Monday, April 20, 2009

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Alice Singleton: Playa, Playa, Play on: Tom Joyner Returns to Chicago Airwaves! Top
Well you did it, Chicago! Tom Joyner and the "Tom Joyner Morning Show" returns to the local airwaves on Wednesday - same time, different channel - April 22, on Soul 106.3FM . Loyal listeners were so up in arms we voted with our fingers at the abrupt and disrespectful change that took place four weeks ago at V103. The station's owner, Clear Channel, deciding that although ratings and ad revenues were fine, being a monopoly they could decide that what was best for "them" (cheaper labor means more money for Clear Channel's' executive lunches and bonuses) and "us" by replacing the TJMS with Steve Harvey, a mediocre comedian/book author who already had a morning presence on sister-station WGCI that failed to dent Tom Joyner's popularity. Short-sighted and greedy, and because they could, Clear Channel executives snatched the TJMS off the airwaves on March 23rd and simulcast Steve Harvey on both stations. Its audience, myself included, voted with our fingers, and switched dials so fast you could hear fingers crack all over Chicagoland. We wanted our TJMS and there could be no substitute. We all knew where to find Tom Joyner's replacement before the switch, and if listeners were that intrigued, Clear Channel's programming bunglers would have been justified in pulling the TJMS - lower ratings would have warranted a change in talent and venue. The unwarranted cancellation of the TJMS represents everything wrong with the few owning the all in media. Consumers can't listen, read or watch enough if, at the end of the day, media executives look at the books and find the sobering reality of cutting some of their own perks, personnel, or good-Lord-forbid-clutch-the-pearls, they may have to give up fancy lunches, exclusive washrooms and town car pickups that they've come to delude themselves into believing that as higher life forms than the rest of us they've really reserved the right to maintain at all costs. Why tighten their bloated belts when they can tighten ours? On March 23rd I'm sure the overriding "logic" held by Clear Channel lads was "the audience will get used to the change. After all, "they loved the (replacement) in "Kings of Comedy",' or my favorite line of dismissal for "urban" audiences that's been floating for decades: "what are there going to do about it? It's not like they have another choice." Ah, but there's the rub: we always have choices - to change the dial and listen to something different, or just turn the damned radio off and plug in the iPod until we get to work and then tune into the TJMS via the internet, or anyone else we choose to darn well listen to. We "urbans" invented rock n' roll, so there's nothing like a little "classic rock" to go along with the commute. Thank goodness Crawford Broadcasting executives saw an incredible opportunity to greatly increase 106.3's listening audience by signing up the TJMS. It can't be stressed enough how imperative Tom Joyner and crew had become to the urban community for local, national and international news and how that news impacted the communities of color. (Uh, Arbitron and Nielsen call those listeners "urban," even if it's a farmer milking a cow in Curlew, Iowa - population 32, if said farmer is African-American or Latino, then said farmer is "urban." Take the designation up with them.) The TJMS weaves its listeners together in a tapestry of an extended global community. The TJMS reaches eight millions households in the U.S. and an overseas audience made up of military families, ex-pats, and those interested in the mix of lighthearted banter between Tom Joyner, Sybil Wilkes and J. Anthony Brown with comedian Sheryl Underwood phoning in hilarity in good measure; hard opinion and political commentary from luminaries Roland Martin and Jeff Johnson and the latest health news pertaining to - here we go again - "urban" audiences from Dr. Ian Smith . With six you get egg roll, and with the TJMS you get BlackAmericaWeb.com , the nytimes.com of, well, Black America. Then there's "Take a Loved One to the Doctor" Day, Mr. Joyner's relentless campaign to correct the health care disparities by insisting that individuals and families take full ownership of their health and challenging health care providers to meet the medical needs of the black community. There's Mr. Joyner's HSBC scholarship campaign, providing earmarks and money for students and those that want to be students at historically black colleges across the country. Mr. Joyner's presence at the presidential primary debates helped put America and the world on notice that things were never going to be the same again - for any of us. As Rush Limbaugh and his hate-minded peers tore down with lies and fear mongering, Mr. Joyner used his five hours a day to introduce to the word a new groove in the American political perspective. The TJMS show is, and remains, a vital lifeline that strings and weaves worldwide - I'm sure the powers at Crawford Broadcasting greatly appreciate found treasure and made quick work of preparing a new home for TJMS. So a big fat thank you and "smooches" to Crawford Broadcasting executives that saw a grand opportunity and jumped on board the fantastic voyage that is the TJMS! That's capitalism at its best. One caveat: those of us on the Northwest Side need a signal increase stat! And one last kiss before goodbye to Clear Channel's decision-makers: if I wanted the choice that you made for me four weeks ago, I wouldn't have donated my "Kings of Comedy" DVD to my neighborhood secondhand store.
 
Armando Iannucci: Top
 
Richard H. Neiman: A Call For Questions For Timothy Geithner Top
As many readers probably know, the Panel that Congress created to oversee TARP is questioning Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for the first time this Tuesday morning. I am one of the five members of that Panel, and I would like the people who are living with this recession to get a chance to ask their questions about TARP, rather than the questions simply coming from me and the Panel. It is my personal view that although disagreement exists among very smart people, Treasury has a viable plan that can work. In fact it must work, but it can only work if people in our country are a part of the dialogue and solution. That dialogue starts with a chance to have questions heard and answered. Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked me to serve on this Panel to be a voice for the states and their citizens.I am also New York State's Superintendent of Banks and in that capacity I have felt that my job is not only to oversee banks, but to help people in financial distress. I plan to ask Secretary Geithner questions based on what I have learned from working with people in New York State who have been impacted by the crisis, including those who have tragically lost their homes and their savings. New York Governor David Paterson, who encouraged Speaker Pelosi to put me on this Panel, asked me to be as inclusive as possible in providing view points to the Secretary. So I would also like the chance to ask your questions too. We have done a lot in New York to help, but the states can't do it alone. A state/federal partnership is needed, with a national dialogue to get us to the right place. Please take a moment to post a question here that you would like the Secretary to answer. If you would like, include your name, where you are from, and what you do. I'll ask what my time allows. You can also reach me directly at rhneiman@banking.state.ny.us, or to share your story with the Panel, please visit the link at www.cop.senate.gov . I am confident that, with your help, we can take advantage of this opportunity to begin the inclusive dialogue that we so badly need. I am asking the Huffington Post readers for these questions because in my opinion the readers are thoughtful and reasonable, as I would like this Panel to be. The goal here is not gimmicks or gotcha, but is to make sure Treasury hears people's substantive thoughts on TARP, even the ones that my limited time will not allow me to ask directly. I hope to stay in a conversation with you. Richard H. Neiman Member, Congressional Oversight Panel More on Timothy Geithner
 
David Axelrod's Inner Circle Top
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and perhaps the political person closest to the former Illinois Senator, makes a somewhat unlikely presence in the White House. More on David Axelrod
 
The Progress Report: Right-Wing Extremists Threaten The Nation Top
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Igor Volsky To receive The Progress Report in your email inbox everyday, click here . Last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report warning that the economic recession and the election of the first African-American president could mobilize right-wing extremist groups inside the United States to gain new recruits. To bolster their ranks, the groups may target veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the analysis. The report concluded that while the DHS "has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," right-wing extremists -- or movements that it defined as "primarily hate-oriented...and those that are mainly antigovernment" -- "are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda." This document, along with an earlier report on radicalized left-wing groups, was requested by the Bush administration after FBI Director Robert Mueller and other Bush appointees acknowledged the threat of right-wing extremism. One DHS official described the report as "nothing unusual." "This is the job of DHS, to assess what is happening in this country, with regard to homegrown terrorism, and determine whether it's an actual threat or not, and that's what these assessments do. ... These assessments are done all the time," the official said. But despite the nature of the report, conservative commentators are outraged, insisting that the document's characterization of "right-wing extremism" represents a direct attack on Republican loyalists, conservative ideology, and veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson went so far as to suggest that the report "shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question." WHAT THE REPORT SAYS: According to the report, "the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn -- including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit -- could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities." Specifically, the report finds that "rightwing extremist groups' frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration" and the government's "heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms, may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity." The report also found that extremist groups may "attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat." In February, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the "number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 -- an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama." CONSERVATIVES PRETEND THEY ARE TARGETS: Most conservative commentators passionately argued that the report's description of right-wing extremists represented a politically-motivated attempt to "smear" conservatives. In a column published on FoxNews.com, Oliver North declared that his Christian faith and respect for the second amendment "makes me a 'right-wing extremist.'" Fox News host Neil Cavuto asserted that the report "more or less states the government considers you a terrorist threat if you oppose abortion, speak out against illegal immigration, or you are a returning war veteran." Sean Hannity announced that "if you disagree with that liberal path that President Obama's taken the country down, you may soon catch the attention of the Department of Homeland Security." Appearing on Hannity's Fox News show to rant about the report, RNC Chairman Michael Steele similarly declared that "to segment out Americans who dissent from this administration, to segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration and labeling them as terrorists...to me is the height of insult." Rush Limbaugh claimed that the report portrayed "standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than al Qaeda terrorists or genuine enemies of this country like Kim Jong Il," and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, even "asked for a hearing into the matter," suggesting that the DHS should focus on the threat emanating from Muslims instead. The DHS report did not target "conservatives" or "Republican loyalists." Indeed, it's odd that conservatives would willingly group themselves and Republicans in with "rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements" -- the actual focus of the DHS report. CONSERVATIVES CLAIM OBAMA TARGETED VETERANS: Several conservatives also misrepresented the intelligence assessment as an attack on American veterans. The Obama administration is "specifically warning that veterans returning home from war, are to be feared -- that they could be right-wing extremists that want to launch terror attacks on America," Joe Scarborough argued on MSNBC's Morning Joe. House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claimed that "to characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable. The Department of Homeland Security owes our veterans an apology." But the report actually argued that the danger isn't from veterans themselves, but from the efforts of right-wing extremists to "recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat." "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today," the report concluded. And while Napolitano apologized to those who found the report offensive, she explained that "the report is not saying that veterans are extremists. Far from it. What it is saying is returning veterans are targets of right-wing extremist groups that are trying to recruit those to commit violent acts within the country. We want to do all we can to prevent that." In fact, as Media Matters pointed out, the report even "cited a 2008 FBI report -- authored during the Bush administration -- as evidence that 'some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.'" The 2.2 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars also issued a statement clarifying that "the report should have been worded differently, but it made no blanket accusation that every soldier was capable of being a traitor like Benedict Arnold, or every veteran could be a lone wolf, homegrown terrorist like Timothy McVeigh. It was just an assessment about possibilities that could take place."
 
Kerry Newspaper Hearings To Begin April 30 Top
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry is wading into a fierce national debate next week by holding hearings on the future of newspapers. In a letter to the "Boston Globe family," Kerry wrote about his determination to help save newspapers. Excerpts of the letter were released by the Globe today. "America's newspapers are struggling to survive and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount" This isn't the first attempt by the government to help restructure the newspaper industry. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) introduced legislation in March to make media companies into non-profit organizations to ensure survival. In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, have either ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing. A number of other publications, including newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, owners of The Baltimore Sun, have filed for bankruptcy or have had to institute severe cutbacks that have impacted news coverage. The Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible. Kerry's letter to the Globe family comes on the heels of recent threats by parent company The New York Times to shut down the Boston paper. On April 3rd, the Times reported it was considering an end to the paper: The company is looking for $20 million in savings from The Globe, which has already gone through several rounds of deep cost-cutting and staff reductions. The company does not report figures by newspaper, but executives have acknowledged that the Globe lost tens of millions of dollars last year.
 
Bob Jeffrey: Millennials' New Mantra: Have Less, Imagine More Top
The Millennials, who were supposed to be the harbingers of a global interwebbed knowledge-based prosperity, are now inheritors of one of the greatest collapses of collective judgment this century has seen. Are they in denial, in disappointment or simply in disbelief? Some recent research we've conducted at JWT, part of our AnxietyIndex.com , provides a window into some answers. We found that more than 60 percent of today's youth believe their generation is receiving an unfair blow due to this recession. This makes sense. Raised in a time of inflated prosperity, full of golden promises and expectations, Millenials were marred in the media as "entitled" and "narcissistic," the "Me Generation." Their career prospects appeared virtually limitless, their optimism buoyed by our faulty assumption that China would do America's saving while the U.S. spent itself rich. As that myth unravels, in pace with the global balancing of current accounts, America's youth will shoulder a heavy portion of the fallout, most notably a rapidly shrinking job market with no clear end in sight. While we at JWT have noted that yesterday's "me" mentality is trending more toward "we"--thanks to Obama and other factors--that doesn't soften the blow of watching your opportunities shrivel in step with the stock market. This can have severe cultural consequences, ones that define an era. In 1951 Time doomed the children of the Great Depression as the Silent Generation. As the New York Times ' Kate Zernike put it, they were cast as "a generally drab lot: cautious and resigned, uninterested in striking out in new directions or shaping the great issues of the day--the outwardly efficient types whose inner agonies the novel Revolutionary Road would dissect a decade later." Will today's youth suffer a similar fate? I don't think so. Unlike their counterparts in the '30s, they're reading the tea leaves through a different lens. More than a quarter of Millennials in our study said that if they lose or have trouble finding a job, they'll start their own business. And more than a third said they have friends who are doing interesting entrepreneurial things to make more money. While youth of the Great Depression flocked to trusted organizations and institutions, valuing corporate continuity over the thrill of entrepreneurship, the pendulum appears to be swinging in the other direction. As confidence in mega-multinationals declines, youth appear prepared to venture into the uncharted. They're asking, "If this whole mess is the result of a system broken at its core, why not just reinvent it instead of trying to fix it?" The time may be ripe for just that. In fact, downturns have been historically friendly to startups, product innovations and disruptive technologies, those that, in hindsight, have proved to be game-changing business models or breakthrough products or services. GE, HP, Trader Joe's, FedEx and Microsoft all grew out of economic adversity. Seemingly simple inventions--text ads and no-frills search--that were born from recessionary constraints became the monolith we know as Google. Necessity is the mother of invention--or in other words: Have less, imagine more. Business academia has been preaching the same narrative: Recessions are the best time to bring a product to market and widen the gap between you and the competition. Markets voice their needs better in a downturn, when the competition has thinned and fewer parties are chasing the same demands with duplicative new products or services. So rather than retreating into a silent shell, youth today are seeking out opportunity and creating things that were harder to imagine in a boom economy. Look at the artist colonies rising from the ashes of Detroit's neglected neighborhoods: Young couples are transforming beaten-down $500 homes into tomorrow's creative communities . And for another illustration of the optimism youth are finding in the downturn, look at the startup New Work City. This co-op office share in Manhattan marries the need for flexible work space with the mission to incubate and connect entrepreneurs. In a down economy--with more people flying solo--this new membership-driven enterprise is rightly sizing the market's demand for flexible prime real estate. This "recession busting" program seeks to unlock creative spirit through collaboration and community. Today, collaboration and community are being propelled in large part by technology. The same platforms that make this generation the most globally connected and culturally aware in history also dramatically lower many of the traditional barriers to entry that startups face. Facebook is the new contact management software, Twitter the new newswire. Virtual networks and pre-existing sites and services represent enormous efficiencies that only the Millennial generation has the collective wherewithal to maximize. Armed with a WordPress account and a keen curatorial eye, young entrepreneurs in the ad business are carving a niche for themselves as independent consultants, social media gurus and virtually networked hot shops. Take Josh Spear, a 24-year-old marketing strategist, trendspotter and recent inductee into the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders group. He's built a religious following on his blog, and his insights are in high demand by the Fortune 500 precisely because they represent a fresh departure from the stale status quo. I've met him on several occasions, and each time I think, "If this guy's the representative Millennial, we're all in good hands." So while the twentysomethings of today have every right to be angry and disappointed, they're not letting resentment get the best of them. Their optimism and self-reliance stand in defiance of the depressing headlines. That spirit should guide all of us who are in the driver's seat as we brace for the rough ride ahead.
 
Somali Pirate Home Base: Eyl Top
Garowe, (WDN) - The Somali pirates that have wreaked havoc on the shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean in recent years have been widely covered in the international media. However, little is known about the basis on the coast of the Horn of Africa where Somali pirates organize their activities. The most important center for organizing piracy in Somalia is the small town of Eyl which is located on the Indian Ocean. What kind of place is Eyl? Eyl, a small town by any measurement, is the headquarters of the district of the same name in the region of Nugal, which is currently a province of the self governing Puntland State of Somalia. As the name Puntland denotes, the area has a rich and magnificent ancient history. The civilization from which Eyl hails dates back to the days of Hatshepsut and Nefertiti of ancient Egypt: Eyl was once known for its Ostrich feathers and the products of frankincense - products that ancient civilizations placed premium values. Located below a range of mountains that face the Indian Ocean, Eyl is about 280 km from Garowe the capital of Puntland, with roads that are as rough as the beginning of settled people, the road that connects Garowe and Eyl has only about 80 km of tarmac road that is properly paved. To get to Eyl, one has to pass forbidding desert and bear the scorching infamous heat of the Somali peninsula. The town is almost entirely surrounded by mountains and is divided into two main neighborhoods: the higher and the lower quarters. The higher quarter is known as Daawad and was named after the famed fort that the anti colonial Dervish movement had at Eyl during the beginning of the 20th century. The other part of the town is called Badey and it is the area that protrudes towards the coast. Until the business of piracy blossomed, Eyl was a sleepy and backwater African village populated with impoverished Somali fishers. With no employment for its youth and no public sector to ease pressure from the day-to day-grindings, compounded by diminishing fishery resources, piracy has indeed emerged as a panacea to the regions ideal life, even attracting outsiders from other regions to accelerate the situation. Here in Eyl, residents of the town are very small, however, when pirated-ships are anchored on its shores, the population numbers of the area surges exponentially. This often results in higher food prices and basic necessities for the locals. But, the pirates also bring along cash and their four wheel drive vehicles that breathe life into Eyl. The locals however generally complain from the lawlessness and vices introduced by the pirates. Particularly, the locals do not seem to enjoy all the attention the Western world is paying to their otherwise non-eventful day-to-day struggle. There are two sentiments one would hear about the infamous piracy in the dusty streets of Eyl. There are those who do not like the pirates because, as one by-stander put it "they brought infamy to our town; all that pirates do in our peaceful town is rush out of town and spend most of the money they receive as ransom elsewhere, mainly by buying properties in the major cities of Puntland." There are feasible surge of women population that came to Eyl seeking marriage proposals and other purposes from the pirates; and women come from across the Somali speaking communities, including Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland regions. Some argue that the pirates had made the Puntland region unruly. But there are those who believe that pirates are protecting Somali waters, despite the crude system of kidnapping innocent sailors. Those who support the acts of piracy are quick to talk about contamination of what used to be pristine coasts, the looting of Somalia rare reefs and the use of Somali seas as dumping grounds for toxic waste. They add to this the corrosion of the living standard of the local residents further compounded by the destruction of the fishery by illegal European and Asian trawlers who, according to some estimates, steal over $300 million per year of seafood from Somalia's coast. In the absence of any meaningful national government in Somalia, many Eyl residents are doubly angry at the Puntland regional government whose leaders have failed to curb the piracy problem. Indeed the pirates themselves who are better armed and resourced, would tell you when asked, that they are not that concerned about the law enforcement agencies of Puntland. Eyl residents are cognizant of the fact that their local government is not capable to stop the pirates or deal with the bigger picture of illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste from countries across the globe. The Puntland authorities have also stated on numerous occasions that they would curb the piracy problem on the high seas but need international help. The pirates that operate out of Somalia have received in excess of $50 million last year which is more than double the entire budget of Puntand. These ill-gotten gains have enabled Somali pirates to buy huge villas in Garowe and other main towns in the region and drive expensive cars. For now, Eyl at least seems to have been reduced to a lawless place where Pirates operate with impunity. If military hawks at the Pentagon get their way, the issue of piracy may as well take the Obama administration's attention away from the Afghan-Pakistan terror domain. But with cool-heads at the helm of the State Department, Eyl residents may welcome a comprehensive policy approach to engage the Puntland administration in a meaningful way. The Obama administration needs to seriously engage the regional authorities in Puntland and Somaliland to put in place policies that are not bandage solutions but that deal with the root causes of the Somali piracy. WardheerNews Special Report Send your Comments to: WardheerNews Editorial Board More on Somalia
 
Wall Street slides as investors dump financials Top
NEW YORK — Investors are having doubts about banks' recent profit reports and wondering whether the better-than-expected performance masks larger problems with bad debt. Stocks fell sharply Monday as investors sold financial stocks and locked in profits after a six-week rally. The major indexes tumbled 2-3 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which fell 230 points. Worries about the financial industry overshadowed Oracle Corp.'s announcement that it would acquire Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion and a $6 billion bid by PepsiCo Inc. to buy its two biggest bottlers. Drops in commodities like oil weighed on energy and materials stocks. The selling came at the start of the busiest week yet for companies reporting results from the first three months of the year. Investors are looking for signals that a rally from 12-year lows in early March can continue. Wall Street has been emboldened by tentative signals that the economy could be stabilizing, but after a 24 percent surge in the Dow Jones industrial average some investors are asking whether the market has risen too quickly. Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading LLC, said traders are now viewing bank earnings with more skepticism amid concerns that even the better-than-expected results are disguising problems. Income from trading and low-cost borrowing rates have boosted results but not erased more difficult problems with bad debt, he said. "They're looking at bank numbers and are saying they are not that great," Saluzzi said. In midday trading, the Dow fell 231.30, or 2.8 percent, to 7,900.03. Broader stock indicators also lost ground. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 29.53, or 3.4 percent, to 840.07, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 58.45, or 3.5 percent, to 1,614.62. About 10 stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 605 million shares. Concerns about the sustainability of bank earnings weighed on financial stocks. Bank of America reported earnings that were higher than expected in the first quarter but also set aside $13.4 billion to cover losses on souring debt. The stock fell 16.2 percent. Citigroup Inc. fell 15.6 percent, while JPMorgan lost 4.5 percent. Jeffrey Frankel, president of Stuart Frankel & Co. in New York, said the retreat in financial stocks is welcome after their sharp rise from early March since rising too quickly could endanger their gains. Many bank stocks have doubled in only weeks. "These banks have had a tremendous run," Frankel said. "Now you're hearing the bearish camp speak up a little bit." Investors are also cautious about financials after The New York Times reported that the White House and the Treasury Department could avoid having to ask for more money beyond the $700 billion already allocated for the government's bank rescue fund by converting the government's loans into common stock. Such a move would give the government a controlling stake in banks. Wall Street was more upbeat about the Oracle deal, which carries a 42 percent premium to Sun's Friday closing stock price of $6.69. Sun jumped 36 percent, while Oracle slipped 2.7 percent. Beverage and snack maker PepsiCo Inc. offered to acquire Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas in an effort to cut costs. Pepsi lost 3.9 percent, while Pepsi Bottling and PepsiAmericas both jumped about 21 percent. In earnings news, drug maker Eli Lilly & Co.'s first-quarter earnings rose 24 percent on higher sales of the antidepressant Cymbalta and as costs for Humalog, a form of insulin Lilly makes, remained flat. Shares slipped 1.3 percent. Hasbro Inc. fell 3.8 percent after the nation's second-largest toy maker said first-quarter profit fell 47 percent because of a stronger dollar and as retailers reduced inventory levels. Investors are parsing earnings for information on the direction of the economy. Since March, figures on home sales, manufacturing, retail sales and even unemployment have signaled that the economy might not be worsening as quickly as it had been earlier in the year. Light, sweet crude fell $4.21 to $46.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Occidental Petroleum Corp. lost 5.9 percent, while Dow Chemical Co. fell 8.2 percent. In other market moves, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 23.33, or 4.9 percent, to 456.04. Bond prices mostly rose, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury note down to 2.84 percent from 2.95 percent late Friday. The yield on the three-month T-bill was unchanged at 0.13 percent. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices rose. Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.19 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 2.8 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 4 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 3.7 percent. More on Financial Crisis
 
Daniel C. Esty: Reset Regulation: An Earth Day Focus on Sustainability Top
Talk has begun to turn to the new economy that will emerge from the present collapse. General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has suggested that the current crisis is not just a recession but a fundamental "reset" of how business gets done. And Time magazine has taken up this theme with a reset cover story. But there has been little discussion of exactly what changes - in principles and practices -- should be made so that we rebuild our economy on firmer foundations. As we celebrate Earth Day this week, it is a good time to commit to "sustainability" as a centerpiece of a revitalized regulatory system. For the past three decades, debate has raged over whether and how to deregulate. But while markets offer the prospect of promoting innovation, growth, and prosperity, few now believe that capitalism is self-correcting or that the private sector needs only minimal supervision. From the demise of Lehman Brothers and AIG to the skullduggery of Bernie Madoff and Allan Stanford, the signs of inadequate regulation and market failure surround us. Two particular forms of market failure underlie the meltdown of the past year and make sustainability the right touchstone for our regulatory reset efforts: • Externalized costs and risks • Incomplete information Both of these problems require that we rethink our approach to regulation -- and re-establish the fundamentals of our economy on a more sustainable basis. And note that this principle should apply broadly, not just in the financial arena. We need regulations which ensure that companies cannot structure their operations so that any upside gains accrue to their owners (or worse yet their managers), while risks or costs get shifted onto society as a whole. In the banking sector, rules against over-leveraging are urgently required. The recently released Turner Report in the UK outlines the first steps in this direction that should be taken. More generally, financial reporting rules must be designed to expose hidden risks and externalized costs. We should likewise insist that companies which send emissions up a smokestack or out an effluent pipe cease their pollution or pay for the harm inflicted on the community. In our "reset" world, economic success cannot come at the price of harms imposed on the public in the form of contaminated air and water or risk of climate change. Thus while we lay the foundation for a more sustainable economy, let's similarly adopt rules that provide for a sustainable environmental future. This will require overhauling the traditional approach to environmental regulation which countenances way too much in the way of externalities by offering "permits" up to a certain level of harm. President Obama's call for a price on carbon dioxide emissions represents a good first step in the "no externalities" direction. But let's broaden the push and make polluters pay for all the harm they cause. If companies -- and each one of us in our personal lives -- had to pay for our waste and pollution, behavior would change. Putting a price on harm-causing creates incentives for care and conservation -- efficiency and resource productivity. More importantly, these price signals will drive a market response. Companies that are positioned to help others reduce their waste or cut their emissions will find customers eager for their goods and services. And where no easy solutions are available, harm charges will motivate "cleantech" innovation as inventors and entrepreneurs recognize the prospect of making money by solving environmental problems. In parallel with a commitment to internalizing externalities, we must adopt transparency as a watchword. Market capitalism does not work without adequate information about economic actors. This reality has been understood in theory, but now needs to be advanced in practice. Government has a critical role to play in establishing the terms of disclosure about companies, markets, products, investment vehicles, and more. Public officials must also be empowered to ensure that disclosures are complete and accurate. Well-designed reporting rules make it easier to spot externalized costs or risks and harder to hide malfeasance. Widely available metrics also facilitate benchmarking across companies, which offers a mechanism for assessing performance, highlighting leaders and laggards, and spurring competitive pressures that drive all toward better results. Studying the leaders offers an important way to identify best practices in everything from corporate strategy to pollution control. Likewise, outliers (such as those who make 10% returns year after year without fail) can be isolated for special review and scrutiny. Such transparency would make it easier to refine our compensation systems to reward superior performance and real value creation. Carefully constructed disclosure rules could help, on the other hand, to unmask mere financial engineering, which should not be credited with outsized rewards. There is a great deal of work to be done to re-establish prosperity across our country and the world. Smart regulation can channel corporate behavior and individual effort toward sustainable economic growth -- that is durable because it rests on solid underpinnings not hidden risks or externalized costs. Daniel C. Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with appointments in both the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is the co-author (with Andrew Winston) of the prize-winning book, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage (just released in a revised and updated edition published by John Wiley). A former Deputy Assistant Administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency, Professor Esty advised the Obama Campaign on energy and environmental issues and served on the Obama Transition Team. More on Earth Day
 
Korans 'Burned In Russian Prison' Top
Russian prison officials have been accused of burning copies of the Koran and assaulting Muslim prisoners, a migrants' organisation in Russia says. More on Russia
 
Jim Luce: Tibet: Polar Perspectives. Can Both Sides Be Heard? Top
The 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's exile has generated much press and media attention. News accounts have been full of the Dalai Lama's visa revocation which blocked him from speaking at an coming 2010 World Cup-related peace conference in South Africa, where two other Nobel Laureates where scheduled to speak. In reading these articles, I find little background on China's side of the story and was curious to learn more about the conflict. Many Chinese friends speak to me with great pride about how their country has profoundly helped Tibet -- especially the children. And our own government, as well as all 192 member states of the United Nations, acknowledges that Tibet is part of China. With the fiftieth anniversary of the events that sent the Dalai Lama into Indian exile, I set out to explore both sides, including the other side, the hugely unpopular Chinese side. Potala Palace in the capital city of Lhasa. The Chinese perspective has been buried here in the West, so I sat out to understand their perspective. China, like India and most of Africa, was split up by European colonization over the last two centuries. Kingdoms and nations were divided in ways that could serve only the dividers. It is hard to imagine one's country ripped apart. On our continent, it is far easier to grasp lost hegemony from a Mexican or Native American viewpoint. From the First Opium War -- waged by the British to protect their opium profits (1840-1842) -- until the end of the Second World War, China was invaded and colonized by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Japan -- and even the United States. I realized the damage of such divisions most dramatically the first time I crossed the Volta River in West Africa. The same Ewe tribe that speaks English on one side (Ghana) speaks French on the other (Togo). Why? Generations of colonization. Colonization recognizes no boundaries. China was once larger -- from Taiwan to Tibet, from Mongolia to Hong Kong. According to some historians, China's area was about 16.8 million square kilometers (1.75 times of China's current area) during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), during which time Tibet officially became an administrative region of China. Beautiful Tibetan children (Courtesy Aidan Loehr/American Alpine Institute). The British peeled away Hong Kong (1842) then tried to turn Tibet into a buffer zone between China and India. China's Nationalists -- the Kuomintang -- took Taiwan as they retreated after losing their civil war (1949). During the Civil War, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) gradually prevailed over the Kuomintang. The PLA liberated China province by province. Tibet was the last province reached. We are all aware of the charges against China since then. They are changes that worry and anger my American and Chinese friends, but for opposite reasons. They are repeated in every story about Tibet: In driving the British and their friends from Tibet, China became the cruel Occupier. In modernizing Tibet, China was eradicating the ethnic heritage of Tibet in a "cultural genocide." In their resettling policies, the Chinese central and provincial government's massive aid has amounted to the "Hanificiation" of Tibet. In filling Tibet with Chinese Tibetans have become a minority in their own land, with Tibetan women forced to marry Chinese men. In ending Theocracy, China was eliminating religion. In sum, that Beijing has caused Tibetans "untold suffering" and forced them to live in "hell on earth." I was an East Asian Studies Major in college and know at least something of the Middle Kingdom. I also learned in high school debate class that arguments can always be made from different perspectives. Can the true story of Tibet be told? Perhaps not. I recently interviewed the Hon. Ms. Zhang Dan, Counselor of the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations. Her knowledge of Tibet seemed vast. By speaking to her, looking at the Chinese government's website for facts and figures, recalling my own academic background, and searching the web for neutral sources -- few and far between -- I have put together a sketch of Tibet. All facts and figures, unless otherwise noted, are according to recent white papers by the Information Office of China's State Council. The United Nations is not the keeper of provincial statistics. In general, national governments, not international governments, keep local stats -- from Texas to Tibet. I can no more authentic the numbers than I can any other governments' statistics. The official Chinese website for facts and figures may be found here . I would read it with the same eye you might read our own CIA's website . I understand that the Chinese Kingdom, which controlled Tibet in some way through many centuries and dynasties, lessened its control during the war of resistance against Japan (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949), peacefully reunited the region in 1951. The Dalai Lama, like his predecessors, was approved and recognized by China's central government. The title of Dalai Lama, by tradition, is conferred on an incarnate boy of a deceased Dalai Lama by an official decree of the Chinese central government. At the time of reunification, 5% of Tibetans -- the Upper, or Priest, Class -- owned everything. Some 95% of the Tibetan people were serfs, whom the Chinese viewed as "slaves." Wikipedia has a fascinating and recommended summary of serfdom as the socio-economic status of 'unfree' peasants under feudalism... "a condition of bondage or modified slavery that developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe. Serfdom was the enforced labor of serfs on the fields of landowners, in return for protection and the right to work on their leased fields." At the time of reunification, Tibet was a Theocracy, like Puritan New England, or today's Iran where Sharia is used as Divine Word. The priests, or lamas and living Buddhas, as serf-owners, controlled everything. Wikipedia's entry on "lama" addresses this as well. Wikipedia is not an academic source. But, as mentioned, facts and figures that are not from the Chinese government -- or Dharamsala -- are in short supply. When the Dalai Lama left in 1959, the Tibetan lifespan was only 35 years. Infant mortality was a staggering 43%, according to China. U.N. and W.H.O. statistics are mostly unavailable. Today the average Tibetan lives to be 67 years old, and only 3% of children are lost at childbirth. Throughout Han-dominated China, medicine is subsidized. In Tibet, it is free, Ms. Dan of the Chinese Mission explains. I have always been apprehensive about China's draconian birth control policies. Still, I have no better ideas for feeding well over one billion people. The number of orphans in China is staggering. (I have one son - adopted, and ethnically Chinese.) According to the Chinese Mission, Tibetans inside the Tibetan Autonomous Region, are immune from the Chinese government's family planning. Han Chinese residents in Tibet are not immune. In fact, the population there has doubled, from 1.2 million to 2.8 million, over the last 50 years. Only 5% of Tibet's population is Han Chinese (the ethnicity of the majority of Chinese) and other ethnic groups. Tibetans are amongst the fastest-growing ethnicities in all of China, according to the Chinese Mission. The Tibetan population increased by 40,000 in 2008, at a growth rate of 1.17%. Tibetans protest this figure, claiming they are a minority in their own country due to Han immigration. Again, what statistics can we find that are neutral? A spokesperson for China wrote me: "When it comes to statistics or figures regarding the different provinces, municipalities and/or autonomous regions of China, the Chinese Government, exercising effective sovereignty and administration -- and having direct and constant access -- naturally has the most authoritative and trustworthy data." There are 56 ethnic groups in China, each speaking its own tongue, all united by Mandarin - as we in the U.S. are united speaking English. China's minorities, unlike our own, are specifically protected by their constitution. They live all across China, including in five separate antonymous regions. In addition to China's five autonomous regions, there are 30 autonomous prefectures, and 120 autonomous counties. These combined areas account for 76% of China's total. Incredibly, the five autonomous regions take up 45% of China's total area While it is illegal for our own government to subsidize religion, according to the Mission, the Chinese government pays to maintain over 1,780 monasteries throughout its land, with 46,000 monks/priests and nuns worship in them. In fact, Tibet seems to have the largest number of full-time Buddhist clergy anywhere in the world. Ms. Dan, Counselor of the Chinese Mission, explains that Tibetans today constitute 95% of Tibet. They are no longer starving. They live longer. Their babies die less often. They are better educated. If true, these are major advances. I am well aware that not all everything the Chinese government has done in Tibet has been positive, or appreciated by the Tibetans, and the fact that vital statistics in have improved does not justify the heavy-handed approach the Chinese government has sometimes taken in Tibet. All I am saying is that the truth about Tibet is perhaps more nuanced than it has been presented by either side of the highly polarized debate. Having put my toe into this raging political river, I want to know more. My main global interest is the welfare of children, which presumably has improved in Tibet under Chinese rule in terms of health, education. I hope one day to travel to Tibet myself and witness the problems and solutions being worked out there. Comments are most welcome. Edited by Ethel Grodzins Romm and Laura Tyson Li. We, Jim Luce, Ethel Grodzins Romm and Laura Tyson Li, contribute the above article to the public domain. More on Tibet
 
Parvez Sharma: Poor Israel? Sure, and I am Barack Obama! Top
I write from Geneva, where I was invited to speak at the UN "Durban II" conference on racism and have just today been spat at by two Israelis. I found myself (unknowingly) on what turned into a "bash Iran" panel with a problematic Zionist agenda. The expectation, perhaps, was that I, being Muslim and gay, would sit and join in the Iran-bashing choir. In doing the opposite I did not make myself the most popular person in the room. Later, two Israeli delegates spat at me. Surprisingly, an erudite Canadian professor and member of Parliament threw around a baffling and hard-to-explain term: "genocidal anti-Semitism". Only he knows what he means, I certainly do not! Still later as the Iranian president walked into his press conference, clueless, young (all White by the way) UN workers stood and hissed, accusing him of "racism" (a term problematically applied in this case). Today for the first time I was witness to the extent of power the pro-Israel , anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian lobbies wield, even here in Geneva. Cleary Ahmadinejad made provocative comments which were in poor taste. But the complete lack of discussion of Israel's continuing genocide of the Palestinian people, its use of banned weapons of mass destruction like white phosporous on Palestinian civilians, the shameful loss of Palestinian life and its skewed ratio with the loss of a few Israelis are not topics of discussion here. A greater dispatch will follow but let me very clear: the first day of this UN conference was not an Israeli hate-fest. Quite the opposite; Israel and its many lobbies in majority Caucasian countries (and sometimes mine like India) are loud enough to drown out the rhetoric of the humble former mayor of Tehran. I write, in a hurry from Geneva where I shall now go and torment myself at a Shoa remembrance being turned into an Iran hate-fest. So very quickly-this is an alternative update from Geneva from a pro-Muslim homosexual Muslim! I shall soon be writing in detail about the politics here in Geneva town. More on Israel
 
Eugene Volokh: U.S. Supreme Court Agreed Today to Hear the "Crush Video" Free Speech Case: Top
Here's my summary and analysis of the case from when the Third Circuit decided it en banc : The relevant statute, 18 U.S.C. § 48 , criminalizes (a) "knowingly creat[ing], sell[ing], or possess[ing] a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce," though with an exception for (b) "any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value." "[D]epiction of animal cruelty" is defined in (c) to include "any visual or auditory depiction ... of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the [jurisdiction] in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place, regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the [jurisdiction]." This means that it's a federal crime to distribute videos of cockfighting or dogfighting in, say, California (assuming the depictions lack "serious ... value") even if the cockfighting or dogfighting was legal in the place (say, Puerto Rico or Japan) in which the video was created. The statute was enacted as an attempt to stop the distribution of so-called "crush videos," which generally depict a woman's legs and feet, often in high heels, stepping on insects, mice, or kittens; and it does indeed seem to cover such videos, assuming the relevant state law bars the underlying conduct (often yes as to killing kittens, often no as to killing insects). Don't ask me why people would want to watch this stuff, but apparently some get their jollies this way. But the statute is written much more broadly than that. On its face, the statute would also punish, depending on how judges and juries interpret " serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value" (emphasis added): A TV program showing foreign bullfights, which might be legal in the country in which they're taken, but illegal in at least some states in which the program is shown. A magazine with photographs of people illegally killing endangered species in a foreign country. A magazine with photographs of people committing cruelty to animals, aimed at exposing and punishing such cruelty, so long as the magazine is sold on newsstands or by subscription (rather than given away). One can certainly argue that all the above has such serious value, but at least as to the first item and maybe as to the others, some factfinders might conclude otherwise — the test is quite subjective, and some jurors or judges might well say "this bullfighting scene has no serious value; it's just aimed to shock, titillate, and get ratings." Note also an important difference between this clause and the third prong of the obscenity test, from which the clause is borrowed: clause (b) doesn't say that the work has to be judged "taken as a whole." This means the "serious value" exemption under this law may well be a smaller safe harbor than the "serious value" exemption under obscenity law. The statute doesn't fit within the existing obscenity or incitement exceptions. President Clinton's signing statement tried to cabin the statute by saying that the Justice Department should construe the law narrowly, limiting it to "wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex"; that at least brings it closer to the obscenity exception, though not entirely within it. But the signing statement isn't part of the law, and is certainly not binding on later administrations. The real question is whether the child pornography exception — the one exception that allows restriction of the distribution of speech because of the manner in which the speech was created — should be extended to cover the distribution of material the making of which involved harm to animals, rather than just harm to children. The argument would be that, as with child pornography, production of cruelty videos can be done in secret, but the distribution has to be relatively public; a ban on production will thus be very hard to enforce; so long as there's money to be made in distributing cruelty videos, there'll always be someone willing to produce them; and thus, to prevent the harm that takes place when the videos are made (injury to animals), one also needs to stop their distribution. The argument against extending the child pornography exception would be: The statute might end up suppressing a lot of valuable speech, such as the film of the bullfight and the like, and clause (b) is an inadequate safe harbor because it's much too vague. The statute will in fact suppress more valuable speech than child pornography law does, because depictions of animal cruelty are more likely to be relevant to political debates or to legitimate art than depictions of sex (or of lewd exhibition of genitals) involving children. The harm that the distribution of this speech causes — indirectly furthering animal cruelty — is much less severe than the harm of indirectly furthering sexual exploitation of children. (The legal system itself embodies such a judgment — child sexual abuse is a very serious crime, generally punished much more severely than animal cruelty. Cockfighting, in particular, is not even a crime in Puerto Rico, though Congress could have outlawed it if it wanted to. For more on when and whether it's legitimate for courts to draw such crime severity lines as a constitutional matter, see Crime Severity and Constitutional Line-Drawing , 90 Va. L. Rev. 1957 (2004) .) This also illustrates how the " slippery slope " can work in a legal system that's built on precedent and analogy. Crush video laws have indeed been advocated by their supporters as analogous to child pornography bans; and while courts might well draw the line between the two, perhaps on the grounds that child sexual abuse is just much more harmful than crush videos, the analogy seemed to be at least helpful in persuading legislatures to enact the laws. Some might embrace the slippery slope here, if they think that cruelty videos should be banned. Some who disagree about cruelty videos nonetheless might accept the slippery slope risk, on the theory that child pornography is so harmful that we should have an exception for it even if there's some risk that the exception will spread further than one would like. (That's my view, and the Third Circuit decision suggests the risk of spread isn't that high, though note that the 3 dissenters did indeed rely heavily on Ferber as justification for carving out a new exception here.) But one shouldn't pretend that the slippery slope risk doesn't exist.
 
Citigroup Credit Losses Rising Rapidly, Goldman Says Top
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc.'s credit losses are growing at a "rapid rate," undermining Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit's efforts to stabilize the U.S. bank, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. While Citigroup posted first-quarter net income of $1.6 billion last week, the New York-based bank suffered an "underlying" loss of 38 cents a share, Richard Ramsden, a Goldman Sachs analyst, wrote in a research note dated yesterday. He repeated a "sell" rating on the stock. More on Citibank
 
Tony Blair Facebook Profile Hijacked Top
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation on Facebook, which is accessed via a link from the charity's official website, is supposed to promote understanding of the world's religions. More on Facebook
 
Stu Rasmussen, America's First Transgender Mayor: "I Dress To Thrill" Top
"Normally, I dress to thrill," he says. But on this evening, instead of the custom-made corsets and leopard-print bathing suit he favors as tops, the 60-year-old Rasmussen--who prefers to be called not Your Honor or Mr. Mayor but rather Stu--has donned a demure red sweater that clashes with his dyed auburn hair. It does, however, match his acrylic nails--which he wears at a length Dolly Parton would admire--as well as the tights he reveals whenever he crosses his legs, opening the Beyoncé-length slit in his black silk skirt. Try as he might to tone down his look, he cannot keep the sweater from clinging to his chest. To all who rubberneck at the sight of the breast implants he got in 2000, Rasmussen says, "Yeah, they're real--real big!"
 
Marshall Fine: Newspaper death rattle: Movies don't tell the half of it Top
Much has been made of the fact that, within two weeks, we have two movies that deal - if only indirectly - with the crisis in newspapers that is threatening contemporary journalism as we know it. In last week's State of Play, Helen Mirren, as the editor of the Washington, D.C., newspaper where Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams work, admonishes them about the fact that the paper has new owners - and they want stories that sell copies. The implication is that the bottom-line-oriented business people who have taken over the nation's print media are more interested in profits than truth, in making money than serving the public trust. In this week's The Soloist, Robert Downey Jr., as real-life L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, watches as one colleague after another packs his belongings into boxes and is escorted from the building by security guards after being downsized. Lopez himself - and his ex-wife/editor, played by Catherine Keener - never seem in danger of a similar fate, but it's still disconcerting to see it happen to friends. Still, as canary-in-the-coalmine moments go, these movies are pretty tepid, because movies have such a long lead time. It's one thing for Law & Order to pull plots from the news and rewrite them as crime drama - and even then, there's a lag time of months. With movies, however, the lag is measured in years. Which means that whatever these movies are showing about what's happening to newspapers, it's much, much worse at the moment. Indeed, if you read the headlines, print media is pretty much on life support. This seeming death spiral has been in the works, in fact, since the turn of the century. I remember hearing, when I still worked for a daily paper - and it's been five years since I left - that newspapers were losing 10 percent of their circulation per year. In fact, that figure has snowballed. What these movies don't show - what they don't seem to get - is how much of this has been brought on by newspapers themselves. Yes, part of it is the Internet and newspapers' blindness to what it represented, both as competition and as a business opportunity. Newspapers shot themselves in the foot by ignoring the web until it had all but swallowed print media's business model whole and spit out the pieces. Another part, of course, is that newspapers - once considered a public trust, the way network TV news once was - have fallen into the Wall Street trap. Live by the profit margin, die by the profit margin. TV news is no longer about news; it's about ratings. So are newspapers, at this point, the ratings system being the daily Dow Jones figure. But even before I left newspapers (for magazines, then for free-lancing), it was apparent that they had lost their sense of who the audience was, why it read a newspaper and how to continue to attract it. And they're still making the same mistake. For the rest of this post, click here to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com.
 
Chad Dobson: Voices Struggling to Be Heard: Access to Information and the World Bank Top
Co-authored by Rebecca Harris In the aftermath of the market meltdown and the hindsight appraisal of the opaque, intricate proceedings of Wall Street and the resulting sub-prime racket that obstructed the deadly iceberg from the sights of the investing public until it was far too late to reverse course, the call for transparency and accountability has never been more defendable. This dearth of lucidity and public information (and the accompanying corruption that breeds in dark corners) is, in part, what led the sheep to the slaughterhouse, so to speak. With the close of the G20 Summit in London, questions persist as to what the lasting effects will be with regard to the structure of the global financial system, the recovery of developing countries whose economies have been battered by the ripple effects from the largely Northern-born crisis and whether or not the World War II-era Bretton Woods system is still appropriately functional. In the weeks preceding the summit, expectations were heightened for an agenda that would deviate from the norm this time around. Perhaps this would be the G20 when words would extend beyond mere boilerplate rhetoric? Preliminary rumblings suggested that Gordon Brown was hoping for Bretton Woods, part two, though inevitably, a more modest agenda materialized. A March 2009 Washington Post article even went as far as to announce that the winners of the G20 would be the developing world, as support has been mounting for the addition of 10 developing countries to a Switzerland-based advisory position. Hopes were high that this time, the global South wouldn't be shut out of the party. Indeed, the G20 did not remain silent on the needs and concerns of the developing world, though, as the Financial Times noted, the question is not so much what statements the leaders are willing to spew, but rather, what kind of weight will these words carry back home and what level of commitment do these world leaders have to following through on the lofty rhetoric once they are no longer sitting elbow to elbow at the big table? As expected, the most urgent of concerns involved the developing world's ability to weather the economic downturn, the G20's response to which was the pledging of $50 billion for the IMF to disburse to the poorest countries as part of an emergency fund, as well as an additional $750 billion to strengthen the lending abilities of the World Bank, IMF and multilateral development banks. Perhaps more telling than the large scale funding re-up, is the fact that IFI (international financial institution) governance and accountability found its place on the summit's agenda this year. The G20 Working Group on the World Bank and Other Multilateral Development Banks called for "full-fledged governance reform in the World Bank Group in order to increase voice and representation of emerging markets and developing economies." The working group also called for the Development Committee of the World Bank to utilize the upcoming Spring Meetings as a means of addressing and improving governance and effectiveness of the Bank, as well as to set an aggressive timeline for the Voice and Representation reform, with 2010's Spring Meetings as the deadline for said agreement. Though closely related and yet overlooked by the G20, is another essential component in giving voice to borrowing and emerging economies: the issue of access to information and transparency, especially within the public storehouses and producers of knowledge, such as the international financial institutions. Freedom of information is a fundamental human right, enshrined in international and regional legal agreements, and in over 50 national constitutions. The push for global economic reform must also encompass this basic human right. It seems that Obama has gotten the message. On his first day in office, he signaled a sea change with the release of a memorandum stating that government should be transparent and participatory and, for this reason, his administration would "take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use." In so doing, the Obama Administration publicly acknowledged the inextricable link between information disclosure and civil society participation and voice. The World Bank and partner IFIs must do the same. The World Bank's Development Policy Loans, more dubiously known as "Structural Adjustment Loans" in the 1980s and 90s, present a cautionary tale of what can happen when policy is dictated in a vacuum of civil society input and how far reaching the effects of bad policy may be. In the name of fiscal responsibility, said loans prioritized debt repayment and fiscal austerity before development. Loan conditions were determined behind closed doors, oftentimes with only the finance ministers present while excluding ministers of education and health. Budget ceilings were placed upon health and education spending in an attempt to corral the national budget into what the Bank deemed appropriate, as a condition of the loan. The resulting damage to development cannot be overstated: AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa without the funds to hire and retain healthcare workers and schools without teachers, chalk or books. Many countries were forced to enact school fees to increase revenues, blocking education as an option for many of the poorest children, especially girls. Budgetary measures that directly and profoundly impacted the lives of many were decided by a scant few. Now is an opportune time for civil society to demand their rights and lobby the World Bank to adopt a modern information disclosure policy, as 2009 marks the beginning of the year-long review of its existing policy. The Bank must reconsider its policies on access to information, as in its own mission statement, the World Bank aspires to "help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge." World Bank transparency and information-sharing is essential for civil society participation. As the leading international development institution, the Bank sets policies and standards often followed by other lenders. An improved disclosure policy requires a shift in thinking and a new business approach from the World Bank. First and foremost, the Bank must adopt a presumption of disclosure, rather than a presumption of NON-disclosure for documents and studies. Exemptions to disclosure must meet the criteria of a "harm test," as in, would the release of a certain document cause demonstrable harm and would this perceived harm outweigh the public interest in the information? Additionally, draft project and program documents must be publicly available prior to the Board vote for approval, along with deliberative Board documents. Document disclosure after the Board of Directors has approved a project and the associated strings attached provide little opportunity for civil society input. Research and studies produced by the Bank in order to formulate loans must be disclosed as part of the Bank's commitment to information sharing as well. An independent appeals mechanism is also a necessary component of any modern disclosure policy in order to ensure that information requests are not unduly denied. Finally, as with any policy, implementation is key. An ideal disclosure policy would mandate that the information dissemination component is part and parcel of every project along with the budget and indicators to provide for appropriate monitoring and evaluation. It is not enough for the Bank to enact sweeping measures with regard to voice and vote at the management level and yet silence the voice of the very individuals who are the stakeholders and the ultimate keepers once the Bank moves on to another project site. As the old adage goes, knowledge is power and access to information is a potent tool that empowers civil society to demand what is rightfully theirs. For further information on BIC's Campaign for World Bank Transparency, please visit our website at www.bicusa.org More on Economy
 
Stephen Hawking Hospitalized, Very Sick Top
LONDON — Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking was rushed to a hospital Monday and was seriously ill, Cambridge University said. The university said Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks, and was being treated at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, the university city north of London. "Professor Hawking is very ill," said Gregory Hayman, the university's head of communications. "He is undergoing tests. He has been unwell for a couple of weeks." Later in the afternoon, Hayman said Hawking was "now comfortable but will be kept in hospital overnight." Hawking, 67, gained renown for his work on black holes, and has remained active despite being diagnosed at 21 with ALS, (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable degenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. For some years, Hawking has been almost entirely paralyzed, and he communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers. Hawking was involved in the search for the great goal of physics _ a "unified theory" _ which would resolve contradictions between Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which describes the laws of gravity that govern the motion of large objects like planets, and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which deals with the world of subatomic particles. "A complete, consistent unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence," he wrote in his best-selling book, "A Brief History of Time," published in 1988. In a more accessible sequel "The Universe in a Nutshell," published in 2001, Hawking ventured into concepts like supergravity, naked singularities and the possibility of a universe with 11 dimensions. He announced last year that he would step down from his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by the great 18th-century physicist Isaac Newton. However, the university said Hawking intended to continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Hawking had canceled an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6 because of his illness. "Professor Hawking is a remarkable colleague. We all hope he will be amongst us again soon," said Professor Peter Haynes, head of the university's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. ___ On the Net: http://www.hawking.org.uk
 
T.C. Conroy: Escape The Prison of Hope Top
Society is undergoing a massive transition and the choices we make today will set the stage for a long time to come. As a success coach I spend the bulk of my day listening to people talk, I deal with many issues and aspects of my clients' lives. I learn what's working for them, but mostly, I loudly hear the silent scream that lives within the multitude of ways we have cleverly devised to sabotage ourselves. Sitting on the sidelines of your life, hoping that everything will be OK is a massive pitfall.  I hear it every day: I hope my money is OK, I hope there is enough, I hope things change, I hope, I hope, I hope. Hope is a sissy word. Hope is just that - hope - it's one of those pleasantries that really sits on the fence: hoping and wishing are not going to get you where you are going. Hoping is the same as trying or wishing, its passive. When I was growing up my grandfather had a saying, it's not the most sophisticated saying but it gets the point across. If you intend to succeed, you must let go of hope, take responsibility for your actions and learn to co-create results or in the wise words of my WW2 sailor Grandpa, "s**t or get off the pot".   With the climate of fear abounding, my clients have come in one after another with the general frustration of falling short of their successes. I have found that this has little to do with their ability and everything to do with their general lack of clarity regarding the actual desire.  Again and again, I hear stories of underdeveloped potential and unmet needs bumping up against the wall of frustration, because all too often people are out there trying to create without really identifying exactly what it is that they are attempting to do.  This leads to failure and the inevitable justification for not doing more.     "I hope it all works out" is not a strategy!  You can hope all day and I guarantee you will get the same results -- it's like leaving for a vacation without a destination.   We all take steps and make decisions every day, often times without putting much thought into our choices or our attitude towards ourselves and those choices. If we simply take a moment to be more aware and create well thought out steps, in keeping with our goals, we can make wonderful things happen. And if we approach these steps with the right attitude and beliefs, we can truly begin to transform all areas of our lives and make our dreams come true!   How do I do it?  Well, first things first, you MUST be clear on what it is you want and need (and if you know the why, that helps too).  Here are my top 5 tips for getting out of hope and into what is most important, action.   #1.Clarity of Goal Clearly know your exact desire/destination.  It's all too easy to sit on the sidelines in fear and let time facilitate your dreams passing you by. You don't have to know how you will get there but you do need to know exactly where you are going.   Sit down and commit your desire to paper.  Remember, this is your dream: it's not written in stone and you may update it at will; be fluid and don't punish yourself for not being further along already; life is a process; make it a point to enjoy the journey.   Once you have identified your destination...   #2. Listen to the story you are telling yourself.  Refuse to use passive (hope) and negative words. Make sure the internal and external script you have written supports you in the most powerful way possible.   If you have any doubt that you can reach your goal or that you are the person to make this happen, then that doubt must be examined. Bring the doubt into the light and look at it -- do not avoid it or run away.  Take the doubt and commit it to paper (write it out) asking yourself if it is true.  Nine times out of ten, the doubt is a bold faced lie.  It may not even belong to you.  It's often a voice we have inherited from our past or bad habits. #3. Give yourself permission to succeed. Remember, you are no longer hoping that everything is going to work out; you are plugged in and pro-active.  You must believe that you will succeed. Consciously develop a strong sense of self worth. Your ego wants to protect you, it will speak to you in a way that says don't take the risk, stay in your comfort zone. This voice is a lie; ask it to quiet down, stretch yourself and let your comfort zone expand.   Do you deserve to have your dreams come true? Will you be able to handle it if they do?   #4. Start where you are. When you get too far ahead of yourself and into the end result, it's easy to become scared and overwhelmed.  Most of us want to play in the Super Bowl without ever having to practice.  This is an unrealistic expectation and a great opportunity for that ego to start yelling at you.  Focus on small action steps that support you in building the foundation you need to support your success.  It's the accumulation of these small steps that create your strong foundation.    #5. Count your wins. Don't fall into the terrible habit of looking at what other people have or where they are at in their lives, making them right and you wrong. Foster the good habit of acknowledging yourself on a daily basis for the small and large things that you have done right today.  Left unchecked, these wins will fade into oblivion; when they are valued and welcomed, they will multiply and keep you motivated. Focus on your goal every day and give yourself props for progress.   When you are out of hope and into action, you create clear obtainable objectives coupled with strong intentions, making you unstoppable.  Don't forget to enjoy the process and love yourself along the way.     Be careful what you wish for -- you will likely get it.   Website: www.westcoastcoaching.com Blog: http://tcconroy.wordpress.com/
 
Kamran Pasha: The Big Lie About Muslim Silence on Terrorism Top
Today I had to refute yet again the Big Lie that hounds the Muslim community -- that we fail to speak out and condemn terrorism. I was being interviewed by the wonderful radio host Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones about my new novel Mother of the Believers . Dr. Jones is a deeply spiritual man whose show always features uplifting themes and speakers. And he went out of his way to make me feel welcome. But as a good journalist, he had to ask the question he felt his audience wanted answered -- "Why do mainstream Muslims fail to speak out against terrorism? It is a question that I get almost every single day, and it leaves me flabbergasted. I often respond to that question with one of my own -- "Why does the media fail to report on Muslims who condemn terrorism?" Since before 2001, every single major Muslim group in the United States has been outspoken in their condemnation of terrorism and the murder of innocent people in the name of Islam. And yet the media ignores it. Every single time. Don't believe me? Go to http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php That site lists links to dozens of major Muslims group and Islamic scholars who have condemned terrorism as a violation of the fundamental moral precepts of Islam. Want more? Here's a compilation of Islamic fatwas against terrorism by Juan Cole, scholar of the Middle East and author of Engaging the Muslim World . http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html Cole's list was compiled after Thomas Friedman wrote an outrageous column in The New York Times claiming that "no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama Bin Laden." Friedman knew (or should have known as an alleged Middle East expert) that what he was saying was a lie. But he chose to publish this garbage anyway, giving it the full credibility of the Times. What was so shocking was that Friedman's column was published on July 8, 2005. But three months before, on March 11, 2005, a group of Spanish imams issued a fatwa against Osama Bin Laden: http://www.int-review.org/terr42a.html http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0314/p06s01-woeu.html So what is going on here? As one of the few Muslims who has worked inside Hollywood for the past 7 years as a writer and producer, I can only explain this shocking lie that has become a national meme as the product of an intentional media agenda. There is a real political agenda inside the media itself to keep Islam as the enemy, and to portray mainstream Muslims as a fifth column inside America. The idea that your Muslim neighbors are silently supporting Bin Laden sells newspapers. It captures the attention of viewers of the nightly news. And it furthers the ambitions of politicians who need a rallying point to get votes. As a Muslim and a patriot I don't know what more to do except telling the truth every time I get the opportunity. But I ask my non-Muslim friends this question. How would you feel if your community was being falsely portrayed as being sympathetic to murderers by the media? How would you feel if every single thing you do to condemn and fight such criminals is intentionally ignored? What would you conclude about the character and motivation of people that continue to spread a lie against millions of your fellow human beings? If you can take a moment to consider, you might get a sense of the true burden your Muslim neighbors carry. The world wants us to be the monsters. When we condemn and fight the monsters, no one notices or cares. It's like the army telling a soldier who has just survived a hellish firefight that he was never in the war in the first place, and condemning him for his cowardice. It would be a formula for despair for most people. And yet what is remarkable is that Muslim groups continue to patiently work against terrorism in accordance with their faith, even though they receive no credit for their deeds. They are secure that everything is in the hands of God. And, as the Holy Qur'an says, that the light of truth will never be put out by the mouths of liars. Last year, I attended the Pilgrimage to Mecca, a powerful, life-changing event that I chronicled on my personal blog at blog.kamranpasha.com One of the most remarkable stories that I heard when I was there was the tale of Abraham, who Muslims believe founded the first settlement at Mecca with his son Ishmael. The Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told Abraham to climb a mountain and call mankind to God. Abraham was incredulous, and responded that there was no one in the barren desert valley except him and his family. Who would hear the call? And Gabriel smiled and said: "Just call mankind to the truth. God will make sure it is heard." Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of Mother of the Believers, a novel on the birth of Islam as told by Prophet Muhammad's wife Aisha (Atria Books; April 2009). For more information please visit: http://www.kamranpasha.com More on Thomas Friedman
 
Dan Bogden: US Attorney Fired By Bush Will Be Rehired By Obama Top
Dan Bogden, who served as the United States attorney from Nevada until he was abruptly dismissed from his job during the infamous wave of firings of U.S. attorneys in late 2006, hoped to someday learn why he was let go. By most accounts, Bogden had served his community and the Department of Justice with distinction: former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who had once directly supervised Comey, would later testify before Congress that Bogden was one of his best prosecutors, and that he could not understand why anyone would want to fire him.
 
Michael Wolff: Eliot Spitzer Knows What He's Doing Top
I'm trying to parse the Spitzer- Newsweek deal. In effect, Newsweek, by reporting on Spitzer's rehabilitation, is rehabilitating its own asset. My curiosity here has nothing to do with whether Spitzer should be rehabilitated or not, but with the commercial nature of the effort, and, too, the who-knows-whom-in-the-media-power-structure aspects of the comeback. Newsweek , in its cover story this week, is theoretically telling us, based on an in-depth interview with the former governor, about details of his soul-searching and the mechanics of his redemption. What Newsweek doesn't say is that a major building block of Spitzer's return to credibility and public life is to be featured on the cover of a major news magazine. As it happens, Spitzer is openly engaged in a more or less formal comeback strategy with various entities of the Washington Post Co., of which Newsweek is one. In addition to writing for Newsweek, he also writes a regular column for Slate, the Washington Post-owned website. Other than a certain coziness, there is nothing necessarily wrong here. Continue reading at newser.com More on Eliot Spitzer
 
Mexican Police Arrest 44 At Drug Raid During Family Baptism Top
Mexican federal police arrested 44 alleged members of the drugs cartel at a family baptism in Morelia, capital of the western state of Michoacan. More on Mexico
 
Gingrich Slams Obama Over Chavez Greeting At Summit Of The Americas Top
WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich charged Monday that President Barack Obama's cordial greeting with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez sends a poor message to enemies of America. In a nationally broadcast interview on NBC's "Today" show Monday, the Georgia Republican also accused the administration of being too slow to react to North Korea's launching of a rocket test and said it has reached out too much to ease relations with Cuba. Appearing on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," Gingrich said: "This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter. Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead." Chavez has been one of the harshest critics of the United States in that part of the world. Obama said at the conclusion of the Latin summit Sunday that he didn't think greeting Chavez would be "endangering the strategic interests of the United States." Gingrich complained that the simple act of a smiling Obama shaking Chavez's hand caused a book Chavez has written to skyrocket on the best-seller lists in the United States. "What I find distressing," he said, "is that the administration opposes opening up oil exploration," but yet Obama has "bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia" and now reached out to Chavez, whom Gingrich said has been conducting "a vicious anti-American campaign." Gingrich, whose name has been mentioned in 2012 presidential speculation, said, "How do you mend relationships with someone who actively hates your country. ... " "Cuba releases zero prisoners," he said, "yet we make nice with Cuba. I'm for doing things methodically and calmly ... things that will work, but I'm not for deluding myself about smiles and words." More on Barack Obama
 
Nora Ephron: Stop the Music Top
Every time I read something about Susan Boyle, I like to think it will be the last thing I read about her. But it never is. Days have passed, and people are still writing about her. Tina Brown has written something this morning that begins by saying that Susan Boyle's moment in history may have been totally fabricated but it doesn't matter because something true came from something false. I have no idea what the piece goes on to say, because I'm afraid to read it. Because the worst thing about Susan Boyle -- and there are several, but I'm going to deal with only one -- is that she sings that horrible song. That song is worse than all of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and it's worse than "It's A Small World After All." That song from Les Miserables that Susan Boyle sings is the all-time most horrible song ever in history, and the reason is simple: it sticks in your brain and never stops playing. Even if you watched Susan Boyle only once, dry-eyed, it sticks for days and days. And just when you think it's gone, you see the title in print, and it starts playing again. Many years ago, when I was young, I had a boyfriend whose father had a symphony in his head. It wasn't Beethoven's Fifth, or anything worth listening to -- it was a completely original symphony. My boyfriend's father was not a composer; the symphony existed only in his head, and every time he lay down to try to sleep, the symphony began to play. He had to buy a special pillow that played the sound of the ocean in order to get the symphony to disappear. I was fascinated by this, so fascinated that it's something I remember (as opposed to all the things I have forgotten). I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be tormented by the sound of music, but now I know: it's what happens when you get older, only in my case, it's not a symphony, it's just a series of bad songs. And they play and play and play. All day long. They play in rhythm as I walk down the street, and they float in and out of my brain as I work. Sometimes I dream them. In fact, I would say that on many occasions I dreamed a dream of them if I weren't so afraid of saying those unspeakable words. I have my very own soundtrack that plays to my very own life, only instead of consisting of songs I love, it's composed of the songs that stick in my brain. It's a form of hell, and that's the truth. I understand that it will be weeks before Susan Boyle gets up to sing again in front of that show, but there's no question in my mind what she will sing in the next round: that song from Titanic . And in the next round, that song from The Bodyguard . I daren't even say their names or they will start playing.
 
Stephen Hawking Hospitalized, Reported 'Very Ill' Top
LONDON — Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking has been rushed to a hospital and is seriously ill, Cambridge University said Monday. The university said Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks, and was being treated at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, the university city north of London. "Professor Hawking is very ill," said Gregory Hayman, the university's head of communications. "He is undergoing tests. He has been unwell for a couple of weeks." Hawking, 67, gained renown for his work on black holes, and has remained active despite being diagnosed at 21 with motor neurone disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable degenerative disease. For some years, Hawking has been almost entirely paralyzed, and he communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers. "Professor Hawking is a remarkable colleague. We all hope he will be amongst us again soon," said Professor Peter Haynes, head of the university's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Hawking had canceled an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6 because of his illness. He announced last year that he would step down from his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by the great 18th century physicist Isaac Newton, and the end of this academic year. However, the university said Hawking intended to continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. More on England
 
Alan Schram: Is Hyper Inflation Coming Top
The Fed recently announced it will buy up $300 billion in long-term Treasury bonds and spend $750 billion more buying sub-prime mortgages from big banks. Given the $3.6 trillion budget President Obama plans, the $1.8 trillion in deficits he will run and the trillions the Fed is pumping into the economy, there is real risk we will have an inflationary spike in the future. It is important to understand that what the Federal Reserve is currently doing does not involve literally printing money but extending credit, and that credit can eventually be withdrawn. If at some point the Federal Reserve reduces the money supply by withdrawing that credit or raising interest rates, and if they do that with opportune timing, inflation would be contained. But if they do not handle this delicate assignment correctly, we will not be able to save ourselves from inflation's devastating effects. Inflation, described as too much money chasing too few goods, edaciously consumes capital and erodes the value of cash, savings, stocks and bonds. By eating away at the value of a currency, inflation punishes savers and creditors and rewards debtors. It is a de facto tax. But it is a far more devastating tax than anything enacted by Congress, because it does not need approval from legislators. A man with a 5% saving account is going to be in exactly the same financial position if he pays 100% tax on his interest income with zero inflation, as if he pays no income taxes with 5% inflation. A tax rate of 100% on interest income will drive people to violent protests and be considered outrageous, but people would usually not complain about 5% inflation. Yet the truth is, either way they are taxed in a way that leaves them no real income. Indeed, debasing the currency is the best way to destroy a capitalist system. Unfortunately, as the world's biggest debtor, the US has plenty of incentive to debase its currency and pay off the debts in cheaper dollars. Gold prices more than tripled over the last decade. This is already telling us the market thinks the dollar has been abandoned by the Fed. It is no wonder therefore, that the Chinese are worried about the Dollar as the world's reserve currency. Rather than endure the pain and accept the sacrifices to cure us of our addiction to leverage and excess spending, we are going back to the same infernal behavior that brought us to the precipice of this financial crisis. Alan Schram is the Managing Partner of Wellcap Partners, a Los Angeles based investment firm. Email at aschram@wellcappartners.com.
 
W. Norton Grubb: Does Money Matter Most? Finding a Silver Lining for Schools in Recessionary Times Top
These are dreadful times for public schools, and even with President Barack Obama's economic-stimulus plan, it's hard to see where the silver lining might be. Schools have become dominated by the money myth : Inadequate outcomes can be explained by inadequate revenues, and any educational problem requires increased spending. Few people are going to look for improving schools in a period of declining revenues. But the link between spending per pupil and outcomes has always been weak. Since increased revenues are unlikely, this period provides an opportunity to rethink the relationship of money to effective school resources, and to develop new approaches. States, districts, and schools should pursue at least the following five strategies, each based on a different reason the money myth is wrong. The first is to eliminate waste, which takes many forms: spending on ineffective resources, such as weak after-school programs or teachers' aides without a clear purpose; spending money without changing practices (using ineffective professional development, for example); mobilizing resources with potential long-run benefits, but where instability--a new principal, a superintendent with different priorities, teacher turnover--undermines their effectiveness. Often, money is spent piecemeal, when schools respond to categorical and foundation grants without overall plans. Other waste occurs when what could be termed simple resources are insufficient. Class-size reduction provides a clear example: As California's failed experiment shows, the effective resource is not smaller classes but a compound resource: smaller classes plus well-educated teachers plus professional development focused on improved teaching plus adequate facilities. This period provides an opportunity to rethink the relationship of money to effective school resources, and to develop new approaches. District and school audits would uncover a great deal of waste that could be redirected to other uses. The second strategy is to avoid spending on expensive but ineffective, even counterproductive, programs. Traditional vocational education is a case in point: It spends much for equipment and materials, while reducing student learning and progress through high school. Other forms of tracking are similarly counterproductive: the general track with its watered-down curriculum, remedial pedagogy with its emphasis on drill and practice, and many other interventions spending more money (with less success) for students who are behind. Third, districts and schools should understand the power of complex resources, usually related to instruction. Statistical results from my work show that teachers' use of time, their control over instruction, a departmental encouragement of innovation, and teachers' reliance on innovative (or "balanced") instruction all lead to improved learning and higher test scores. But these complex resources cannot readily be bought, and districts with higher spending per student do not necessarily have them at higher levels. Instead, such resources must be constructed at the school level, by principals and teachers working collaboratively over time, using more-effective professional development. Many abstract resources are powerful too: a positive school climate, the absence of distractions such as fighting and drug-dealing, overall student commitment, trust among a school's participants, the coherence of the curriculum, and stability among students, teachers, leaders, and reforms. Like complex resources, these abstract resources cannot easily be bought, and higher spending does not increase them. They are usually embedded in the personal relationships of schools and must be constructed collectively. Fifth, schools and districts should recognize and eliminate the mistreatment of students of color. Achievements gaps are usually stated in racial or ethnic terms: the differences among white, black, and Latino test scores, for example, or the dropout rates of Latinos compared with those of white and Asian students. These differences cannot be explained away, even by variables describing family background, unequal school resources, or students' commitment to schooling. There is substantial evidence of schools' mistreatment of students of color, ranging from the unconscious to the grotesque. In response, advocates have developed many innovative practices to support these students, including culturally relevant pedagogy and multicultural education; innovative instructional methods with greater student participation and more critical perspectives; systematic classroom observation, so that teachers can learn whether they are unconsciously mistreating students; and different approaches to discipline. These are also complex and abstract resources, requiring not money but understanding, leadership, and cooperation. Sometimes money is necessary, of course. A list of effective practices that cost more money would include personalizing schools, which requires additional adults; having more counselors per student; providing teacher release time for planning and professional development; maintaining higher teacher salaries to increase the pool of job applicants and reduce turnover. But increased spending is effective only when an activity enhances outcomes and that activity requires specific expenditures. So there are many activities schools can undertake to help their students achieve more and thrive, even as we wait for this recession to pass. But doing so will require an understanding of the broad range of resources that affect students' progress, and of how many of these are not dependent on money--contrary to the money myth. More on Stimulus Package
 
Kenneth Wollack: People-to-People-Based Foreign Policy Top
Our nation's public diplomacy has often been about lecturing instead of listening, preaching instead of partnering. At times, we have tried to sell the American brand as though it was a bar of soap. Ineffective public diplomacy initiatives have consisted of "advertising campaigns, listening tours, 'goodwill' ambassadors...and the like," according to a recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Task Force on Confronting the Ideology of Radical Extremism, on which I served. But we will not restore our international standing by aiming a single monologue at the rest of the world, no matter how savvy our pitch. Citizens from other countries, particularly in nondemocratic societies, readily recognize -- and reject -- propaganda from their own governments. They should hardly be expected to accept it from a foreign source. Rather than casting ourselves as participants in a global "war of ideas," we ought to drop the language of combat. We can best serve our interests by aligning ourselves with the aspirations of the vast majority of people in other countries -- aspirations for themselves, their families, their communities and their countries. This approach to the world shows that America recognizes a common humanity and respects human dignity. This would position our country as a hands-on partner in achieving positive change. This effort will require the use of all the traditional tools of development and democracy -- building schools and digging wells, extending microcredit and providing vaccines. It means backing democrats who promote peaceful political change in autocratic environments and supporting the development of institutions in nascent democracies so they can improve the quality of life for all citizens, not just the privileged few. In today's interdependent world, where the free flow of information is a valued currency, we will need new communications tools as well. And that is where a revitalized public diplomacy effort comes in. We can foster connections and exchanges that can build trust, demonstrate our values, and blend people together in a web of relationships that cross borders and cultural divides. This is the best way to restore America's reputation, to promote a sense of shared well-being, and to counteract the messages of hate and violence. Imagine an African cotton farmer, buffeted by unpredictable weather and the whims of the closest buyer, receiving accurate market pricing data and weather forecasts on his cell phone, courtesy of a U.S. government-supported initiative. Political and civic activists throughout the Middle East can gain access to model legislation that can serve as an advocacy tool to promote women's political participation and leadership. This kind of approach is possible because, with 21st century communications technologies, we have unprecedented opportunities to engage people directly -- and to connect people to one another -- all over the world. New leadership of our public diplomacy program will be central to this effort. It will require someone who can energize public-private partnerships and tap the great potential of communications technologies. Judith McHale, the former president and CEO of Discovery Communications, has now been nominated for this position -- Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. McHale, who serves on the Board of the National Democratic Institute, among other organizations, is the right choice. While many Americans know Discovery's outstanding cable channels seen in the United States, they are less familiar with the company's international work, which makes McHale particularly well-suited to the public diplomacy post. Under her two decades of leadership, Discovery's reach expanded to 1.4 billion subscribers in 170 countries, with translations into more than 30 languages. Its emphasis is on both locally focused as well as globally unifying communications, which is the same strategy that should underpin U.S. public diplomacy efforts. Judith McHale not only understands the importance of these approaches; she has had many years of experience implementing exactly these kinds of communications that have engaged and connected with people all over the world. The new Administration has already underscored the central role of reaching out beyond government-to-government relations to forge people-to-people connections based on mutual respect and trust. And a modern and revitalized public diplomacy program, led by Ms. McHale, can be a centerpiece of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's doctrine of "smart power." Kenneth Wollack is president of the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit organization that supports democratic institutions and practices abroad.
 
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.: Eating for Self-Synchronization Top
When you eat out of hunger, you tune in to yourself. When you eat in response to cravings, you tune in to the environment. Try this: some time this week contrast and compare craving-driven eating and hunger-driven eating. On a scheduled craving-driven eating day, eat each and every time you have a craving. On a scheduled hunger-driven eating day, eat only if you are hungry. Notice a process of social and environmental synchronization. When you eat in a craving-driven fashion, you eat each and every time the environment presents you with a powerful enough stimulus to elicit a craving in you. As a result, you become attuned to the environment, eating in sync, as if line-dancing with a crowd of strangers . Everybody eats, and you eat. Compare this with a different kind of synchronization, self-synchronization (synchronization with your self), when you eat in a hunger-driven manner. While you begin to feel progressively out of sync with the environment (everybody eats, but you don't), you begin to appreciate a sense of your behavior becoming synchronized with your intentions. Notice what feels better to you. Don't get me wrong: I am not suggesting that you forever eat all by yourself. No. I am just pointing out the cost associated with social eating. Social eating connects us to others and disconnects us from ourselves. That's just the reality of it. After all, while we can sync our watches, we can't quite sync our hunger. As a result, at least one person at the table will be eating out of sync with themselves. On some days it might feel more important for you to connect with others than with yourself. On those days, eating while not hungry (just because someone else has triggered you to crave) might be an acceptable price to pay for the psychological benefits of social company. On other days, perhaps, not. Knowing what you need more (to connect with yourself or with others) when you need it is part of balanced self-care . Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of EATING THE MOMENT: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time (New Harbinger, 2008) www.eatingthemoment.com
 
Oprah Cancels Columbine Anniversary Show Top
CHICAGO — Oprah Winfrey has canceled an episode of her talk show that was to mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, saying it focused too much on the killers. The episode, "10 Years Later: The Truth About Columbine," was to air Monday, the anniversary of the massacre in Littleton, Colo., that killed 12 students and a teacher. Winfrey posted a message Monday morning on her Facebook page, saying that after she reviewed the taped show she decided to pull it because of its focus on the two gunmen. She urged viewers to keep the Columbine community in their thoughts. Winfrey said she would air a program about a mother released from prison in place of the Columbine piece. Her company, Harpo Productions, confirmed the announcement. ___ On the Net: http://www.oprah.com/ More on Oprah
 
Sahil Kapur: America's Self-Defeating Attitude on Health Care Reform Top
With skyrocketing costs and 47 million Americans uninsured , it's obvious that health care has become a serious domestic crisis. President Obama made it a centerpiece of his campaign and has since moved to amend the moldering system. But before reform legislation can pass, Americans must realize what the biggest historical obstacle to universal health care has been: themselves. There are two main types of universal health care opponents: a) special interests pursuing their own agendas and b) those who reject government activism on principle. The former will forever fight to preserve their power over the system, largely at the expense of the people. The latter ought to know that by encouraging their leaders to sit idly by, they're effectively digging their own graves. A sea of Americans view government as innately flawed and incapable of improving their conditions. Many of these individuals, instead of voting for candidates interested in ameliorating their health care woes, elect those who believe government should stay out of their lives. And so the tide persists as a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. The AMA, insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry have long battled national health care because it would weaken their stranglehold over the populous. On numerous occasions they've spent extraordinary sums of money to engulf attempts at reform -- be it during the progressive era in the early 1900s, Truman in the 1940s or Clinton-care in the 1990s. (They even fought Medicare and Medicaid tooth and nail in the 1960s.) But the alarming reality is that these monsters wield much of their power from the very people they consistently swindle and cheat. In the '90s, insurance companies sank the Clinton Health Security Act by convincing Americans that it would curtail their menu of medical options. As a result, tens of millions ended up without a menu altogether, many of whom have since plunged into bankruptcy due to unbearable medical bills. A very similar episode occurred in the '40s under Harry Truman, with the AMA leading the charge . Both times , the ensuing anti-reform wave drowned the Democratic Party for its efforts to rescue the uninsured. The virulent obstructionism and influence wielded by these special interests is disheartening, to say the least. But let's not forget how helpless they'll be once ordinary people stop buying into their propaganda and understand that they're being conned. Anybody who wants to solve America's health care predicament must first reject the naysayers who dogmatically vilify government and glorify the private entities that have failed us. The current system encourages exclusion of those who need medical care the most, and only government has the power to restructure these incentives. Remember also that there is no such thing as a free lunch, which some people are apparently holding out for. Poll a group of Americans and ask them whether they'd like to have a national, government-sponsored health care program; the answer is resoundingly positive . Then ask the same group whether they're willing to pay higher taxes to make it happen, and watch the number shrink (although both figures are gradually rising over time). The tragedy is that an effective national program, despite the costs, would be more economically sound as it would minimize the enormous out-of-pocket expenditures millions are currently subject to. It would also encourage preventive medicine, thus saving many lives by catching illnesses early. The United States, with one in six uninsured, spends far more per capita on health care than countries like France and Canada, which manage to insure all their citizens. And contrary to popular myth, quality of care is no better here . The good news is that the winds of today are blowing against the obstructionists. There is currently a deluge of populist determination to overhaul the health care system. But the necessary reforms will only succeed when Americans get serious and see through the nonsense that has allowed this broken system to persist. So during the upcoming debate on health care reform, don't be swept away by sneering slogans like " socialized medicine " or harebrained ads comparing universal health care to the Russian Revolution. Remember whose interests the medical establishment and their partners in Congress have at heart. Demand that your government stand up for you. If you think your leaders can help you, you may well be right. If you think they can't, you'll definitely be right. More on Health
 
Liz Neumark: 2 weeks/2 continents Top
I am not a food writer. I am a caterer. When I am lucky enough to travel, it is most often not in a professional capacity. I travel with my family (hubby and 3 teenagers) and struggle (or sneak) to find the time to indulge my inner passion - local foods, markets and hospitality. I am always on the lookout for creative design,food trends and inspiration. And I am a voyeur - peeking in on culinary experiences, and making notes. Allow me to share my thoughts as I returned home today. 2 weeks, 2 continents. This trip began in the Galilee region of Israel where agriculture is everywhere, from large-scale operations to small family fields with ancient rock walls. Virtually all meals reflect local bounty. Markets feature current harvest, peak flavors scream out for recognition. It was a wet spring and the fields were amazing shades of green making everything growing more tantalizing then ever. I could stay there forever. Not only do you know where your food comes from, but the interaction with butcher, fishmonger and baker define the shopping experience. And given the familiarity with which Israelis communicate, it was entertaining to observe the banter between consumer and food professional - somehow the roles become obscured as the advice and opinions were generously shared in both directions. The same was true in the markets in Barcelona. Though not a market that celebrates local food exclusively, the dazzling array of items and the professionalism of the vendors areoverwhelming. The ultimate taste of a dish has its genesis in the relationships formed here. I stopped for a long time at a meatstall, watching as selections were made, the trimming process was a performance rendering the word "butcher" inappropriate. The interaction was intensely personal. At moments, I felt like I was watching a courtship -- a romance between purveyor and buyer with this small piece of meat, the object of their affection. Every slice was evaluated. The pace was seductive.(Everyoneelse patiently waitedhis or hermoment.)I could easily close my eyes and smell a gentle sauté or slow roast. I wanted to be invited home for dinner. The notion of picking up pre-packed meat in the refrigerated section of the supermarket seemed callous if not outright hostile. Where would the passion be - that secret ingredient that separates merely eating from real dining? And the meat counters were filled with a staggering array of all animal body parts. Even a seasoned food professional like me could not help but stare with dismay at some of the more unusual items on display. Perhaps a sign of our Americandisconnect from our food sources. Who is in love with their butcher? I came upon a stall - 'verduras' - where the proprietress was in the final stages of arranging her produce. If the carne was romance, this was an affair. How tenderly each item was laid out, almost as if she was bidding each of her lovers farewell "Look your best." My camera was welcomed, how proud she was to be photographed. The vegetable farmer in me bonded instantly with this woman. I loved her, and her vegetables. I know the feeling of loving each and every tomato, carrot or onion. And though I am an omnivore, as I turned around and stared into the eyes of a bodiless animal head, I thought - ' Nothing died so these vegetables could be here'. Though I really missed seeing the connections between field and fork in the Barcelona market (I wonder about food miles), I did enjoy the magnificent globe-spanning bounty there for the asking. I devoured a ripe, juicy, giant, delicious peach (4 euros!) but have no clue as to where it came from. Theconnections between our food and us are to be celebrated. It is a wonderful ritual - to really knowwhat we put into our bodies. How were they grown, and by whom? How were they handled?Where did they come from? Though we are so terribly busy, to the point that some days a simple nutrient pill might seem alluring, the process of knowing and loving what we eat can be equally thrilling. Savoring moments of flavor and tastes, connecting to farmers and fishmongers adds a dimension to our lives and reminds us of our humanity and our temporal existence. In that moment, we celebrate the earth and pay homage to our environment as well. Rest assured, I am no saint. By midweek, I will be bemoaning the fact that my children need to be fed 3 times a day. Dinner? Again? My romance with food and the joy of dining will be eclipsed by the demands of work and practicality. But my heart will forever be in the markets, the fields and the love affair between us.
 
Eric Boehlert: The White House press corps is the problem Top
Writing in the WashPost , Ana Marie Cox suggests the White House press beat oughta be ditched, or at least drastically reconfigured by news orgs, because WH reporters rarely break news. Instead, they sit around and wait to repeat doled out WH info. Facing a paucity of real news, reporters turn to trivia, claims Cox: Here are some stories that reporters working the White House beat have produced in the past few months: Pocket squares are back! The president is popular in Europe. Vegetable garden! Joe Biden occasionally says things he probably regrets. Puppy! But then Cox, anxious to not offend her fellow Villagers, goes astray [continuing directly]: It's not that the reporters covering the president are bad at their jobs. Most are experienced journalists at the top of their game. That circle doesn't square. If WH reporters are wasting their time writing too much about nonsense like pocket squares and puppies and wardrobes and on and on, than they are, by definition, bad at their job . So why won't Cox say so? Cox also ignores the fact that this never-ending trivial pursuit by the press under Obama is an entirely new, and completely voluntary, phenomena. i.e. WH reporters have routinely been locked out of juicy stories for decades, yet managed to not embarrass themselves the way they do today. WH journalists are most definitely not at the "top of their game." And that's the real problem with beat. Crossposted at Media Matters' blog County Fair . More on Wash Post
 
Bill Scher: How To Get 60 Votes For a Carbon Cap Top
In an oped published Sunday by the Omaha World-Herald (and reprinted today by Grist ) , I argued for a climate compromise with the coal- and oil-state Senators needed for a 60-vote supermajority: a strong carbon cap that makes polluters pay to pollute, but steering that revenue back into the same states to cushion the transition away from fossil fuels. On Friday, Rep. Henry Waxman indicated to Bloomberg that a compromise along those lines is possible. Bloomberg reports: "Waxman said Representatives John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who once chaired the committee, and Rick Boucher, a Democrat from Virginia's coal country, will support his 20 percent reduction [in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020] even though they have previously called for a reduction of just 6 percent. Dingell and Boucher may be willing to accept the higher reductions in part because of Waxman's proposal for allocating the permit revenue." If this idea gains traction, expect coal and oil CEOs to squeal with more misinformation about how capping carbon would affect families and businesses. When we respond, it's incumbent on us not to view polluter CEOs as proxies from the voters in coal and oil states. Because in order to gain the support of wavering Senators, we need to build support among their constituents. And the interests of their constituents (stable and manageable energy bills, safe environment) is not the same as the CEOs (personal profits, no competition from new clean energy companies). For more background, my oped is below. *** Obama's Carbon-Cap Plan Tests Democratic Coalition By Bill Scher Democratic gains in the Plains, the interior West, the Rust Belt and the Old Confederacy have transformed the political landscape. But one primary goal of the Obama administration is straining the geographic diversity of the new Democratic coalition: capping carbon pollution to avert a climate crisis. While a rapid transition to a clean energy-powered economy is a main plank of the Democratic platform, 17 Democratic U.S. senators hail from the top coal-producing states , with another four representing the biggest oil-producing states. Several more (including Nebraska's Ben Nelson) serve constituents whose electricity is primarily generated by coal , which would intentionally become more expensive in any effective climate protection strategy. Many of these senators have signaled their reluctance to pass a strong carbon cap. Yet Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top House Democrats have pledged to pass climate protection as part of a broad clean-energy bill this year. As energy is a hot-button issue felt by every voter every day, an intraparty regional clash would jeopardize the new Democratic coalition. Can Democrats creatively bridge geographic differences to craft effective legislation? Or will they take a path of least resistance: a paper-thin compromise that fails to address the crisis? The big sticking point is how much polluters pay. President Barack Obama's initial proposal would cap carbon, create new pollution permits and sell them. Since there would be a limited number of permits, we would be able to control the amount of carbon gumming up the atmosphere. Since private companies would no longer get to pollute the public's sky for free, the cost of carbon-heavy goods would rise. The revenue from polluters would fund both clean-energy production and consumer rebates, making low-carbon goods more affordable. Businesses that burn a lot of carbon -- like coal and oil companies -- are not enamored with paying to pollute. They want the permits given away for free. This makes some political sense; it buys off the opposition. But we saw what happened with freebies when Europe struggled with its attempt at capping carbon. As the Wall Street Journal recently explained: "That let utilities pocket billions of euros in windfall profits, because they got the permits for free, yet were able to pass on higher electricity costs to consumers." The crudest way to compromise is to split the difference, give away most permits for free to start with, and then gradually sell more as the program ramps up. But there is great concern in the scientific community that we don't have time for a slow start. There is a better way to compromise. It still would not appeal to coal and oil CEOs, but -- more importantly for senators thinking about re-election -- potentially would appeal to voters in fossil-fuel states. Sen. Evan Bayh, from coal-heavy Indiana, last month on MSNBC criticized President Obama's intention to take carbon-cap revenue from polluters and steer it to taxpayers across the country: "You're taking money from carbon-intensive states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and redistributing it to California, New York." But in that concern lies the key to compromise. Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute think tank, has a simple solution: "Return 80 percent to 85 percent of the revenue back to the states where it came from. Because they have the most to lose, and they need the most help." Jenkins further recommends focusing on clean-energy investments rather than taxpayer rebates to get the best bang for the buck: creating clean-energy jobs, lowering the cost of clean energy, easing our ability to purchase less energy and making our bottom-line energy bills manageable and stable. Coal and oil CEOs would still complain, but that's inevitable. After all, the whole idea is to lessen our dependence on their products. But if voters in carbon-intensive states know that there will be money on the table to create green jobs and keep their energy bills in check, the corporate scare tactics will ring hollow and skittish senators should be reassured. The key to keeping the Democratic coalition geographically solid so it can effectively govern is thoughtful policymaking. If communicated directly to voters, that could lock in grass-roots support. Splitting the difference in back rooms with special interests will not only lead to bad policies that sell voters short but also will greatly shorten the era of Democratic dominance. *** Cross-posted at OurFuture.org More on Climate Change
 
Bethenny Frankel: Age of Insecurity Top
Its the truest cliche ever. Men age gracefully, and women end up just looking like hags. Men upgrade the wives that are their age for the newer, younger model (not necessarily fashion model but the younger version so to speak). Then there are the inspirational exceptions. These are the men who embrace the age of a beautiful woman. And there are the women who don't fall prey to the youth obsession. To me, a woman like Susan Sarandon is the truest form of beauty. She is wise, beautiful, she looks her age (whatever that may be) but the best version of herself and her age. No visible pulling or tucking or disproportionate features. This comes to mind because I'm now 38. I'm on television, I'm photographed often, and when I look at the pictures, I see my lines. I see that even when in makeup, the dark circles and lines show through and are often accentuated by trying to cover them up. I've worked hard for and earned those lines. Those lines are paying my rent and not some man. I'm on the Bravo network, a place where wealth and youth and beauty are commodities. I'm in the land of the weekly tabloids where skinny and pretty are more important than anything. I find it liberating to admit my age, to not define myself by my looks, to admit that I had to work to be "naturally thin" as I discuss in my book. I also find that more men are attracted to me now than in my 20's because I do not step out into life wearing my looks first. I'm no spring chicken, and any model or actress or reality star can take me down on looks in a minute. Trust me, the blogs remind me of that all the time. But put me in a room with a group of supermodels, and I'll take any of them down on truth and personality and being evolved and being a strong woman. I think that's what women should focus on. I know a girl (a beautiful girl) who was dating a mogul. They were going to a New Year's Eve party and she said to him "I'm going to be the hottest girl in the room.". His answer was, "How silly. Who would want to be the hottest girl in the room? Wouldn't you want to be the most interesting girl in the room?". I agree with him and think his wise comment is probably why he's a brilliant mogul. Embrace your age and strive to be interesting first. Its so much more difficult than being the prettiest. Age goes. Interesting grows. More on Reality TV
 
Pius Kamau: Bush's Right of Conscience Rule Top
The "right of conscience" rule designed to protect health-care workers that refuse to participate in procedures they deem "morally objectionable" was passed in the waning hours of the Bush administration. It was really aimed at protecting pharmacists who choose not to dispense medications that may cause abortion or help with birth control. I couldn't help, as a physician, think of the times I have been confronted by morally objectionable medical situations but have been obligated to overcome my qualms. All physicians and pharmacists encounter patients they would, if they had a choice, prefer not to treat for reasons that range from moral, ethical to personal. But we have all taken an oath: to treat everyone, no matter what we feel about their actions, no matter how despicable. We drown our objections and do our best for them. All professions have standards and certain requirements; we may find some of them disagreeable. Those of us with insurmountable objections should seek other employment. I have had my own disagreeable moments with patients whose behavior and beliefs I've found morally reprehensible. The most egregious was a young man with swastikas tattooed across his chest and upper limbs -- red flags to my mind. He epitomized all that is repugnant in the small, remaining fringe of bigoted America. He spat on me; I fulfilled my obligation -- I took care of him. Worthy of note is, for thirty years federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions; Catholic institutions don't perform them or other human fertility terminating procedures. Bush's rule specifically stated that healthcare workers may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion, covering surgeons, nurses and "employees whose task it is to clean the instruments." The main thrust of the regulation was to protect pharmacists who refuse dispensing the morning after birth control pill and therapies they think might cause an abortion, from disciplinary action or from lawsuits. The danger in the rule is that in rural communities with only one pharmacy, rape victims or women forced into unwanted sex may not get the morning after birth control pill. In fact pharmacists don't even have to provide any information to them. This is the worst injection of the politics of abortion into the deep, binding and sacrosanct professional relationship which has been in existence for centuries, but is fraught with difficulties. Any attempt to breach it should be viewed with repugnance and vigorously opposed by all in a democratic society. We all have different convictions -- religious or otherwise, and would like to abolish some things or resurrect others. But in a secular society, we can't cater to all: Muslim, Hindu, various strands of the Christian faith. We must separate our religious beliefs from our politics. In that spirit, no matter my belief, I view the doctor/patient relationship as a sacrosanct space; unique and separate from all others. When I step into that space I leave my beliefs, my faith and prejudices behind, becoming neutral, to serve my patients' needs; to help cure their maladies. Similarly pharmacists are bound by their oath and code of ethics. In medical care, the most important entity is the patient and their illness. The regulations proposed by the Bush administration place the care provider -- the pharmacist -- at the center of their relationship which is the opposite of the intent and letter of all medical practice. The Bush administration's rule placed the issue of a practitioner's faith in the middle of the very difficult issues that already confront healthcare providers. This is a slippery slope down which we're led by some non-medical bureaucrat who spent very little analytic time on it. This unfortunately happens often when certain faiths, religious convictions, moral imperatives are used as part of legislative agendas. My hope is that the new, more enlightened administration will rescind Bush's rule and herald a day when the doctor/patient relationship can be one of respect and true care without religion reaching its invasive hand into it. More on Careers
 
Jeremy Scahill: Impeach Bybee: The Growing Movement to Unseat Bush Torture Lawyer Turned Federal Judge Top
While the leadership of the Democratic Party remains silent on Obama's refusal to hold torturers accountable, activists are demanding a special prosecutor and calling on Congress to impeach Jay Bybee. In the Sunday New York Times , the paper's editors call for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, author of one of the now infamous torture memos released last week. Bybee is now a federal judge. In its editorial, "The Torturers' Manifesto," the Times argued : [The] investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with. These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it. Of course, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Cheney, Bush and a slew of others belong on trial with Bybee, not just as witnesses in his case and the Times should be calling for that as well. But let's remember, this is the paper that the Bush administration used as a conveyor belt for its deadly lies so expectations of it should be low. In a recent piece for Slate , "Impeach Jay Bybee: Why should a suspected war criminal serve as a federal judge?," Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman lays out some of Bybee's history: "Jay Bybee is currently sitting on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. As assistant attorney general in President George W. Bush's Justice Department, he was responsible for the notorious torture memos that enabled the excesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other places. While John Yoo did most of the staff work for Bybee, Yoo was barely 35 years old -- and his memos showed it. They not only took extreme positions; they were legally incompetent, failing to consider many of the most obvious counterarguments. Bybee was 49. He was the grown-up, the seasoned jurist. He had been a law professor and had served as associate counsel to President Bush. When he was promoted to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, he became the final judge of legal matters within the executive branch. Yet his opinion on torture was so poorly reasoned that it was repudiated by his very conservative successor, Jack Goldsmith." David Swanson , the ever vigilant crusader for holding Bush era criminals accountable for their crimes, has started a website ImpeachBybee.org which contains resources on Bybee and how people can sign a petition calling for his impeachment. While Obama has made clear that he does not intend to prosecute CIA torturers and their bosses and lawyers, saying it is "time for reflection, not retribution," not everyone in his party is in agreement. As previously reported, Representative Jan Schakowsky , has been outspoken on this issue, as have Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Jerrold Nadler. But the leadership of the Democratic Party has, predictably, been silent. Indeed, Nadler was the first Democrat to call for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. On Friday, Nadler released a statement , saying: "These memos make it abundantly clear that the Bush administration engaged in torture. Because torture is illegal under American law - as the U.S. is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture - we are legally required to investigate and, when appropriate, to prosecute those responsible for these crimes. "I commend President Obama for his unequivocal rejection of torture and for his resolve to move forward. The President's intentions are honorable, but don't go far enough. All history teaches us that simply shining a light on criminal acts without holding the responsible people accountable will not prevent repetition of those acts. "I have previously urged Attorneys General Gonzalez and Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the torture abuses of the Bush administration, and now I will convey that same necessity to President Obama and Attorney General Holder. We sorely need an independent investigation that will provide accountability for these terrible crimes. Meanwhile, Bob Fertik at Democrats.com is circulating a petition to Congress with five primary demands: 1. Demand the appointment of a Special Prosecutor by Attorney General Eric Holder for torture, warrantless wiretapping, and other heinous crimes of the Bush Administration. 2. Prohibit the use of any taxpayer dollars to defend government officials who committed such crimes against lawsuits, or to pay for judgments against them. 3. Impeach Judge Jay Bybee, the torture memo author who serves on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California. 4. Protect human rights by restoring Habeas Corpus and the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure), including repeal of the Orwellian-named Protect America Act, U.S.A. Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments, and Military Commissions Act. 5. End secret government by prohibiting use of "State Secrets," "Sovereign Immunity" and "Signing Statements." The Obama administration has a moral and legal responsibility to prosecute Bush era criminals. The UN has indicated that Obama's refusal to prosecute torturers may be a violation of International law. As for US law, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights said, "Whether or not to prosecute law breakers is not a political decision. Laws were broken and crimes were committed. If we are truly a nation of laws ... a prosecutor needs to be appointed and the decisions regarding the guilt of those involved in the torture program should be decided in a court of law." Comments like "reflection not retribution" and "look forward, not backwards," are insulting to the rule of law and the cause of justice. Read more from Jeremy Scahill at RebelReports.com More on Barack Obama
 
Leading economic indicators dip more than expected Top
NEW YORK — A private sector group's index of leading economic indicators fell more than expected in March, but the forecast called for the recession's intensity to ease this summer. The Conference Board said Monday that its monthly forecast of economic activity fell 0.3 percent in March and has not risen in nine months. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a 0.2 percent decline. The index is designed to forecast economic activity in the next three to six months based on 10 components, such as stock prices, the money supply, jobless claims, new orders by manufacturers and building permits. The index for February was better than previously reported, falling 0.2 percent instead of 0.4 percent. But it was revised lower in January to a 0.2 percent decline, instead of a 0.1 percent increase. "The recession may continue through summer, but the intensity will ease," Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board, said in a release. "There have been some intermittent signs of improvement in the economy in April, but the leading economic index and most of its components are still pointing down." Dragging the index lower were building permits, stock prices and vendors' deliveries to businesses. But there were three positive indicators in March, including growth in the real money supply from Federal Reserve programs to pump up the economy. Also pointing higher were the wide "interest rate spread," or difference between the interest rates for 10-year Treasurys and the benchmark federal funds rate, and the consumer expectations index. In the six months through March, the index fell 2.5 percent, nearly double the 1.4 percent drop in the six-month span through February. In spring, however, there has been some positive news. The Dow Jones industrials rose about 15 percent since their February bottom. Auto sales in March jumped 25 percent from the month before, construction of new homes seems to have stabilized, and earnings from big banks have been better than expected. Bank of America Corp. on Monday became the latest to report a profit that beat analysts' expectations _ even as it put up $6.4 billion to cover future credit losses. The National Association for Business Economics' latest quarterly survey, also out Monday, showed that while companies and trade associates are more pessimistic about U.S. economic growth, more companies are seeing increased demand for their products. There also was a slight uptick in businesses reporting increased capital spending, but more than half still said they were cutting back, according to the NABE report. Still, the labor market likely will stay weak and more claims for unemployment insurance helped drag down the Conference Board index. The Labor Department said last week that while new jobless claims were at the lowest level since late January, people continuing to collect unemployment insurance rose above 6 million for the first time. Many economists expect the unemployment rate _ now at a 25-year high of 8.5 percent _ to hit 10 percent by the end of the year. On Monday, a General Motors Corp. executive said 1,600 white-collar workers will lose their jobs in the next few days as the struggling automaker chops away at the 47,000 worldwide layoffs set to happen this year.
 
Madagascar Ex-President: I'll Be Back Top
Ousted Madagascar President Marc Ravalomanana has said he intends to return to the Indian Ocean island in the next few weeks. More on Africa
 
Everything's Better With A Bag Of Weed: "Family Guy" Celebrates 4/20 (VIDEO) Top
HuffPost's own Ryan Grim did an excellent piece today on the origins of 4/20 and why it has become the highly celebrated "National Weed Day." Something tells us the folks at "Family Guy" didn't need to read it to get jazzed about the holiday. Last night they did an episode entitled "420," in which Brian, the dog, lead a campaign in Quahog to legalize marijuana after being arrested for possession. He gave an impassioned speech about the topic in the local park then realized a big musical number was a better way to recruit stoners. Set to the tune of "Me Ol' Bamboo" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, "Everything Is Better With A Bag Of Weed," is fun for the whole family! WATCH: More on family guy
 
Michael B. Laskoff: Obama Gets Real and So Should You Top
I was consumed in the blast furnace that is the University of Chicago undergraduate experience, where I studied political science. It often wasn't pleasant, and the truth is that the place affected me far more than I cared to admit at the time. My two decades of grey matter were no match for a faculty that got credit for nothing but wielding the intellectual sword. (I'm sure there's plenty of departmental politics as well, but that wasn't my problem.) President Obama, too a much more rarified extent, must have experienced something similar during his nine years of teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Yes, he's smarter than I am, and his brain was far more developed than mine, when the maroon whip fell. Nevertheless, this is a school with a point of view that communicates remarkably across the faculty as a whole. That's not to say that there isn't plenty of intellectual diversity, but there is one principle that always struck me that always seems to hold sway - a fondness for reality over ideology. Cynics beware, that doesn't mean a world without value; it implies a preference for policies that have a chance in hell of becoming a practical reality. Moreover, it recognizes, in the words of the Rolling Stones, "You can't always get what you want but if you try sometime you just might find that you get what you need." With this lens, the first few months of the Obama administration start to snap into focus. On the foreign policy front, he's easing the nonsense with Cuba, burying some of the hatchet with Venezuela and trying to help the Mexicans to forestall the development of a narco-state on the border. He's clearly sent signals to the Russians, who seem to understand, and to the Iranians, who maybe don't. (I fear that the conviction of a US journalist is a reaction by their hardliners to preserve a conflict that helps keep them in power.) As a result of all this, the US is more able to concentrate on the truly scary parts of the earth, like North Korea and Pakistan. Both have nuclear weapons and delivery systems: a madman controls one while no one seemingly controls the other. Perhaps that's why 25,000 more troops are on their way to Afghanistan: their ultimate destination may be Pakistan, in the case of a government collapse. Domestically, it's also clear that affection for reality prevails. As a result, there has been huge activity on the financial crisis, much of which isn't working but some of which is. And anyone who has listened to the President discuss the budget knows that he has laid out a ridiculously ambitious agenda full in the knowledge that he's going to have to trade much of it away to get Congress to pass it and fund it. He's going to be a hard ass when it comes to energy and health care, education and the environment. He's willing to play ball in almost all other areas. In other words, he's a realist. More on Barack Obama
 
Richard Laermer: "Punk Marketing" In a Recession Top
You don't need to be told that we are in the depths of a steep recession. Jobless claims are up, GNP is down, and most importantly for marketers, ad spends are projected to fall a whopping four percent this year. Trust in corporate America is non-existent. Things are bleak. It is easy to curl into to the fetal position and wait out the warmer economic days, but if you do that, you are missing out! You see, friends, Recession actually *creates* opportunity. When there is less money, marketers have license to be more creative. The people who are scared will retreat into the traditional, boring methods of marketing - another billboard? now? - while those who think outside the bun a little bit will have the chance to be creative and thrive. Sounds easy, but at this point you're probably wondering how you can be part of the "in crowd" who makes a buck during the downturn. Let the gentlemen from Punk Marketing give you some tips. Key is to keep a few straightforward concepts in mind and the rest will take care of itself...with finesse and vigor! First, you have to realize that consumers - not the media or marketers - control the market. What do consumers want? They want you to be there for them. They want to know they are buying a good product. Consumers want you to hold their hands and show them what to buy. They want to feel like they are part of American-led innovations. Example: A recent Brooks Brothers ad entitled Generations of Style may as well have been clipped from a 1949 life magazine. the message: "We are an American institution, it's OK to buy from us!" Once you've determined the right angle with which to position your product, remember that marketing in 2009 is like war, but less bloody. We are fighting people who never want to leave their homes, and when we capture them, we shower them with love. After you get consumers to consume, you must reward them for taking the plunge. Reassurance is one of the big changes that needs to be made to adjust. OK - you know how to position your product, you know how to treat your customers after you get them to buy, but how about the actual marketing? Simply put: Tone is more important than ever. Your message is meaningless today if you say it with the wrong tone. Your messages should be WARM in the cold recession. Fill people with warmth. People need to feel good about what they are buying, not just adequate. Take for example, the latest Crown Royal TV spot - the typical alpha male pool shark wins every game at the pub, but leaves early every night to shoot a game or two with his dad, while enjoying Crown Royal. Isn't that precious? Kind of makes me want to spend $35 on a fifth of bourbon, just to feel better. Beyond the message and its position and tone, there is a very practical aspect of selling that many marketers completely miss: focus groups do not represent your customers. Your customers represent your customers. Listen to them! Do not make your customers feel stupid by telling them what research presumes they are thinking! Original Punk Marketer Henry Ford once famously said that if he listened to what his customers thought they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse." Your message should be crafted in a way that provides people with the idea that they are getting something of value when they purchase your product instead of just a low price. Cheap is what chickens do! People want to feel like they are getting a deal on something that costs a little more. Nissan's latest move is an excellent illustration of this. It started selling a $12,000 car -- the Nissan Versa -- for just under $10,000. All of the sudden, car buyers were getting a deal - a brand new car for below the psychological barrier of a five digit price. Excellent move, Nissan. The line between low-cost and value is often precarious, and complicated even further by the fact that in a recession, consumers do not want to spend large amounts of money. Big ticket items are no longer the big sellers. Huge capital outlays are for the birds. You need to pick and choose what kinds of products fit the bill: Instead of selling that 52" plasma, how about selling a Blu-ray disc with a pack of microwave popcorn? Just as consumer spending is principled these days, all recession marketing must be similarly principled. Stick to your customers like your job depends on it, because it does. Now is perhaps not the best time to be over-aggressively pursuing new customers. You need to hang on to your existing customers. They already love you with their wallets! Creativity plays a big part of the successful recession marketer's arsenal. There are a few sources of media left that consumers actually listen to. The Internet is one. This is, remember, 2009. There is no excuse for dismissing the online world as fringe. Start using some 2009 methods to get the message out. Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, Wikipedia, Ning sites, etc. are your friends - these are not cliches in any way. Using them is no longer optional - it is compulsory. Everybody uses a computer now. Don't you think you ought to start? everyone and their mother is carrying an iPhone or a Blackberry these days - isn't it about time you figured out how to get to them via their mobile device? Along with a solid, disciplined message, consumers want clear and concise choices. Don't confuse them with options and bells and whistles. Be one thing - one really great thing. Tylenol sells no less than 14 kinds of sinus medication. Don't make your buyers have to become experts on the ins and outs of your product. Hit them over the head with focused and deft marketing, and the rest will take care of itself. The well-informed, principled, disciplined, and savvy marketer must always keep in mind that marketing is not always the most important thing that your company has in mind. You absolutely must choose your battles. As a marketer, you aren't going to get every dollar you want. That's where that noggin of yours comes into play. Didn't get the $15,000 you wanted for billboards? No big deal. Think up something better to use in hopes that you get the $2,000 for AdWords on a great and unexpected content site. Money is finite - and companies aren't likely to give you all the dollars you need. Don't let that be an excuse for running yet another lame radio ad, ok? Look, friend. Things are bad, no doubt. Chances are they are going to get bad before they get better. This is where you earn your stripes as a marketing pro. Stick to what we know works well and ride out this downturn. This can be your time to shine -- if you choose to make it your time to shine. On Twitter: www.twitter.com/laermer ; paperback of the book Punk Marketing on sale 5/15. The site is on 24/7, right? www.PunkMarketing.com . More on Advertising
 
Roy Zimmerman: The Sing-Along Second Amendment Top
Today is the tenth anniversary of the tragedy at Columbine. As a tribute, here's an ode to the Second Amendment...
 
John W. Whitehead: Does the Afghanistan War Represent Graveyard Thinking? Top
"I fear that President Obama, finding himself embroiled in an unwinnable war, with too much invested in treasure, lives and reputation to just pick up and walk away, will share the fate of another liberal Democratic president whose dreams for a "Great society" had to be abandoned because of his decisions to become involved in quagmire."--Professor Camillo Bica Afghanistan has become America's war -- a very expensive war at that and one with no exit strategy or timetable. Let us examine the facts. At present, 38,000 American troops are stationed in Afghanistan. According to military sources, that number is expected to increase to 68,000 by the end of this year. Not included in the number, however, are the hundreds of U.S. civilian specialists and diplomats also being sent to Afghanistan. The current cost of the war in Afghanistan is $2 billion per month and will most likely increase by 60% this year. In fact, "following George W. Bush's example of keeping war funding off the books," writes author and journalist Dahr Jamail for Truthout.org, "President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion in additional 'emergency' funding for the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which, if approved, would bring the 2009 funding to around $150 billion and the overall costs of the two wars to nearly $1 trillion." Ironically, Obama, as a senator, was a harsh critic of the Bush administration tactic of avoiding placing the costs of both occupations in the overall military budget. Moreover, this latest request by President Obama is in addition to the $534 billion military budget his administration recently unveiled. That budget was for fiscal 2010 and was an increase over the last Bush administration military budget from 2009. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is spending $4 billion this year alone on "road-building" activities in Afghanistan, with that same amount or more pledged in 2010. And $2 billion of American taxpayer money has already been spent constructing facilities for the Afghan army and police forces, with another $1.2 billion budgeted for this year. Now, the Obama administration has voiced its intention to expand U.S. military efforts in Pakistan as well. President Obama is currently seeking as much as $3 billion over the next five years to train and equip Pakistan's military, in addition to $7.5 billion in civilian aid. Thus, as professor Camillo Bica recognizes, "Obama's 'new strategy' acknowledges and accepts without discussion and debate that we are as much at war in Pakistan as we are in Afghanistan (maybe more so)." In the words of British journalist Gerald Warner, it is becoming increasingly apparent that "Afghanistan is Obama's Iraq--and threatens to become his Vietnam." As Warner writes: America and its allies, like the Soviets before them, are being defeated in Afghanistan. The countryside is completely in the hands either of the Taliban or of warlords. Even the cities are now beleaguered: within the past 10 days suicide bombers have killed 27 people in Kabul and insurgents temporarily occupied the Ministry of Justice. The government of Hamid Karzai, whose younger brother Ahmed Wali is accused by Western security agencies of being a major drug baron, is corrupt and impotent. In 2005 opinion polls showed 83 per cent of Afghans favourably disposed towards America; today it is 47 per cent. Why are the allies in Afghanistan? To stamp out the drugs trade, we are told, and to prevent the country becoming a base for attacks on the West. But the Taliban extinguished the heroin industry: only since the allied occupation has the trade flourished again. And what kind of terrorist attack can be planned against New York or London in Helmand Province that cannot as effectively be plotted in Waziristan, just over the border, which the Taliban now rules? Or in mainstream Pakistan? ...The Taliban is winning. If it encounters superior US forces it will retire, then resume the offensive when suitable. It can play this game for years or decades, ratcheting up the American body count. The fact is that "today's Taliban are something of a Frankenstein monster created by the United States," writes journalist Skeeter Sanders. "The Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan with a reign of terror from 1998, when the Soviets pulled out, to 2003, when they were ousted by the Americans, began as the Mujaheddin resistance against the Soviets. The Mujaheddin received direct aid from the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran -- and even China, which at the time was locked in a bitter ideological feud with the Soviet Union for supremacy of the communist world and saw the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul as a threat to Beijing's sphere of influence." Thus, the question: Why is America becoming so deeply involved in the mess that is Afghanistan? Why -- at a time when the U.S. economy is failing, when America is beholden to countries like China to bail us out financially, when millions of Americans are losing their jobs and homes with little hope of recovery in the immediate future -- are we continuing to sink billions and billions of dollars into a country whose government is corrupt and whose people are resistant to American efforts? One possible answer may lie with those who advise the president and often make the decisions affecting foreign policy. As author Tom Engelhardt of the American Empire Project notes, President Obama's "foreign policy team is made up of figures deeply entrenched in Washington's national security state -- former Clintonistas (including the penultimate Clinton herself), military figures like National Security Adviser General James Jones, and that refugee from the H.W. Bush era, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. They are classic custodians of empire. They represent the ancien régime ." George W. Bush, a spokesman for the ancien régime , told Americans that we invaded Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban. Later, Bush rationalized an American military presence as necessary to liberate the oppressed Afghan people. Then it was to stamp out the opium trade. Yet eight years later, little progress has been made in any of these areas. And now American war efforts, underwritten by our taxpayer dollars, are about to expand into the corrupt regime of Pakistan. The rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are in Afghanistan, but the one that remains constant is that we are feeding the appetite of the military industrial complex (the illicit merger of the armaments industry and the Pentagon). After all, there is money to be made in war. And what allegedly began in 2001 as part of an effort by the Bush administration to root out al Qaeda, which had supposedly taken sanctuary in Afghanistan, has turned into a goldmine for the military industrial complex. Just consider: In the wake of September 11, George W. Bush's $2.13 trillion budget (which put the country $80 billion in the red) increased the Pentagon's annual account to $451 billion by 2007. This is more than the budgets of the next fifteen largest militaries combined. As of 2003, the U.S. was spending more than $400 billion per year on defense and another $100 billion a year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This in effect means that the Department of Defense is the largest industrial entity in the United States, and the president is its CEO. The U.S. is also the leading arms supplier to the developing world, accounting for more than 45% of the arms transferred globally in 2007, with the majority going to undemocratic governments or regimes that engage in human rights abuses. Of the 27 major armed conflicts that took place internationally in 2007, 20 involved some form of U.S. arms or military training. Moreover, in the summer of 2007, the Government Accountability Office issued a report indicating that the Pentagon could not track approximately 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq since 2004. These included 110,000 AK-47 rifles and 80,000 pistols, in addition to 135,000 body armor pieces. The concern is that many of these very same weapons are being used against U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Incredibly, despite reports of corruption, abuse and waste, the mega-corporations behind much of this ineptitude and corruption continue to be awarded military contracts worth billions of dollars. For mega-corporations such as Halliburton, KBR, DynCorp and Blackwater, which still operate in Afghanistan and are some of the nation's largest military contractors, war equals profit. And there are exorbitant amounts of money to be made in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition to the enormous financial burden laid upon the beleaguered American taxpayers to maintain a colossal military machine, not to mention the enormous strain on the country's economy, there are also moral, political and social costs, as well as human costs, to consider. Nearly 5,000 U.S. military service members have been lost in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, with more than 32,000 wounded. This does not include the "invisible wounds" of war, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury. And according to the British polling agency Opinion Research Business, in Iraq alone, there have been more than 1,000,000 civilian casualties (which, of course, include women and children) as of 2008. In other words, war profiteering equals death and maiming. As the old adage goes, those who forget the lessons of history are bound to repeat them. For example, an estimated 620,000 Soviet troops fought in the USSR's nine-year occupation of Afghanistan. Of these, nearly 54,000 were wounded and an incredible number of Soviet troops -- nearly 416,000 -- fell ill from local climate and sanitary conditions. More than 115,000 contracted hepatitis, over 31,000 developed typhoid fever and more than 140,000 contracted other diseases. And more than 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in action. Simply put, America has entered a new universe. Domestically, our country is in a mess, and we are now embarking on a journey to countries where insanity rules. As Tom Engelhardt writes: In the end, as with the Obama economic team, so the foreign policy team may be pushed in new directions sooner than anyone imagines and, willy-nilly, into some genuinely new thinking about a collapsing world. But not now. Not yet. Like our present financial bailouts, like that extra $30 billion that went into A.I.G. recently, the new Obama plan is superannuated on arrival. It represents graveyard thinking. For the sake of the nation, I hope this assessment is wrong. More on Afghanistan
 
Joseph A. Palermo: Jay S. Bybee: It's Not Torture If You Use A Caterpillar Top
On August 1, 2002, then Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, who now serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sent an 18-page memo he wrote to the Acting Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. It surfaced as one of the four "torture memos" from the Bush Justice Department the Obama Administration made public last week. Specifically addressing the interrogation of al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, Bybee argues that since the "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape" (SERE) training some American servicemen endure generally does not cause long-term physical or psychological damage it's safe to assume the same for foreign captives undergoing interrogation. It's clear that Bybee was writing up a fraudulent interpretation that he knew would never stand the light of day or be upheld in open court. On waterboarding Bybee writes: "[A]lthough the subject may experience the fear and panic associated with the feeling of drowning the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. . . . The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view, inflict 'severe pain or suffering.' Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to attempt to treat 'suffering' as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering. . . . Accordingly, we conclude that these acts neither separately nor as part of a course of conduct would inflict severe pain or suffering within the meaning of the statute." (p. 11) American interrogators waterboarded Zubaydah eighty-three times. Discussing what he refers to as "confinement in a box," Bybee is equally confident this practice, like "the waterboard," "sleep deprivation," and "walling" (the practice of pounding someone's head against a wall with a towel wrapped around his neck to prevent whiplash) does not constitute torture and is permissible under U.S. law: "As with the other techniques discussed so far, cramped confinement is not a threat of imminent death." Because Zubaydah "would spend at most two hours in this box" the practice is okay. "Like the stress positions and walling, placement in the boxes is physically uncomfortable but any such discomfort does not rise to the level of severe physical pain or suffering," Bybee concludes. (p. 14) Among Bybee's "greatest hits" contained in his torture memo the most interesting is where he discusses putting an insect in the "confinement box" along with Zubaydah. Evidently, Zubaydah indicated to his captors through some kind of psychological test that he feared the critters: "In addition to using the confinement boxes alone, you also would like to introduce an insect into one of the boxes with Zubaydah. As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. . . . [Y]ou must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain." (p. 14) Here the word "insect" moves from the singular to the plural "insects" without elaboration. Then there's a sentence blackened out ("redacted") from the memo before it continues: "An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpillar was placed in the box. . . . Thus, we conclude that the placement of the insect in the confinement box with Zubaydah would not constitute a predicate act," i.e. violate the anti-torture statute. (p. 14) "[T]hough the introduction of an insect may produce trepidation in Zubaydah it certainly does not cause physical pain." (p. 10) So if you lock a guy in a box for hours with a stinging insect -- that's unacceptable. But if you lock a guy in a box for hours with an insect or insects that only bite or are "harmless," like a caterpillar, but only tell him it's a stinging bug, that's a legitimate interrogation technique. See how easy chicanery is? Bybee should pick up a copy of George Orwell's 1984. And no matter what techniques an interrogator might choose if his intent is pure then he need not worry about breaking U.S. laws banning torture. "To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering. Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture."[!!] (p. 16) That's like saying if a guy holds a straight-edged razor to your throat but has no "intent" to harm you it's nothing more than benign persuasion and you shouldn't get too worried about it. The Obama Administration's decision to make public more of the "torture memos," the lawyerly products of George W. Bush's little shop of horrors inside the Justice Department, begins the long and complicated process of coming to terms with what the Bush Administration was doing in this country's name. More than any single element of the "War on Terror," authorizing torture through the twisted "legal" opinions that leapt from the fertile and kinky imaginations of Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven Bradbury of the Office of Legal Counsel calls into question the judgment and morality of those who ruled the world's "last best hope for mankind" for eight long years. Judge Bybee showed such horrible judgment in his pained re-working of the U.S. torture statutes that it should raise questions about whether he is qualified to issue new judgments from the federal bench. Impeachment and subsequent disbarment are certainly in order. I never thought I would be having arguments with people I know about the merits of torture but I have had many such debates, which goes to show you how low Bush sunk the general level of American political discourse. According to the CIA Abu Zubaydah is not a nice guy. He is a religious fanatic and a terrorist who is determined to kill Americans in any ingenious way he and his buddies in Al Qaeda can cook up. Yet even a "high value" terrorist suspect like Zubaydah never should have been tortured. Torture is a sign of pre-Enlightenment barbarism and has no place in the modern world. It's immoral and it doesn't even work in getting useful information. The Bush Administration's decision to legitimize torture undermined the efforts of torture victims and those who fight against the practice the world over. It denuded the meaning of any attempt by the United States to make moral judgments about other nations' "human rights" records. Authorizing torture led health care professionals who were involved, doctors and psychologists, to violate the ethical standards of their professions and the Hippocratic oath. It also perverted the legal profession by legitimizing crazy arguments from lawyers like Bybee. The "ticking time bomb" argument favoring torture that lawyers like Alan Dershowitz and John Yoo and others have shoved down our throats for years now, and was even dramatized serially in a popular FOX TV show 24, has collapsed under the weight of the new revelations about the case of Abu Zubaydah. Some of my friends and relatives who insist on defending torture for some reason -- probably from watching too much 24 -- insist that IF a "terrorist" has information that can SAVE LIVES torturing the poor bastard is not only a good idea, it's the right thing to do. I've heard every variation of the "ticking time bomb" argument but no one, not even Dershowitz or Yoo, could answer the simple question: How do you know that the "terrorist" knows what you suspect he knows? In the case of Zubaydah, he had been cooperating with FBI interviewers when they were using the standard rapport-building interrogation techniques and he told them everything he knew. But that wasn't good enough for the Bush people who forced him to endure months of torture. Zubaydah couldn't tell his torturers where the "ticking time bomb" was hidden because there was no "ticking time bomb" to tell them about. The Bush people's justification for torturing this guy was without merit even by their own twisted logic. At some point it just became vengeful and kinky. President Barack Obama promised last week at the summit with Latin American leaders in Trinidad to open up a new dialogue with Cuba toward ending the 47-year-old economic embargo. It's supremely ironic that the biggest human rights violator on the island of Cuba was not the crusty "communist" regime of Fidel and Raul Castro but the United States through its ownership of the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. The Tea Baggers might hate taxes and hate government but they sure loved George W. Bush's torture policies. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and Dennis Prager and Laura Ingraham and Michael Medved and Bill O'Reilly and Bill Bennett and Neal Boortz and Lars Larson and Mike Gallagher and the rest of them all enthusiastically supported torture and denounced those who didn't agree with them as endangering American lives. They supported torture despite the fact the U.S. military opposed it; they supported torture despite the fact that rogue regimes they claim to loathe practice it; they supported it despite the fact their personal Savior, the source of their political piety as well as Bybee's, was himself a victim of torture (I saw the Mel Gibson movie). They supported torture because the president they loved supported it. It's ironic that the same Tea Baggers who have such an intense distrust and hatred of government and paying taxes are willing to cede to the government the power to render and torture any person deemed a "threat" to "national security." And these talk-radio Tea Baggers continue to project an aggrieved nationalism that is religious in its observance of partisan dogma. They still insist that you can't be a true-blue patriotic American unless you accept the necessity of torturing suspected terrorists. After all, they say, "it's the law." More on Terrorism
 
New York Times Accepts Premise That Torture Memos Reveal Too Much, Despite Their Own News Reports Top
One of the key lines of so-called "reasoning" among those who have objected to the release of the torture memos is that now that we've let the cat out of the bag, we can never use those techniques again, because now, Al Qaeda knows about them. The idea, I suppose, is that somehow, the "terrorists" have missed all the previous discussions, hearings, articles, reports, campaign promises to end the practice, legislation, opinion pieces, popular entertainments that featured torture, and that now, the release of these memos will finally -- FINALLY -- demystify the fact. And now, the New York Times is playing along with this weird notion, pretending that the matter of torture being an open secret is an unsettled debate . One of those "depends on who you talk to" things: Democrats on Sunday played down the importance of the release of the documents, saying that most of the information was already public. That comes after a litany of critics express their disapproval of tipping off the terrorists. The only counter to these claims is presented as above, as a Democratic party claim . Another way of countering it, of course, is to say that these critics are factually wrong , and as Greg Sargent notes today, it's not like the New York Times has to go on a scavenger hunt for evidence . So now Democrats are "saying" that much of the info was already public. But again, it is an indisputable fact that most of the info about the torture techniques has already been made public in a leaked Red Cross report and in other places. As it happens, this info can be found in the paper's own archives. The Times published an article earlier this month detailing the revelations in the Red Cross report -- and even linked to the report itself ! But, you know, just in case the New York Times has entered some new era in which they cannot believe that they have actually been reporting news, all this while, we could also take the word of an actual interrogator. Here's Matthew Alexander, explaining to the Washington Post that terrorists are pretty much aware of our torture regime : I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq . The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse . The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans. So, let's stop pretending that this was some sort of well-kept secret. [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .]
 

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