This is an Open Thread: No Secrets

USA

The Pakistan Mess

Published: November 6, 2007

By imposing martial law, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has pushed nuclear-armed Pakistan further along a perilous course and underscored the failure of President Bush’s policy toward a key ally in the war on terrorism. The events should not have come as a surprise to administration officials. This is what you get when policy is centered slavishly on a single, autocratic ruler rather than more broadly on his country.

Critics Cite Red Tape in Rebuilding of Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS – If rebuilding anything in this storm-scarred place could possibly qualify as simple, surely it would be the administration building in City Park.

The two-story structure, built in 1992, does not have any of the features that can complicate restoring public buildings. No special historic, environmental, cultural or political significance. No history of poor maintenance or other damage (aside from the five feet of water that filled it after the levees failed). No need to be merged, moved or reimagined in response to changes after Hurricane Katrina

CPSC’s Ethics-Review Process For Travel Criticized by Experts

By Elizabeth Williamson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page A03

Top officials at the Consumer Product Safety Commission repeatedly took costly trips at industry expense after internal reviews that ethics experts say were weak and superficial, including one instance in which the agency’s ethics official traveled with the commission chairman as a guest of a regulated industry.

In several cases, the agency made travel bookings before the trips were approved. For another industry-financed trip detailed in internal agency documents, written legal approval came after the trip.

Maneuver gave Bush a conservative rights panel

WASHINGTON – The US Commission on Civil Rights, the nation’s 50-year-old watchdog for racism and discrimination, has become a critic of school desegregation efforts and affirmative action ever since the Bush administration used a controversial maneuver to put the agency under conservative control.

Democrats say the move to create a conservative majority on the eight-member panel violated the spirit of a law requiring that no more than half the commission be of one party. Critics say Bush in effect installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents.

Middle Eaast

Abbas Sees Palestinian State Soon Achievable

Leader Says Success Possible in Bush Term

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 6, 2007; Page A14

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 5 — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that he believes the path to peace with Israel is now clear and that a Palestinian state can be achieved before the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.

Echoing a statement made Sunday night by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Abbas said that an upcoming peace conference in Annapolis would mark the start of serious negotiations over core issues that have posed insurmountable obstacles for decades — the status of Jerusalem, the borders of Israel and Palestine, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the rights claimed by Palestinian refugees who left or were forced from their homes when the state of Israel was established.

2.3 million Iraqis reported displaced

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s displaced population has grown to 2.3 million people, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society said Monday on the heels of a warning by another humanitarian aid group that border tensions are exacerbating the plight of those who fled north to escape sectarian violence.

The Red Crescent report says an additional 67,000 families left their homes in September, continuing a pattern that has multiplied the number of displaced people more than fivefold this year.

About two-thirds of the total are younger than 12, the Red Crescent said.

Asia

Top judge attacks Musharraf rule

Pakistan’s sacked chief justice has called for the people to “rise up” and restore the constitution.

In a telephone address to lawyers in Islamabad, Iftikhar Chaudhry criticised President Pervez Musharraf, who imposed a state of emergency on Saturday.

He said the constitution had been “ripped to shreds” by Gen Musharraf and added it was now “time for sacrifices”.

US President George W Bush has called on Gen Musharraf to end the emergency and restore democratic civilian rule.

Korean front-runner faces hurdles

Presidential contender Lee Myung-bak could be hit with an inquiry in a fraud case as well as a formidable opponent’s late entry into the race.

By Bruce Wallace, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 6, 2007

SEOUL — Under normal circumstances, South Korean presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak’s overwhelming lead in the polls would leave him coasting to victory in next month’s election, savoring the final weeks of the campaign like a golfer strolling up the 18th fairway with a four-shot lead.

Instead, he sees nothing but land mines on the path to power, from a threatened late entry of a heavyweight challenger to the possibility that he may soon be investigated in a financial fraud case.

Europe

Italian police in dawn raids targeting terror cells

ROME (AFP) – Italian police launched dawn raids in Milan on Tuesday targeting about 20 people suspected of recruiting suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ANSA news agency reported.

The anti-terrorist operation ordered by a Milan court was also under way in France, Britain and Portugal, according to the Italian all-news channel Sky-TG24.

The raids uncovered remote electronic detonators and poisons, as well as instructions on guerrilla warfare techniques, ANSA said.

Britons arrested as police smash global paedophile ring that abused to order

A paedophile ring that filmed tailor-made attacks for individual abusers has been broken by police in 28 countries. Officers arrested 93 people in connection with the case, about half of whom were living in Britain, and rescued 23 victims, all girls.

Police gave warning that both numbers would rise in the next few months. Officers seized thousands of computers, videos and photographs and revealed that they found 1.5 million sexually explicit video and picture files on one computer system alone.

Latin America

Mexicans missing after flood, landslide

OSTUACAN, Mexico – Survivors saw relatives swept away by huge waves or buried by debris after a landslide hit a rain-swollen river, triggering what officials called a “mini-tsunami” that wiped a hamlet off the map and left at least 16 people missing.

Residents of San Juan Grijalva told The Associated Press on Monday they had been awakened by a rumbling roar and the sound of rocks rolling down from surrounding mountaintops on Sunday night, almost a week after massive flooding sent rivers over their banks in the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and neighboring Tabasco.

Drug traffickers dive in

CALI, COLOMBIA — It was on a routine patrol that the Colombian coast guard stumbled upon an eerie outpost amid the mangroves: a mini-shipyard where suspected drug traffickers were building submarines.

Perched on a makeshift wooden dry dock late last month were two 55-foot-long fiberglass vessels, one ready for launch, the other about 70% complete. Each was outfitted with a 350-horsepower Cummins diesel engine and enough fuel capacity to reach the coast of Central America or Mexico, hundreds of miles to the north.

Africa

Mbeki admits he is still Aids dissident six years on

President Thabo Mbeki remains an “Aids dissident” who has told a biographer that he regrets bowing to pressure from his cabinet to “withdraw from the debate” over the disease ravaging South Africa.

According to a long-awaited biography by Mark Gevisser, the president feels aggrieved that he was deflected from continuing to question the causes of the epidemic by colleagues who believed the country’s reputation was being damaged by his views on Aids.

Police blamed over deaths of 450 Kenyans

Malkhadir Muhumed in Nairobi

Tuesday November 6, 2007

The Guardian

More than 450 young Kenyan men have been killed execution-style in the past five months, a state-funded national human rights group said yesterday. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights linked the slayings to a war between police and a violent street gang accused of a string of beheadings and fatal shootings earlier this year.

The commission’s preliminary report stopped short of directly blaming the police, but said the force was linked by “circumstantial evidence”. It accused the police of ignoring tip-offs and refusing to collect bodies, and said the commission’s inquiries had been met by “obfuscation, stonewalling and outright denial”.

Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

In 1992 I learned to speak my truths.  They were tentative at first, hardly more than notes about the reality of my life.  Later some of them became poems.  Still later, more poems were added to add the view of hindsight.  I’ve tried to arrange them into a cohesive whole.  Maybe it works.  Maybe it has more meaning this way.

Cyber-poetry about an earlier time.  The colors are chosen in honor of oldendays.

A Transition through Poetry XII

Art Link Bits and Bytes E-spacing There is no sound but the clickety-clack of fingers on the keyboard There are no sights but the electronically formed letters on the screen But there are people in my computer Riding the crest of the technological future And I have joined them We have stripped ourselves down to the thoughts we express Mind meeting mind with no distractions The carefully chosen phrase can be undone By the carelessly tossed word A misplaced comma may cost a friendship We become our vocabulary and our usage of it Our emotions are expressed only through punctuation Yet we bare our souls to each other And form relationships deeper than those in the real world Because we must always trust each other Finland, Australia, South Africa and Canada Maine, Virginia, New Hampshire and Kansas Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco and Boston I have trod on your virtual streets today And visited with some of your most caring inhabitants We embrace each other thought to thought And love each other’s wisdom We share our joys and pain And support each other through our sorrows and triumphs This is life in e-space –Robyn Elaine Serven –June, 1993

I know you have talent.  What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent.  I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook.  🙂 

Let your talent bloom.  You can share it here.  Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.

Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making?  And be excellent to one another!

So, yesterday, Republican Ron Paul raised $4.07 million, in a Guy Fawkes Day fundraising stunt.  That is more money than any other Republican has raised in a single day, although it falls short of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s biggest single day take.

Dr. Paul is a candidate whose campaign has caused no shortage of consternation, both among us here on the political left, as well as in Republican circles.  Dr. Paul is, after all, a nut.  He’s an unapologetic isolationist, a goldbug, a religious fundamentalist, and a possible to probable racist.  He polls at under 5% in nearly every poll.

So why is this person who most Americans had never heard of a year ago outraising nearly all Republican contenders and most Democrats, without any support from major lobbys or corporations, and drawing adoring crowds nearly everywhere he goes?

I have a theory.  It is because no matter how crazy Dr. Paul’s beliefs are, he is not in the least bit ashamed to have them.  And because Dr. Paul’s supporters aren’t in the least bit ashamed to be supporting Dr. Paul.

This shouldn’t be that surprising.  After all, we know the polls on the American support for the war in Iraq.  And simple math tells us that lots of self-identified Republicans and conservatives oppose this war.  And it ought to be obvious to us that they have no place else to go.

No other Republican candidate even dares to suggest that we ought not attack Iran, much less withdraw from Iraq.  And no Democrat has made even a cursory effort to appeal to Republicans or Conservatives.  Part of that is the nature of the primary process; in most states, independents and Republicans don’t count, so who cares about their support?  But part of that is the fault of Democrats, including ourselves in no small part.  In our own arrogance after the 2006 elections, and our own strong desires to not only end the war in Iraq and have real government in the war against al-Qaeda, we have demanded and received candidates whose agendas are bold well beyond reversing the disasters of the last two terms of foreign and domestic security policy.  Indeed, our three front runners have all articulated detailed health plans, but not detailed troop withdrawal plans for their first term.

And here’s the thing: that is the smart thing for the three of them to be doing.  Because we have not risen up in outrage to deny Sen. Clinton, Sen. Edwards, or Sen. Obama our support.  We have not given four million dollars in a single day to Dennis Kucinich – hell, we’re removing Mike Gravel from the debates.  We’re willing to rationalize it as doing what it takes to be electable, or being worth it to elect a person of such character, or being scared off by the vicious media.  Because ending the war in Iraq is important, but not so important that we can give another Republican a Supreme Court nomination or put Roe at risk.

So right now, we’re really pissed at Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  We’re pissed because they are going to vote to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, despite the fact that the Democrats can block him without a single Republican joining them, or having to worry about Joe Leiberman jumping ship.  Their rationale is that this is the best Attorney General we can expect from this President.

The refrain is the same: Mukasey is the best we can get from this President; Clinton, Edwards and Obama are the best we can get from this Democratic Party.

Posit: we are getting exactly the kind of government from the Democrats in Congress as we have asked for, and as we deserve.