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Excuse me--

howl time again

by rubber hose

The barack obama campaign site is designed to be like an online community. anyone can come by, create an account and start a blog there. so a guy named brother nathanael kapner sets up an account at barackobama.com and writes an inflammatory post about the jewish lobby. a couple of hours later, the obama campaign notices and deletes the post. but not before the rightwing blogosphere latches onto the post and goes nuts about it.

like all howls what will soon be lost is the howler's actual point. do they believe it reveals obama's actual views? (if so why did the campaign delete the post?) brother kapner is not affiliated with the campaign in any way. he's just a guy who used the open source nature of the obama site to write something there that the campaign publicly disavows. kapner is not even an obama supporter; check out this anti-obama rant that kapner wrote just a few days ago.

it seems pretty obvious that kapner doesn't like obama and put up the post on the obama campaign site just to embarrass him. but obvious stuff like that won't get in the way of the dim lights of right blogistan in the midsts of a good howl. the only real question is whether this idiocy gets picked up by the wider world.

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Parties split over teen voting bill

By Jim Sanders - jsanders@sacbee.com

Voting is as American as mom and apple pie ? the more votes cast, the better for democracy, right?

Not necessarily.

Efforts to gradually increase California's pool of voters by targeting young teenagers are splitting the Capitol along party lines.

Democrats support, Republicans oppose.

"There's red apple pie and blue apple pie," quipped John J. Pitney, government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

The issue came to a head recently with Assembly Bill 1819, which would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote, qualifying them automatically when they reach 18.

Students learn about U.S. government, history and economics in high school, so it's a perfect time to seek their commitment to active participation in elections, supporters say.

"It's an excellent complement to teaching the importance of citizen involvement," said Assemblyman Curren Price, the Inglewood Democrat who proposed the measure.

The bill passed the Assembly and was sent to the Senate last month on a party-line vote, 45-31, with no GOP support.

Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, criticized the bill as a Democratic power play.

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New Republican Energy Czar: Hitler

by Kagro X

Debating H.R. 2632, establishing the Sabinoso Wilderness Area in San Miguel County, NM, the Republicans actually manage to violate Godwin's law -- in reverse, no less! -- on a suspension bill.

The bill, itself a relatively non-controversial measure designating, as the name implies, a new federal wilderness area in New Mexico, is nominally opposed by Republicans looking to capitalize on the quiet period being spent on suspension bills today and tomorrow to harp on rising gas prices, something they do without any shame whatsoever, and as though they had no hand in it by voting to blow up the world's largest oil-producing region in the hopes that new consumer markets peace (or something) would spontaneously develop in its place.

Check out Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), pleading for what passes for sanity among Republicans:

I think the people that elect us deserve to know what our plan is. The Republican side has come out with a plan. They say, "Look, we're gonna take advantage of our natural resources. We're gonna take advantage of the things that we were God-given in this land. We're gonna take advantage of our oil reserves, of our natural gas, of our abundance of coal." We're gonna take advantage of those things, and we're gonna use the technology that we've been so good about coming up with. We're gonna take and convert this shale to oil, which Hitler did in the late '20s. In the late '20s. And we don't think that we can do that today?

Yes, that's a Republican Member of the United States Congress on the floor of the House of Representatives, speaking approvingly of Adolf Hitler and what may or may not have actually been his energy policy.

As though anybody gives a shit what Hitler's energy policy was.

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Iranian leader: US military is Iraq's top problem

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's supreme leader told the visiting Iraqi prime minister Monday that the U.S. military presence is the main cause of Iraq's problems, according to Iranian state television, making clear his opposition to a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's talks with Iranian leaders during his three-day visit here have focused on the proposed security agreement that Iran fears will keep the American military in neighboring Iraq for years.

Al-Maliki has tried to push Iranian leaders to back off their fierce opposition to the proposed pact, promising that Iraq will not be a launching pad for any attack on Iran.

But the agreement has become a point of contention as Baghdad tries to balance its close ties to rivals Washington and Tehran.

Iran, which has repeatedly said the way to end instability in Iraq is for U.S. forces to withdraw, believes the proposed pact could lead to permanent U.S bases on its doorstep amid fears of an eventual American attack.

"Occupiers who interfere in Iraq's affairs through their military and security might ... are the main problems," Iran's state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying Monday.

Khamenei said Iraqis have to "think of a solution to free" themselves from the U.S. military. Though he did not explicitly mention the security agreement, he said Iraqis — not Americans — must decide the fate of their country.

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When cousins are two of a kind

Media Conference: The Freedom That Makes Freedom Possible

by Bennett Gordon

"As journalism goes, so goes democracy," renowned PBS host Bill Moyers told the crowd at the National Conference for Media Reform. And right now, journalism is in trouble. In his serious and eloquent style, Moyers warned the crowd of the "mighty armada of power and influence" that threatens the media and democracy today—propagating junk news that dominates the national discussion and forces out more legitimate and competing storylines. 

There is one central tenet that runs through the media reform movement, according to Moyers: Everyone here sees media consolidation as a "corrosive force." As the wall between journalism and advertising is broken down by businesses pushing profit over public good, honest information and accountability in this country literally disappears. He called out the "myths of the marketplace," including the idea that private systems will provide for the public good, and the business mantra that public interest is what the public is interested in.

Moyers effortlessly drew connections from the complicity of the media in the war in Iraq to the near-constant attacks on the environment, from the "political marionettes" in Washington, D.C., to the soaring credit card debt and inequality in America today. The way to combat these problems is with media reform, and the only way reform the media is with a healthy and popular movement.

"In numbers is strength, and in strength is success," Moyers told the crowd of journalists and activists, urging them to support a diversity of voices from all communities. He called on journalists and activists to "be vigilant" and "show courage," because their job is literally to protect "the freedom that makes all other freedom possible."

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Fear, disillusion and despair: notes from a divided land as peace slips away

Six years after the fall of the Taliban, Nato claims the war is being won. But as Peter Beaumont discovered in his journey across the country, the West is in danger of losing the peace as millions suffer the fallout from social and economic collapse.

by Peter Beaumont

Unemployed day labourers gather in kabul in the hope of getting work. Photograph: Antonio Olmos

In a brickmakers' hut at the edge of Afghanistan's capital Kabul, Samiullah, his only name, washes his face and hands. They are black from feeding the moori - the glowing openings in the kiln's surface - with coal. The hut is a bare room shared by four men. Musafer they are called: single men who live together. There is bedding and phone numbers are scratched into the wall. A blackened kettle has been cooked on one of the red-hot vents.

Samiullah is 23. His family farm is in the village of Sohrabi, an hour's drive, he says, from Kabul. Samiullah has not seen it or his family recently. They are living in Peshawar in Pakistan. 'In Afghanistan everything is in chaos,' says Samiullah. 'Remember what happened in Kabul,' he says, referring to an attempt to kill President Hamid Karzai. 'So my home is in Peshawar. I come here and work for three or four months, then I go home again. I'll go in two weeks to give them money. Then I'll be back.'

Afghanistan's problems spring from 'lies and promises that were not kept. There is no security. Everything is in disorder. And the poor are no better off than they were before. They have to take out loans that they cannot return.

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'Willie Horton' ad creator takes on Obama

On a website he calls ExposeObama.com, Floyd G. Brown, the producer of the "Willie Horton" ad that helped defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988, is preparing an encore.

Brown is raising money for a series of ads that he says will show Barack Obama to be out of touch on an issue of fundamental concern to voters: violent crime. One spot already on the Internet attacks the presumptive Democratic nominee for opposing a bill while he was an Illinois legislator that would have extended the death penalty to gang-related murders.

"When the time came to get tough, Obama chose to be weak. . . . Can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?" the video asks.

Though crime has taken a back seat in the presidential race to the war in Iraq and the economy, some Republicans think that Obama is vulnerable on this issue and hope to inject it into the campaign.

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Obama could set an earthquake under the established electoral map

He has roused black and young voters as never before, but he has to maintain the rest of the Democratic base

by Gary Younge

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has a compelling personal and political biography. One of eight children, he could not read until he was 10, left school soon after and by the age of 12 was working as a shoeshine boy. Lula was instrumental in setting up his own leftwing political party, the Workers party, risked jail as a trade union organiser during the dictatorship and ran for president three times before he was finally successful in 2002, capturing the imagination and hopes of many Brazilians - albeit with a vastly watered-down programme.

Having finally won the presidency, a moment many of his supporters thought would never happen, he was then cruelly mugged. The invisible hand of the market grabbed him on his way to the inauguration and shook what was left of the socialism out of him. In the three months between his winning the vote and being sworn in, the nation's currency plummeted by 30%, $6bn in hot money had left the country, and some agencies had given Brazil the highest debt-risk ratings in the world.

"We are in government but not in power," said Lula's close aide, Dominican friar Frei Betto. "Power today is global power, the power of the big companies, the power of financial capital."

In any democracy the link between the electoral and the political is essential but not inextricable. Between the trappings of democracy and the trials of legislating, there is power. The balance, distribution and strategic exercise of it shapes the relationship between expectations and possibility, marking the distinction between being the will of the people and the work of government.

It is the very tension that lies at the heart of Barack Obama's candidacy and the energy it has unleashed.

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Why Are We Giving Nuke Tech to the Saudis?

[Jonathan Adler, June 10, 2008 at 6:26am] Trackbacks

Representative Ed Markey wants to know -- and so do I (though I suspect he has just a bit more pull).

Last month, while the American people were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more, the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.

Not only do the Saudis have no need for nuclear power, it seems quite unwise to feed another Middle Eastern state's nuclear ambitions. But, hey, they're our friends, right?

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Brother Can You Spare a Couple Billion?

The War Over the War (cont.)

What the G.I. Bill Debate Is Really About.

By Reihan Salam

 

A relatively minor battle currently being fought in the Congress over G.I. educational benefits dominates the war over the war in Iraq.

 

There's the war in Iraq and then there is the war over the war in Iraq. The first is about gaining ground against the sectarian militias and terrorists who plague that country. The second is about storytelling.

Advocates of staying and fighting in Iraq are at a distinct disadvantage in the second war. The burden of the Iraq fighting falls on such a small number of military families that it is easy to portray the troops in the field as victims. This has proved an effective strategy for Virginia's junior senator, Jim Webb, a staunch opponent of the surge. Once seen as an irascible loose cannon, he has used his experience in the Pentagon -- he served as Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs and had a brief, controversial stint as secretary of the Navy -- to mount a disciplined attack on the Bush administration's personnel policy, what you might call the soft underbelly of the surge.

Politically speaking, advocates of withdrawal are in a bind. Though all depends on how the question is asked, a CNN poll conducted in late April found that only a third of Americans say they want all U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately. Another third want to withdraw some troops, and a fifth want troop levels to stay where they are. Despite the general unpopularity of the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan-esque calls for bugging out aren't popular.

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U.S. Planning Big New Prison In Afghanistan

The proposal for a new American prison in Afghanistan underscores the daunting scope and persistence of the detention problem, at a time when the administration continues to say it wants to close down Guantánamo.

By Tim Golden with Eric Schmitt

The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.

The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.

But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The proposal for a new American prison at Bagram underscores the daunting scope and persistence of the United States military's detention problem, at a time when Bush administration officials continue to say they want to close down the facility at Guantánamo Bay.

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The Unraveling

The Jihadist Revolt Against bin Laden

By Peter Bergen with Paul Cruickshank

Within a few minutes of Noman Benotman's arrival at the Kandahar guest house, Osama bin Laden came to welcome him. The journey from Kabul had been hard, 17 hours in a Toyota pickup truck bumping along what passed as the main highway to southern Afghanistan. It was the summer of 2000, and Benotman, then a leader of a group trying to overthrow the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, had been invited by bin Laden to a conference of jihadists from around the Arab world, the first of its kind since Al Qaeda had moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Benotman, the scion of an aristocratic family marginalized by Qaddafi, had known bin Laden from their days fighting the Afghan communist government in the early '90s, a period when Benotman established himself as a leader of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

The night of Benotman's arrival, bin Laden threw a lavish banquet in the main hall of his compound, an unusual extravagance for the frugal Al Qaeda leader. As bin Laden circulated, making small talk, large dishes of rice and platters of whole roasted lamb were served to some 200 jihadists, many of whom had come from around the Middle East. "It was one big reunification," Benotman recalls. "The leaders of most of the jihadist groups in the Arab world were there and almost everybody within Al Qaeda."

Bin Laden was trying to win over other militant groups to the global jihad he had announced against the United States in 1998. Over the next five days, bin Laden and his top aides, including Ayman Al Zawahiri, met with a dozen or so jihadist leaders. They sat on the floor in a circle with large cushions arrayed around them to discuss the future of their movement. "This was a big strategy meeting," Benotman told one of us late last year, in his first account of the meeting to a reporter. "We talked about everything, where are we going, what are the lessons of the past twenty years."

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Crystal Skulls Fuel Controversy, Fascination

By Richard A. Lovett and Scot Hoffman

Crystal skulls are not uncommon or terribly mysterious. Thousands are produced every year in Brazil, China, and Germany. But there are a handful of these rather macabre objects that have fueled intense interest and controversy among archaeologists, scientists, spiritualists, and museum officials for more than a century.

Counterfeit crystal skull in the British Museum

Photograph by AFP/Getty Images

There are perhaps a dozen of these rare crystal skulls in private and public collections. Some are crystal clear, others of smoky or colored quartz. Some are actual human size and of very fine detail, while others are smaller and less refined. All are believed to originate from Mexico and Central America.

Many believe these skulls were carved thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago by an ancient Mesoamerican civilization. Others think they may be relics from the legendary island of Atlantis or proof that extraterrestrials visited the Aztec sometime before the Spanish conquest.

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headlines

24 Hour Animal and Pest Control. Look at all the animals and pests you've got! How many baby traps do you put out a day?

Hey, here's a deal! "Tombstone: Standard gray, a good buy for someone named Grady."

"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds." Look, we want people to know we don't have any money!!

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Kucinich presents Bush impeachment articles

by David Edwards and Mike Sheehan

An Ohio Democratic lawmaker and former presidential candidate has presented articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush to Congress.

Thirty-five articles were presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives late Monday evening, airing live on C-SPAN.

"The House is not in order," said Kucinich to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), upon which Pelosi pounded her gavel.

"Resolved," Kucinich then began, "that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. ...

"In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power..."

The first article Kucinich presented, and many that followed, regarded the war in Iraq: "Article 1 - Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq."

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David Byrne: Playing the Building

Posted by Xeni Jardin, June 10, 2008 6:30 AM | permalink

In today's edition of Boing Boing tv, music legend David Byrne transforms an entire NYC building into a giant musical instrument, and Xeni joins him inside for a BBtv tour.

Playing the Building is Byrne's latest sonic innovation, and morphs the century-old Battery Maritime Building into a clanging, vibrating sound sculpture. In this installation, the former Talking Heads co-founder blurs the boundaries between the creators and consumers of culture. He explains:

Devices [have been] attached to the building's structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Byrne sees music as deeply embedded within the natural sounds that surround us every day, and believes "anyone can be a writer, artist, or musician if they want to." Playing the Building continues through August 10, 2008 at 10 South Street, New York, NY; open every Friday through Sunday, noon - 6pm. Admission is free of charge.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

(Photos used in this episode are by Clayton Cubitt. Special thanks to Danielle Spencer, and Jason Wishnow).