Endangered species act

Why Soldiers Rape

by Helen Benedict

Jennifer Dyer, in an interview with 60 Minutes, explains the pressure of reporting rape in the military. (Photo: CBS News)

    Culture of misogyny, illegal occupation fuel sexual violence in military.

    An alarming number of women soldiers are being sexually abused by their comrades-in-arms, both at war and at home. This fact has received a fair amount of attention lately from researchers and the press - and deservedly so.

    But the attention always focuses on the women: where they were when assaulted, their relations with the assailant, the effects on their mental health and careers, whether they are being adequately helped, and so on. That discussion, as valuable as it is, misses a fundamental point. To understand military sexual assault, let alone know how to stop it, we must focus on the perpetrators. We need to ask: Why do soldiers rape?

    Rape in civilian life is already unacceptably common. One in six women is raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice, a number so high it should be considered an epidemic.

    In the military, however, the situation is even worse. Rape is almost twice as frequent as it is among civilians, especially in wartime. Soldiers are taught to regard one another as family, so military rape resembles incest. And most of the soldiers who rape are older and of higher rank than their victims, so are taking advantage of their authority to attack the very people they are supposed to protect.

    Department of Defense reports show that nearly 90 percent of rape victims in the Army are junior-ranking women, whose average age is 21, while most of the assailants are non-commissioned officers or junior men, whose average age is 28.

http://www.truthout.org/article/why-soldiers-rape

The Biggest Story of Our Lives

by Jim Lampley

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

Karl Rove isn't capable of conceiving and executing such a grandiose crime? Wake up. They did it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-lampley/the-biggest-story-of-our-_b_576.html

Nope

World War W

Bill Maher: Pointing Out the Truth

by Marc D. Allan

 

Comedian Bill Maher's current tour has no name. But if it did, he jokes, it'd be the "Better Than Staying Home and Smoking Pot Tour."

"I always laugh when people say 'tour,' " he said in a telephone interview, "like I'm the Rolling Stones and it's been going on for two years."

OK, so it's not Steel Wheels. But on second thought, Maher said, maybe it is a tour. He's on the road three nights a week – which he has time to do, since his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher is on hiatus until Aug. 29 – and the performance consists of all-new material.

Whatever this is, it's certainly a chance to see one of the smartest and most controversial political comics working today. You can always count on Maher to say what he thinks. And that's what he did in our interview, which covered topics such as his talk shows (1993-2002's Politically Incorrect and Real Time, going into its sixth season), his upcoming movie about religion, Religulous (pronounced like "ridiculous," out Oct. 3), politics and anything else we could fit into 15 minutes.

Q: What's wrong with this country?

A: Basically, the people are too stupid to be governed. I saw yesterday that two-thirds of the American public now thinks it would be a good idea to drill for more oil, when even oil people like T. Boone Pickens are telling everyone this is not the answer. It's not going to make your gas prices go down, it's only going to hurt the environment more, it's going to keep us stuck in the past. (New York Times columnist) Tom Friedman had a great analogy: He said it's as if in 1980, someone was clamoring for more IBM Selectric typewriters. Forget about this Internet stuff. It's going nowhere.

Plainly, we have to hitch our wagon to different kinds of energy sources. They're available. We could do it. It just seems incredibly selfish of the president to push for this drilling solution – which is no solution – and it's just so depressing that it takes so little to convince the people of something so erroneous.

http://www.altweeklies.com/culture/bill_maher_pointing_out_the_truth/Story?oid=459735

IF THIS IS HOW THE McCAIN PEOPLE CAMPAIGN, THIS IS HOW THEY'D GOVERN

No More Mister Nice Blog

Here's Joe Lieberman launching the latest McCain attack on Barack Obama's patriotism:

One of the McCain campaign's new themes, that Senator John McCain has always put his country first, has been seen by some analysts as a subtle suggestion that his opponent, Senator Barack Obama, has not.

But as he introduced Mr. McCain at a campaign event here on Tuesday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut made the attack a lot more explicit, calling the election a choice "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not."...

I'll say what I said a couple of weeks ago: Barack Obama needs to tell the public that this gutter approach to politics will be America's problem if John McCain is elected president, because if he and his crowd campaign this way, they'll govern this way -- by dividing the country, questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them, and going into character-assassination mode whenever they're challenged.

Obama should say,

John McCain doesn't like it when I say he's running for Bush and Cheney's third term, but this is exactly what George Bush and Dick Cheney have done for eight years. Their attitude is "my way or the highway." They've turned America into a divided country: allies on the one hand, mortal enemies on the other -- and they think their enemies don't deserve the slightest bit of respect. If you question their policies, they say you're a traitor to your country, they say you hate America, they'll say you're the problem, just because you disagee.

Do we need four more years of that? Every day, with every low-road attack, John McCain makes it abundantly clear that if we elect him president, that's exactly what we'll get.

This wouldn't just be a way for Obama to deflect criticism of himself. This is a fact. John McCain gives every indication that he will govern like a typical attack-dog Republican. Can you even remember the last time he took the high road?

 

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/08/if-this-is-how-mccain-people-campaign.html

Still at large!

Putting the pressure on Osama

McCain: ‘In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.’

In recent days, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) rhetoric toward Russia has mostly been overblown bluster, including an accusation that the country wanted to restore its old empire. However, since a cease-fire was announced and his predictions were proven wrong, McCain has backtracked, saying there won't be a Cold War. To justify his new position, he told reporters in a press conference today:

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

Watch it:

As Matt Yglesias writes, "We all recall, of course, John McCain's outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003."

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/13/mccain-21-century/

Swift boat express

Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?

October comes early? Sen. John McCain and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

By Robert Scheer

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain's presidential campaign.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080812_georgia_war_a_neocon_election_ploy/

Big Oil Ties Could Hurt GOP

As Republicans Push Offshore Drilling, Oil Company Links Might Pose Liability

By Mike Lillis

Monday night, after weeks of pressure from Republicans to lift a federal moratorium on new offshore oil drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) abandoned her adamant resistance, indicating that she's now open to a vote on expanding exploration.

"[Republicans] have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas," Pelosi told CNN's Larry King late Monday. "Well, we can do that. We can have a vote on that. But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them."

The sharp change of position arrives as Republicans, who face a potentially disastrous November election, think they've found a lifeline in offshore drilling. Indeed, with gas prices near historic highs, polls indicate that most Americans now support more drilling. In a continuing Capitol Hill revolt, dozens of House Republicans have circulated through Washington over Congress's August vacation, taking to the dim and empty chamber floor with demands that Pelosi call a vote on the controversial measure.

The Republicans hope to portray the Democrats as the party of callousness on the issue of towering gas prices. In retaliation, Democrats accuse the GOP of cozying up to big oil interests. The debate has evolved into a blame-game over which side is blocking the process — and which is fighting hardest for the needs of constituents.

Yet if a Republican primary in Tennessee last week is any indication, GOP leaders might want to reconsider their strategy. In an upset victory Thursday, GOP challenger Phil Roe defeated freshman Rep. David Davis in a contest where Roe portrayed the incumbent — one of the House Republicans giving energy speeches — as an oil company minion. It marked the first primary defeat for a Tennessee incumbent of either party in 40 years. Many political experts say the Republicans' defense of the thriving oil industry may haunt other GOP candidates in November.

http://washingtonindependent.com/171/big-oil-ties-could-hurt-gop

No blood for oil

Why We Don't Shoot Back

By Sara Robinson

Drew Westen and Mike Lux both have cogent and persuasive posts up that deftly explain — and raise the alarm about — the timidity that's recently settled into Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Sen. John McCain's shooting live rounds now; and, as usual, the Democrats are refusing to fire back. If that doesn't change — this week, before the Olympics starts — this could all too easily turn into Dukakis-all-over-again.

Progressives have been picking at the whys and wherefores of this pattern ever since Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. (One of my favorite explanations came from Paul Rosenberg, who dug into the psychology of both sides in this excellent series last year at Open Left.) But there's one fairly simple and glaring factor that I'm increasingly convinced plays at least some role in this — and since I've never seen it discussed anywhere else, I'm going to propose it here.

We've all got our short lists of books that changed the way we look at things forever. One of the ones I keep going back to is Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, published in 1989 by Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer. Fischer's basic argument -- which he supports with a weighty and richly researched sociological survey that runs to 700 pages plus another 200 pages of footnotes -- is that most of America's most enduring cultural and political conflicts can be traced back to essential differences between the first four groups of English settlers, who brought four very different worldviews with them, and set deep patterns that continue to influence America's identity and choices to this day.

To quickly summarize, the first of these groups were the Puritans, the bulk of whom arrived in New England between 1630 and1650. They were Reform Protestants who brought with them a notion of "ordered liberty." They believed that government authority, including the right to use force, properly belongs not to individuals, but to communities; and that individuals would necessarily need to conform their will to that of the larger whole for society to succeed. In the generations that followed, their descendants spread Puritan culture across the northern tier of the county, into the Pacific Northwest, and down the West Coast to northern California. These are, today, still the most liberal parts of the country.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083205/why-we-dont-shoot-back

Good news from home

Is Laura Leaving Bush After he Leaves Office Because He's Been Hitting the Sauce Again?

by Mark Karlin

Okay, don't tell me you don't look at the tabloids on the sly when you are in the supermarket checkout line. I do. Sometimes, yes, I even buy one, if there is a timely potentially believable political scandal story.

Most of the time, the tabloids focus on Britney and Paris (now also of John McCain ad fame), but when they go after a political figure, we have found that some of them have about a 50% chance of being onto something. For instance, The National Enquirer had such specific details of the Edwards trip to the hotel in Beverly Hills that he could have sued them for libel if it weren't true. And as sleazy as these publications are, The Enquirer was credited with being one of the more accurate sources on the Lewinsky scandal.

The main reason that the mainstream press looks down on them on political stories is that they pay for information if they need to, not to mention that "real" reporters look down on their tabloid brethren.

So it's not surprising that there's been a persistent tabloid story that the corporate establishment media has been ignoring: allegations that Laura Bush has basically decided to part company with Junior after his term of office is over again.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/112

Persian diplomat

Iranian comic Maz Jobrani tries to help
Americans think beyond the idiot box

SCHOOLING THE WEST ON THE EAST: Jobrani

by NARCEL X

Nursing a broken ankle and eagerly awaiting the birth of his son, Maz Jobrani, the Persian element of the Axis of Evil comedy quartet, is no stranger to multi-tasking. From starring alongside Sean Penn in The Interpreter to being a staple voice at the world famous Laugh Factory, Maz is at his best under pressure.

From making fun of his heritage by saying Iranians refuse to be called anything but Persian (like the cat, he says) to teaching the crowd how to pronounce the current president's name (Ahmed I'mma-need-a-job), Jobrani serves as a light-hearted diplomat in the ever-growing gap between the East and West. Hitting the stage for this year's Just for Laughs, he spoke to me from his Los Angeles home about future plans, political misconceptions and his knack for Iranian spiced humor.

Mirror: With all the rhetoric and finger pointing at Iran in the last couple of months, what do you feel your role as a comedian is?

Maz Jobrani: It's to educate and shed light on the origin of my people. A lot of Americans don't think beyond the idiot box. Iran has been demonized and definitely simplified—there are 75 million people there. I think it's important to humanize my people, and make the advocates of war realize the cost of war. Before war, there is diplomacy. That's what I do, a form of diplomacy. I try to make people laugh and leave with a different perspective on Iran.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/071008/comedy3.html

30 years later...

Back on the bottle?

How to blow it

It's the most winnable presidential election in American history - but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans.

by Michael Moore

"Let's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
"We never met an election we'd like to win."
"Why get elected when you can be defeated!"

These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don't just simply "blow it" - they blow it especially when the electorate seems desperate to give it to them.

After eight years of Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, the public had seen enough. The Democrats chose Michael Dukakis as their nominee. Two months before the election, he was ahead of Bush I in the polls. Then he went to an army tank factory in Michigan, put on some kind of stupid-fitting helmet and rode around in a tank with a goofy smile on his face. Weeks later, when asked what kind of punishment he would like to see given to someone who might rape his wife, he started mumbling some sort of bleeding-heart gibberish instead of just saying what anyone would say: "I'd like to tear the bastard limb from limb!" The voters were so put off by his wimpiness, they elected an actual wimp over him, George H W Bush.

For years now, nearly every poll has shown that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic Party. They are pro-environment, pro-women's rights, pro-choice, they don't like war, they want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal healthcare system. The American public agrees with the Republican Party on only one major issue: they support the death penalty.

So you would think, with more than 200 million eligible voters, the Dems would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections, they even lose when they win! Al Gore won the 2000 election, but for some strange reason he didn't become the president of the United States.

If you are unable as a party to get the landlord to turn over the keys to a house that is yours, what the hell good are you?

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1035

Too good

And then I warned Putin...

Yes, she can

By Maureen Dowd

 

WASHINGTON: While Obama was spending three hours watching "The Dark Knight" five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring "Aloha attire" and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She's amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn't eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they've made Barry's convention all about them - their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can't win! He can't close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

http://iht.com/articles/2008/08/13/opinion/edowd.php

Should Barack Obama or Cindy McCain really be in prison?

 

That's the mad logic of the 'War on Drugs'. So why the silence?

by Johann Hari

 

On January 20th 2009, either the president of the United States will be a man who used to snort coke to ease his blues, or the First Lady will be a former drug addict who stole from charity to get her next fix. In this presidential campaign, there are dozens of issues that have failed to flicker into the debate, but the most striking is the failing, flailing 'War on Drugs.' Isn't it a sign of how unwinnable this 'war' is that, if it was actually enforced evenly, either Barack Obama or Cindy McCain would have to skip the inauguration -- because they'd be in jail?

At least their time in the slammer would feature some familiar faces: they could share a cell with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and some 46 percent of the US population.

The prohibition of drugs is perhaps the most disastrous policy currently pursued by the US government. It hands a vast industry to armed criminal gangs, who proceed to kill at least excess 10,000 citizens a year to protect their patches. It exports this programme of mass slaughter to Mexico, Colombia and beyond. It has been a key factor in reviving the Taliban in Afghanistan. It squanders tens of billions of dollars on prisons at home, ensuring that one in 31 adults in the US now in prison or on supervised release at any one time. And it has destroyed an entire generation of black men, who are now more likely to go to prison for drug offences than to go to university.

And for what? Prohibition doesn't stop people using drugs. Between 1972 and 1978, eleven US states decriminalized marijuana possession. So did hundreds of thousands of people rush out to smoke the now-legal weed? The National Research Council found that it had no effect on the number of dope-smokers. None. The people who had always liked it carried on; the people who didn't felt no sudden urge to start.

So where's the debate? The candidates have spent more time discussing froth and fancies -- how much air is in your tyres? -- than this $40bn-a-year 'war."

http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1354

Drill American

Police seek motive in shooting of Arkansas Democratic leader

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Police on Thursday sought to uncover what led a gunman to burst into the headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party and kill the chairman, a top ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, US media said.

Bill Gwatney, 48, was shot multiple times in the upper body and died shortly afterward at the hospital, police said.

His assailant, 50-year-old Tim Johnson, was fatally shot after a police chase into a neighboring county.

He had no criminal record and had reportedly been fired earlier that morning from his job at a Target store, but it was unclear if or how he knew Gwatney, according to local news reports.
Police were called to a Target store in Conway, about 25 miles north of Little Rock, early Wednesday after coworkers complained about an agitated employee who had been fired for writing graffiti on a wall, the Arkansas News said.

The employee, Johnson, was "very agitated and shaking, and they feared for their safety," said Conway police spokeswoman Sharen Carter, who added that Johnson had departed by the time police arrived.

Several hours later, just before noon, Johnson walked in the state Democratic Party headquarters and asked for Gwatney.

A volunteer who was in the office at the time said Johnson had indicated he was "interested in volunteering, but that was obviously a lie."

Once Gwatney came out to meet him, "they introduced themselves, and at that time he (Johnson) pulled out a handgun and shot Chairman Gwatney several times. He then turned and left the business," said police lieutenant Terry Hastings.

The killing left fellow Democratic leaders in shock less than two weeks before the party's national convention in the midst of a fierce battle for the White House.

 

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jm9DYuIE_x8ICCCwKAhyi3PneK_A

Haunted by Elizabeth

A Powerful Campaigner Missed the Cold Facts of a Modern Election

By Anne Taylor Fleming

 

John and Elizabeth Edwards in Tipton, Iowa, in June 2007.

(Photo by John Edwards 2008 Campaign)

What what she thinking?

That's the question that continues to haunt the painful saga of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not that she loves him and stayed with him after he confessed to having an affair (and possible lust child; though whether he told her about that we don't know).

If we have learned one thing watching Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, it is that marriages are complex, each and every one, with its bargains, and attachments, and wounds that run deep. After, of course, insisting she was not some little woman standing by her man, Hillary Clinton was in many respects just that. It was clearly what she needed to do, sailing on post-presidency into the Senate and her own fierce run for the White House.

No, the question in Elizabeth Edwards's case is: Why in the world did she go ahead and let him run — run with him, run hard all across the country, giving her all despite her stage four cancer and her two young children — after she knew. After she knew about his dalliance with a bouncy, blond so-called filmmaker with a penchant for New Age spirituality.

In these days of her public humiliation, one wants not to add to it. He is the cad, the creep. Looking back at his charm, his expensively coiffed hair, his caramel-voiced defense of the poor — while he built a palatial country estate. All this was a bit suspicious at the time. There were overtones of another Slick Willy.

But then there was Elizabeth Edwards. She was the moral anchoring point, the class act. So authentic, so warm, so unslick, so graceful, so brave. If a woman of such obvious depth and concern for the country, a woman who had lost a son and had faced cancer with openness and strength — sharing it all but not in a sympathy-begging way — if a woman like that loved a man like that, well then, he must be OK, too.

http://washingtonindependent.com/179/haunted-by-elizabeth

Paying the piper

By Tom Mockaitis

Well, it has finally happened. The crisis born of unilateralism, strategic overreach and bravado has come to pass. With U.S. forces tied down in two protracted wars, American credibility on the international stage at a record low and our dependence on foreign oil painfully obvious, a revitalized Russia is on the move. And the blow has fallen where most analysts expected it would: on America's closest ally in the Caucasus, the tiny Republic of Georgia.

Traumatized by its fall from superpower status at the end of the Cold War, the Kremlin has nursed a growing resentment at a series of humiliations and needlessly provocative moves by the Bush administration over the past eight years. NATO's war against Serbia revealed the limits of Russian power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The confrontation at Pristina Airport between British Gen. Michael Jackson's Kosovo Force and Russian troops rushed in from Bosnia ended with President Boris Yeltsin backing down, largely because NATO hopefuls Bulgaria and Romania closed their airspace to Russian aircraft that might have flown in reinforcements. The episode should have served as a poignant warning that Moscow would not take another such embarrassment lying down. Conciliation, not confrontation, should have guided American foreign policy in Eastern Europe during the past decade.

Instead, Washington continued to poke the Russian bear with a stick. The first prod came with plans for a missile defense system of dubious value in Poland, supported by radar installations in Slovakia.

The Bush administration justified the deployment as part of its global war on terrorism, assuring a skeptical Vladimir Putin that the defense system aimed to protect the U.S. from attack by a rogue state such as Iran.

Putin didn't buy it. While the White House focused myopically on Al Qaeda and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Putin consolidated power in Russia, dealt with Chechnya, and bided his time.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0818georgiaaug13,0,2100829.story

I'm typing as fast as I can

Russia says Georgian move for South Ossetia was 'like 9/11'

Georgia's attempt to reclaim South Ossetia has been compared with 9/11 by Sergei Ivanov, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister.

By Jon Swaine
Seeking to justify Moscow's overwhelming response to Georgia's attempt to reassert itself over the breakway province, Mr Ivanov said that Russia had no choice but to take military action, just as the US felt bound to respond after the attacks by al-Qa'eda on New York and Washington in September 2001.

"We just reacted because we didn't have any other option. Any civilised country would act same way. I may remind you - September 11th, the reaction was similar. American citizens were killed. You know the reaction," Mr Ivanov said.

International condemnation for the Russian response had taken Moscow by surprise, according to Mr Ivanov. "We didn't think that we annoyed anybody," he said.

Mr Ivanov also rubbished comments by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. Mr Miliband earlier accused Russia of engaging in "19th Century forms of diplomacy" in its "blatant aggression" towards Georgia. He said "the sight of Russian tanks rolling into parts of a sovereign country on its neighboring borders will have brought a chill down the spine of many people, rightly".

Mr Miliband's claim that Russia was keen restore the Soviet Union was "total rubbish - to use a proper English word," Mr Ivanov said.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, earlier taunted the US and Georgia over the crisis, describing the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili as a "special project" of the Bush administration rather than a proper state.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2556139/Russia-says-Georgian-move-for-South-Ossetia-was-like-911.html

Distraction

Obama without his script

Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama's make-believe presidency isn't ready for prime time

 

by Jonah Goldberg:

 

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a "prenaugural" address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.

It's an understandable ploy. More than most candidates, Barack Obama needs to appear like a plausible commander in chief because he's not only inexperienced (during the last Summer Olympics he was still an Illinois state legislator), he's novel. The name, the skin color, the cosmopolitan upbringing: Fair or not, all of these things give Obama the aura of otherness that is both part of his charm and a potential handicap.

If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.

(David Letterman recently offered a list of the top 10 signs Obama is overconfident. Among them: "Asked guy at Staples, 'Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?' "; "Having head measured for Mt. Rushmore;" and "Offered McCain a job in gift shop at the Obama Presidential Library.")

Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend. Taking advantage of the Olympic distraction in Beijing, the Russians invaded South Ossetia, a territory on the north side of Georgia, a democratic U.S. ally. Out of the blocks, the Russians bombed civilians, rolled tanks across an internationally recognized border and threatened to launch an all-out, destabilizing war. Now it looks as if their army has cut Georgia in two.

Moreover, Russian bombs reportedly targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia on its way to the Mediterranean -- the only oil pipeline in Central Asia not under Russian control. Russia is tightening its chokehold on oil and gas at precisely the moment energy costs have become the paramount domestic issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Obama's response?

First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and "restraint" from both sides -- followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.

The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we've come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised "to go body surfing at some undisclosed location."

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg12-2008aug12,0,6742318.column

What, me worry?

Ground control to Major Dick

by Eric Alterman

 Last month, when President Bush signed the FISA compromise bill into law, the Nation joined a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union over the spying program. The new laws secure for the federal government "sweeping and virtually unregulated authority to monitor the international communications," and so naturally the Nation, which frequently reports from conflict zones, was concerned that their communication might not be private.

This should be a concern for all U.S. news outlets that do international reporting, although sadly the lawsuit didn't get much coverage from any of them. But one would think this should change things:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post in the newspapers' Indonesia bureaus in 2004.

Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., disclosed the episode in a phone call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, and apologized for it. He also spoke with Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, to apologize.

F.B.I. officials said the incident came to light as part of the continuing review by the Justice Department inspector general's office into the bureau's improper collection of telephone records through "emergency" records demands issued to phone providers.

The records were apparently sought as part of a terrorism investigation, but the F.B.I. did not explain what was being investigated or why the reporters' phone records were considered relevant.

This proves that the government monitoring the overseas communications of news organizations is not a theoretical concern -- though it would be no less important even then. They've done it at least once recently, we now know. But why? What reporters, and what phone records? Have they done it any other time? To whom? What safeguards are in place, if any, to keep this from happening again?

http://mediamatters.org/altercation/200808120002#5

Really Lame Duck

McCain - Obama taxcut chart

Fox News suffers another debate snub; bloggers take a bow

by Eric Boehlert

Coveted assignments for presidential debate moderators were handed out last week, and guess who was left off the list ... again.

After suffering the bitter, and unprecedented, blow during the Democratic primary season of having candidates refuse -- twice -- to appear in Fox News-sponsored forums when bloggers raised hell about the news organization's lack of legitimacy, Rupert Murdoch's news channel was again left off the list of news anchors tapped to moderate the must-see TV events in the fall.

Instead, the questions during the three presidential forums and one vice presidential debate will be posed by PBS' Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill, as well as NBC's Tom Brokaw and CBS' Bob Schieffer.

Unlike the primaries, Fox News this time won't be locked out entirely; all the networks will be able to broadcast the debates. But the snub means that once again Fox News will be denied the chance to leave its imprint on the all-important debates. It won't be able to build its brand on the back of Democrats who have injected extraordinary passion and interest into the White House run.

That passion and interest has helped boost ratings for Fox News' cable competitors, while Fox's numbers have remained stagnant. Meaning, the unfolding presidential campaign has been a ratings dud so far for Fox News and its unofficial year of woe.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200808120001

Flying piece of art causes museum chaos in Switzerland

 

A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080811192637.nkspe7sd&show_article=1

Assisted Living Firm Rejects Medicaid, Evicts Elderly

by Joseph Shapiro

"To provide the best care for residents and to remain a solvent business, there are limits on the number of Medicaid residents any assisted living facility can serve."

Assisted Living Concepts statement

 

All Things Considered · A nationwide chain of assisted living facilities promised elderly residents that if money ran out, they could pay for services with Medicaid. A change in policy by the company, Assisted Living Concepts, means Medicaid is no longer accepted and those who cannot pay are being evicted.

Older people often say one of their biggest fears is to wind up in a nursing home. That is one reason the assisted living industry has boomed. It offers a comfortable alternative, where people get to live in their own private apartments and leave the cooking and cleaning to the staff. But assisted living is expensive. And when people run out of money, there are few government rules to protect them.

Evicted At Age 99

Cordelia Robertson turned 99 in May. Two days later, she got the eviction notice.

Her son, Gene Robertson, says even though his mother is confused and doesn't understand what's going on, she would be devastated if she had to leave the home outside Seattle she has lived in for nearly 10 years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93260987