jeremy Manier: Watch Obama's Fine Print on Stem Cells Top
Today President Obama will formally announce that he is ending the Bush -era restrictions on stem-cell funding via executive order. Now comes the hard part - implementing a stem-cell policy that's meaningful, has full ethical protections and unlocks the scientific talent that's been held back the last eight years. One insider point to watch today is whether someone from the National Institutes of Health will help explain the new funding channels for this research. It's a question of some urgency. Just last week, the NIH released a set of "challenge grant" topics that are eligible for a pool of $200 million as part of the new federal economic stimulus act. The NIH site describes the qualifying projects as those which "address specific scientific and health research challenges in biomedical and behavioral research that will benefit from significant 2-year jumpstart funds." Embryonic stem-cell research would seem a natural fit - especially since the Bush administration held it back for years - but it's not clear yet that Obama's rule change has come in time for stem-cell grant seekers to get a share of the stimulus money. That's one reason why Obama's delay in announcing changes to the stem-cell policy was a bit puzzling. Many observers - including me - expected him to lift the restrictions his first week in office. Around research centers like the University of Chicago, stem-cell scientists are poring over such details. I just spoke with John Cunningham , M.D., a specialist in pediatric stem-cell transplantation, who directed me to the brand-new NIH list of " Highest Priority Challenge Topics ." (You can see a more researcher-oriented application guide here .) Stem-cell research is on the list, but not specifically the embryonic stem-cell research that's been subject to Bush's limits. I count five topics that relate to iPS cells - short for induced pluripotent stem cells - which were discovered in 2007 and seem to have many of the properties of embryonic stem cells but are derived from adult cells. That's fantastic because iPS cells deserve more study. But embryonic stem-cell research never appears by name, except to say that "iPS cells act like embryonic stem cells." This is an important point because as Cunningham said, "One of the things that lifting the current ban should allow us to do is really test whether iPS cells and embryonic stem cells have similar properties." In theory the current challenge grant list could include work with embryonic stem cells, since some of the topics are broad enough to encompass work with several different cell types. For example, Topic 11, "Regenerative Medicine," contains a broad opportunity to "Develop cell-based therapies for cardiovascular, lung, and blood diseases." That could cover some work with embryonic stem cells, as could some of the items under the general category of stem cells. But none of this is set in stone. What the president says today may signal whether broader embryonic stem-cell funding will begin with the stimulus package, or whether scientists - and patients - will have to wait longer to start seeing more progress. Stay tuned. [Note: This post also appears on the University of Chicago blog Science Life .] More on Health
 
BMW Heiress Blackmail Case: Swiss Banker Admits Guilt Top
Germany's richest woman and heir to the BMW car empire has been spared an embarrassing court appearance after her playboy lover admitted to defrauding her of millions of euros and attempting blackmail with intimate footage of their encounters. Helg Sgarbi, a Swiss former investment banker, confessed in a Munich court on Monday to having defrauded Susanne Klatten, a member of the reclusive Quandt dynasty, and three other wealthy women of more than €9m ($11.3m). He was sentenced to six years in prison.
 
Natasha Chen: Gay Marriage Protestors Crowd the Steps of CA Supreme Court Top
On Thursday, the California Supreme Court heard arguments for three cases filed in relation to Proposition 8. According to the California Courts Web site , they are: 1) Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution? (2) Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution? (3) If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8? Watch the oral arguments here . See a brief video on the protests outside the courthouse below: March 5th Hearings on Prop 8 from Natasha Chen on Vimeo . More on Gay Marriage
 
Lee Stranahan: Will Your Future Be Changed By The Bad Economy...or Something Even Bigger? Top
A friend of mine was talking with me about their business recently. Typical story; times are tough, sales are down but they hoped that things would pick up again in a few months. Maybe a year or two, at worst. I knew a bit about their business, so I asked if I could be honest with them. Of course, they said. And that's when I told them that their business wasn't coming back. There are two significant yet very different things going on in the economy right now that will have life altering consequences for millions of people . We all know one of them; the economy is bad. We hear about the Bad Economy every day, everywhere. There are plenty of numbers and statistics to back it up. But just as significant and much less discussed is unmistakable fact that the economy is also radically changing. Understanding the difference between the Bad Economy and the Changing Economy could be the key difference between just squeaking by in tough tough times and prospering. In my friend's case, their business's problem wasn't that it was bad. It had changed forever. Listening to my friend was like listening to someone in the music business saying, "Well, cassette sales are down right now but after the economy picks up we're sure we're going to be back to 1986 levels and everything will be fine." To be sure, some business are just going through a difficult period. The construction industry is certainly having a bad time but it's probably not changing in a fundamental way. In the future, people will still want buildings and homes and roads and bridges. But just as sure, jobs lost from the Changing Economy are also all around us. Newspapers are closing not because people can't afford a paper anymore but because the Internet has changed the way people get news and use advertising, including classified ads. I don't see anything in the future that indicates that newspapers as we know them are going to make a resurgence. Or take the case of electronic retailer Circuit City. They closed all their stores and over 30,000 people are out of work. I don't think another big box electronics retailer is going to rise up from their ashes to take their place. There are too many options like online retailers like Amazon.com and NewEgg.com, brick and mortar stores like WalMart and BestBuy, and direct sales from companies like Apple and Dell that seem to have consumer electronics covered. So while people might have less disposable income to spend on HDTVs and computers, it seems to me that wasn't the biggest problem Circuit City faced. That means that most of the former workers there aren't going to be able to do a pivot to another company doing the same thing. Things changed and they need to change with them. The good news is that this is a foreseeable problem. Knowledge really is power. Start by asking yourself honestly whether the industry you're in is fundamentally changing. If it is, then you can't afford to wait until things get 'bad' - you have to try and figure out how changes will effect you and your job or business right now. To repeat - right now. Otherwise, you are going to waste time hoping things will get better instead of looking for other opportunities so you can roll with the changes. Ask yourself questions and talk to friends, family, and co-workers. You can't count on your boss or the 'industry leaders' to figure this stuff out for you because they are often the ones most in denial about the shifting sands that may be about to engulf their business. Where is your industry going? Can you get there first with your own business or by shifting in a job with future potential? Should you consider changing industries? Are you facing a rough patch or totally new landscape? Remember that while scary, change presents opportunity as well. Getting out in front of these questions of the Bad Economy vs. the Changing Economy might not save your job because it might be too late for that. But if you're able to think it through and can act on your knowledge, you sure could save your future. Lee Stranahan teaches seminars on topics like building your dream career and you can sign up for his seminar newsletter here. More on The Balanced Life
 
William Fisher: The Spies Who Came in from the Mosque Top
Ever since John Ashcroft began indiscriminately rounding up "Middle-Eastern-looking" folks in the U.S. and holding them incommunicado following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the American Muslim community has been trying to mobilize public support against knee-jerk racial and ethnic profiling. But their success has been, to be kind, limited. Muslim- and Arab-American organizations lack the resources enjoyed by many other influential lobbying groups in Washington and elsewhere. They're also trying to take on a Sisyphus-like mission. Now, a new poll by the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies finds that only 45 percent of Americans consider Muslims in the country as loyal and 25 percent of Americans say they wouldn't want to have Muslims as a neighbor. Predictably, the poll also found that American Muslims experience emotional turbulence due to the stereotypes and suspicion of Islam since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But now, two gaffes by the Federal Government may be making their objective a tad more achievable. On the heels of the recent poll, two major Muslim-American organizations issued scathing indictments of the tactics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) said the recent revelation that the FBI used paid informants and agent provocateurs in U.S. mosques that have participated in law enforcement outreach efforts "undermines the decade-long relationship that American Muslims built with law enforcement." And another major advocacy group, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), filed a complaint charging that the Department of Homeland Security unfairly targeted Arab and Muslim communities. The FBI's covert surveillance of mosques "sends a devastating message to community leaders and imams who have worked diligently to foster greater understanding between law enforcement and their communities," MPAC said in a statement. MPAC Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati urged greater transparency by the FBI in their dealings with the Muslim community. "Clearly, law enforcement has a crucial job to do in keeping our country safe. The American Muslim community and its national organizations have demonstrated time and again their consistent commitment to developing solutions that can protect America while also upholding privacy and civil liberties," he said. Prof. David Cole of Georgetown University, one of the nation's preeminent constitutional scholars, agrees. He told this reporter, "Nearly eight years after 9/11, there is little evidence of support for al Qaeda or terrorism among Muslims in the United States. Paid informants are a highly intrusive form of surveillance, and should be restricted to instances where there are grounds for suspecting serious criminal activity. If the FBI is seen to be infiltrating mosques it will only breed distrust and make relations with the Muslim communities that much more difficult." MPAC said, "It is now up to the FBI and law enforcement agencies to build once again the trust and respect necessary to re-engage with the American Muslim community." The organization said it will "continue to raise these community concerns with federal law enforcement officials in its efforts to help form policies that preserve civil liberties while also protecting our nation." Al-Marayati pointed out what he termed the "irony" in a speech given by FBI Director Robert Meuller to the Council on Foreign Relations in the same week as the surveillance revelations became public. Meuller's speech said, "Too often, we run up against a wall between law enforcement and the community -- a wall based on myth and misperception of the work we do... Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts." "The simple truth is that we cannot do our jobs without the trust of the American people. And we cannot build that trust without reaching out to say, 'We are on your side. We stand ready to help'," Meuller said. The FBI's tactics surfaced last week in the case of Ahmadullah Niazi in Tustin, California. According to MPAC, in 2007, Niazi reported suspicious behavior by a new Muslim convert in his mosque, who he said was talking about jihad and suggested planning a terrorist attack in conversations with others at the Islamic Center of Irvine. He and a mosque official filed a report with the Los Angeles field office of the FBI. The FBI then told mosque officials that they were investigating the matter, and the mosque successfully got a three-year restraining order against the individual. Niazi reported that FBI officials later contacted him to ask him to be a paid informant. When he refused, he said they threatened to make his life "a living hell." Niazi was arrested last week on charges related to lying on his immigration documents and was released yesterday on $500,000 bail. MPAC said mosque members were shocked when FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified that the convert reported by Niazi was actually an FBI informant who had infiltrated several mosques in Orange County, California. In its complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security, the ADC asked for "a full and comprehensive investigation" into a program known as 'Operation Frontline,' run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of DHS. ADC said Operation Frontline was ostensibly designed to prevent terrorist activity around the 2004 Presidential election, but it primarily targeted men from Muslim-majority countries without links to any national security-related activity. ADC filed numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to gain access to data on the nationalities and religions of those detained and deported. It says these requests were not addressed by DHS. ADC then filed a separate FOIA request and lawsuit against DHS and its ICE component to compel them to release the data. As a result, a sample of 300 Operation Frontline investigation files data was released as part of a court settlement. ADC says analysis of this data shows that Operation Frontline targeted foreign nationals from Muslim-majority countries. For example, 79% of the foreign nationals targeted by Operation Frontline were from Muslim-majority countries; deportable foreign nationals from Muslim-majority countries were 1,280 times more likely to be targeted by Operation Frontline than were similar individuals from other countries; Operation Frontline investigations included in the sample released by ICE led to no charges and no convictions for national-security related crimes. These developments seem to add credibility to results of the new poll. "Muslims are the most negatively viewed religious community among Americans," said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center, which is a nonpartisan research center affiliated with the Gallup polling organization. Despite the fact that millions of Muslims have been living in the U.S. for generations, the poll presents a portrait of an often-misunderstood community -- one that is integrated socio-economically but culturally alienated; that succeeds in the workforce but struggles to find contentment. And though the report states that while Muslim Americans are more likely than the general public to hold a professional job, they expressed less satisfaction with their standard of living and community. The disparity is a sign of the alienation some Muslim Americans may feel, experts say. Ahmed Younis, a senior Gallup analyst, said some Muslim Americans feel a sense of "otherness" created by outside perceptions of their religion and a lack of involvement in their larger community. The poll numbers suggest economic and career success among Muslim Americans -- they have a higher employment rate than the national average and are among the nation's most educated religious groups. Yet only 41% described themselves as "thriving." Muslim Americans ranked highest among American religious groups who believed their communities were getting worse. Muslim Americans ages 18 to 29 in particular reported discontent with their jobs and communities. Approximately 35 percent of American Muslims are African-American. And contrary to conventional beliefs - largely based on overseas models - American Muslim women enjoy a high degree of equality with men. The poll results are based on a sample of 941 Americans who identified themselves as Muslim in a survey of more than 300,000 Americans over the course of 2008. So the question is: Will ordinary Americans pay any attention to the poll results, much less the transgressions of the FBI and the DHS? Will they even know about law enforcement's totally avoidable errors? Well, if they read the so-called Mainstream Press, the likelihood is less than nil. For years, the American Muslim community has been one of the most under-reported groups in the U.S. For most cable news channels, the subject has become one of the third rails of American journalism since 9/11. And the print media's silence on this issue began long before circulation and ad revenue began to fall off a cliff and the print media started decimating their newsrooms to cut costs. And if American voters don't care about the outrageously clumsy performance of their law enforcement agencies, neither will Congress. Meanwhile, the CIA will doubtless continue its expensive efforts to polish its image so that it can try to recruit more language-savvy Arab- and other Muslim American agents and analysts. Didn't it ever occur to the FBI and ICE that they're sabotaging the CIA? Which brings me back to Bob Mueller's speech. "The communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least. But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts," is what he said. Well, spying on mosques hardly meets that test. Good luck, Bob.
 
Jay Marose: In a new media world, the best PR is to be your own media Top
All the talk of restructuring the banking and real estate markets and Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn's WSJ piece on the service economy recession started me thinking about the future of the advertising, marketing and PR businesses. With hiring freezes and layoffs at many of the largest firms, many in my industry (PR) would find it interesting to hear that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that: "Employment of public relations specialists is expected to grow by 18 percent from 2006 to 2016, faster than average for all occupations..." Until recently, the route to effective consumer public relations was to influence the media that the public consumes. A news feature, television or radio appearances were the tools. The media was the objective middle-man, the arbiter of what was in and what you SHOULD know. To influence the influential, PR truly is a business built on relationships and reputation. We all know TV, radio and print publications are losing their audience. That audience is increasingly, living in their own information/entertainment silos that don't resemble the traditional age, gender and racial demographics the communications industry has come to know. We no longer thumb through magazines, sit through commercials or absorb the chat on the radio passively absorbing. We actively choose what influences reach us. Now we must target the new media and innovate the old communications corporate structures. Yahoo's Carol Bartz, certainly "new" media if ever there was one, is on to something when she says she does not want to ever use the word "silo" again to describe how their business units operate. Her businesses must work together to collectively reach the same audience that has segmented itself. That's the challenge! For PR people, media conglomeration has only made the ability to garner press coverage of your product, be it a entertainment, consumer items or causes, based on its own merits more difficult. Given the choice of covering your product or a product in a corporate family as vast as Disney, GE, Viacom, TimeWarner or News Corp or their major advertisers, there is no real choice. You don't have a chance. In fact, in the entertainment field one can find very little support for trying to spend promotional dollars outside of the corporate structure at all. There is a bright spot that speaks to the truly creative brands, traditional media is in love with the new media. Try to get what remains of the traditional news media to cover your product and you don't stand a chance. Create a viral video or experiential marketing concept that tells your story, in your way, with your message and media will clamor to cover it . News of news is now news. In this new world, the innovative clients, corporate marketing structures and the communications firms are breaking down their silos between the marketing, advertising and public relations disciplines? After all, to penetrate the protective coating around consumers, the most effective strategies use all the tools in the new media reality - creating media for the silos to absorb and pass along to like-minded consumers (in the truest sense of the word). Since mass media are losing their mass audiences, the traditional entry point for influencing consumers, this presents unique challenges to public relations firms, large and small, to create influence by attracting an audience to influence. As usual, showing this new reality is MTV. Not content to wait for musical talent to develop, MTV creates its own from the Making the Band bands to Ashlee Simpson - often owning a piece of the action. Now try to get your product any time on that network without paying for it. When that wasn't enough, they manufactured reality and reality celebrities like The Hills, so popular, they grace magazine covers and have spun off their own shows, though no one believes in this soft-scripted reality. MTV has created a reality of its own; a commercial reality that teens think is cool, because it's on TV. If the reality is cool, the products in it are cool. Many think they can do this simply by employing buzz words. Social Networking! Communities! Tribes! It's not enough to twitter and tweet and call your commercial a viral video. If those tribes smell a hint of commercialism a community or blog audience will shut you out of their social network. Worse, your product becomes un-cool. Groucho Marx would be proud that no modern consumer wants to buy a product that would try to sell to them. But traditional marketers still want to see their products front and center in traditional ways, creating content that centers on the product. More importantly, their bosses want to see their products. The new consumer wants to see a lifestyle with which they relate, then develop an affinity for the product that's included. This has given tremendous power to anyone who has their own audience. Celebrities not only sell their own entertainment products, they can attract attention to any other product with which they are associated in a non-overtly, commercial context. You don't even have to start out as a celebrity. Perez Hilton not only sells products by writing advertorial content without identifying it as such, he blatantly and shamelessly plugs products and personalities for his own financial and personal well-being usually by re-packing content created and culled from traditional media sources. In February 2009, his site attracted 13.9 million page views. Given all this, that USBLS finding seems quite prescient : "Opportunities should be best for college graduates who combine a degree in journalism, public relations, advertising, or another communications-related field with a public relations internship or other related work experience." This multi-disciplined approach is the best strategy in this landscape of segmented marketplace. My advice to clients is to be your own media; blogs, video, social networking, product integration, experiential marketing as part of a comprehensive brand strategy. Big brands do this, but in silos so their client firms remain in silos. Recently, Heineken has also been doing an outstanding job of producing engaging advertising while integrating their products into entertainment environments that enhance the product image like key plot points in shows like Mad Men. And, much of this entertainment work comes out of a one-person shop . It's riskier and return is far less quantifiable than the usual circulation and viewer ratings information for advertising or paid placements. But when it works, its works at a deeper, emotional level that makes traditional advertising and sponsorship activities more effective. This is, ultimately, good news to the true creative community: creativity is the single best tool. Not repetition. Not placement. The audiences are ready. Let's hope the clients and communications companies adapt quickly. Then, make a media product the target market really wants to consume and they will not only consume it, they will pass it on and on and on. More on Yahoo!
 
Michael Wolff: It's Not Your Father's News Top
The New York Times continues to attack Newser. A few weeks ago it was in a legal letter telling Newser not to use the little Times "T" to identify the Times as an original content source; this morning it's in a piece by its media columnist, David Carr, that says "Google, The Huffington Post, and Newser have built their audiences and brands on other people's labors." Carr's idea is that, in an effort to save newspapers, owners should get together and have every paper charge for its websites so that, among other effects, aggregators won't be able to reference the efforts of news organizations like the beleaguered Times. What we have here is a deeply plaintive cry: Stop the world, I want to get off. As it happens, the problems in the newspaper industry are not principally caused by reader attrition, but by the flight of advertisers. Even before the recession, auto, help-wanted, and real estate advertising, the bedrock of the newspaper business, had been migrating to the web. It's just a technological advance: The web is a better place to unite buyer and seller. Continue reading at newser.com More on Newspapers
 

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