Prometheus 6

An astounding amount of money has been spent of rent subsidies...when the same money could have...should have...been used for mortgage subsidies.

Anyway...

Study Urges City to Require Building of Low-Cost Housing
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: February 15, 2005

A new study by researchers at New York University recommends that the city require developers to include lower-cost apartments in large apartment buildings in fast-growing neighborhoods.

Although the Bloomberg administration and the real estate industry have said such actions should be voluntary, the study says that under the right conditions it would make financial sense to have developers set aside 10 to 20 percent of their units for lower-income residents, in exchange for building larger buildings than zoning now allows. The requirement would be most effective in developing neighborhoods like Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, the study says, and in condominium buildings, not rental units.

Ex-Aide Questions Bush Vow To Back Faith-Based Efforts

By Alan Cooperman and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A01

A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush has failed to deliver on his promise to help religious groups serve the poor, the homeless and drug addicts because the administration lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first term, said in published remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

Jailed Ex-Official Linked To More Defense Contracts
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page E01

Darleen A. Druyun, the former Air Force procurement official who admitted showing Boeing Co. favoritism on contracts, may have unduly influenced eight other contracts worth about $3 billion, including four awarded to other companies, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Druyun's admissions last year sparked a review of 407 contracts she dealt with during her nine-year tenure as a top Air Force procurement official. The possible irregularities were referred to the Pentagon's inspector general for further review, the officials said.

Quote of note:

Bush has said that his nominees are well qualified and deserve a vote in the Senate. "Every judicial nominee deserves a prompt hearing and an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate," he said yesterday.

Not true. If every candidate is to be presented to the full Senate no matter what, there's no point to having a nominating committee at all.

Not that I want to give anyone any ideas...

Anyway...

Bush Tries Luck Again With Judicial Nominees
12 Candidates For Federal Courts Blocked in 1st Term

By Michael A. Fletcher and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A05

Quote of note:

"I wish I could tell you that the Bush administration has done everything it could to detect and punish fraud in Iraq," Grayson said. "If I said that to you, though, I would be lying."

Lawmakers Told About Contract Abuse in Iraq
By Griff Witte

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A03

A government contractor defrauded the Coalition Provisional Authority of tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction funds and the Bush administration has done little to try to recover the money, an attorney for two whistle-blowers told Democratic lawmakers yesterday.

The lawyer, Alan Grayson, represents two former employees who charged in a federal lawsuit that the security firm Custer Battles LLC of Fairfax was paid approximately $15 million to provide security for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport, even though no planes flew during the contract term. Grayson said the firm received $100 million in contracts in 2003 and 2004, despite a thin track record and evidence the government was not getting its money's worth.

U.S. Urges Nations Not to Reward N. Korea

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2005; Page A14

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her South Korean counterpart yesterday as the Bush administration urged North Korea's neighbors not to provide incentives to the government in Pyongyang to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear programs.

North Korea last week pulled out of the talks and officially announced it possessed nuclear weapons, leaving the United States scrambling for ways to step up pressure to get the negotiating process on track.

Having mentioned it, and even linking to a version posted on an experimental (and now non-existant) WordPress site, I've posted Black Power Defined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at The Niggerati Network. Read it when you get a chance.

And the result of the last poll (Should we have open threads?) was
No - 8 votes
Yes, daily - 7 votes (mine doesn't count)
Yes, weekly - 3 votes

That's 10 to 8 in favor, but 11 to 7 that there should be no daily open thread. So I'm going to do one open thread per week, roughly noon on Fridays.

HISTORIC FRONT PAGES FROM THE Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette

Forty years ago, conflict over integration of Little Rock Central High School captured the attention of the world. That crisis stands as the most significant news event in Little Rock's 20th century history.

The crisis of 1957 was reported in powerful detail by the two statewide newspapers of that era -- the morning Arkansas Gazette and the afternoon Arkansas Democrat. Their pages, reflecting different news cycles but equal competitive vigor, provide an objective record of those momentous times.

For 37 days in August, September and October 1997 the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette republished the front pages of both newspapers from the corresponding date 40 years ago. We offer this unprecedented window onto history as a service to our readers.

Quote of note:

The missile defense program has undergone a series of delays that forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that the system would not be operational by the start of 2005, a key campaign promise made by President Bush last year.

Missile Defense System Fails Test
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

12:25 PM PST, February 14, 2005

WASHINGTON   A test of the national missile defense system failed today, in the second expensive setback for the fledgling program in two months, Pentagon officials said.

Military analysts believe the failure of the $85-million test was due to a problem with ground support equipment and not with the interceptor itself. Technicians believe the problem occurred inside the concrete underground silo, where a variety of common and widely used sensors perform safety and environmental monitoring.

The interceptor, located at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, was supposed to target a mock ballistic missile fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska. But after the target missile was launched at 1:22 a.m. EST, the interceptor failed to launch.

The failure marked another expensive delay in testing the interceptor, but defense officials expressed relief that the problem did not appear related to the component being tested.

Defense officials considered the failure less of a setback than the Dec. 15 launch, when the so-called "kill vehicle" shut down without launching after sensors detected a problem later deemed to have been caused by a fault in the software of the interceptor.

Iran spurns European reactor deal
Iran has said it will not give up its plans to build a heavy-water nuclear reactor.

European negotiators had offered to replace a heavy-water nuclear reactor with a light-water reactor.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi dismissed the offer, saying Iran wanted to be a major player in nuclear fuel supply in 15 years.

The US fears Iran's programme could be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Sunday's Washington Post reported that the United States had been sending unmanned drones over Iran since April 2004 trying to gather evidence of any weapons programme.

Military action

European negotiators have been trying to get Iran to give guarantees about its nuclear programme and one of the major incentives on the table has been the offer of a light-water research reactor.

Not so long as CNN posts a picture of a nuclear reactor in Iran on February 9 with one story...then zooms and crops for another story, claiming it's a reactor in North Korea on February 12.

Yes, they did.

The image from February 9 has been changed now, but The Brad Blog saved it.

Stanford: Mind Control in Theory and Practice

When Zimbardo was teaching a course on Mind Control, he had an assignment where he asked his students to apply what they had learned to get blacks and women to start smoking. Almost all students came back with detailed explanations, some used their personal experiences, others interviewed black friends for their input, etc. Just to make sure, he told the students that he d sent their reports to a friend at Philip Morris and they were very interested in hiring a few students over the summer; it'd only be an internship, but who would be interested? Almost everyone's hand shot up.

Zimbardo was livid. He was going to outright cancel the course until someone talked him out of it. Here were students who had spent months learning the techniques of mind control, with special emphasis on the evils of smoking, with the goal of being able to resist its power, and none of it had any effect! One simple assignment and kids were lining up to kill people.

...but he's both idealistic and terribly naïve.

Title:  The Ethics of Identity
Author:  Kwame Anthony Appiah
ASIN:  0691120366
Format:  Hardcover
List Price:  $29.95
Amazon.com Price:  $19.77

Title:  On Bullshit
Author:  Harry G. Frankfurt
ASIN:  0691122946
Format:  Hardcover
List Price:  $9.95
Amazon.com Price:  $8.96

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."

Quote of note:

He pointed to another "bearish divergence" - an increase in the "emotional money component" measuring the first half-hour of trading and a drop in the "smart money component" of the final hour. He said he expects either an abrupt drop in the market, or "a longer period of general weakness, until no one is any longer interested in stocks."

Analyzing the I.Q. of Money

Conrad de Aenlle

EVER wonder what the smart money is doing? Walter Hertler, a technical analyst, thinks he has it figured out, and many stock market investors won't like the news.

I'm watching Washington Journal with Andrew Maner, the CFO of the Homeland Security Department, and ALL the callers are talking about eliminating illegal immigration.

The xenophobia is astounding.

A caller from Georgia said we should make illegal immigration a felony, whihc would give us a huge supply of workers for highways and such..."we should put them on a chain gang." Georgia always loved chain gangs.

Another said you don't have to patrol the borders, just show up at any laundromat and you can get all the illegals you want.

Several said "we just want them all gone." Which means they want to put Wal-Mart out of business and stop all the home construction on Staten Island, NY and North Carolina.

And Maner just said DHS has the authority to search without cause!

Quote of note:

Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer presented the ministers a copy of a letter he received. The letter described Ben-Eliezer, who was born in Iraq, as "the epitome of evil, a miserable Iraqi, a Nazi with Arab blood."

"You love Arabs more than Jews," the letter said.

Ben-Eliezer then said to the ministers, "I am telling you: They will try to kill the prime minister," according to the Haaretz daily newspaper.

Sharon targets Jewish extremists
Orders crackdown after threats to Cabinet ministers

By Josef Federman, Associated Press  |  February 14, 2005

Difference being there's probably more guns than people...

Quote of note:

"There were violations in Kirkuk where ballot boxes were stolen," said demonstrator Nawal Mohammed.

Hundreds of Turkmen and Arabs held a similar protest in Kirkuk on Friday condemning alleged fraud and calling for a re-run of the election there.

Turkmen protestors in Baghdad denounce  electoral fraud 

13/02/2005   AFP

BAGHDAD, Feb 13 (AFP) - 13h35 - Members of Iraq s Turkmen minority demonstrated in central Baghdad Sunday to protest alleged electoral fraud in the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk during last month's historic election.

Around 150 demonstrators crossed the Tigris river and gathered at one of the entrances to the fortified Green Zone, home to the offices of the electoral commmission.

"We want reparation for electoral violations in Turkmen areas," read one banner carried by demonstrators, who rallied just hours before the results of the January 30 vote were due to be announced.

"There were violations in Kirkuk where ballot boxes were stolen," said demonstrator Nawal Mohammed.

Hundreds of Turkmen and Arabs held a similar protest in Kirkuk on Friday condemning alleged fraud and calling for a re-run of the election there.

Iraq s Turkmen say they account for 13 percent of the population of 27 million, but the most recent census dating from 1977 puts the proportion at just two percent.

Final results from the election are expected to show a decisive advance for Iraq s Kurds who want to retake control of Kirkuk after it was Arabised by the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.

...maybe you'll believe Forbes (Capitalist Tool).

Anyway...

Kurdish Aims For A Post-Election Iraq

...The Kurds have entered the post-Saddam era as the most politically and militarily organised of Iraq's communities. As such, their key demand is to maintain the high levels of autonomy enjoyed during the 1990s and to augment them by existing in a federal Iraqi state, with the contested city of Kirkuk as the capital of the proposed Kurdistan region.

The Kurds, who number approximately 20% of Iraq's population, managed to enshrine this federal position in the Transitional Administrative Law of March 2004, which included what came to be known as "the Kurdish veto", allowing two-thirds of the population of any three governorates to block the progression of the permanent constitution to be drafted following last week's elections.

98 percent of the people of South Kurdistan vote for independence

09/02/2005   KRM - International Committee
Kurdistan Referendum Movement - International Committee

PRESS RELEASE

London, 8 February 2005

During the general elections in Kurdistan on 30 January 2005, Kurdistan Referendum Movement conducted an unofficial referendum asking Kurdistani voters to choose one of these two options:

- I want Kurdistan to stay as part of Iraq
- I want Kurdistan to be independent

The Higher Committee of Referendum Movement in Kurdistan announced the results of the referendum in a press conference at Sheraton Hotel in Hewler, on Saturday 5 February 2005.

The total number of Kurdistani voters participating in the referendum was 1,998,061 people.

- 1,973412 people voted for independence.
- 19650 voted for Kurdistan to remain as part of Iraq.

Thus 98.8% of the people of Kurdistan have voted for independence.

The committee stated that the referendum was held in all Kurdish areas including Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Kurdish areas in Mosul province. But it excluded the Kurds living in Baghdad and other Arab cities and towns.

The Kurdish poet Sherco Bekas, member of the High Commission of Kurdistan Referendum Movement, stated that the Movement would take the results to the United Nation and the European Union.

A petition carrying the signatures of over 1,700,000 signatures asking for a UN-sponsored referendum on independence was delivered to the UN by the movement on 22 December 2004.

The results of all the votes in Kurdistan areas are as follows:

Province/area: Total votes / Votes for staying in Iraq / Votes for independence
Kirkuk: 131582 / 181 / 131274
Mosul: 165891 / 111 / 165780
Khanaqin: 36413 627 / 35786
Sulaymani: 656496 / 5796 / 650000
Hewler (Arbil): 636898 / 11289 / 622409
Duhok: 370781 / 2247 / 368163
Total: 1998061 / 20251 1973412
Percentage: 100% / 1.2% / 98.8%

Kurdistan Referendum Movement-International Committee
For further information and queries email:info@kurdistanreferendum.org
Telephone: 07782361435

Kurdistan Referendum Movement

Turkey expresses concern over Iraq vote
13/02/2005   Associated Press - By Susan Fraser

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey urged Iraqi electoral officials and the United Nations to examine what it claimed were skewed Iraqi elections results released Sunday, saying it was particularly concerned about vote tallies in the oil-rich and ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.

Turkey has long complained that Kurdish groups were illegally moving Kurds into Kirkuk, a strategic northern city, in an effort to tip the city s population balance in their favor.

Turkish officials did not make direct reference to the Kurds on Sunday, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that voter turnout in some regions was low and charged that there were "imbalanced results" in several regions, including Kirkuk.

"It has emerged that certain elements have tried to influence the voting and have made unfair gains from this," the statement said, in an apparent reference to the Kurds. "As a result the Iraqi Interim Parliament won t reflect the true proportions of Iraqi society."

Ankara fears that Kurdish domination of Kirkuk and oil fields near the city would make a Kurdish state in northern Iraq viable. Such a state, Turkish officials warn, could further inspire Turkey s own rebellious Kurds, who have been battling the Turkish army in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

To let you know how much drama is going on, consider that Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey's Prime Minister.

If Kurds are not free, Tayyip Erdogan will not be free either…
07 February 2005
KurdishMedia.com (Translated)

By Ahmet Altan

It seems as if it is very difficult for Turks to understand that they are not the only race on the face of the earth and that they do not hold the divine power to decide how life evolves.

Since they are not interested in their own recent past, they are not aware of where this chain of "unreasonable decisions" is dragging this country.

If they just read what was being said here before the Balkan war, maybe they could better understand what the curse of empty words can do to a society.

Quote of note:

Minutes after the results became public, Massoud Barzani, speaking for the Kurdish coalition, said in an interview that Kurds would insist that the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk be incorporated into semiautonomous Kurdistan, and that the Kurdish Peshmerga militia continue to operate independent of the Iraqi military.

Those are two explosive demands in the eyes of Sunnis, who fear that Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north will squeeze them out of the central government and assert increased regional control over Iraq's oil reserves, which are mainly in Shi'ite and Kurdish regions.

I'm sure Turkey and Iran are just thrilled by the Kurdish response.

I have to get to a Rasta partner of mine and acknowledge he was right.

In choice of new leader, possible shift from US
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff  |  February 14, 2005

BAGHDAD -- The Shi'ite Islamist-led coalition that won the most seats by far in Iraq's new parliament is engaged in a fierce internal debate over who should be prime minister, a choice that could determine how confrontational the new government might be toward the United States and the 130,000 US troops expected to remain in Iraq.

Beaming with victory and wielding a mandate from more than 4 million voters, the leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, a collection of religious Shi'ite parties and independents endorsed by Iraq's most revered cleric, say they will insist that the post goes to one of them, not to the US-backed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

This is cooler than that.

Checking my referral logs I find that part three of The Care and Feeding of White Folks, posted at The Niggerati Network (for the record, if you can't handle satire, don't even load the page), has been included in a course called Postmodernism & American Fiction Since the Romantics at the University of Washington.

Even I am impressed by that.

The start of the class is a way off, so there's still time for the university's administrators to bug out over the whole piece...it has happened before.