Thursday, June 18, 2009

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Obama Manages To Skirt Lobbyists, Barely Top
WASHINGTON - When President Obama arrives at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a Democratic fund-raising reception on Thursday night, the new White House rules of political purity will be in order: No lobbyists allowed.
 
Teddy Wayne: J.D. California is a Goddam Thief Who Ripped Me Off, Too Top
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is how some Swedish phony named Fredrik Colting wrote an unauthorized sequel to J.D. Salinger's famous bildungsroman , The Catcher in the Rye , under the pen name J.D. California, and how his lawyers, who are touchy as hell, had about two lawsuits apiece and are poised to ban it from publication in the U.S., and all that Holden Caulfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, because something similarly litigious happens every couple of years with Salinger, anyway, and in the second place, J.D. California also plagiarized me . Where I want to start telling is the day I wrote a humor piece in April 2008 in McSweeney's called "The Catcher in the Retirement Home" to which California's novel is suspiciously similar. You probably heard of McSweeney's . You've probably seen their influence on 21st-century fiction, anyway. Their writers write in about a thousand literary magazines, always showing off some hotshot prose with an often twee sensibility that incorporates pastiche and balances sentimentality with irony and all. Anyway, in both my and California's modern updates, Holden is a still-alienated septuagenarian who escapes from his retirement home. (In my version, he's quickly nabbed by a guard and forced to watch the Daytime Emmys with all the other lousy elderly bastards.) But while Salinger's high-powered legal team is preventing California from plagiarizing him and the international press is covering the whole situation like it's the goddam I ran ian e lec tions and all, no one's protecting my intellectual property. Maybe it's because no one paid attention to it when it first appeared. People never notice anything online. Not that I'd do much about it if I met Colting in person. I probably would say, "Okay. How 'bout crediting me with my humor piece that you blatantly copied?" Then he probably would say, his voice very innocent and Swedish and all, "What humor piece?" Then what I probably would do, I'd bring along a printout of my humor piece and show him and say, "I suppose this parodic narrative structure and setting is your goddam idea?" Then he'd say, "I never saw that humor piece before in my life. Are you calling me a plagiarist?" Then , instead of saying, "You're goddam right I am, you dirty crooked Kaavya Viswanathan!" all I probably would say is, "Nobody's calling anybody a plagiarist. All I know is my plot skeleton and character revision is in your goddam novel." Now he's out in New Hampshire, J.D. Salinger, being a completely deaf recluse with age-related health problems , and he probably doesn't care about an 1,100-word parody on a Web site read by hipsters with retro glasses in San Francisco and Brooklyn. He's probably never even read anything by Dave Eggers and all, I mean. That's all I'm going to tell about. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Salinger and his lawyers, for instance. I think I even miss that bastard Colting. It's funny. Don't ever parody anybody famous. If you do, you start being plagiarized by every other hack.
 
Sally Duros: Iran: When the Patient is Dying Call Twitter Top
The TwitterIran movement has raised the stakes in the online vs. paper news debate. There's no question, it's no longer about commerce. It's about our freedoms globally. Newspapers and newsrooms are to democracy like wellness centers are to medical treatment. Newsrooms are the places that track the pulse of developments, monitor the ethical health of our elected officials and businesses, blow a whistle when things are in danger of going awry and air the programs to get us back to health. Social media and Twitter are to democracy like emergency rooms are to life and death. When Iran puts a drill bit through its "democracy" by pulling a fast one, activists at the grass roots level have the buzzer to call an alarm before the patient bleeds to death. "It's crazy," says Nassim Nazemi, a former colleague of mine from Chicago web company IGive.com. "If you check out the trend topic "Iran election" on Twitter, you'll see there are hundreds of posts every 20 seconds," Nazemi said. "If it weren't for social media, the protesters wouldn't be able to organize. They would not be able to publish their YouTube videos," she says. At the time I worked with Nazemi in 2000, we were just starting to understand the potential to organize in the real world using online tools. Craigslist was just a short list of threads held together by some special software and I was active in women's social network ChicWit (to become Liz Ryan's WorldWIT, now defunct). In fact, it was online through ChicWIT that I had found a great job at iGive and first got to know dozens of quality professionals here in Chicago building an economic vision for our city online and on the ground. In the year 2000, the web bubble was fully inflated and ready to burst. The number of iGive employees had swelled to 70 and then shortly after the NASDAQ collapse shrank to two. Nazemi was one of the two who remained after the layoffs, and I learned today that she was a mere 20 years old then. Like me, Nazemi, has always kept her foot in the online revolution, but her favorite subject is monitoring events in her family's country of origin - Iran. Now, as you've been hearing, Iran has upped the ante in the online news world to fostering democracy with a capital "D" everywhere, where before brute force set the timber for people's daily life. "How would the world have gotten news of this were it not for the citizens turned reporters?" Nazemi says. "It is really really amazing to me. It's the future of Democracy." Nazemi tells me that the people on Twitter are not all Iranians. They are people all over the world re-tweeting news out of Iran and protecting the protesters' names. It's scary what's happening in Iran, she says, and the Twitter community is out in full force. "We are seeing shocking footage that you will not see anywhere because no reporter is going to go in there," Nazemi says. "The riot police are not going to let you go anywhere near the real story. " The election results that showed hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning were very fishy to her and her friends from the very beginning, but the news outlets were silent, she said. "There was not nearly the kind of coverage you would expect in regards to a sham election, " Nazemi says. The election itself was conducted in such a suspicious manner and the results were announced so quickly that they could not have been a true account, Nazemi says. Yep, that's confirmed six days later in an AP timeline of events . Every informal poll showed reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the lead, Nazemi says. Eveen Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's supporters couldn't say the final tally was a true report. To show solidarity with the protesters Nasssim is working with Chicago's Iranian community to organize a rally Saturday in support of democracy and the Iranian people. It's June 20, from 4:00pm - 6:00pm at the Daley Center Plaza (near the Picasso sculpture) at 50 W. Washington St. Nazemim says that everybody coming out to the rally is of the mind that the election was rigged. "We are standing in support of them, saying 'We want our votes back. No more dicators.' "Protestors are demanding that their voices be heard," she says. "They are marching for their basic freedom," Nazemi was born here in the United States in 1978, but she has extended family in Iran. "We have our dream of a free and Democratic Iran," she says. "But it's not our place to say how that should proceed. Among expats, there is no agreement on the road but the destination is clear to everyone." "That destination," she says, "is a free and Democratic Iran." Iran is evolving from a monarchy to a theocracy to a democracy. "They are killing honest civilians and ignoring the will of the people," Nazemi says. "We all see some eerie similarities to the weeks proceeding the 1979 revolution." "We are here in the U.S. benefiting from freedom and democracy," says Nazemi, who will be attending law school at Northwestern University come fall 2009. "As an advocate for international human rights, and as an Iranian born in the U.S. who has democracy flowing through my veins.," Nazemi says. "I think the world has to know the story of what has happened to Iran over the past 30 years. More on Iran
 
Moon Launch: NASA Sends Unmanned Rocket (VIDEO) Top
(The Associated Press) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA launched its first moon shot in a decade Thursday, sending up a pair of unmanned science probes that will help determine where astronauts could land and set up camp in years to come. The liftoff occurred just one month and two days shy of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar footprints. The mission is a first step in NASA's effort to return humans to the moon by 2020. Watch the launch: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Scientists cheered as the Atlas V rocket carrying the two spacecraft blasted off in late afternoon, ducking through clouds and providing an exhilarating start to the $583 million mission. "It was amazing," said John Keller, a deputy project scientist. The two spacecraft should reach the moon in four to five days _ or by early next week. One will enter into an orbit around the moon for a mapping mission. The other will swing past the moon and go into an elongated orbit around Earth that will put it on course to crash into a crater at the moon's south pole in October. NASA expects the dramatic moon-impacting part of the mission to be "a smashing success." It's a quest to determine whether frozen water is buried in one of the permanently shadowed craters. Water would be a tremendous resource for pioneering astronauts. "We're going to be doing some lunar prospecting, if you will, excavation style," said project manager Dan Andrews. It's an unusual two-for-one moon shot. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will provide a high-precision, three-dimensional map of the lunar surface. It will circle the lunar poles and, via its seven science instruments, provide a new atlas of the moon as well as a guidebook for future explorers. When it comes time to launch astronauts to the moon, NASA wants to avoid putting them down on an uneven surface, near boulders or in a crater. "The Apollo program accepted risk and was able to have safe landings," said Richard Vondrak, project scientist for the orbiter. "But we want to return to the moon, make repeated landings in some areas, and be able to go there with a higher degree of safety." The second probe, called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, will be aiming for a spectacular smashup that should be visible from the United States. "How do you get something that's been in the dark for maybe a billion or 2 billion years out to study it?" said Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator. Answer: Impact the bottom of the shadowed crater with the satellite's spent upper-stage Centaur rocket, more than 5,000 pounds of dead weight careening in at 5,600 mph. LCROSS, pronounced L-Cross, will drop the Centaur into the targeted crater. The impact will send a plume of ejected material up into the sunlight, vaporizing any ice and exposing any traces of water. Previous spacecraft have detected hydrogen in these craters, which could be evidence of frozen water. The plume of ejected material _ more than 350 tons of soil and rock _ should rise as high as six miles. The trailing LCROSS will fly through the plume, take measurements, send the data to Earth, then crash into the surface four minutes after the Centaur, creating a second plume of debris. The impacts and plumes should be visible to observers in the United States, west of the Mississippi River, using 10- to 12-inch telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope will monitor the event, as well as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, still circling the moon. In a novel touch, NASA has a song to go with the impact mission, "Water on the Moon," written and performed by deputy project manager John Marmie, a song-writing engineer who once considered a music career in Nashville, Tenn. The rock 'n' roll tune begins with a short countdown and the sound of a launching rocket. The moon shot _ NASA's first since the 1998 launch of Lunar Prospector _ should have gotten under way Wednesday. But the space agency wanted to give shuttle Endeavour one last crack at taking off on a space station mission; a recurring hydrogen gas leak halted the countdown. ___ On the Net: NASA: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/ NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LRO/main/index.html
 
Finance Committee Retreats On Health-Care Reform Bill Top
The outline I was given today isn't the Finance Committee's final bill. It's not even necessarily the Chairman's Mark (the bill that will go to the rest of the committee for debate, changes, and modifications). But it's the clearest look at what Finance -- the key committee for health-care reform -- is currently considering.
 
Arianna Huffington: Mission Shrink: We've Gone From Saving Wall Street in Order to Save Main Street to Just Saving Wall Street Top
Remember how, back when taxpayers were being asked to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street, we were told it was essential to saving Main Street? Well, in just a few months, we've gone from saving the banks in order to save the economy to just saving the banks. It's the opposite of mission creep. In announcing his proposed "overhaul of the financial regulatory system," President Obama said , "Financial institutions have an obligation to themselves and to the public to manage risks carefully. And as president, I have a responsibility to ensure that our financial system works for the economy as a whole." But parsing through his 85-page plan , it's not clear how these reforms will ensure that our financial system works for the economy as a whole. "The Obama plan," writes Joe Nocera in the New York Times , "is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself." For Obama's plan to have any lasting value, says Nocera, "he is going to have to make some bankers mad." We are already hearing the usual whining from the financial industry about too much regulation and the dampening of incentives. And we are already seeing a concerted push from the banking lobby to kneecap the newly proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. But, all in all, there is little there to make bankers mad. I don't expect there will be too many on Wall Street unhappy with the massive loophole the new plan leaves by calling for so-called plain vanilla derivatives to be traded on an exchange but allowing customized derivatives -- which were at the heart of the financial meltdown -- to remain largely unregulated. This is very good news for the wheelers and dealers who helped turn Wall Street into a casino. The larger problem continues to be the administration's habit of conflating the health of the Wall Street economy with the health of the real economy -- when, in fact, the two economies have become decoupled. The Dow may be up 30 percent since March, but the numbers that matter most to everyday Americans continue to tell a very different tale. Unemployment, the single most important statistic when it comes to taking the temperature of the real economy, is at a 26-year high . Yes, the number of people filing continuing claims last week dropped for the first time since January, but the number of new people seeking unemployment benefits rose -- as did the number of people receiving benefits under the emergency federal program that extended benefits beyond the 26-week program offered by most states. All told, over 9 million people are getting some form of unemployment compensation. And most economists are expecting unemployment to continue to rise, hitting 10 percent -- some even say 11 percent -- by 2010. Another indication of the troubled state of the real economy is the record high credit card default rates reported in May. The numbers are staggering. Bank of America's default rate hit 12.5 percent -- up from 10.4 percent in April. Citigroup wrote off over 1-out-of-10 of its credit card loans last month. American Express did the same. If the numbers stay around these levels, credit card issuers stand to lose over $70 billion this year. And it's worth noting that a number of the biggest banks are reporting default rates higher than the "worst-case scenario" numbers from the Treasury's recent stress tests. Tim Geithner's team might need to come up with some new terms: "worst-case -- and this time we really mean it -- scenario"; "even worse than worst-case scenario"; "can't imagine a worse case -- and believe us we tried -- scenario". On the housing front, in May foreclosures dipped 6 percent from April -- but the 321,480 homes lost was still the third-highest total on record. May was the third consecutive month with over 300,000 foreclosed properties -- the first time that's happened since RealtyTrac began tracking foreclosure numbers. Nevada, California, and Florida were the hardest hit states. In Nevada, one out of every 64 homes received a foreclosure filing last month. Nationwide, one out of every 398 homes received a foreclosure note. That's a whole lot of people looking for some place to live. And lending -- the increase of which was supposedly the primary reason for the bank bailout -- is also down. "If the banks aren't lending money," Jeff Rosen, deputy chairman of Lazard told me, "the economy can't get going." But, according to the Treasury's latest report on lending by the top 21 recipients of government money, consumer and commercial lending fell 7 percent in April -- with nearly 75 percent of the banks reporting a decline in loan originations. Despite this gloomy picture of the real economy, the administration prefers to focus on the rising sense of consumer confidence -- even though this confidence hasn't translated to greater consumer spending. "Everyone feels mildly better about where the economy is going," is how Joe Biden put it earlier this week. Perhaps the vice president needs to get out more. There are 9 million out-of-work workers, thousands of former credit card holders, and 321,480 newly homeless homeowners (and their families) who might say otherwise. So the economic bubble continues to be deflated, but the rhetorical bubble is being pumped with plenty of hot air. Maybe we could use one of the many green shoots the administration is marveling at to pop it. If the Wall Street economy is ever going to be recoupled with the real economy, we'll have to start by recoupling rhetoric with reality. More on Barack Obama
 
Rep. Jim Cooper: Reconciliation Rules - Not Bipartisanship - Will Kill Health Care Reform Top
Right off the bat, I want to be clear: I support health care reform. I share all of the goals laid out by the president in his June 2 letter. I believe that every American should have high-quality, affordable health care. And I believe that reforming health care should be Congress's top priority. Let me repeat that: health care reform should be Congress's top priority. We are not here to slow it down. That's the Senate's job. So don't believe the phony talking points that are being circulated that we're trying to "slow down the process." The process is already creaking under its own weight and we haven't even seen full bill text yet. Don't take my word for it; just read your own publications. On the contrary, we are trying to ensure that reform actually happens. We are here because we see health care reform bogging down in the Senate, and we worry that the chance to achieve this great victory for the American people is slipping out of reach. Here's why what's happening in the Senate worries me so much. If reform gets bogged down, it will have to go through the Senate's reconciliation process. This is not good news for supporters of health care reform. In fact, it's awful news. Reconciliation is just what the trillion dollars of vested interests who want to kill health care reform are hoping for. That's because they know something that few people in Washington have figured out: the Senate's very restrictive reconciliation rules will prevent a true health care reform bill from passing. Has anyone here actually looked at the reconciliation process and the Byrd rule? Every committee would have to report a bill that reduced the deficit by $1 billion in five years. It would have to be deficit-neutral each year after that. It couldn't include "extraneous" material -- like all the vitally important changes to our health care delivery system. Or, if we couldn't find the savings, our grand health care reform achievement would have to sunset. In short, health care reform under reconciliation wouldn't be health care reform at all. It would be a deficit reduction bill relating to health care. Or a reform package with an expiration date. And hey, you know me, I think deficit reduction is great. But this is about passing a robust health care reform bill. One that provides every American with low-cost, high-quality health insurance. One that focuses on prevention. One that keeps people healthy. One that gives them choices. One that modernizes our delivery system. And one that lowers cost. After all, the out-of-control cost of health care is bankrupting the American people. Something major happened yesterday. Democrats and Republicans, working together, unveiled a bipartisan comprehensive health care reform plan. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker did what Congress is failing to do. They met all of President Obama's goals, and they fully financed their proposal. And the White House released a statement praising this bipartisan leadership. In the House of Representatives, meanwhile, we are explicitly told not to work with Republicans. Now, my personal belief is that Congress could begin marking up the bipartisan Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act right away. Smart commentators like Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic and Ezra Klein at the Washington Post have praised this bill. It's progressive, it's bipartisan and it's deficit-neutral. All I know is that health care reform is on life support because the Senate can't figure out how to pay for it. Jon Cohn and Ezra Klein are worried. I'm worried. And I'm speaking out today because I've been through a failed health care reform process before. We can't afford to repeat those mistakes this year. Let's follow President Obama's lead and work together to finally provide health care to every American. And let's do it right now.
 
CIA Targets Laid-Off Bankers In Recruitment Drive Top
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Laid off from Wall Street? The CIA wants you -- as long as you can pass a lie detector test and show that you are motivated by service to your country rather than your wallet.
 
Lee Stranahan: WATCH: My Personal David Vs. Goliath Fight For Affordable Health Care Top
I am admittedly crazy. It's just one of my preexisting conditions, probably. (Diabetes is the big one, though.) A couple of months ago, I left my safe, steady job to get out of California before it imploded, move to New Mexico and devote myself to teaching and filmmaking. I am free. Broke, uninsured...but free! I set my own agenda. I can make films about anything I want. Based on my own life experience and on stories like my friend Bob Cesca is telling, the biggest thing I do right now is to take on the huge moneyed interests that are going to fight tooth and nail against reforming health care in any meaningful way. So I'm starting a personal project making 30 second spots about health care. I have this crazy idea that my voice can help hold back millions of dollars in lies. Not just mine, of course; if we win this, it's going to take all of citizens acting like citizens and once and for all beating the insurance and drug company lobbies. Please spread the word. Actually CALL congress and the White House. Talk to your friends or make your own video. If you want to help fund me on this project please visit LeeStranahan.com . You can donate or hire me for a video project of your own or something. This is our fight. More on Health
 
Charlotte Safavi: Green is the Color of Growth Top
I am a child of nowhere--at least I thought so until this week. Though born in London and educated at Oxford, my heritage is Iranian. Both my parents are from Tehran, where I also spent part of my childhood. I immigrated to Los Angeles in 1985, later married an American and gave birth to an American son. When it comes to explaining my cultural identity, my head spins uncontrollably like that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist . No single country defines me, rather a combination of all three, depending on the situation. Living far from Iranian family and friends in suburban DC, Iran has been creeping lower on my totem pole. But this week feels different. The Iranian in me is piping up. All you halves and mutts, like my son, all you multicultural schizophrenics, like me, there will come a time when parts of you come to life when you least expect them. However long or for whatever reason you suppress them, those parts of you that are from somewhere else will be at the fore. For me, it started on Facebook. At first, the election in Iran meant little to me as an American bystander with no Iranian passport and no right to vote, except that I think a dangerous president who denies the Holocaust should be in a lunatic asylum, not running a large country. Suddenly the postings on my News Feed went from Blank says I'm at a spa getting a pedicure to Blank says Long Live Freedom with an accompanying YouTube of a Basij motorcycle going up in flames. My Facebook transformed overnight into a place of intelligent political discussion, world-class articles on current events unfolding in Iran, videos of live demonstrations, Twitter posts of utmost urgency, all swathed in the color green. It is not that I think Facebook is for political purposes, but in a country where the passage of critical information is officially shutdown, I am grateful for its dissemination on the Web. I felt an intense surge of patriotism for a country I barely know, a pride for the youthful population risking their lives to be heard, an incredulity at being a participant in history, a Webolution in the making, if not a Revolution. Then it occurred to me, in an ancient country where fallen regimes and dynasties are a dime a dozen, including the Safavid Dynasty, from whom I am descended, this spirit of rebellion must be in our genes. Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, I took part in a massive demonstration in London starting at Hyde Park Corner against the Ayatollah Khomeini. My older cousins and I -- they were gorgeous, with almond-eyes and flowing hair -- were front and center, leading the way. As a teenager, I thought we had more balls than a roomful of mullahs. I did not have a clue. Whatever the short-term political outcome, for me, this is no longer about who wins the election. It is about growth, about grass roots, about the green. Suppressed for 30 years, some of the people of Iran have decided they have had enough and are demanding change. They are no longer afraid to take to the streets. This in itself is monumental. I turned on the TV last night to get updates on Iran: I could not find a thing. Where was the real news? It was on my Facebook, where my youngest sister, married to an American Jew, has temporarily changed her profile picture to the Shahyaad Monument (now Azadi Monument), where I had to scroll through pages to catch up, where I can get the hot-off-the-street details on an election dispute that has taken on a life of its own. I care less about the actual candidates. Between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hossein Mousavi, Mousavi is clearly the lesser of two evils. What we really need is for the axis to shift. It is moving. "Are the Iranians still rioting?" asks my ten-year-old boy when he gets home from school the next day. "Protesting, darling," I reply. "Well, did they get rid of I'm a Dinner Jacket ?" "No, and they may not. But they're finally standing up for their rights and that's what really counts." I may not be wearing green, but my eyes are flashing it. Green is the Color of Growth. More on Ahmadinejad
 
Cynthia Boaz: The Green Revolution Belongs to the Iranians, Not the United States Top
Pardon me while I have a moment of conspiracy-theory deja vu . Back in the fall of 2007, during the height of Burma's Saffron Revolution, I was repeatedly called upon (as one of the few Western analysts of the civil resistance going on there) to answer the claim that the uprising in that country was not indigenous, but rather the work of some number of democracy-promoting entities from the West, including but not limited to: the NED, the Open Society Institute, the CIA, and a handful of experts and trainers in strategic nonviolent conflict. As several members of the pro-democracy movement in Burma are well known to me, and I feel a very strong sense of solidarity with their ongoing 20+ year struggle against one of the world's most brutal regimes, I was somewhat insulted on their behalf at the implication that it wasn't really the people of Burma who were responsible for the events unfolding in their country. In a piece for Truthout in November of that year, I wrote that: [These] claims signal that those who should be most encouraged by mass displays of civilian resistance to tyranny may have bought into the propaganda of the Burmese junta and its backers in China. [People] who should know better (many of the progressive web sites who have reported on these 'theories') are actually doing the movement in Burma a great disservice by strengthening the hand of the junta there, and potentially undermining the momentum of the resistance. [A key] misconception comes from a degree of ignorance about how nonviolent struggle works. To claim nonviolent protests of the scale we witnessed in late September in Burma can be manufactured abroad is to grossly overestimate the influence of US agents and agencies. How could US agencies organize broad-based protests and manage to get hundreds of thousands to maintain nonviolent discipline half a world away, while these same agencies have, for 50 years, been unable to remove the now 81-year-old, and reportedly invalid, Fidel Castro from his perch only 90 miles from the US border and with a population one-fifth the size of Burma's? These kinds of claims show contempt for what the people of Burma are doing, which is to assert control of their own destiny. They have had enough of repression, fear and poverty. This is their struggle, and they deserve, like all people who are struggling for justice, respect for having sovereignty over their own lives and credit for their courage and sacrifice in the face of oppression. Not surprisingly, these same questions are now being raised about the protests currently taking place in Iran. I personally received several email responses to my recent piece critiquing mainstream media coverage of Iran which accused me, amongst other things, of secretly working with everyone from the CIA to "Zionist Israel forces" [sic] who want to install their own preferred regime in Iran. Maybe the biggest shame is that most of those disseminating these theories are not paranoid fringe radicals, but well-meaning individuals harboring legitimate -- if misplaced -- concerns. The neoconservative years of Bush/Cheney's "democracy promotion" understandably have turned otherwise sane people skeptical. But to quote my friend Stephen Zunes, "the beauty of strategic nonviolent action is that it cannot succeed in threatening any government's rule unless the regime has lost its legitimacy with the people (i.e., Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, Milosevic in Serbia, etc.) and the opposition has widespread popular support." You don't need to believe me . There are thousands of Iranian-American pro-democracy activists who have made their presence known over the past week; ask any one of them. Many blog on this very website. The Iranian people have periodically risen up against oppressive rulers over the decades, and they don't need external forces to tell them what to do. There are numerous movements in Iran that have been organizing for years. Ahmadinejad's hubris and ignorance in attempting to steal this election has given those movements a window of opportunity to join together and collectively demand an end to the oppression. Do folks really think US agencies -- of whom the Iranian people have every reason to be suspicious given the last 8 years (and beyond) -- are capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people who are ten thousand miles away...and then getting them to continue showing up on the streets, even when they're being shot at? The notion is ridiculous, even ethnocentric in that it presumes that Iranians are so ignorant that they'd turn out in scores to risk their lives just because an American agency suggested it. No, the Green Revolution belongs solely to the Iranians. The reality is that regardless of political party or ideology, anyone who claims an affinity for democracy as people power owes it to the courageous Iranian people to recognize their resistance as such. To seriously question the Iranians' ownership of their struggle serves the interests of a brutal regime and risks undermining the morale of individuals participating in a true peoples' movement. More on Burma
 
Danielle Staub Sex Tape: "Real Housewives" Scandal As Ex Discusses Sex Life Secrets Top
ONE of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" might have a real sex tape problem on her hands. After being dated and dumped on-air by 46-year-old Danielle Staub -- the "prostitution whore," as cast member Theresa Giudice called her in Tuesday night's finale -- Steve Zalewski, 27, is coming out of the woodworks to say that he's got videos of the two of them engaging in various sex acts. More on The Real Housewives
 
Matthew Bauer: What's Really Happening on Madison Avenue Top
We've all read the news and heard the reports - shopping (especially high-end luxury shopping) - is out of fashion in New York. Well, I'm here to say that reports of the loss of Madison Avenue's luster (and profits) are greatly exaggerated. There's no question that a handful of stores in this renowned shopping district have closed or moved. But still, Madison Avenue's vacancy rate measured in square feet is just 6 percent - a very low number compared to the rest of New York City. Twenty-eight out of over 350 stores are vacant at this moment, and in a dynamic district such as ours, stretching over 29 city blocks, that's not uncommon as stores come and go. Some of the closures that have occurred reflect broader brand-related issues; the store on Madison Avenue could have been doing well, but the brand itself might have been struggling. Similarly, some of the stores that look vacant might have been renovating (these include stores such as Armani Collezioni, Cole Haan, Frette, Georg Jensen and Stuart Weitzman, which have all recently completed major renovations of their stores). Finally, some stores - such as DiModolo, Giorgio's of Palm Beach, Graff, Jil Sander, and Krizia - have moved within the district, choosing in each case to remain on Madison Avenue. In fact, none of the major brands have left and many of the world's leading fashion designers and jewelers continue to invest in new retail locations on Madison Avenue. Consider the following: Since September 2008, when the recession was well underway, Christian Dior, Chrome Hearts, Dalyah, J. Crew Collection, Jack Vartanian, Kwiat, Marni, Mauboussin, Nanette Lepore and Solange Azagury-Partridge each opened new boutiques on Madison Avenue. Retailers new to the avenue whose stores are currently under construction include Canturi, Devi Kroell, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, J.P Journe, and Girard-Perregaux. And construction has already begun on new flagships for Hermes, Ralph Lauren, David Yurman and Longchamp. Sounds pretty vibrant, right? So why all the negative headlines? For one thing, Madison Avenue is an easy target. One of the most visited and admired shopping strips in the world, Madison Avenue enjoys high visibility around the globe. As a consequence, people look to us as a barometer of the times, especially when it comes to the health of high-end retail. Secondly, doom-and-gloom headlines, unfortunately, seem to garner more attention than positive ones. It's easier to jump on the bandwagon rather than sift through the statistics and actually write the much more boring story, which is that Madison Avenue, while affected by the economy, continues to retain its appeal and cachet as a destination of choice both for luxury brands and the customers devoted to them. The truth is that, recession or not, there is still lots of money being spent by regional customers, local residents, and international tourists, all of whom continue to visit - and patronize -- Madison Avenue stores. Is the shopping environment more subdued? Of course it is. But does this signal the decline of Madison Avenue? Of course not. In the current recession, some people seem to have forgotten that everything is cyclical. This recession may be more severe than past ones, but it, too, will eventually come to an end. I predict that savvy brands will recognize that the current environment represents an incredible opportunity to gain a foothold on Madison Avenue. Rents are lower than they have been in a while, and the smartest retailers will recognize this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain Madison Avenue visibility. These are the brands that are opening new flagships, expanding their existing space, and looking to the future. They realize that you can't afford to look just a few months out, but that you have to have a long-term vision, both for your brand, and for the economy at large. Another thing that keeps me optimistic about the health of Madison Avenue is my belief that people will never stop admiring, craving and purchasing beautiful things. And as long as these people exist (and they do, in droves), then Madison Avenue will be here to enchant them.
 
All The Palin Letterman Drama In One Minute (VIDEO) Top
(SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO) Roughly two weeks ago, David Letterman made a joke (as he is known to do) about Sarah Palin's daughter, saying: "One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game: During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." He was obviously referring to Bristol, the daughter who has in fact been knocked up, but she was not at the game, 14-year-old Willow was. This spiraled out of control and quickly became an issue of rape with the National Organization for Women backing up a lady they told voters is "not an advocate for women," and conservatives blaming Obama for their made-up scandal. Dave responded to Palin's insistence that his jokes were "disgusting" and "sexually perverted" in an earnest 7-minute segment in which he made it clear he was referring to Bristol and was self deprecating, saying: "I'm telling you, I recognize that these are ugly. These are actually ugly. These are borderline...but again, in an act of desperation to get cheap laughs, which is what I've been doing for the last 30 years." This wasn't enough for Ms. Palin, who quickly took to the air to drag this ridiculousness out telling Matt Lauer that Letterman contributed to the "acceptance of abuse of young women" and calling on people to "start really rising up." The last tidbit, of course, struck a cord with nutjobs who organized a "Fire David Letterman" rally. That went on despite the fact that Letterman apologized (AGAIN) and Palin accepted. Anyway, it worked out well for Dave, whose ratings have gone through the roof as a result of the "scandal." Having said all of this, none of it is actually in the following video. No no, our "in a minutes" are about coverage not actual events, and the coverage of this ranged from awesome to absurd. I'll let you decide which is which. WATCH: Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on In A Minute
 
Robert Fuller: Bleeding Heart Liberals Proven Right: Too Much Inequality Harms a Society Top
An important new book substantiates something progressives have long intuited. Published first in Britain and now headed for the United States, it's by epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson and health researcher Kate Pickett, and its title conveys its message: The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Since the French Revolution, belief in the social benefits of egalitarianism has been central to progressive thought. Now Wilkinson and Pickett have produced some hard evidence for this plank in the liberal platform. They show conclusively that the well being of whole societies is closely correlated not with average income level but rather with the size of the disparity of income between the top 20% and the bottom 20%. Countries with smaller disparities like Norway, Sweden, and Japan (4 to 1) have fewer medical, mental, crime, and educational problems than countries like the Britain, U.S. and Portugal with higher disparities (7 or 8 to 1). France and Canada both have mid-range disparities (6 to 1) and place in the middle on health, education and psychological indicators. Even within American society, it's not the absolute income level of a state that determines its social well being, but rather the level of income disparity. Economic inequality and social dysfunction go hand in hand, and Wilkinson and Pickett have marshaled the evidence to make the case. It's one thing to demonstrate the social benefits of egalitarianism, and another to spell out the underlying political, economic, and psychological mechanisms that explain these findings. Only as we understand how the level of income disparity affects social well being will we be able to generate the political will to undo the damage wrought by gross inequality. Dignity and Its Enemy--Rankism An explanation of the social dysfunction associated with large income disparities can be organized around the notion of rankism. Rankism is defined as a generalization of the familiar isms and encompasses them all. Specifically, in the same way that racism insulted the dignity of blacks, and sexism was an affront to the dignity of women, so, too, rankism is behavior that diminishes human dignity--black or white, female or male, gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, poor or rich, etc. Rankism is the abuse of power attached to rank. A difference of rank alone does not cause indignity, but abuse of rank invariably does. Put simply, rankism is what somebodies may do to nobodies. But just as not all whites were racists, so too not everyone of high rank is a rankist. Therefore, rankism, not rank differences, is the source of indignity. Indignity causes indignation, and indignation takes its toll either on the health of the individual who must contain it or it manifests as withdrawal or anger/aggression. Rankism functions socially in the same way that racism does. No one doubts any longer that racism cemented in large, self-perpetuating income disparities between the white majority and black victims of slavery and segregation. In a parallel way, rankism marginalizes the working poor, keeping them in their place while their low salaries effectively make the goods and services they produce available to society at subsidized prices. This process, whereby the most indigent Americans have become the benefactors of those better off, is vividly described by Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed. In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David Shipler depicts the less fortunate as disappearing into a "black hole" from which there is virtually no exit. As class membranes become ever less permeable, resignation, cynicism, and hostility mount. In the economic realm, the market mechanism, at least when it's working, functions to limit abuses of power, but political arrangements can trump the market. Large enough disparities in economic power may be used to influence politics so that laws and regulations perpetuate the economic gap. Once established, economic inequality, if it is steep enough, also perpetuates exploitation because it imprisons the poor in their poverty. When missing a single paycheck means homelessness, people are not likely to demand better wages or working conditions. As Rev. Jim Wallis says, "Poverty is the new slavery." There is another important reason that eightfold factors in wealth disparity cause more social distress than factors of four. When the top 20 % are eight times better off than the bottom 20 %, far more people are vulnerable to rankism because people in the middle quintiles are also separated from the top and bottom quintiles by significant differences in economic status and power. Instead of being confined within a narrower spectrum (characterized by, say, a disparity factor of four or five), people are spread out over a broader economic range. When the first (poorest) quintile is further from the top (richest) quintile, so, too is the second quintile further from the fourth, and the third from the first and the fifth. These larger differences in economic power make possible more abuse. Economic gaps soon become dignity gaps. As rankism gains ground, more people experience its indignities and humiliations, and these individual wounds compound into illness and social dysfunction. Dignity is to the identity what food is to the body--indispensable. By confirming our identity and affirming our dignity, respect and recognition provide assurance that our place in the group is secure. Absent periodic and appropriate validation, our survival feels at risk. Without proper recognition, individuals may sink into self-doubt and subgroups are marginalized and set up for exploitation. Dignity and recognition are inseparable. We can't all be famous, but fortunately recognition is not limited to the red carpet. We can learn to understand the effects on those who are either denied a chance to seek it, or from whom it is otherwise withheld. Once aware of the deleterious effects of "malrecognition," we can act against it as we now take steps to prevent malnutrition. Like malnutrition, malrecognition lowers the body's resistance to disease and reduces life expectancy. For most people, just the opportunity to contribute something of themselves to the world is enough to stifle the indignation that accumulates from exposure to indignities caused by rankism. This means that malrecognition, like its somatic counterpart, is a preventable and treatable malady. To increase the supply of recognition we need only discern people's contributions, acknowledge them appropriately, and compensate them equitably. When the average compensation of the richest 20 % exceeds that of the poorest 20 % by factors greater than four or five, the poor experience this as unfair, unjust distribution of recognition. The deleterious consequences of malrecognition manifest in the familiar array of social problems tracked in The Spirit Level--mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy, an elevated homicide rate, a shorter life expectancy, and lower educational performance and literacy rates. More than either liberty or equality, people need dignity. In contrast to libertarian or egalitarian societies, a dignitarian society is one in which everyone, regardless of role or rank, is treated with equal dignity. The findings reported in The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better suggest that as societies become more dignitarian they will, in the words of the subtitle, "do better." A startling example of this proposition comes from, of all places, our prison population where indignity and malrecognition are endemic. Recent work done under the auspices of The Center for Therapeutic Justice in Virginia indicates that the recidivism rate for inmates who serve their sentences in a dignitarian community drops from 50 % to 5 %. Social Isolation and Depression In explaining their findings, Wilkinson and Pickett put the emphasis on the lack of trust fostered by large wealth disparities. Put the other way round, the connectedness experienced in dignitarian communities is the equivalent of social oxygen. Some thirty years ago a physician (Wolf) and a sociologist (Bruhn) teamed up to explain why, in the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, there was a group of poor Italian immigrants whose health and welfare were vastly better than their neighbors. After a twenty year study of immigrant families in Roseto, and a comparable study in a nearby, non-immigrant town, they found that health and welfare were dependent on what they called cohesion, the opposite of isolation and the antithesis of distrust. As the younger generation adopted American ways of geographic and status mobility, their health and welfare levels decreased to the level of the neighbors. In addition to directly affecting health and welfare, disconnection has an effect on the emotions. Just as being closely connected with others leads to authentic pride, so disconnection leads to shame and humiliation. The isolated person is apt to feel rejected, if not completely worthless, and live in a more or less permanent state of shame. One way of defending against the shame of malrecognition is to withdraw, sometimes all the way into the isolation of depression. Such withdrawal then leads to further isolation, which in turn compounds the rejection by the community and accelerates the downward spiral. Again, malrecogntion compounds into social dysfunction as confirmed in this eye-opening book. Conclusion In addition to caring for the weak, humans are still capable of predatory behavior towards those lacking the protection of social rank. Rankism is the residue of more overt predatory practices of the past. Now that rankism has a name, the miasma of malrecognition is visible and we are in a position to begin rooting it out. Rooting out rankism, like overcoming racism, is a multi-generational undertaking. Despite the enormity of the task, we are likely to look back on the 21st century as marking an epochal transformation from a predatory to a dignitarian era. Disallowing rankism betters human well being in the same way that disallowing racism and sexism improve the lives of blacks and women. The hard evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett have provided demonstrates the benefits of dignitarian societies and validates the egalitarian instinct that has long been a mainstay of the liberal creed.
 
HuffPost Readers: We Want Your Father's Day Stories! Top
He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. - Clarence Budington Kelland Father's Day is this Sunday - time to turn our attentions to Dad. Most of us will send him a tie or a card (or in the case of our Green Editor, Dave Burdick, a Nature Mill ), or perhaps pay him a visit and take him out to dinner. But to honor our fathers, we should dig deeper. What lessons did he teach? How did he shape us? My dad was a boy scout, which is why I know how to tell the difference between a red and a white oak. He was a history teacher, so he spent numerous weekends dragging my sisters and I to various historical sites, and lecturing us along the way. He love to refurbish antiques, so I've seen huge collections of repaired wooden boxes, scrimshaw and deguerrotypes from the Civil War. These are small things, but when I find myself enjoying being outside, seeing an old building, or browsing in an antique shop, I suspect my dad may have played a part in it. What about your fathers? Tell us your stories. Just fill out the form below and we'll feature some of the best stories on Father's Day. Loading...
 
Pamela Gentry: Only a Reprimand for GOP Staffer Racist E-Mail Top
June 18, 2009 - I'm not sure what is considered a hate crime anymore, but the two most recent incidents where an escaped gorilla was referred to as an "ancestor" of First Lady Michelle Obama: and President Obama was depicted alongside his 43 predecessors as a black box and white eyes showing, could only be from someone motivated by hate. What is so alarming about both of these racist and incentive assaults is that they were created by Republicans who have prominent and influential positions within the GOP statewide. When I first heard about Rusty DePass's comment I didn't find it funny at all, but I did wonder why someone who had once run for a statewide office, chaired a presidential candidate's campaign [Rudy Giuliani] and is the former chairman of the Richland County Republican Party in South Carolina would be so foolish. In case you missed it -- DePass responded to the news of escaped gorilla from the Columbia city zoo on his Facebook page, saying:" " I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors -- probably harmless." And as if that wasn't bad enough, DePass lacked any remorse or concern for what he said. He made a half-hearted apology and attributed his remark to what he recalls Mrs. Obama having said in the past. Who is he kidding? It appears this behavior is somewhat common in Republican circles where Obama bashing and the development of derogatory and malicious attacks are considered "humor." In Tennessee an e-mail created and distributed by Sherri Goforth, an executive assistant to Tennessee State Republican caucus chairwoman Diane Black is the latest attack garnering national attention. Goforth e-mailed a picture of all the U.S. presidents, except Obama, on a poster captioned "Historical Keepsake Photo." The photo where Obama would have been pictured was entirely black except for two white eyes. After complaints following the first reports on the blog newscoma.com, Goforth's boss decided to give her a verbal reprimand and place a note in her file. Black said she isn't going to fire Goforth, unless she does something like this again. No doubt she will do it again, I think Black means if she is "caught" doing it again. More on Barack Obama
 
WaPo Fires Dan Froomkin, Stalwart Voice On Torture (And The Rest Of Your Scritti Politti) Top
I have to say that I greet today's decision by the Washington Post to fire blogger and columnist Dan Froomkin to be both sad and alarming. Froomkin has been a leading light in examining the issue of state-sanctioned torture, and most importantly, has been the rare voice in the heights of traditional media to actually say that torture is torture. While the rest of the world soft-foots the matter with dumb euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation" and "intense questioning" -- deployed for no other purpose than to signal "Nothing to see here, folks! Not a big deal at all! Attention need not be paid" -- Froomkin refused to play that game. His loss is a big one. Better writers than I have already opined on the subject, so I'll only say that I endorse these statements, wholeheartedly: Andrew Sullivan : "Dan's work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should." Glenn Greenwald : "One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim." Surely Froomkin shall find some sort of perch for his perspective, and quickly. But I decry this decision. Poll Positioning : And now, a child's garden of panicky poll analysis . I guess all the stuff that people said they wanted to get done last November no longer matters to anyone! Priorities : How smart does this sound ? "Members of Congress on Wednesday approved taking money out of an environmental cleanup fund and putting it toward new fighter jets that the Pentagon has said it doesn't want." What Twitter can't do : As I said earlier, it's easy to both overplay and diminish the importance of Twitter where Iran is concerned, but I think that Matt Yglesias gets at what's really important : But when you have your mass protests, you still have the key question. Do the security services just kill a bunch of people (Tiananmen)? Does the regime blink and surrender (Velvet Revolution)? Does the regime attempt surrender, only to be undercut by a hardline coup (USSR, 1991)? Does the regime attempt to resist, only to be undone by a coup (Romania)? Information technology doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with this. It all has to do with internal regime politics, and the attitudes of the people leading and serving in the security forces. [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 .] More on Twitter
 
Stephen C. Rose: Traffic Free Times Square Is A Half-Baked Concept Top
By Stephen C. Rose Last February Manhattan was apprised of an incipient revolution. Cars and trucks would no longer be welcome in Times Square and on a small stretch of Broadway near 34th Street (in front of Macy's). These rights of ways would be given back to the pedestrians which in summer means the tourists and a few stalwart Manhattanites. I write from the POV of the latter group. Our little apartment looks out on Broadway just above Herald Square on 34th Street. You need to know that in Manhattan most outdoor seating is not public, It is private, the responsibility (or option) of the buildings in the area. Seating generally expands and recedes in relation to the fear that it will be overrun by the indigent. (I assume there are indigent in Europe where parsimonious public seating would be deemed a crime.) My candidate for the most delightful outdoor seating in my Manhattan neighborhood is three blocks away -- the Au Bon Pain outdoor tables in the stone terrace entrance area to the Girl Scout's Building on 37th Street just West of 5th Avenue. I can go to this spot late on a Sunday afternoon and feel intense wellbeing -- exactly what a nice public space should evoke. A block away -- 32nd and Broadway -- there is a bank building that used to have a somewhat similar aspect, chairs and round tables. Recently the tables and chairs were removed. . Meanwhile Greeley and Herald Square -- both narrow triangular parks fitted to the angle of Broadway where it crosses Sixth Avenue -- remain genuinely diverse seating areas, pleasant and giving the lie to the notion that if you make public space nice it will turn into a slime pit. There are a few other outdoor sitting areas around, but you get the flavor. No wonder at first the Bloomberg announcement seemed at the time like a great leap forward. To review: According to the NYC DOT, Broadway will be closed to through traffic on May 24 from 42nd to 47th Streets and from 33rd to 35th Streets to make that pedestrian mall announced back in February. In addition to greater safety and access for pedestrians and cyclists, the project hopes to improve car traffic flow through the areas. - Traffic lights with up to 66% more green time - Significant travel time improvements on Sixth and Seventh Avenues - Faster bus speeds for 70,000 daily riders SOURCE Anyone who, like me, had visions of a quick transition from gridlock to St. Marks Square in Venice, with tasteful tables and chairs, the capacity to have a drink of something and watching a promenade of unimpeded pedestrians, does not understand how America works. We rarely do things right. We muck it up somehow. What is right about the Bloomberg experiment is that is is a blow against the dominance of the car. A PAGE OF COMMENTS ON THE CLOSINGS What is wrong is that the present solution is neither safer nor more pedestrian friendly. The execution of the project was both sloppy and ill-conceived if it was meant to serve people who live here or are trying to walk on Broadway. Take a trip with me up Broadway on foot if you dare. Start downstairs from where I am writing on 34th Street, where the street in front of Macy's has been closed off. Most of it has been blocked by metal chairs and tables, intersected by a bike lane. If cars in Manhattan often push the rules, the bike riders ignore them entirely. They wear armor while their victims on foot go unprotected. It is not uncommon to be grazed by a high speed biker getting between you and some barrier at speed. Then there is the large number of pedicab drivers, maniacs all. They block the entrance to the area on 34th street and squeeze inside to take pedestrian space with impunity. There is some kind of construction at the 35th Street end, forcing pedestrians over to the sidewalk at the western end, where cars from Broadway are aggressively turning right, their only option. This happens through the the entire walk light. The blocks from 35th Street to 42nd Street feature a strip of pedestrian tables with heavy traffic or parking on one side and a fast-track bicycle lane on the other. The brown gravelly substance on the ground has disgusting stains from the water leaked from huge and ugly cement planters. The planters cannot be rationalized as anything but barriers -- they have no redemptive floral aspect. It is hard for a resident not to be a bit miffed at the appropriation of this newly opened experiment -- it will be zapped if it does not work -- by tourists. Yes, tourists pretty much monopolize the newly open area -- anywhere will do, I guess, if you're tired enough. But then we get to 42nd Street. For the next three blocks, cars are banned. Since there are no more cars, the city has removed the lanes on the street were once designated for pedestrians. Then the city dumped thousands of plastic deck chairs on each of these block-long areas. The tourists have them lined up arm-to-arm across every inch of the street. They sprawl in those chairs with legs spread wide. If you are trying to walk through, beware. If you manage to squeeze through without being tripped, you have won an uneven contest. Looking at the chairs' sagging bottoms, it's possible they won't last long. The contrast between this mess and the Au Bon Pain scene sketched at the start reflects the disappointment I feel at an opportunity lost. Apparently the shaky deck chairs will be replaced in August. But by what? Today it is harder to pass through Times Square on foot than when cars were whizzing back and forth. And don't hope you can walk on 7th Avenue. They city took away the walking lanes there too. The sidewalks are more impassable than ever. Finally, you reach 45th street and someone has had the good sense to keep the chairs mostly on one side of the street so it is actually a bit easier to get through. But don't be deceived. When you reach 47th, the cars from Broadway have to turn right again, and as the pedestrians try to cross 47th Street you will see a police officer screeching at the cars, "Turn now, now, now, while you have the chance," at the top of her voice. Police have little patience with a pedestrian who would obey the lights when they are disobeying them to squeeze vehicles through, All told today's traffic-free Times Square is half-baked at best. But I have left out one salient fact. The object of the change was never really to improve my experience. It was mainly to improve traffic flow. For the Bloomberg folk, the car is still king no matter what is claimed. For the moment I will content myself with walking to Au Bon Pain. More on Cars
 
Craig Newmark: Media humans! join us at Volunteer Boot Camp this Saturday at UC Berkeley Top
Hey, you're invited to the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp this Saturday at UC Berkeley. Lots of good speakers including Arianna Huffington, Randi Zuckerberg, Jonathan Greenblatt and also craig. (The last on the list might not be in the "good speaker" category.) Media folks can get media passes by e-mailing  bootcamp@craigslistfoundation.org Tickets will still be sold at the door for anyone wanting to help change the world or improve your own communities. What: 6th Annual craigslist foundation boot camp , 1,500 volunteers from across the nation attending this one day event Where: UC Berkeley Campus  MLK Student Union Courtyard When: Saturday June 20th 9am-5 pm Highlights            9:30am       Keynote by Arianna Huffington Zellerbach Hall            12:10am    Lunch Keynote by Randi Zuckerberg -Facebook  Outside Lower Sprowl Plaza            3:00 pm     AllForGood.org session with Jonathan Greenblatt - 2nd Floor MLK Student U            4:30 pm      All Star Panel- Arianna Huffington, Craig Newmark and others  MLK SU Detailed schedule: http://craigslistfoundation.org/sf09/sf09-onepageschedule.pdf Event map:  http://craigslistfoundation.org/sf09/sf09map.pdf Directions: http://craigslistfoundation.org/map.html Directions: http://craigslistfoundation.org/map.html Media List/Pass contact: bootcamp@craigslistfoundation.org, 415-278-0404 Hope to see you guys at this weekends Volunteer Boot Camp
 
Kenneth Starr Endorses Sotomayor For Supreme Court Top
Kenneth Starr, the lawyer who chased after President Bill Clinton and his wife, said on Thursday that he supports President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. More on Sonia Sotomayor
 
David Archuleta's Dad In Hooker Bust Top
The father of "American Idol" star David Archuleta was busted for hiring a massage parlor prostitute following a January raid in Utah. James Jeffrey Archuleta, the father of the "Idol" season 7 runner up, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge and paid a $582 fine after he was caught at a police raid of the Queens of Reiki on January 14 in Midvale. More on American Idol
 
Cheney's FBI Interview Over Plame Leak To Be Reviewed By Judge Top
WASHINGTON — A federal judge said Thursday that he wants to look at notes from the FBI's interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision to review the documents followed arguments by Obama administration lawyers that sounded much like the reasons the Bush administration provided for keeping Cheney's interview from the public. Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them. "If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren't going to cooperate," Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said during a 90-minute hearing. "I don't want a future vice president to say, `I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for 'The Daily Show.'" Sullivan said the Justice Department must give him more precise reasons for keeping the information confidential than they had in previous court filings. Cheney agreed to talk to FBI agents in June 2004 as they were investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters the year before. Her name was revealed after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. The leak touched off a lengthy inquiry that led to Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, being convicted on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. During his trial, jurors found that Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters. Bush commuted Libby's sentence, and he never served prison time. Libby was the only person charged in the case. No one was charged with leaking Wilson's name. In July 2008, the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department seeking records related to Cheney's interview in the investigation. The Justice Department declined to turn over the records, and CREW filed a lawsuit in August. The Justice Department reported in court filings that it found three documents totaling 67 pages that related to the watchdog group's FOIA request, but said the documents were exempt since they were part of a law enforcement matter and their release could interfere with future cases. They also said the interview contained classified material and that presidential communications were shielded to allow candor with the president and his advisers. CREW argued that the public has a right to know the role that Cheney played in the leak and why he was not prosecuted. Libby told the FBI in 2003 that it was possible that Cheney ordered him to reveal Plame's identity to reporters. The prosecutor in that case, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, said in his closing remarks at Libby's trial that there was a "cloud" over Cheney's role in the case. Fitzgerald told members of Congress who also sought the information that Cheney set no conditions about the use of his interview with investigators. A Cheney spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. More on Dick Cheney
 
US Tracking Suspicious Ship From NKorea Top
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is tracking a ship from North Korea that may be carrying illicit weapons, the first vessel monitored under tougher new United Nations rules meant to rein in and punish the communist government following a nuclear test, officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has ordered additional protections for Hawaii just in case North Korea launches a long-range missile over the Pacific Ocean. The suspect ship could become a test case for interception of the North's ships at sea, something the North has said it would consider an act of war. Officials said the U.S. is monitoring the voyage of the North Korean-flagged Kang Nam, which left port in North Korea on Wednesday. On Thursday, it was traveling in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China, two officials said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. What the Kang Nam was carrying was not known, but the ship has been involved in weapons proliferation, one of the officials said. The ship is among a group that is watched regularly but is the only one believed to have cargo that could potentially violate the U.N. resolution, the official said. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen did not specifically confirm that the U.S. was monitoring the ship when he was asked about it at a Pentagon news conference Thursday. "We intend to vigorously enforce the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1874 to include options, to include, certainly, hail and query," Mullen said. "If a vessel like this is queried and doesn't allow a permissive search," he noted, it can be directed into port. The Security Council resolution calls on all 192 U.N. member states to inspect vessels on the high seas "if they have information that provides reasonable grounds to believe that the cargo" contains banned weapons or material to make them, and if approval is given by the country whose flag the ship sails under. If the country refuses to give approval, it must direct the vessel "to an appropriate and convenient port for the required inspection by the local authorities." The resolution does not authorize the use of force. But if a country refuses to order a vessel to a port for inspection, it would be in violation of the resolution and the country licensing the vessel would face possible sanctions by the Security Council. Gates, speaking at the same news conference, said the Pentagon is concerned about the possibility of a North Korean missile launch "in the direction of Hawaii." Gates told reporters at the Pentagon he has sent the military's ground-based mobile missile system to Hawaii, and positioned a radar system nearby. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their last stage of flight. "We are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory," Gates said. A Japanese newspaper reported Thursday that North Korea might fire its most advanced ballistic missile toward Hawaii around the Fourth of July holiday. A new missile launch _ though not expected to reach U.S. territory _ would be a brazen slap in the face of the international community, which punished North Korea with new U.N. sanctions for conducting a second nuclear test on May 25 in defiance of a U.N. ban. North Korea spurned the U.N. Security Council resolution with threats of war and pledges to expand its nuclear bomb-making program. The missile now being readied in the North is believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles and would be launched from North Korea's Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, the Yomiuri newspaper said. It cited an analysis by Japan's Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites. More on North Korea
 
Michael F. Jacobson: Packaged Deceit: How Dietary Supplements and Fortified Foods [try to] Fool You Top
For years, Bayer has been marketing its One A Day supplements with selenium to men as a way to prevent prostate cancer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to take a harmless pill to fend off the most common cancer in men? Wouldn't it be wonderful if Bayer's claims were true? But they're not. The evidence that selenium prevents prostate cancer is as skimpy as Paris Hilton's bikini. Worse: there's disturbing evidence that selenium may actually increase the risk of diabetes. Because of that, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has threatened to sue Bayer unless the company stops its deceptive marketing. CSPI is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission to require the company to run corrective advertising. Photo Credit: Jeff Cronin, CSPI. Bayer, of course, is not alone in exaggerating the benefits of dietary supplements and foods spiked with everything from ascorbic acid to the amino acid taurine to zinc. The supplement craze was sparked in 1970, when Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling contended that megadoses of vitamin C prevent the common cold. There never were more than shards of evidence that vitamin C could ward off colds, but Pauling's credibility paved the way for a burgeoning industry. Since then, countless companies have marketed countless products on non-existent or paltry evidence, taking in the gullible... and even the somewhat skeptical. For many years, it was the pill pushers who proclaimed supplements' glories. But then small food companies began to put their toes in the "functional foods" waters. And major corporations, not wanting to miss out on a potentially profitable niche, have now dived in. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to object to the frivolous fortification of foods. It reasoned that haphazardly adding cheap nutrients could encourage the consumption of fortified junk foods and might even be harmful. But the vitamin industry lobbied Congress, and in 1976 Congress forced the FDA to make its "fortification policy" voluntary (though the agency still could take action against harmful levels of vitamins and minerals). The agency also had the power to stop the marketing of dishonestly labeled or dangerous dietary supplements. However, in 1994 the dietary supplement industry got the law weakened again to further reduce the FDA's ability to protect consumers. The proliferation of deceptively marketed foods and supplements harkens back to the patent medicine quacks of the 19th Century. Consider: Ginkgo is advertised everywhere for improving memory and concentration, but the vast majority of studies show it does nothing for the memory and concentration of middle-aged and older people. Garlic is advertised as cholesterol's "natural enemy," but it has failed to lower cholesterol in so many studies over the past two decades it is no longer allowed to be promoted as a cholesterol-fighter, even in Germany where the garlic supplement craze began. Airborne , the fizzy vitamin and herbal "cold remedy," advises consumers to take the product before entering a germ-infested environment, but there's no credible evidence that it can protect people from getting sick in any environment. A huge banner on packages of Kellogg's Frosted Krispies blares "NOW HELPS SUPPORT YOUR CHILD'S IMMUNITY," which falsely implies that this candy (40 percent sugar) helps prevent colds and other illnesses. Kraft adds a few vitamins and other ingredients to its Crystal Light On The Go drink mixes and gives them names like "Metabolism +," "Immunity," and "Skin Essentials." They're not going to improve your health, but at least they are sugar-free. Red Bull adds taurine, caffeine, and a few nutrients to pretend that it's an energizing drink. (Red Bull can actually be harmful, because when mixed with alcoholic beverages, the caffeine makes inebriated people think they are alert.) Hershey's Chocolate Flavor Syrup with Calcium is gussied up with calcium, zinc, vitamin E, and other nutrients. Don't count on getting any benefit from that random grab bag of nutrients in a product that contains five teaspoons of sugar per six-teaspoon serving. Coca-Cola's Enviga beverage deceptively claims to burn more calories than it provides, thanks to the magical EGCG ingredient from green tea. Coke also markets VitaminWater as a healthful alternative to soda, claiming that the drinks reduce the risk of chronic disease, promote healthy joints, and support optimal immune function. In fact, the 33 grams of sugar in each bottle of VitaminWater do more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems than the vitamins do to achieve the advertised benefits. (CSPI has sued Coca-Cola for deceptive marketing of Enviga and VitaminWater ; the cases are still in court.) Fortification can be useful when it involves the right nutrients in the right foods. The vitamin D added to milk helps us get more of that bone-building nutrient. Adding calcium to orange juice helps people who don't drink milk or other major sources of that mineral. Exceptions like those aside, health-food stores and supermarkets are bulging with foods and supplements that are fortified primarily to distract you with fancy claims while the manufacturers and stores pick your pocket. Trial lawyers and state attorneys general have brought a handful of cases against some of the most egregious cheaters. But what's needed is stronger laws and greater funding that would enable state and federal agencies to protect the public from unscrupulous marketers. That would be fortification we could all use. More on Wellness
 
Sandy Tolan: Babu's Story: A Child Worker In The Shipyards Of Bangladesh Top
NOTE: This Reporter's Notebook accompanies the story on public radio's Marketplace which aired on June 18. For the original radio story, go here . "Did anybody ever tell you," I asked the child worker sitting on the cement floor, "'You're only 13, you shouldn't have to work like this'?" Ismael "Babu" Hussein paused to reflect on the question. All around him were other kids, sitting in the small airless room that was shared by several worker families who sleep there in shifts. Like Babu, these boys, some as young as 12, do the risky, often terrifying work of breaking down ships by hand on the beaches of Chittagong, Bangladesh. The boys are apprentices to older "masters" who operate the blowtorches that cut the steel walls into six-by-ten-foot plates, and thus turn useless old tankers and cargo ships into usable scrap. When their masters get tired, Babu and his fellow child laborers often handle the blowtorches on their own, frequently without goggles, risking serious injury or blindness. Some are forced to climb tall rope ladders to the ships' highest points to retrieve items, risking death if they slip. And all the children are on constant lookout for falling metal plates and rods, which have killed many a worker before them. Lately, Babu has been having nightmares of falling steel, or of being thrown into melting iron by an angry boss. "There was another foreign guy who came here years ago,"Babu answered after a pause. "He also said this. But nobody else ever told me this before, except the foreign guy." Indeed, for many of the children here, the idea that they shouldn't work is an entirely foreign concept. Despite laws in Bangladesh restricting child labor, the reality is starkly different. A 2005 report from the International Labour Organization says in Bangladesh, a country of 65 million packed into a land mass the size of Wisconsin, there are nearly 5 million laborers under the age of 15. The context, of course, is poverty. Babu's father, Atiqur, was 13 himself when he came to Chittagong looking for work. Today, 25 years later, he loads scrap metal onto waiting trucks, for which he is paid about three dollars a day. But the work is sporadic, and after paying the rent on the family's tiny bamboo shack, he has barely forty cents left to feed each of the family members: Atiqur and his wife Hosneara; Babu; daughter Bethi-Akhtar; and son Papi. With no other options, Atiqur and Hosneara recently sat their eldest son down and told him they needed his help. Babu, who never learned to read or write, would go to work. His job would add $2.20 to the family's daily budget. "If it wasn't for my labor, my family would starve," Babu says. Still, he dreams of something else. "There is no fun in the work. I wish I could find something easier to do." According to advocates for the shipyard workers, the work shouldn't be so hard - or so dangerous. When decommissioned ships plow into Chittagong's beaches, armies of poor Bangladeshis walk along the tidal flats and begin the work of dismantling. More than 20,000 laborers work in the city's 36 shipyards. They unload every item - sinks, toilets, couches, crystal, flatware, microwaves, computers, mops, life preservers - and transport them to the dozens of shops lining the road north of Chittagong. Then begins the work of blowtorch and hammer. Teams of workers, hundreds strong, can dismantle a ship in four to six weeks. Many of the ships contain toxic materials, sometimes hidden in pipes that workers will cut open with their torches. These include asbestos, PCBs, arsenic-laced paint, and tons of oil and grease. Add to that the risk of falling steel from vessels that are literally coming apart, and it's easy to understand why Babu has nightmares. According to a 2005 report by Greenpeace and the International Federation for Human Rights, between 1975 and 2005 an estimated 1,000 Bangladeshis died from accidents in the shipbreaking yards - an average of about three deaths per month. Statistics cited by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) suggest the figure is much higher: 2,000 deaths since 1998. Unknown numbers of others are maimed or severely sickened by toxics. It's impossible to know how many become ill or eventually die, for example, from exposure to asbestos. Environmental and human rights groups, led by BELA, have been fighting on national and international fronts for worker and environmental protection. In March 2009, BELA lawyers won a ruling from the country's highest court, ordering the shipyards to shut down for two weeks and requiring them to get government-issued environmental clearances. The shutdown angered many worker families like Babu's, for whom bad work is better than none. An estimated 10,000 shipbreaking laborers and their families, concerned for their jobs, protested the High Court ruling. The High Court also ruled that ships would no longer be able to enter Bangladesh's waters without first "pre-cleaning" their toxic wastes. This was a huge victory for shipbreaking watchdogs, but given the country's history of strong laws and weak enforcement, advocates say it isn't enough. "All the agencies - environment, labor, shipping - they have categorically failed to protect the laborers from this havoc," says BELA director Rizwana Hasan, who in April 2009 won the Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious international award recognizing "grassroots environmental heroes." Hasan and her colleagues are pushing for international measures requiring pre-cleaning of ships, and a ban on shipbreaking on beaches. A 64-nation accord signed in Hong Kong in May 2009 will require companies to produce toxic inventories, but will not fundamentally change the shipbreaking workers' operations. "Yards that have been dormant for years are bouncing back to life," acknowledged Enam Ahmed, technical head of the Bangladesh Shipbreakers Association, in an interview with Agence France Presse. "There's a sense a boom time is coming with more ships heading our way." Not surprisingly, BELA and other advocates are highly critical of the accord for for not going far enough. "I don't want the developed countries to take Bangladesh as a dumping site," Hasan told me, "and to take our laborers and our environment for granted." For Hasan and her fellow activists, the goal is not to destroy the shipbreaking industry, but to bring it under stricter labor and environmental controls. Crucial for Bangladesh - as well as other shipbreaking nations like India, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, and Turkey - will be not only the agreements themselves, but also enforcement. This will become more pressing as single-hull oil tankers are phased out by 2010, sending more decommissioned ships to South Asian shores. "A work should give people dignity," Hasan told me in her office in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital. "A work should provide you a better life. A work should be able to bring you out of your poverty circle. It is not doing any of these things. So it's not a solution to unemployment, it is just exploitation. And they're doing it because these people are poor, and no one is listening to what they have to say." For Babu, who doesn't follow the national debate and in any case can't read any of the agreements, the issue is simple. If there are rules about safety, why doesn't anyone follow them? "They usually don't provide us with protective equipment, but when any law enforcement agency comes into the yard to check, they immediately provide all this stuff for half an hour or so," he says with a frown. "Then they take it back when the inspectors leave. My question is 'Why?' Why do they only provide this stuff when the law enforcement people come? Why don't they give it to us all day, every day, so we can protect ourselves?" Special thanks to Mainul Islam Khan and Shah Mohammed Nurul Islam, for indispensable help; to producer Ki-Min Sung; to Ismael "Babu" Hussein and his parents, Atiqur and Hosneara; and to Kavan Prabhu of Nairobi, Kenya, who provides the English-language voice of Babu in the radio program. For information on the history of the global shipbreaking industry, see "The Shipbreakers," the Baltimore Sun's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning series by Gary Cohn and Will Englund. More on Asia
 

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