Prometheus 6

I've been really clear that I see a difference between individual and collective action (personal is about your position in the game and collective is about the rules of the game). If I haven't been clear that I'm discussing the collective thing, take this as notification.

Plus I don't do memes.

You want me to tell folks about it, I can do that. But you don't REALLY want me to join your party...after all, it's NEVER turned out the way you expected, has it? 

The business of America is business, right? 

Prosecutors charged that Corso received $100,000 in "unusable" cash from the undercover agent. He gave the "smuggler" a check for $100,000 drawn on his personal bank account.

Corso also agreed to transfer ownership of nine pieces of property in Prince's Bay and Huguenot "in return for $6,554,000," the complaint alleged.

Alien-smuggle sting nabs Islander
Pleasant Plains resident charged with laundering 144Gs given to him by undercover FBI agent
Saturday, January 13, 2007
By JEFF HARRELL
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE

An FBI sting operation has netted a Pleasant Plains man, part owner of a medical supply firm, who allegedly sought to profit from human smuggling.

The death threat came Thursday.

"The person said "you're a dead . . .' n-word," Mabey said....

Mabey believes the threats are more political than racist, but said he still deems the calls a bias crime and a terroristic threat.

N.J. mayor threatened
By LEO STRUPCZEWSKI, The (Cherry Hill, N.J.) Courier-Post
Posted Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 10:39 pm

SOUTH HARRISON, N.J. — Township police said Saturday they have interviewed several "people of interest" in connection with what they say is a bias crime involving threatening telephone calls and a death threat received by newly elected mayor Charles Tyson.

Does the USofA support efforts to stop government helicopters from killing random folks in Darfur?

No.

It backs an invasion to unseat a new government in Somalia that brought peace and commerce back after ousting an ineffective "internationally supported" government (like that government actually got any international support). And why?

For practice.

The New York Times says

The bloodshed seemed to be more evidence of a steady breakdown of law and order in Mogadishu, and plunged the disarmament plans into uncertainty.

But there was no steady breakdown...there was an intentional shattering by outside forces. And this is the real life result of this horrible decision.

UNICEF Representative in Somalia assesses impact of conflict on children and families
By Blue Chevigny

NEW YORK, USA, 12 January 2007 – Children in southern Somalia are suffering from recruitment and abduction into militias, displacement from their villages and other ill effects of an increase in violence and instability in the region.

Somali families in the most vulnerable communities are fleeing their villages and heading for the Kenyan border. But once they get there they are unable to cross to safety, as the borders are closed. Over 65,000 people have been displaced by the recent flare-up in fighting.

In an interview with UNICEF Radio today, UNICEF Representative for Somalia Christian Balslev-Olesen expressed grave concern for people in the conflict zone. Many problems are converging at once, with a dreadful impact on children, he said.

Entire population affected

The good news is that the country’s Transitional Federal Government has been able to regain control of the capital, Mogadishu, said Mr. Balslev-Olesen. But he added that there is also bad news – a resurgence of activity in the capital by dangerous warlords, who had been relatively inactive over the preceding six months.

As a result of the warlords’ return to Mogadishu, as well as the fighting in the south, children throughout Somalia are now being affected by conflict.

“The children being mobilized into the militias, the children detained and the children on the run, because of fighting in the villages, are the most affected people and the most vulnerable,” said Mr. Balslev-Olesen.

“But we are also concerned about the ordinary children who are not involved in the conflict,” he noted. “Parents are taking children out of school because of fear of letting them go into the street, where they may be recruited by militias. So the whole population is affected.”

UNICEF’s activities curtailed

Mr. Balslev-Olesen is particularly concerned because security issues have significantly limited the work of UNICEF and other humanitarian agencies.

“Due to the war in the southern part of the country, we have had to terminate or suspend a number of lifesaving activities and programmes,” he said. “That’s in the area where children are suffering most because of conflict, and we’re not able to get access to these people. It’s very frustrating.”

For children in Somalia, the situation is dire. Today, UNICEF and Save the Children issued a joint press release to alert the world to their plight.

“These children are definitely not getting the support they need,” asserted Mr. Balslev-Olesen. “There has been reported harassment of NGO workers, including UN workers. We cannot do our work. People are not getting the assistance they need and that we are mandated to give, because of the ongoing conflict.”

From Dr. King, a Reminder on Iraq
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A19

Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom the nation will honor on Monday, took to the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City at a meeting organized by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The date was April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination in Memphis.

King said he was in New York because his conscience had left him no choice. In his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," King declared: "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

King acknowledged the reluctance of some people to speak out on Vietnam -- the same hesitation some Americans may have today over voicing their concerns about Iraq. People, he explained, "do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war."

And you're touched if you think Black folks think Republicans care about Black folks. But you're not pretending to care, are you? You trying to play on...White Guilt.

For Dems, It Is Attack-the-Single-Black- ... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Female-Secretary-of-State-Because-She-Is-a-Single-Black-Female-Secretary-of-State Week

You know about Barbara Boxer. Now, Neil Abercrombie:

Yesterday, Abercrombie was particularly critical of Rice, the former national security adviser, whom Abercrombie described as "the most overrated, underperforming individual in executive authority that I have ever seen."

"She constantly gets a pass. Who knows if the whole question of race and gender come into it, but ... I can't account for it, except to say she isn't up to the mark," Abercrombie said. Rice is scheduled to testify before the Senate.

Mr. Abercrombie: You are totally on point. She's not a Secretary of State, she's a used car salesman.

After his relentless support for the invasion, after his sucking up to the guy that used racism to attack his family, he deserves this grief. I got no sympathy for him.

McCain, an all but announced presidential candidate, offered those assessments toward the end of a lengthy interview Thursday night. No politician in the United States is more clearly identified with President Bush's new policy [P6: except maybe Lieberman], and no politician has more to lose if it fails. Democratic opponents have already coined a name for the troop "surge": the McCain Doctrine.

The War Within Sen. McCain
Vocal Supporter of Bush Is Increasingly Critical, Isolated
By Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A01

There is no mistaking the anguish of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Sitting in his Senate office, he is uncharacteristically subdued, his voice at times almost inaudible.

Although the Bush administration this week finally embraced his long-standing call to send more troops to Iraq, McCain believes the way it has handled the war "will go down as one of the worst" mistakes in the history of the American military.

"One of the most frustrating things that's ever happened in my political life," he said, "is watching this train wreck."

When Ramadane started teaching at Graham Park Middle School near Dumfries in 2003, the special education teacher didn't meet the law's standard because she had a provisional license. But after earning a master's degree and completing a 30-hour literacy class, she obtained full certification, and Virginia now deems her highly qualified to teach language arts.

In Maryland and the District, however, Ramadane would be asked for more: another standardized test, more professional coursework. Tougher rules are probably one reason Maryland and the District report lower rates of classrooms with highly qualified teachers: 79 percent in Maryland and 51 percent in the District, compared with 95 percent in Virginia. D.C. public schools -- and some in Maryland -- also face major recruiting obstacles.

For Teachers, Being 'Highly Qualified' Is a Subjective Matter
'No Child' Standards of Content Mastery Widely Interpreted
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A01

To overhaul public education, the No Child Left Behind law required a massive expansion of student testing. But it also called for states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are "highly qualified" to help students succeed -- an unprecedented mandate that has delivered less than promised.

In officially colorblind France, blacks have a dream - and now a lobby
By Susan Sachs | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS – Patrick Lozès has a dream: One day France's black citizens will enjoy the equality granted them under law.
"To be black and proud - that's not being anti-French," says Mr. Lozès, whose vision challenges France's colorblind model of assimilation. "It's simply theliberation of a people who don't see themselves reflected in their country's public life - in its theater, television, medicine, and universities - except in negative images."

It is not an accident that Mr. Lozès's words often contain echoes of Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries of the American civil rights movement. The African- American struggle for racial equality has been his prototype for France's first national black lobbying organization.

When I first heard of this stuff I wasn't sure someone wasn't hustling folks. Now I find it not only really exists but that there's varying flavors of it...that it's not so much a matter of the material it's composed of but the physical arrangement of the material that makes it capable of the things that made me doubt its existence.

Back on Earth aerogels may have many other applications. The material is already being crushed up and used as insulation in extreme weather gear like snowsuits as well as spacesuits. Another possibility is developing aerogel-based capacitors--energy storage devices--for powering cell phones and cars; the large surface areas of carbon aerogels could store enormous amounts of electric charge compared with their traditional battery counterparts. In addition, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have made iron oxide aerogels embedded with nanoparticles of aluminum that react with the oxidizing gel, releasing an immense amount of heat that could be useful as rocket propellants, in explosives or for pyrotechnics. Similarly, carbon aerogels impregnated with nanosize particles of precious metals like platinum could serve as catalytic converters in cars that would require a fraction of the rare metal to perform the same function. For such a lightweight substance, aerogels have a lot of heavy-duty applications.

"Who pays the price?" Boxer (D-Calif.) asked Rice, who is unmarried and has no children. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."

Rice Criticizes Sen. Boxer's Comment on War
Associated Press
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A15

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday criticized Sen. Barbara Boxer's suggestion that, because she does not have family in harm's way, she will pay no "personal price" in the Iraq war.

God saw this:

Scientists prepare to move Doomsday Clock forward

Porpoises Starving in Europe Due to Ocean Warming

Schwarzenegger declares emergency as California shivers

Japan finds first frog fungal infections

...and decided it's time to start the backup plan.

"...the divergence of this group from known organisms is as great as the difference between land plants and animals," Connie Lovejoy, a biologist at Universit Laval in Canada and another member of the research team, said in a statement.

Bizarre New Form of Life Found in Arctic Ocean, Scientists Announce
Kelly Hearn
for National Geographic News
January 11, 2007

An entirely new group of tiny and bizarre marine algae has been discovered in the Arctic Ocean.

A team of European researchers found the new organisms while analyzing DNA sequences in samples of seawater.

Alpha Phi Alpha’s refusal to allow the use of its symbols in a movie—a movie made by two of its own members—demonstrates the ends to which black fraternities and sororities will go to protect their legacies from the encroachment of popular culture. (Alpha Phi Alpha celebrated its centenary last year.) But the dialogue about how best to protect those legacies may open up deeper conversations about how an organization like Alpha Phi Alpha can balance the need to protect both its history and its future, and whether the exclusivity that has been arguably both its strength and its folly will continue to serve it going into its next 100 years.

Movies: Stepping on 'Stomp the Yard'
'Stomp the Yard' takes on the subject of black fraternities—and touches off a controversy.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Joshua Alston
Newsweek
Updated: 12:38 p.m. ET Jan 12, 2007

NY Post:

The junior senator from California apparently believes that an accomplished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.

No...not unless she's also saying she is "not fully qualified."

"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."

Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

I keep hearing Republicans saying stupidity like "The important thing is, we have a plan." The fact that its an escalation of the same plan isn't important to them...but it is to me. Because to me, the important thing about a plan is, can it work?

Withdrawing from Iraq would work. Nothing could stop us from doing that (right now...). But the placement of a carrier group in the area means the Preznit's plan has little to do with the Iraq insurgency. The carrier group can only be part of a waterbound "shock and awe" campaign aimed at Iran.

So maybe there is a plan...it just includes tricking you all.

Again.

The response should convince even the most dedicated Bush acolyte there's no way out of Iraq but to just leave.

Dear Preznit...pay attention. THIS is the proper way to lie!

cock-hungry whores

Apparently, you're too busy—or is it callous?—to concern yourself with the fact that prostitutes need to eat, too. And guess what? Turns out they tend to crave poultry.

REGARDING THOSE INTERNET SEARCHES YOU FOUND AND THEN CONFRONTED ME ABOUT IN A HOSTILE WAY? WE'LL BE LAUGHING ABOUT THE HUGE MISUNDERSTANDING IN THIS WEEK'S COUNSELING SESSION.
BY FRANK FERRI

Tim Nichols, ex-San Francisco police officer, on the high black arrest rate: "It comes from the fact the majority of officers who want to take on criminals are in the Bayview and the Fillmore, which are heavily black. I don’t believe it's racism.... Officers have to pick and choose the severity of the crime they want to spend their time on, and officers who make a lot of arrests generally go after hard-core criminals." He also said black drug dealers are particularly visible: "How often do you see a group of whites standing on the street corner selling narcotics? Generally whites don’t sell on the corner."

Sharen Hewitt, director of the Community Leadership Academy and Emergency Response project, which helps connect low-income clients with services, said when she has watched what happens on a Friday night on Union Street where the crowds are predominantly white, she finds "kids tearing up, fighting, smoking marijuana, drinking in the streets, guys being abusive to women, young men publicly urinating, and I don’t see a whole lot of them being arrested. Some of these behaviors are developmentally appropriate, but I don’t think African American young men get the luxury of having errors."

HIGH BLACK ARREST RATE RAISES CALL FOR INQUIRY
Range of explanations offered by experts, officials for S.F.'s disparity with other cities
- Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006

San Francisco police arrest African Americans for serious crime at a much higher rate than officers in California's other biggest cities.

Black people in San Francisco are arrested for felonies at nearly twice the rate they are in Sacramento. They are arrested at twice the rate of black people in Fresno, three times the rate in San Jose, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego, and four times the rate in Oakland.

The disparity between San Francisco's black felony arrest rates and the seven other largest cities' -- measured by the number of African Americans arrested per 1,000 black residents -- is so large that many experts and civic leaders who reviewed the numbers said they are "disturbing" and require an investigation.

The numbers prompt several questions, all of which basically boil down to this: Is the high arrest rate of African Americans because of the way the San Francisco Police Department does its policing, or because of criminal activity within the community?

Pentagon Abandons Active-Duty Time Limit
Mideast shaking its head
It may be too late to secure Baghdad's mix
Somalia targets survived, U.S. says

Quotes that forced me to stop looking at the goddamn warporn follow.

Tears Are Shed at the White House for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

The president shed tears during the ceremony.

Among the missing material: the record of a videoconference in the White House Situation Room in which former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown said he warned senior officials about the dire situation in New Orleans, but was greeted with “deafening silence.” Also missing: records believed to include messages and conversations involving the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and their top aides during the days in late August and early September 2005 when the Katrina disaster was unfolding and thousands of city residents were flocking to overcrowded shelters and hanging onto rooftops awaiting rescue....

Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.

But now that he chairs the homeland panel—and is in a position to subpoena the records—Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator’s chief committee spokeswoman. “The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House’s role in Katrina,” she told NEWSWEEK.

No Oversight on Katrina?
Joe Lieberman gives the president a pass on Katrina.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 9:04 p.m. ET Jan 11, 2007

In times of war, the American people have the right to expect a president who is straight with them linguistically, whether he's delivering good news or bad news, and an opposition party that uses words to unite and explain rather than divide and attack. Too bad we haven't had enough of either.

After years of supporting Republican efforts words to divide and attack, Democrats are dividing the War-cons from the 2/3rds of the nation that retains remnants of sanity.

But this is the sort of article that really pisses me off. WAR OF FUCKING WORDS? That's what you're worried about? Yeah, no one wins...

"There were not enough Iraqi and American troops…. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have."

These two sentences, while seemingly straightforward, may well become the most important of the entire speech. Americans have been told repeatedly that the commanders and troops would be given everything they need to win the war. Apparently, even the president now admits that wasn't the case.  

Wartime linguistics
No one wins the Iraq war of words after the president's speech Wednesday night.
By Frank Luntz, FRANK LUNTZ is a Republican pollster who has worked with Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg. His latest book is "Words that Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear."
January 12, 2007

NOT SINCE THE frigid days of the Cold War have so many people parsed the lexicon of a world leader. Americans tuned in Wednesday night to hear the president's plan for a "new way forward" in Iraq. We also tuned in to be convinced and reassured that President Bush was the right man to execute that plan.

The speech was a clear attempt to draw a distinct line between the past and the future. The president addressed head-on the most common attacks on him and his administration, countering "inflexible," "unrealistic" and "incompetent" — three words pollsters like myself have heard from an angry electorate for more than a year — with "adjust" and "change," "scrutiny," "responsibility" and, again and again, "our new strategy." Speaking from the White House library, a different setting befitting a different strategy, the president attempted to make the case that things in Iraq were going to be different from now on.

The problem is, for most Americans it is too little and too late.

Washington says it has no commandos on the ground—although some U.S. news organizations are reporting they are there, quoting Washington sources. Some Somali officials with the TFG, however, openly boast that U.S. ground forces are in Somalia, while others stick to the party line and flatly deny it. And in a telephone interview today from Mogadishu with NEWSWEEK, the TFG's interior minister, Hussein Aidid, confirmed that U.S. ground forces were involved in the mop-up in southern Somalia.

Somalia: How Deeply Is U.S. Involved?
Somalia’s interior minister says U.S. troops are on the ground in his country. Just how deeply is Washington involved?
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Rod Nordland and Abukar Albadri
Newsweek
Updated: 6:28 p.m. ET Jan 11, 2007

Jan. 11, 2007 - To many Somalis, history is repeating itself. They feel that the United States has once again invaded their country, albeit with a proxy force from Ethiopia, occupying most of the south and central part of it; has bombed members of the former government as they fled last Monday, then has followed that up with helicopter-gunship attacks as well as AC-130 aerial assaults on a daily basis since. After that, they say, Washington deployed American commandos to hunt down remnants of Islamic hard-liners, both from the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower offshore, and across the land border from Kenya in the south.

Sergeant in trouble for Playboy spread
2 hours, 25 minutes ago