Four stories in the news at 4 o’clock. Simple, huh?

1. A story from The Jakarta Post picked up by AFP reports that “Indonesia is seeking access to some 72 migrant workers who have been kept at US military camps in Iraq despite the expiry of their employment contracts… The cooks, technicians and cleaners served 17-month contracts in the camps but have been there for more than 20 months” and “Indonesian officials had been seeking access to the workers for more than three months through US embassies”. “US officials initially denied the workers were being kept beyond their contracts”. Teguh Wardoyo, the foreign ministry’s director for the protection of Indonesian, said “the US military authorities are dependent on our workers and are afraid they won’t come back”.

2. While the ice is disappearing at a catastrophic rate, “polar bears – the very symbol of the Arctic’s looming environmental disaster – are crashing towards extinction as a result of global warming, the US government has found.” The Independent reports more on the appalling fate of the polar bear, symbol of the Arctic. “Campaigners know that climate change and pollution are the biggest threats to polar bear survival, but believe that stopping sports hunting is symbolically important… ¶ American hunters exploit a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows them to get licences to import polar bear trophies from Canada. Some 953 have been granted or applied for since 1994. [Democratic] Senator [John] Kerry is now co-sponsoring with Republican Senator Olympia Snowe a proposed Polar Bear Protection Act in the US Senate that would stop the skins being imported”. The Observer reports that thanks to climate change now one in four mammals under threat and “most dramatically” of all are the polar bears.

3. McClatchy Newspapers report, as Brazil’s rain forest burns down, planet heats up. “As vast tracts of rain forest are cleared, Brazil has become the world’s fourth-largest producer of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, after the United States, China and Indonesia… ¶ And while about three-quarters of the greenhouse gases emitted around the world come from power plants, transportation and industrial activity, more than 70 percent of Brazil’s emissions comes from deforestation. ¶ Burning and cutting the forest releases hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that the vegetation had trapped.”

4. The National Science Foundation has informed the the Arecibo Observatory, the largest and most sensitive radio telescope on Earth, that it must shutdown unless it can find at least $4 million dollars to keep it running. A story in the Washington Post, Radio Telescope And Its Budget Hang in the Balance, has the details. The observatory, located in Puerto Rico, “is the only facility on the planet able to track asteroids with enough precision to tell which ones might plow into Earth — a disaster that could cause as many as a billion deaths and that experts say is preventable with enough warning.”

One more story below the fold…

5. According to the Times of India, “In a country where the concept of reincarnation is as old as life itself, it isn’t surprising that past life regression therapy (PLRT) has become the hottest treatment for upwardly mobile Indians demanding answers to all their life’s problems.”

So, what else is happening?

If you want to be knowledgeable about what goes on in Israel you have to read websites like Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Forward, ynet and JTC everyday because you will not get a full picture from American newspapers or network & cable news. When I was writing diaries for daily kos, I read everyone and then some. For those of you that really care about Israel, I can’t imagine why you would not want to know the facts on the ground and keep informed.

Usually reading these papers are enough to get the picture. Sometimes I go to papers like Palestinian Chronicle or al jazeer, but I find plenty of stories just from the Israeli papers

They are obviously writing for an English speaking audience, so why not stay informed and see what is being Done in Our Name. They use our bombs paid for by American tax dollars. 30 billion plus in the next ten years. That does not include loan guarantees and non-profit donations from Americans.

I could see, people partial to Israel getting underwear in a bunch if all I wrote about were news articles from B’Tslem, Peace Now or Palestinian Chronicle, but I rarely quote them.

I also get accused of only writing about the “bad” things Israel does, I believe the term is “Israel sucks diaries”. Let me explain how I pick stories to include. Each action by a Palestinian or an Israeli either brings them closer to peace or provokes the other to do something in retaliation. After reading Israeli newspapers for close to over two years….I see a pattern. Israel provokes, Palestine responds. Obviously, this is my opinion. I firmly believe there will be peace when Israel wants peace….and not a day sooner. Billions pumped onto the Israelis economy because of the continuing wars just might act as a deterrent to peace. Don’t you think?

I don’t see the actions of either one in a vacuum. For example, last year before the kidnapping of the soldier by Gaza militants happened, a family was murdered on a beach. The kidnapping of the IDF soldier was in retaliation to the massacre of the Palestinian family on a Gaza beach. There was a time that Gazans could not enjoy their beaches because they were controlled by IDF forces and settlers. So finally Palestinians could go to their beach (after the settlements pulled out) and enjoy a picnic. But an Israel gunboat decided to join the party.

Also, just before the soldier was taken did you know a Palestinian doctor and his teenaged son were kidnapped with no charges given? See a pattern?

Just like in the states, the Israeli military has extremist elements in it.  Right-winged proponents in our military….pro-settlements proponents in the IDF. To ignore the issue will not make it go away.

Last week qassams fell in Sderot. And 5 Palestinian children were shot dead.

Funding one side, and enabling the other has brought us no closer to peace.

Very timely article, even Israeli Jews are intimidated:

Ha’aretz, Israel’s Liberal Beacon

In Israel, spirited debate was once a cultural imperative. Now it is a rare, if precious, resource, as is Ha’aretz and its emphatic liberal consciousness. Though Palestinian suicide bombers and Hezbollah rocket attacks have all but muted Israel’s high-decibel, hydra-headed politics, there is Ha’aretz, arousing and provoking with its pro-peace apostasy. Not only does the paper challenge its readers; it makes money doing it. The depth, passion and wit of its reporting recalls the best of the long-extinguished Washington Star or Britain’s once-sassy Independent. The paper routinely scoops its larger rivals, the tabloids Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv, particularly when it comes to US-Israeli relations, and it is the closest thing the Middle East has to an indispensable read. (It is also the only major Israeli daily with an editorial page; in June Yediot Ahronot dropped its editorial section and, like Ma’ariv, now restricts itself to signed opinion pieces.)

Ha’aretz’s opposition to Israel’s most controversial policies–the occupation of the West Bank and the incarceration of Gaza behind a fortified wall, the systematic discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizenry, last year’s war in Lebanon–makes it a life raft for anyone who despairs of the Jewish state’s rightward lurch but who is too afraid to criticize it openly for fear of being tarred as an anti-Semite, an appeaser of terrorists or a self-hating Jew.

“Israel is in a coma,” says Ha’aretz senior writer Gideon Levy, bête noire of Ha’aretz critics and patron saint to its most loyal readers for his relentless campaign against the occupation. “There was a time when you’d ask two Israelis a question and you’d get three opinions. Now you get only one.”

Like museum curators who deny a national treasure to a marauding foe, Landau and his staff preserve Israel’s tradition of dissent from the demagogues of our Age of Fear. When Ha’aretz’s coverage of seismic events has triggered a wave of subscription cancellations–most notably for its empathetic reports of Palestinian suffering in the early days of the second intifada and its condemnation of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last year–publisher Amos Schocken has struck back with defiant editorials. When American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were slandered last year for their article in The London Review of Books, which alleged a pernicious influence over US Middle East policy by the so-called Israel lobby, Ha’aretz ran an editorial that condemned the “McCarthyite policing of academia” as “deeply un-Jewish.” Last September, when violent clashes erupted between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza, auguring the climactic split that would come in June, Ha’aretz correspondent Amira Hass ruled them the inevitable result of “the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.'”

Reportage like that regularly places Ha’aretz and its correspondents–several of whom have their own columns on the opinion page–in the cross-hairs of conservative pro-Israel groups as well as ordinary Israelis and members of the Jewish Diaspora.

The whole article is worth reading:
http://www.thenation…

Further daily readings:

http://www.haaretz.c…

http://www.ynetnews….

http://www.jta.org/c…

http://www.jpost.com…

http://www.palestine…

http://www.middle-ea…

http://english.aljaz…

http://www.khaleejti…

http://uruknet.info/…

http://www.menewslin…

http://www.atimes.co…

http://www.btselem.o…

http://www.palsolida…

http://www.pchrgaza….

http://www.peacenow….

Every time Osama bin Laden’s vile visage reappears on America’s television screens, the pundits hyperventilate with excited anticipation of the political benefits for Bush. John Kerry blames his 2004 defeat on bin Laden’s sudden reappearance, on tape, in the days before the election. The calcified conventional wisdom persists that when Americans are reminded of bin Laden and terrorism, they quiver in fear and cower for the cover of their big bad Republican protectors. This is, of course, at best, absurd. In 2004, some right wing shrillmongers even insisted that bin Laden was openly hoping for a Kerry victory. That exact presumptive political calculus actually explains bin Laden’s true motives.

When Bush needs a boost, bin Laden is there to lend a hand. Bin Laden is no fool, and he understands the foolishness of the American media. He understands that they will comply with his true desire, which is to bolster Bush and to help facilitate the continuance of Bush’s national security policies. Unlike the idiots in the American punditocracy, bin Laden is mockingly confident that whatever Bush does will be to bin Laden’s benefit. Never in American history has an American administration’s ineptitude so consistenly benefited America’s enemies.

Once again, because they need be continually explicated, these are the facts:

The Bush Administration’s incompetence and negligence allowed the September 11 terrorist attacks to happen

Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and the National Security Council’s counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke warned Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and Stephen Hadley in January 2001 that: “You’re going to spend more time during your four years on terrorism generally and al-Qaida specifically than any issue.” They were ignored.

Clarke later testified that “the administration did not consider terrorism an urgent priority before the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite his repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden’s terror network.

Although Predator drones spotted bin Laden at least three times in 2000, Bush did not fly them over Afghanistan for the first eight months of his presidency.

The Bush Administration ignored the two and a half year Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century’s warnings about terrorism, choosing, instead, to conduct their own study.

Neither Bush nor Cheney made good on an announced plan to study the consequences of a domestic attack.

Obsessed with missile defense, the Bush Administration thought it was wrong to even focus on Osama bin Laden.

Throughout the summer of 2001, Tenet, Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack.

In July, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet warned Rice “that ‘the system was blinking red,’ meaning that there could be ‘multiple, simultaneous’ al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. interests in the coming weeks or months.

On August 6, 2001, Bush received a Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.”

Bush’s response to his CIA briefer was: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

Meanwhile, Don Rumsfeld was vetoing a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism.

Not to be outdone, just a day before the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft turned down “F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators.”; instead, he “proposed cuts in 14 programs. One proposed $65 million cut was for a program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants for equipment, including radios and decontamination suits and training to localities for counterterrorism preparedness.”

The Bush Administration’s incompetence and negligence allowed Al Qaeda and the Taliban to get away with it, and because of that, both groups are now growing stronger and more dangerous.

Bush Administration incompetence allowed bin Laden to get away, when he could have been caught or killed, at the battle of Tora Bora.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are growing stronger.

They’re also growing stronger in nuclear armed Pakistan, threatening to overrun the government.

Al Qaeda has also regrouped, and is growing stronger in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A recent assessment by the National Counterterrorism Center, was even titled “‘Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West.”

The failure is so complete that both Afghanistan and Pakistan are now having to negotiate reconciliation with the Taliban

The Iraq War is bin Laden’s best propaganda tool.

It’s spawning a new generation of terrorists.

Terrorism is on the rise, all around the world.

Our detention camps in Iraq are breeding grounds for new terrorists.

The corporate media will continue to spin lies, and the Democrats will continue to misunderstand how to reframe the discussion. We need to continually broadcast the truth, and to teach our Party leaders how to explain themselves. The political stereotypes could not be more backwards, and this false framing is not only politically damaging, but a legitimate threat to our national security.

Bin Laden is back because he wants to help Bush perpetuate the endless war. Bin Laden is back because he knows  that Bush’s Iraq disaster is the best thing that ever happened to him. Bin Laden is back because he fears that, at some point, the American people and the American Congress might come to their senses and demand an end to the war that serves bin Laden so well.

It’s time for Congress to stand up to bin Laden. It’s time for Congress to stand up to Bush. It’s time for Congress to stand up for America, and for the world. It begins be reframing the debate. We all need to keep explaining it. We need every Democrat who appears on television or radio to reduce the discussion to the most simple, the most honest, and the most devastating sound bite: Bin Laden’s back, and Bush is to blame!

The facts speak for themselves: Bin Laden’s back, and Bush is to blame!

You know, I only have so much material. To be entertaining that is. You know how I found this out? Babysitting my nephew. When he was around 3-years-old. A three-year-old knows everything and everything they know is correct. Did you know that? It’s true.

But I am limited and finite. And so was my ability to sing songs, play with blocks, talk funny, and make up stories. It was humbling, I have to admit, to know I could only go toe-to-toe with a toddler for about an hour and a half… at most.

The kid did teach me some things, though. He helped me to forget being a grown up when I was with him. He helped me to remember lots of kid stuff in general… songs i used to sing and books i used to love. And he gave me something hard to explain: the understanding that giving is a completing act.

Love that kid and his brother… the baby of our family will be my next story… what are your babysitting stories???

here he is:go ahead, talk, play, and be excellent to one another…

btw, did you know that Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts? is that true? can anyone verify that?

what was your favorite toy growing up, anyway? we had a sand pile that was turned out as the USS Enterprise or we made it into a whole town, with mountain roads, rock houses, twig trees…loved the sand pile.

also a big game player… any board game and loved chess, but very impatient player and always my downfall.

okay, y’all, i’ll check in on you later.

talk… play… be excellent to one another

I have changed exactly 2 settings tonight.

I’ve changed the Blox headers to OTB Maroon.

This echos the maroon in the eyes

I’ve changed the blockquote background to a very light yellow, hopefully echoing the gold of the Buddha while evoking our Revolutionary Blue and Patriot Buff.

It’s very contrasty, but I can hear the fifes and drums marching.

We could maybe go a little golder.