Month: April 2007

This is hatred. Set someone apart. Make them “other.” Make them less than human.

This is where it leads. This is what it looks like.

This is a lynching. This is a hate crime.

Warning: The images and video after the jump are disturbing and violent.

FALMOUTH, Trelawny – A cross-dreser was set upon and severely beaten by a mob in Falmouth’s Water Square yesterday morning.

Police who were called to the scene had to fire warning shots to disperse the stone-throwing, stick-wielding mob, which succeeded in tearing off the man’s black-and-white form-fitting blouse and jet black wig.



… The news of the man’s presence in the community spread rapidly and in a matter of minutes scores of angry residents converged on the scene and began to rain blows all over the cross-dresser’s body with sticks, stones and whatever weapon they could find.

“Where is the police station at?” the frightened man screamed.

During the melee, the wig the man was wearing fell off and wads of newspaper stuffed in a brasserie to lift the man’s chest dislodged, while a cosmetic kit containing lipsticks of varying colours was thrown from a bag he was carrying, much to the amusement of the large crowd who stood watching.

“B***y boy fe dead,” persons among the mob shouted.



The sentiments were echoed by the rest of the riled-up crowd.



“Falmouth no pet no b***y boy. We no want none a them bout here,” one woman yelled.

After the mob dispersed, the victim was whisked off in a police service vehicle, much to the disapproval of the crowd who rushed upon the vehicle demanding the man’s release.



… The man was admitted to hospital. However, a police spokesman said last night that a group of people, who wanted to beat the man on his release, were waiting outside the hospital, which, he said, could delay his release from the health facility.

This is a lynching. A black-on-black lynging. Some context.

Crossposted from The Republic of T

Meanwhile, the madness marches on:

On another subject, Bush said that he wanted Paul Wolfowitz to remain as president of the
World Bank.

“He ought to stay,” Bush said. Wolfowitz is being investigated for helping to arrange a contract to give a big salary increase to his female companion.

Bush cited Wolfowitz’s work in championing programs to end poverty throughout the world.

Carry on.

When a controversial study was released in The Lancet last October, suggesting that by that time some 655,000 people had died (over and above normal mortality rates) in Iraq since the war had started, Republican pundits went crazy.  That was more than 10 times any official estimate.  Even George Bush (who certainly studied statistical epidemiology at Yale) was quick to criticize the “poor methodology” of the Johns Hopkins team.

Now, in response to the real criticism of university professionals, the researchers are responding by releasing raw data to some–but not all–of their peers. The fire storm continues.
The authors of the study (lead by Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins) got their results by extrapolating from the results of door-to-door surveys, and validating some of those results by cross checking with death certificates. They employed local resident and trained them to take the surveys.

Critics like Michael Spagat, from Royal Holloway, University of London, suggests there is a bias in their methods, since the quick survey results may have relied on main street homes–more susceptible to IEDs and car bombs than back street or more rural settings. There is also the issue of some raw data being destroyed in the chaos of Baghdad. These factors have led some blogs on the right to join the chorus accusing the researchers of ginning up the numbers for political reasons:

As I pointed out in this post, the Lancet survey included only residents of urban areas, thus introducing significant bias into the results.  [Some critics] argue that the survey methodology also excludes many urban residents, making bias problems even worse.  The problem is what they call “main street bias”.

Now lead researcher Gilbert Burnham’s team is releasing some of the raw data stripped of information that might reveal identities–but only to groups that they consider “qualified.” They define that as those “with expertise in biostatistics and epidemiology…and ‘without publically stated views that would cause doubt about their objectivity in analyzing the data.'” [Quoted from Science, 316:20 April, 2007]

Spagat was not allowed access to the data, because the research team suggested he “would not meet the criteria by multiple measures.” The feud was featured prominently in this week’s Science.

Many people believe that the halls of scientific research are normally quite quiet and staid; not so with this epidemiological spat. Accusations have continued to go back and forth, fired by the vehemence of political fervor.  Without access to the original documents, or the ability to interview the brave employees who did the street surveys (for their own protection) the issue may never be truly resolved by scientific standards.

In the midst of the war of words, the essential message of the study seems to have been lost–the true death toll in Iraq is many times what the Bush administration is willing to admit. Neither have they discussed the growing number of refugees in Jordan, Syria and other nations where they have been admitted.

The situation parallels the political games being played with death rates and injury rates of American service persons in Iraq, where the distinction between a death that is “combat related” and one that is not seems to be which seat you are sitting in then an IED hits. (The backlog of over 600,000 potential combat-related injuries in the VA is another sign of ongoing effects to deceive.)

Does it really matter whether the number is 655,000 or 555,000? Any number that is an order of magnitude greater than (statistician) Bush will admit is a human tragedy beyond imagination.

I’ve been promising an article from my interview with ex-CIA intelligence officer, Richard Barlow, for months. RawStory published the first piece.

Barlow was the CIA’s key expert on Pakistan’s nuclear program – he engineered sting operations & arrests of key AQ Khan personnel. For his efforts, Barlow was retaliated against – he says that Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz & Hadley “viciously tried to destroy my life, personally & professionally… in truly extraordinary ways that no one had ever seen before or since—at least not until the Wilsons (Joe, Valerie) were victims of the same people years later.”

Barlow was recently featured in a BBC documentary about AQ Khan, “The Nuclear Walmart,” which highlights that the US government was fully aware of the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program, as well as Pakistan’s proliferation to countries like North Korea & Iran – and sat by quietly and did nothing.

Barlow argues that the military-industrial-complex is so powerful that it dwarfs serious national/global security concerns such as the spread of nuclear technology to America’s ‘enemies’: “They sold out the world for an F-16 sale.”

I’ve been promising an article from my interview with ex-CIA intelligence officer, Richard Barlow, for months now. RawStory published the first piece today.

Barlow was the CIA’s key expert on Pakistan’s nuclear program – he engineered sting operations and arrests of key AQ Khan personnel. For his efforts, Barlow was retaliated against – he says that Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and Hadley “viciously tried to destroy my life, personally and professionally… in truly extraordinary ways that no one had ever seen before or since—at least not until the Wilsons (Joe, Valerie) were victims of the same people years later.”

Barlow was recently featured in a BBC documentary about AQ Khan called “The Nuclear Walmart” which highlights that the US government was fully aware of the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program, as well as Pakistan’s proliferation to countries like North Korea and Iran – and sat by quietly and did nothing.

Barlow argues that the military-industrial-complex is so powerful that it dwarfs serious national/global security concerns such as the spread of nuclear technology to America’s ‘enemies’: “They sold out the world for an F-16 sale.”

***

In 1993, Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY) told Seymour Hersh “If what Barlow says is true, this would have been a major scandal of Iran-Contra proportions, and the officials involved would have had to resign.” We now know that Barlow was indeed telling the truth- but the officials involved – Cheney, Hadley, Wolfowitz and Libby didn’t resign – they’ve been running the country for the last six years.

From the article:

In the era of Ronald Reagan, intelligence officer Richard Barlow was an analyst for the CIA, monitoring Pakistan’s nuclear program. In 1989, he moved over to the Pentagon, where he worked for then-Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. Barlow lost that job when he raised objections to his bosses about senior Pentagon officials lying to Congress concerning Pakistan’s emerging nuclear program.

In an interview with RAW STORY conducted over several weeks, the onetime intelligence officer revealed new details about intelligence on Pakistan’s nuclear program—and efforts by the US to quash attempts to stop development. Barlow’s story also casts light on recent efforts by the current administration to keep information from Congress on Iraq and other matters.
[]
When Richard Barlow joined the CIA in 1985 as a counter-proliferation intelligence officer with particular expertise on Pakistan, he quickly realized that Pakistan was continuing to develop its nuclear program, and that some of its clandestine and illegal procurement activity was occurring within the US.

It didn’t take Barlow long to realize that US officials knew what Pakistan was doing. According to Barlow, individuals at the State Department later actively facilitated procurement, tipping off targets of sealed arrest warrants in undercover operations and illegally approving export licenses for restricted goods.
[]
Pakistan, Barlow said, had been breaking US nuclear export laws regularly since 1985, and the responsible individuals in the US intelligence and law enforcement communities knew it. Having just approved a multi-billion dollar aid package, Solarz and others in Congress—including Senator Larry Pressler, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee—were outraged to learn about Pakistan’s violations of their laws. Solarz was appalled that information had been hidden from Congress.

In contrast, those who had willfully misled Congress were horrified that Barlow had told the truth. They tried to undercut Barlow’s testimony but to no avail. Barlow’s classified testimony was unimpeachable.
[]
Barlow says he continued to be engaged in trying to arrest more Pakistani nuclear agents. He also encountered similar activity to before regarding lying to Congress about Pakistan’s nuclear program in order to keep aid flowing, but now there was a significant difference: The Afghan war was over, so there was no Cold War “justification” for continuing to shovel money at Pakistan. This time, he believes, it was simply about profit.

“They sold out the world for an F-16 sale,” Barlow says.

By then, Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons.

“They had nuclear weapons at the time, and we knew they did,” Barlow remarks. “The evidence was unbelievable. I can’t go into it—but on a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of intelligence evidence, it was a 10 or 11. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Barlow asserts that in 1988 and 1989, Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush illegally certified that Pakistan was free of nuclear weapons in order to keep funds flowing.
[]
In fact, US and foreign intelligence and news reports indicated that the Pakistanis had in fact modified their F-16’s for nuclear delivery and had been conducting training exercises where they practiced dropping nuclear weapons from the F-16s. Nonetheless, Barlow says, Pentagon officials lied to Congress under oath, saying that the planes couldn’t be used for nuclear purposes without a radical overhaul well beyond the industrial capabilities of Pakistan.

Barlow says he then learned that Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Hughes had delivered testimony willfully falsified by officials at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He realized that Hughes had lied to Solarz’ committee because earlier in 1989 he had prepared a comprehensive paper on this very issue for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

“All the top experts had looked at this question in detail for years, and it was a cold hard engineering question,” Barlow says. “There was no question about it—the jets could easily be made nuke-capable, and we knew that Pakistan had done just that.”

Barlow says he tried again to inform his bosses that the congressional testimony was false. He was effectively fired two days later.

Go read the rest.

It’d be remiss of me not to mention Sibel Edmonds, because, ya know, that’s what I do – but there are some eerie parallels with the Edmonds & Barlow cases – and both of them touch on the cases of Joe and Valerie Wilson.

From my interview with Mathieu Verboud, director of the film Kill The Messenger, about Sibel’s case (particularly the nuclear black market element):

Luke Ryland: What about the connection between Sibel Edmonds and Valerie Plame – what can you tell us about that?

Mathieu Verboud: Apart from the complexities of these matters, we have something wonderful here: a PATTERN! Richard Barlow knows too much about nuclear stuff. Hadley goes after him. Plame knows too much about nuclear stuff. Grossman and Hadley go after her. Edmonds knows too much about nuclear stuff. Did Grossman, as some believe, go after her? Well.. anything is possible.

Marc Grossman and Steve Hadley! With these two guys, we’re not faraway from the Neocon little Mafia at the Pentagon, those people who called the shots about the war in Iraq, namely Perle and Feith. Feith and his infamous Office of Special Plans…

To be clear, Barlow doesn’t see the same connections between his case and the Edmonds or Plame cases – but he does think that his case is somewhat similar to Joe Wilson’s case – at least to the extent that the same people attempted to inflict similar heavy-handed retaliation on both Wilson and Barlow.

With any luck, Rich will be joining us in the comments here this evening and might be able to answer any questions. Barlow is a Dailykos newbie – and there might be some associated technomological issues.

I’ll have some more instalments from the interview with Barlow in the near future.

cross posted at wotisitgood4.blogspot.com

With the Froggy Bottom Cafe going into retirement, are there any suggestions for creating something new? I could change the World/Open thread into a Cafe/Lounge and have it automatically refresh at midnight or something. Other ideas?

And, thank you to all the people that have tirelessly maintained the cafe for the last two years.

Anything else on your mind? Want a marmotini?

Via Senate 2008 Guru we have new poll numbers for Senators up for reeelection in 2008. And the numbers prove that the Democrats are not hurting themselves by opposing the President…while Republican fortunes continue to plummet.

New approval ratings – (11/22/06 approvals in parenthesis):

On the Republican side:
Norm Coleman: 53-41 (48-43)
John Cornyn: 43-40 (45-42)
Pete Domenici: 54-38 (68-25)
Mitch McConnell: 53-40 (54-39)
Pat Roberts: 48-39 (51-36)
Jeff Sessions: 54-36 (58-32)
Gordon Smith: 51-41 (54-37)
John Warner: 55-33 (60-28)

On the Democratic side:
Tom Harkin: 57-38 (53-40)
John Kerry: 54-41 (48-50)

Only Norm Coleman seems to be treading water. The rest of the Republicans are listing badly, and Kerry and Harkin seem to be doing fine.

Pete Domenici and John Cornyn are in real trouble.

I have said that the problem with Hillary Clinton is not so much Hillary Clinton, but the crowd she runs with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better (albeit, unintentional) explanation of this than in Anne Kornblut’s profile of Clinton’s pollster, Mark Penn. Excerpting the profile does it an injustice. You kind of have to read the whole thing to have the totality of it seep into your bones and inform your brain.

Let’s start with Penn’s influence on Ms. Clinton:

If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton’s husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).

If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party’s biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft’s image in Washington.

And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.

Safe, pro-corporate, and arrogant…and that is just for starters. Consider Penn’s pro-Likud pedigree.

Penn started his polling business with Schoen with the 1977 New York mayoral candidacy of Edward I. Koch…

Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country’s history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East…

His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004…

Penn has deep roots in the national security wing of the Democratic Party, along with other centrist Democrats — some of them Jewish and pro-Israel, like Penn — who saw the merits of invading Iraq before the war began.

Finally, let’s look at how Penn makes a living.

Today, from a sleek 12th-floor office just off Thomas Circle, Penn manages both the strategy of the Democratic presidential front-runner and a multimillion-dollar corporation as worldwide chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a 2,000-employee public relations firm. The job is the latest iteration of the lucrative corporate work that Penn and Schoen began in the 1980s, at the same time they were making their names as political pollsters, and that put them in the company of a new generation of business-minded Democratic consultants.

Among their clients over the years were AT&T, Eli Lilly, Texaco and Microsoft. Their specialty was corporate research and positioning — figuring out, for example, how AT&T could outflank competitor MCI by targeting uncommitted customers, the business equivalent of seeking out swing voters. While some Democratic rivals criticized the crossover work, suggesting that Penn had sold out or worse, the polling firm expanded rapidly, with Penn and Schoen adapting corporate models to the political sphere and vice versa.

Here you can see the fundamental problem with Clintonian politics. The Clintons rely on pollsters like Dick Morris (who has no discernable soul) and Mark Penn (whose idea of clear-headed foreign policy is shaped by Menachem Begin and Joe Lieberman). I don’t minimize the heroic efforts Bill Clinton made to achieve peace in the Middle East, but his overall foreign policy vision for the region was deeply flawed (as evidenced by the Clintons basic, if equivocal, support for Bush’s excellent adventure in Iraq).

On economic matters, the Clintons pursue a straight-forward pro-corporate agenda, emphasizing free-trade. And, yet, the Clintons manage to pull the wool over the eyes of the very people in the Democratic Party that are least represented by these policies.

Penn’s theory of the 2008 race has always been that after two tumultuous terms under Bush, the electorate will want change — but not too much change. Clinton offers a perfect mix, Penn believes. She inherently represents change, as a woman, without being unfamiliar or untested, thanks to her many years in Washington.

Penn did not anticipate that another Democrat might come along with a similar ability to fit that bill — as supporters of Obama, who would be the first black president, believe he can — but he says Clinton has another advantage in her ability to appeal to the underprivileged. Penn believes, and independent surveys confirm, that she outperforms other Democrats among lower-income voters, especially members of a family of four making less than $75,000 a year.

“She has a very, very strong base among the Democratic primary voters — first and foremost among voters who have real needs, people who may not have health care, people worried about losing a job, people who know someone serving in the war, people in the working and middle class, people whose lives really depend upon having the kind of champion and advocate that Hillary represents,” Penn said.

Given how radical the Bush regime is, it would be fatuous to suggest that there is no difference between Bushism and Clintonism. There are enormous differences…chiefly, that the Clintons operate within the traditional confines of American politics (in both the good and bad sense).

But if you want progressive politics that deemphasizes America’s role as international policeman and re-emphasizes people that have ‘real needs, people who may not have health care, people worried about losing a job, people who know someone serving in the war, people in the working and middle class’, then Hillary Clinton is the last Democrat you should support.

Remember those old EF Hutton commercials? ‘When EF Hutton speaks, people listen.’ Well…that’s true for the Republican Party anytime William F. Buckley chimes in on national affairs. Back in February 2006, the earth shook a little when Buckley wrote:

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.

Today he has a different warning:

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal…

But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq…

There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

Buckley created the National Review in 1955 and used it as a platform to build the ideological underpinnings of the modern Republican Party. When he got started the Republicans had the White House (Eisenhower) but they had yet to define themselves in the post-New Deal era. Buckley backed Barry Goldwater in 1964 and was undeterred by the beating the Republicans took as they started to develop their modern ideology. In a real sense, Buckley has been here before. He has seen what it looks like for the Republican Party to virtually cease to exist.

His warning should be heeded not only because Buckley is a perceptive fellow, but because he has a feel for the the slow-moving tectonic shifts in party fortunes. Yet, it is hard to see how the Republican Party’s ‘survival’ is threatened. After the 1964 congressional elections, the Democrats had a 68-32 majority in the Senate, but the Republicans took back the White House four years later and steadily chipped away at the congressional margins. Nevertheless, we might consider a post-2008 Senate with more than 60 Democratic senators…and even wider margins in the House. Under those circumstances the GOP will certainly have to reinvent itself.

There seems to be a growing chorus of Republican intellectuals (and pseudo-intellectuals like David Brooks) that are warning of an imminent catastrophe and wondering why the Republicans are not showing any signs of self-preservation. I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s unfortunate for the country.

the FDA is trying again to restrict alternative therapies and supplements.  Now I don’t want to go to a regular doc and get loaded up with at least three or four prescriptions, so I go to an acupuncturist who also may give me some supplements as needed and I go to a pilates instructor trying to undo decades of misuse of my great body.

Those are now at risk.  If you, like me, want to have the freedom to choose your therapies, please comment to FDA and talk to your reps.

Thanks
Update [2007-4-30 14:39:12 by glitterscale]: link is now fixed.
Here is a link for the info on this:
FDA Guidance

I know that you don’t really even want to think about this but this goes beyond what we think about in supplement abuse.  Do you really want to have to get a prescription for vitamins?

Deaths of American troops in Iraq passed 100 for the month of April yesterday:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Five U.S. military personnel were killed over the weekend in Iraq, including three by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the military said Monday, pushing the American death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year.

Four Army soldiers died in eastern Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite Muslim area where U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations in the security crackdown that began Feb. 14. A Marine was killed in Anbar province, a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold west of the capital. […]

The U.S. weekend deaths raised to at least 104 the number of American troops killed in Iraq so far in April, making it the deadliest month since December, when 112 died. At least 3,351 personnel have died since the war started, according to the AP count.

April has been the deadliest month for British forces in Iraq since the first month of the war. The 11 British soldiers killed this month is surpassed only by the 27 deaths in March 2003, reflecting increasing violence in southern Iraq where they are based, particularly among Shiite groups vying for influence as Britain prepares to reduce its force.

God knows how many Iraqis have died. No one in the Pentagon or the Bush administration ever seems willing to give an honest account of those deaths, but I’m sure the rise in dead Americans is matched by an equal increase proportionately among dead Iraqis.

Meanwhile, we now learn that the surge in additional American troops will last much longer than we were originally told back when Bush announced his new strategy for victory in Iraq.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is now gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest the White House may maintain the increased numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq well into next year.

That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week….

Unless and until Bush and Cheney are impeached, we are in Iraq through January, 2009, and depending on who is elected President next year, perhaps much longer than that. The longer we stay, the worse the consequences will be for the troops, for our economy, for our national security interests around the world and for what’s left of our collective soul. That is Bush’s legacy: death, failure, wasted lives, wasted dreams and the loss of any moral integrity we once had as a nation. And it’s a legacy that will only get worse, and cost us ever more deeply in the future, each day this war continues.