PARIS - France on Saturday issued a veiled warning to rebels battling toward the Chadian capital, saying in a statement that "any armed action targeting Chad and its institutions can only be condemned." "We call on all concerned parties to find a political solution," said a French foreign ministry statement.
Rebels in Chad said Friday they were fighting their way toward the capital Ndjamena and threatened to target any French aircraft flying reconnaissance missions over their positions. But a Chadian government spokesman dismissed claims of a rebel advance.
"Any armed action targeting Chad and its institutions can only be condemend by France and the international community," said the statement. "We are following the situation in eastern Chad with great interest," it added.
France, which has had a military presence in Chad since 1986, supplied most of the troops for the European Union EUFOR peacekeeping mission in the east of Chad, on the border with Sudan and the Darfur region.
The rebels alliance in the east of Chad called on France to stop flying intelligence missions in a statement read out to AFP by Ali Gueddei, spokesman for an alliance of rebel factions. "We are making a last, solemn appeal to France for it to immediately cease its state of belligerence towards the armed forces of the opposition," said Gueddei reading a prepared statement by telephone. France would be better advised to "stop its repeated provocations" in providing the government forces with intelligence through its aerial reconnaissance missions, said Gueddei.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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Kadhafi does better juche and spittle these days than does the KCNA ...
Africa and the Arab world are ready to back and finance Barack Obama as long as he helps the oppressed populations, said the Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, calling however on the US democratic presidential candidate to not always defend Israel at all costs, as all American presidents have done so far. Kadhafi, speaking in occasion of the 38th anniversary of the expulsion of the Americans from an old base near Tripoli, also urged the government of Tel Aviv to accept the prospective of cohabiting with the Palestinians in one state that could be called Israstine (also Isratine, according to another version).
In regard to the exiting US President, Kadhafi merely said that he proceeded in his evil warmonger policies, accusing him of being behind the skyrocketing oil prices, also because he managed to weaken the value of the dollar used to calculate the price.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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He's got quite cocky since there were no consequences after he turned over his WMD... in the original packaging.
Simon Mann, the Old Etonian mercenary accused of plotting a coup against the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, will appear in the dock on Tuesday amid growing evidence that the government in the capital, Malabo, is planning a show trial designed to embarrass its enemies.
I'm tearing up .. no wait, it's the Visine ...
After claims by Amnesty International that a group of Mann's alleged co-conspirators - including the leader of the alleged advance party, Nick du Toit - was denied a fair trial in 2004, Equatorial Guinea's government is again deploying the tactics it has used to ensure the outcome of three previous trials since 1998. Amnesty says it has been told that Mann's local lawyer, Ponciano Mbomio Nvo - who had said he planned to introduce a plea of not guilty despite Mann's confession - has been suspended from practising law for 'defaming' the president, a ploy the authorities in Malabo have used a number of times before to interfere with the defence in political trials.
The case against Mann and his fellow defendants, claims Amnesty, was completed only last Thursday. The next day the country's attorney general announced the date of the three-day trial, giving the defence almost no time to look at it. Under Equatorial Guinea's trial law - a system modelled on Spain's system of investigating magistrates - both the prosecution and defence are supposed to have several weeks to 'qualify' or challenge the case.
Amnesty is also concerned that Mann's trial will follow the pattern set in previous major cases, where no material evidence is presented and the judge instead relies on confessions extracted under torture or duress. The location of the three-day trial is being kept a closely guarded secret until the opening day, with high security at the country's ports.
Mann, a former officer in the SAS, was arrested in 2004 with 70 other men when his plane landed in Zimbabwe to collect a shipment of arms purchased from the country's state arms manufacturer. Another group, which included du Toit, was arrested in Equatorial Guinea itself. Together they were accused of hatching a plot to overthrow the country's president, who seized power in a coup in 1979.
I must say that I'm having trouble working up much sympathy for a Euro caught in a coup attempt in Africa ...
The heir to a brewing fortune and the son and grandson of England cricket captains, Mann - who co-founded the controversial mercenary company Sandline with Tim Spicer - was extradited to Equatorial Guinea earlier this year after serving almost four years of a sentence in Zimbabwe for buying arms illegally.
Although Mann 'confessed' in a television interview that he was the 'manager' of the plot, he denied he was the 'main man'. He did, however, implicate Mark Thatcher, son of the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, as part of the conspiracy. Mann's family has said the interview was given 'under duress' from the authorities in Malabo, as part of a plea bargain to mitigate a sentence which potentially could have carried the death penalty.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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'Sandline'....an interesting name, or a mark that should have been made LONG ago by western governments, or was it? The Bay of Pigs invasion went quite badly as well.
ZIMBABWE police brought the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's secretary general to court this morning despite having said earlier that they were not sure his order issued yesterday was genuine. Handcuffed and wearing leg irons, Tendai Biti appeared tense as he was brought into Justice Ben Hlatshwayo's court escorted by an armed policeman. He was wearing a green tracksuit and appeared to be in good health, a reporter at the scene said. Hlatshwayo had given police an hour to produce the secretary general.
The judge is due to rule on the legality of his arrest on treason charges.
A reporter who was in the courtroom said Biti looked "dejected and dull" and he said "fine" when reporters asked how he was.
Biti was arrested upon returning to Zimbabwe from neighbouring South Africa Thursday. Police had refused to say where he was being held. Police say he faces a treason charge, which can carry the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Police said the treason charge Biti faces stems from a transition document they say was effectively a blueprint for regime change. He is also accused of spreading false information by releasing the opposition's own results from the first round of harmonized elections. Under Zimbabwean law, only the independent electoral body -- the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission -- is mandated release results.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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President Robert Mugabe has vowed that the main opposition party will never lead Zimbabwe and said he was prepared to "go to war" for his country.
Speaking at the burial of a former independence fighter, Mr Mugabe said he would never accept the MDC taking over the government of Zimbabwe. He described the opposition as "lackeys" and referred to Zimbabwe's past struggle for independence from its colonial ruler, Britain, saying the country should not be "lost" again. "We shall never ever accept anything that smells of a delivered parcel that comes through what they call the MDC here," Mr Mugabe said at the ceremony. "We fought for this country. Now we have it under control. After all that work, can we allow this country to be taken over by lackeys? That will never happen in our lifetime. It will never happen.
"We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war if we lose it the same way our ancestors lost it."
So Bob's not going quietly. That means the military is four-square behind him.
Mr Mugabe stopped short of explicitly calling for war if the opposition won the run-off vote, but the remarks raised the stakes in his fight to hold on to his job, says the BBC's Peter Greste in neighbouring South Africa.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Main Entry: 1lack·ey
Pronunciation: ˈla-kç
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural lackeys
Etymology: Middle French laquais
Date: 1523
1 a: footman 2, servant b: someone who does menial tasks or runs errands for another
2: a servile follower : toady
Gordon Brown is privately ready to sacrifice the Lisbon treaty rather than allow the Irish no vote to create a two-tier Europe. Despite the Irish referendum, France, Germany and senior Brussels officials have insisted there should be no delay in implementing the European Union blueprint. But No 10 sources say the prime minister would rather see the entire constitutional treaty collapse than allow individual member states to be left trailing in a two-speed Europe.
The collapse of the Lisbon treaty would take the heat off Brown as he faces down renewed calls for Britain to have its own referendum. If Europe presses ahead without Ireland, it would set a precedent for a two-speed club, with Britain likely to be stuck in the second tier.
A Downing Street source said: The legal position on this is very clear: the treaty cannot come into force until all 27 countries have ratified it. One senior government official said anyone who thought the Irish vote could be ignored was living in cloud-cuckoo-land. The leaders of the EUs 27 members states will meet this week in Brussels, but yesterday the Irish government ruled out forcing through a second referendum.
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said European leaders had to heed the no vote or risk looking remote, out of touch and more undemocratic than ever.
However, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who will take over the rotating EU presidency next month, dismissed the Irish vote as a hiccup that should not become a political crisis.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germanys foreign minister, went further, stating that the Lisbon treaty provisions, which include the creation of a permanent EU president and the widespread abolition of national vetoes, could be implemented without Ireland. Ireland for a period of time could leave the way free for the integration of the other 26 member states, he said.
In public, British ministers are insisting that a solution to the impasse can still be found. Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, yesterday told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: Only those who previously wished to dance on the grave of this treaty, even before the Irish referendum, are declaring it dead.
In private, the mood among senior Whitehall officials is more pessimistic. No one wants to come out publicly now and say the treaty is dead, said one. But by the end of the week, after the Brussels summit, that could well be the case. Rest at link
Posted by: ed ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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#5
This is a propaganda effort by Murdock to kill the treaty. Brown will find out who is really running EUrope next week. If he tries to pull something like this the dictators in Brussels will start to work the contract on him.
#6
I presume it's a one-way ratification process - once a country approves it it cannot un-approve it later (sort of like the womens rights amendment, or the US Constitution). Eventually Ireland will give in.
#10
"I presume it's a one-way ratification process - once a country approves it it cannot un-approve it later"
Glenmore, why presume anything, when you could have looked it up in two secs in Wikipedia?
Actually it's the other way around. The *previous* treaties allowed no possibility to leaving the European Union. The Treaty of Lisbon on the other hand (same as the European Constitution it replaced) explicitly allows secession of the European Union.
So basically it was all the previous treaties that didn't allow "unapproving" them later, and it's this one that does.
So basically Ireland and UK are legally stuck in the European Union until they actually decide to ratify a treaty that actually allows them to legally leave it.
#13
Bright Pebbles, I keep being at awe at how little interest in facts there's in this place. "Parliament would no longer be sovereign after the Lisbon treaty"?? That's cute. Utterly meaningless but very very cute.
"Before the Lisbon treaty all that would be needed was a vote in Parliament to leave the EU."
Not sure you understand how treaties work. Treaties between nations are generally considered binding under international law -- except of course when they have exit clauses. Previous EU and EC treaties didn't have exit clauses. Treaty of Lisbon does have an exit clause.
Not that anyone would prevent UK from leaving right now if she wanted to -- after all the EU has neither the wish nor the capacity to stop the UK from leaving. It's just that *everyone* would know that UK would be violating its obligations under the existing treaties by so leaving. I'm sure UK could live with that shame.
#15
Not sure you understand how treaties work. Treaties between nations are generally considered binding under international law -- except of course when they have exit clauses.
Contrary to this assertion, it is a hotly disputed issue WRT international agreements as to whether any such agreement can be said to prevent sovereign nations from withdrawing from it. Historically it was agreed that they would not; more recently, some have tried to change that precedent and understanding in order to bind states to give up increasing amounts of sovereign power to transnational and often unelected officials and mechanisms.
The question then becomes whether the existing EU treaties in fact abrogate national sovereignty. The fervid dreams of some notwithstanding, it's not at all clear that they do which is why there is such pressure brought to bear by those parties to lock Brussels' powers into a firmer legal basis.
#16
And Vlad Putin's desired "MULTIPOLAR WORLD " loses again!?
Again IMO, OSAMA, etc. + IRAN + RADICAL ISLAM > SAVING THE JIHAD VV PAN-ISLAMIST NUCLEARIZATION + STRATWEAPNZ > IN LT, "TWO" IS BETTER THAN PUTIN's = RUSSIA's "MANY", i.e. US-ALLIES/WEST versus NUCLEARIZED ISLAMIST CENTRAL ASIA
= FUTURE NUCLEARIZED ISLAMIST ASIA [and beyond].
*2008 -2012 POTUS Period > MSM-NET = the post-Dubya USA needs to refocus PRIMARY attention on VARIOUS GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, NOT ON FIGHTING ISLAMISM IN IRAQ + AFGHANISTAN, etc.
[read - POST-DUBYA US BIG GOVT NEEDS TO EXPAND ET PERPETUO = AD INFINITUM AMAP ASAP].
BIGGER AND BIGGER AND ...., FOREVER AND FOREVER AND...
OSAMA + RADICAL ISLAM > LATENTLY DESIRE TO TEMPOR SUPLANT/REPLACE THE USSR + COMMIE BLOC IN A QUASI-COLD WAR [detente'?, mutual-coexistence?' IN SUPPORT OF PAN-ISLAMIST [Proto-]NUCLEARIZATION + STRATWEAPNZ.
MORE ACCURATELY > PRO-DETERRENCE "NUCLEAR/
STRATEGIC SUFFICIENCY".
* 2008-2012 POTUS Period >= CRITICAL PERIOD FOR THE DESIRED FUTURE NUCLEAR JIHAD, etc.
SUB-IOW, among other valid or realistic premises, 'tis prob safe to presume that Osama = Radical Islam are also getting the FUTURE NUCLEAR JIHAD-TERR READY FOR THEIR PRO-JIHAD ORGANZ SUCCESSORS = SONNY BOYS [e.g. ASSAD III, etal.]???
D *** NG IT, AMERICA = AMERIKA IS STILL LOW ON POPCORN AND POPCORN BUTTER!
#17
Is Aris allowed back today for his EU expertise, or did somebody here request a punching bag for a Father's Day gift?
Three cheers for the Irish! If the Eurocrats can't propose something acceptable to their constituency, then the Eurocrats have no valid reason to exist. First it was the "constitution' and then it was Lisbon treaty. It appears that the "blueprint" is for a house of cards.
#18
It's ok, JosephM. Barbara Skolaut has charge of the industrial sized popcorn machine in the O-Club, and she's been stocking up on popcorn kernels, butter and salt. She's a clever woman, is our Barbara -- she'll make sure we win the war. ;-)
Pyongyang, June 13 (KCNA) -- The all-people candlelight actions now under way in south Korea remind one of the June popular resistance 21 years ago which forced the military dictatorship regime to yield to it. They are an inevitable product of the traitorous rule enforced by the Lee Myung Bak regime as it has frantically blocked the advance of the times, escalating its sycophancy toward the U.S. and its moves for confrontation with the DPRK.
'sycophancy'?
Rodong Sinmun Friday observes this in a signed article.
The article cites facts that in just 110 days since he came to power traitor Lee Myung Bak has unhesitatingly committed such acts of treachery as blocking the independent development of south Korean society and doing harm to the national dignity and interests by pursuing unprecedented pro-U.S. and pro-Japan sycophantic and treacherous policies, regarding outside forces more important than the nation. It goes on:
... and on, and on, and on ...
The Lee Myung Bak group has committed such anti-reunification acts as slandering under the watchword of "pragmatism" the June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration unanimously supported and hailed by the whole nation. This has dampened the desire of the south Korean people to lead an independent and genuine life and see national reunification and bedeviled the inter-Korean relations which had favorably developed.
As far as politics is concerned, the south Korean people have already sentenced the Lee group to death for having committed indelible crimes against the country and the nation. Those who trample down upon the will and interests of the people can never escape destruction.
You just don't get this kind of juche much anymore ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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Used to, Pappy, back when the writers were somewhat less poorly fed, and had energy to spare to fire the neurons in their brains. But the North Koreans consider the South Koreans to be mongrels anyway, so what else should they expect? ;-)
With just two weeks left in the Supreme Court's term, everything we thought we knew about the Roberts court seems wrong. The question now is: Who plans to tell the presidential candidates?
Both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are finally beginning to campaign as though the composition of the Supreme Court actually matters. And that's a good thing, because -- the American public's lack of interest notwithstanding -- the court counts as much as almost every other issue facing the voters in November. Assuming that you work, worship, vote, parent, own property the government might covet or occasionally have sex, the high court will intimately affect your life. This is particularly true now that the average justice is older than Mount Rushmore and the next president may well have two or three new court picks in the space of a few years.
But it's hard to generate much public hysteria over nameless, faceless future jurists deciding nameless, faceless future cases. And so the court plods along undisturbed, like the tortoise, while presidential elections zoom by like the hare.
But the dialogue about the judiciary now taking place between the two presidential nominees is antiquated. Both McCain and Obama have now taken predictable stands on the Supreme Court of their dreams. In a speech last month, McCain offered a jeremiad Pronunciation: ˌjer-ə-ˈmî-əd, -ˌad Function: noun Etymology: French jérémiade, from Jérémie Jeremiah, from Late Latin Jeremias Date: 1780
: a prolonged lamentation or complaint; also : a cautionary or angry harangue
about the evils of "judicial activism," deriding the "common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power." Last March, Obama offered up his own judicial ideal: a judge with "enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through."
The main problem: Both McCain and Obama start from the premise that the Supreme Court is tidily balanced among four conservative judicial minimalists, four liberal judicial empaths and the inscrutable Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, swinging away at the center. This is a useful model for trying to stir up public concern about the court's composition, and the decision in at least one blockbuster case -- last Thursday's ruling that the Bush administration is violating the constitutional rights of foreign terrorism suspects being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- did indeed go down along the traditional lines. Still, the current term is rapidly proving the simple conservatives-vs.-liberals construct to be a thing of the past. This court term has revealed a series of patterns that aren't so easy to neatly file away: conservative moderation, moderate conservatism, liberal pragmatism and pragmatic minimalism. And that's just for starters.
Court watchers have stood dumbfounded all spring as the high court rejected and renounced the 5 to 4 conservative-liberal splits that seemed to have calcified after last term's bitter divisions. The end of June 2007 saw a full third of the court's cases decided by a 5 to 4 margin; as of this writing, the court has decided just four cases that way this year. At this point last year, Kennedy had cast his vote with the prevailing five justices every single time. But this term has seen a slew of ideology-busting unanimous, 7 to 2, and 6 to 3 decisions, which have not just baffled the experts but also made the usual end-of-term chatter about "activists," "minimalists" and "strict constructionists" sound as old-fashioned as the Bee Gees.
Last week, the high court handed down five more unanimous opinions. The week before, it served up a 5 to 4 split decision in which the dissenters included the usually conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., his fellow Bush appointee Samuel A. Alito Jr., the moderate Kennedy and the liberal Stephen G. Breyer. We've passed the point of crying "strange bedfellows" at the Supreme Court. As of this month, conservative and liberal justices are routinely sharing a toothbrush. More at link
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/15/2008 11:56 ||
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#1
Instead of trying to override the court time and time and time again only to see the court issue another fatwa, its time to make the seats of SCOTUS directly accountable to the people [like in the classical concept of a republic or democracy]. 12 year terms with/without one additional term. What excuse does Congress have not to do it other than POWER. If we good enough to elect Senators [something that took an amendment almost a hundred years ago], we're good enough to deal with these seats as well. It's not like the whole appointment processes hasn't degenerated into political circus anyway.
#2
Disagree P2k: that would reduce the SC elections to a series of sound bite campaigns, just like we have now; but since many Americans decide their votes based on these, I think that there aren't a lot of exciting quotes and theatrics coming from courtrooms.
While not exciting, the current version works just fine for me, thank you very much.
#3
The stock solution for the last 100 years or so has been to make things more democratic. This has not made things better, the opposite. The founders understood the difference between a democracy and a republic, choosing the later and abhoring the former. Now, I would be willing to bet, most law school grads don't know the difference.
The problem here is that the SC roughly reflects the opinions of congress and the elites of the country. So you really have to wonder why, if the people continually elect bozos to the congress, we would be better off with the same people electing the SCOTUS. They have certainly screwed up the senate, whose election should be returned to the state legislatures.
#4
I have to concur, NS. Precisely why the founders chose a republican style government. Right now I almost favor moving to restrict voting to landowners only. The rabble will overrun this government. It is happening. There is a far greater percentage of "Americans" today who know nothing of how our government was formed and how it ought to work than do. You can see it in voting patterns across the country. Unfortunately, things will necessarily have to become much worse before any real constructive action is taken.
#5
How about something like the Electoral College, You ask the people to vote, but you're not bound to follow their wishes.
That way you'd get the "Flow" of opinion without all the "Sound bites" and whining.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/15/2008 13:15 Comments ||
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#6
Right now I almost favor moving to restrict voting to landowners only.
Count me in.
Heinlein suggested only those who served in the Military (Any Capacity)
Double for me, landholder AND ex Navy.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/15/2008 13:22 Comments ||
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#7
So you're saying you prefer 'elitists' to run things rather than the 'mob' and look at what we have screwing up with democracy. Well, I'll repeat - we get what we pay for in Congress. We pay crap to attract people to fun a multi-trillion dollar international economic engine, a mult-billion dollar international security system, manage vast programs and bureaucracies. Of course we get less than qualified people to do the job, because the 'other' Americans won't do it. Every time there is a increase in Congressional pay there's the faux outrage and denunciation about how the bums don't deserve it, but that attitude also keeps the better qualified people from even considering carrying the burden. So instead of us paying for and owning the congresscritters, other organizations/special interests do. We get what we paid for. Isn't that a concept.
As for the 'republican' principle you seem wedded to, that of anti-mob, it isn't much different than the rationalization of the Brussels EUocrats' position. Haven't we been hammer them for not allowing a plebiscite to allow their citizen a say in the matter of the EU constitution ratification? Is this fundamentally no different?
#8
Isn't there legal and historical precedence for the President simply ignorning the SCOTUS ruling on Guantanamo? As I recall, Lincoln basically told the SCOTUS to go f#$k themselves during the Civil War (or maybe it was someone else) by saying something along the lines of "How many divisions does so-and-so have?"
SCOTUS rulings are often ignored, it seems to me, by most everyone, other courts and lawyers included, but most especially by the American people.
#9
The "mob" doesn't run anything anywhere. In the US it chooses an "elite" and the elite runs things. I believe there is also a lot more to elites than that, that it is quite fascinating, and that this is neither the time nor the place to go into it all. However, I do agree that we get what we pay for.
Haven't we been hammer them for not allowing a plebiscite to allow their citizen a say in the matter of the EU constitution ratification?
I have not hammered them for not having a plebiscite per se, but for not giving the people a voice in the adoption of a change in the structure that governs them. Our Constitution was not adopted after a plebiscite, but after conventions which were selected by all the electors so that the single matter could be thoroughly debated and decided by that elite group. No such ratification process was used anywhere in the EU to allow the people to speak whether directly or through their representatives.
The EU's earlier try at adopting an overt constitution began, "The King of the Belgians..." ours begins "We the People..." There is all the difference in the world. We have lived up to ours and they have lived down to theirs.
#11
Stalin said,"How many divisions does the Pope have?"
Lincoln suspended habeus corpus as the constitution allows in time of rebellion or invasion. I am not aware that he ignored any SCOTUS decisions other than Dred Scott, one well worth ignoring.
Andrew Jackson is reported to have said, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can." History has shown to the satisfaction of most that Jackson was in the wrong. Since then the proper way to change the courts decisions has been through legislation, amendment or appointment.
#12
Neither those we elect to represent us in Congress nor those who represent us in the electoral college are truly elites in the dictionary sense: those with the best education and background. Rather, they are a reasonably representative cross section of those that choose to involve themselves in our political process, with all the stupidity, cupidity and venality that implies.
#14
Only an individual who is a net tax payer should vote. Otherwise the leeches and welfare queens vote themselves a bigger part of the pie and your taxes go up. American are generous enough to help the needy without being forced.
The rookie state senator from Chicago had driven 340 miles to explore southern Illinois, but Barb Brown could muster only 20 Democrats in this small town on the Mississippi River to have breakfast with him. She asked her niece and sister-in-law, who were helping in the kitchen, to come out to pad the audience.
"We tried to convince people that they needed to come out and meet with this senator from Chicago, who on top of everything else was African American," Brown, a circuit court clerk, said of the 1997 gathering. "We had people looking at us strangely." Because he was from Chicago and came downstate?
As Sen. Barack Obama emerges as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, worries stoked by Hilly linger in his party over whether he can improve on his poor showing among many rural and blue-collar voters in the primaries. Clues to that question lie in Illinois outside metro Chicago, a 400-mile swath of corn and soybean fields that, in the coal country of its southern reaches, shares more with Kentucky and Missouri than with Chicago.
Obama's courting of the region began soon after he was elected to the legislature in 1996. Southern Illinoisans interpreted the visits as a sign that he was already thinking about a future run for statewide office, but the trips also served as an education in the middle-American milieu that Obama's Kansan grandparents hailed from but that he knew little of, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spent his adult years in big cities. Before mostly white audiences, Obama would joke about his name -- rhyming it with "yo mama" -- and test his message about getting past divisions to solve problems.
Obama's advisers have pointed to his success in winning over "downstate" Illinoisans as a sign of his electability, but political analysts question the claim. Obama lost most of downstate Illinois in his Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate in 2004, and his big win in the general election that year came against Alan Keyes, a black conservative wacko with a Maryland address who dropped in a few months before the election. In this year's presidential primary, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) beat Obama in southern Illinois' struggling coal counties, highlighting the same weakness he showed in the coal regions of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky. Coal miners. Why do they hate us?
"He certainly has shown a good amount of reach into downstate and southern Illinois, but . . . it has been overstated," said Michael Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. To the extent that Obama has penetrated downstate, said Chris Mooney, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Springfield, it has been partly a result of his constituent service, a tool he lacks in the presidential campaign. "He was thinking Illinois from Day One" in Washington, Mooney said. "He has the classic attention to detail of a Chicago politician, the idea that 'we gotta get ours.' "
But Obama's push for support in rural Illinois has also driven his stances on several issues that could complicate his matchup against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He is strongly in favor of ethanol, the corn-based biofuel that is being blamed for driving up food prices, and he supports the new farm bill, which McCain says is wasteful and at odds with Obama's call for reforming Washington.
In Obama's telling, he early on viewed downstate Illinois as a proving ground for his belief that the differences among Americans are smaller than they might appear. He describes Illinois in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," as a "microcosm of the country" and recalls the wonder of his week-long 1997 tour with aide Dan Shomon -- the "miles of cornfields" and roadside vendors with signs such as "Good Deals on Guns and Swords."
Most of all, Obama relished how the region defied stereotypes. After Shomon warned Obama to wear only khakis and polo shirts, "no fancy linen trousers or silk shirts," Obama enjoyed pointing out residents with linen slacks. When Shomon urged him not to request Dijon mustard at a restaurant, the puzzled waitress said she had it. So the conversation took place in front of the waitress? Why else would she be puzzled? So did they have some kind of spicy mustard, or Grey Poupon?
In the state legislature, Obama befriended rural lawmakers such as Sen. Gary Forby, a conservative Democrat and contractor from a coal county. "We're down-to-earth people, and Barack was down-to-earth people, too," Forby said last week. "What I liked about him was the way he was brought up, that he had never had anything gave to him." Forby is sure that rural Americans will agree: "If people could just talk to him for a few minutes, I don't think there will be an issue."
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/15/2008 05:39 ||
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#1
"What I liked about him was the way he was brought up, that he had never had anything gave to him."
#4
If his grandparents were poor folk, as the other article here today about Senator Obama alleges, who paid for that fancy private high school in Hawaii that he went to as a lad? For that matter, who paid for his undergraduate education? I've no doubt he went to Harvard Law on a full scholarship, and glad they were to give it, too. But if he was a scholarship boy at the private high school, I can see him discovering insecurities and resentments, if he was the only one without funds and designer clothes.
#5
I suspect undergrad on scholarship and loans, law school on loans is more likely. There's no problem getting loans at Harvard Law as you're a sterling credit. Even Harvard College, not so much.
Verizon Communications confirmed on Thursday that it will stop offering its customers access to tens of thousands of Usenet discussion areas, including the alt.* groups that have been a free-flowing area for discussions for over two decades.
Eric Rabe, a Verizon spokesman, said only a subset of discussion groups, or newsgroups, would be offered to customers in the future. In Usenet parlance, those newsgroups are called the big 8; they include complex procedures for newsgroup creation and deletion and even boast a formal management committee.
Rabe had told us earlier in the week that some newsgroups would be restricted, but didn't have the details until we spoke with him on Thursday.
No law requires Verizon to do this. Instead, the company (and, to varying extents, Time Warner Cable and Sprint) agreed to restrictions on Usenet in response to political strong-arming by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.
Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for the companies' blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry."
Usenet is a pre-Web technology that, for most of its history, relied on companies, Internet service providers, and universities to operate servers that would exchange messages posted by their users. Each server operator can choose what newsgroups they wish to offer. Today, some companies like Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com offer newsgroup access for a fee. (Unlike, say, mailing lists, Usenet has no central repository.)
What this means in practice is that, thanks to the New York state attorney general, Verizon customers will lose out on innocent discussions. Verizon is retaining only eight newsgroup hierarchies, even though over 1,000 hierarchies exist.
That means not carrying perfectly innocuous--and, in fact, very useful--newsgroups like symantec.customerservice.general, us.military, microsoft.public.excel, and fr.soc.economie.
The alt.hierarchy is even more extensive. In the discussion thread attached to our earlier story, one of our readers said: "This is ridiculous. I actually met my wife on alt.personals, 14 years ago... I still use usenet - there are a lot good discussions and a person can get answers to questions on specific topics pretty quickly. It's nice to have a decentralized place to hold discussions, one that is not beholden to a sysadmin to correctly run a forum, one that's free of blinking gifs and flash ads."
The only Usenet newsgroups that Verizon will continue to offer customers are the comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.* hierarchies. Customers will continue to be able to connect to other non-Verizon Usenet servers; no blocking is taking place. "There might be child porn in the library. Quick! Burn the library down!"
#4
It doesn't mean those groups will go away, it just means that Verizon won't carry them on THEIR news servers. You would still be able to access those groups through other people's servers ... even Verizon's own customers will. It won't remove any content, it simply eliminates Verizon's liability by removing it from THEIR servers.
google will still have access to them via google groups for example.
#5
I am gonna go out on a limb and say that this is a bad thing for Cisco and its competitors. It's also good for Verizon and its competitors, because no one wanted to provide a lower level of service if the competition was going to one-up him. This way, everyone cuts off binary news feeds simultaneously, thereby saving a bunch of money.
#7
Verizon could use the respite from capital spending - it's been shoveling tens of billions of dollars a year into infrastructure and borrowing up the wazoo. Cuomo's initiative is just an excuse.
TEHERAN - An former Iranian police commander detained for on accusations of "immorality" has been released on bail after spending around five months behind bars, state television reported on Saturday. Former Teheran province police commander Reza Zareie was released on bail of 500 million rials (about 54,000 dollars), the television said, quoting Teheran judiciary chief Ali Reza Avaie.
"Brigadier General Zareie was jailed for four to five months over moral accusations and was retired as a colonel," he said. Several Iranian news outlets alleged that Zareie, who enforced one of the toughest moral crackdowns in Iran last year, was found in a "house of corruption" with naked prostitutes.
Avaie added that a former Iranian MP has also been detained over moral issues while another lawmaker facing the same allegations was released on bail.
The Zareie case was a major embarrassment for the police, which have warned tens of thousands of women over the past year for infringing the strict dress code rules in the Islamic republic.
Unlike similar initiatives which wound up in a few months in the past, police vans and officials monitoring passing women have become omnipresent in Teheran's main squares and shopping malls. The police insist their drive is almost universally popular with the public, but some moderates have questioned the need for the moral crackdown at a time of economic problems including high inflation.
High inflation is precisely why the ruling regime needs a morals crackdown ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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Sounds like an increase in demand for services.
James Kirchick, "The Plank" blog @ The New Republic h/t Instapundit
Chris [Orr] does an admirable (and hilarious) job of tearing apart M. Night Shyamalan's latest crime against cinema, The Happening. Go click through and read the review. It's possibly the best film review I've ever read. (The review, that is, not the film.) Maybe "review" isn't quite the word; how about "deconstruction" or "demolition"?
It is incredibly awful, so laughingly bad that at one point during the screening I attended last night a man in the audience yelled, "I can't take it anymore!" No one shushed him. While Chris deconstructs the film's myriad absurdities, poor performances, and atrocious script, he didn't go after what I believe is its morally appalling premise: that the mere existence of the human race is a cause for great shame.
As with most of Shyamalan's films, The Happening has an intriguing plot: centuries of human pollution has prompted nature to retaliate against us by form of a noxious gas released from trees, plants, grass -- it's never really clear. The toxin is first emitted in Central Park, smack dab in the middle of one of the most densly populated places in the United States. First, victims lose their critical faculties. Then they freeze. Then they killl themselves. From New York City "The Happening" spreads all along the east coast, from Boston to Washington. Shyamalan leaves little to the imagination in depicting man's nature-inflicted suicide. We see a woman stab herself in the neck with a hair pin. A man runs himself over with a lawnmower. On can't help but leave the theater thinking that Shyamalan derives a sick, masochistic pleasure in showing the deaths of all his bit characters, hopeless rubes are these human beings. They drove their SUVs for too long and had a big carbon footprint and now they're going to pay. "Repent, sinners! Gaia's gonna get'cha!"
This isn't just radical environemntalist fare; it's perverse and anti-human. Shyamalan cuts immediately from the natural joy of pregnancy to its consequence: mass, nature-inflicted murder. It's not carbon output, styrofoam cups or the clearing of the rain forests that so angers Mother Earth and, thus, her self-appointed human spokesman. It's us. Some of the TNR commenters make similar points:
You're right that the movie - which I saw last night - is morally abhorrent, but you're wrong when you imply that its message is outside the mainstream of environmentalism. What is the "environment," which is the standard of the good in this religion? Anything - animal, mineral, or vegetable - which isn't human. It follows that humanity is evil, a blot on an otherwise pristine natural world. There are plenty of prominent environmentalists who will say as much explicitly.
If you think human beings are alright, you might be a conservationist, but you're not an environmentalist.
Original sin is central to the environmental faith. We, humans, have sinned by the knowledge of technology and have thus been caste out of the pre industrial Eden into a world of industrial sin. The absolution of this sin comes from de-development where humans regain Eden by disassembling the machines that lost us our innocence.
This is why environmentalists uses Carbon Dioxide as its enemy. It is produced when humans do anything industrial and its elimination only happens when we reach Eden.
Others don't quite get the point, but even some of them help to prove it:
To be fair, the sheer mass of humanity, arguably already past the planet's carrying capacity, is in fact a huge problem. Shyamalan has apparently made a singlularly awful movie based on the conceit that we're outgrowing our Petri dish, but the bad movie doesn't discredit the idea. Nature will, in fact, cull the herd if it gets too large. I understand that your objection is a moral one, that you think Shyamalan seems to be saying that human presence is intrinsically bad. I dunno--haven't seen the movie and don't plan to, and I suspect your accusation is one of those highly arguable, eye-of-the-beholder things. But even if we grant that point, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. (After all, water conservation helps save the earth! Throw the baby out and recycle the water!) At some point, we'll either have to manage our population growth (i.e. start offing people) or drastically increase the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, or both--or we court disaster. . . .
Strangely, I feel optimistic. If even the fiftieth-percentile-of-the-liberal-elite crew at TNR is realizing that radical environmentalism is "morally abhorrent" and anti-human (at least when encountered in the form of a crappy M. Night Shyamalan movie with a screenplay from the darkest fantasies of Al Gore and Paul R. Ehrlich), radical environmentalism (and all the global warming carbon footprint hysteria it's stirred up) is close to (if not already making) the old shark-jump.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/15/2008 08:37 ||
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I see washed up directors...
Posted by: john frum ||
06/15/2008 10:57 Comments ||
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#4
I've never been able to endure any of this joker's flicks. By the way, how bad must his first name be, if going by the middle name of "Night" is preferable?!?? I think his parents hated him, now he hates himself (and everyone else).
#5
we'll either have to manage our population growth
It's called Socialism. Shown remarkable success in reducing population growth. In fact it has shown the ability to depopulate future projected tax serfs tax bases.
#10
Well, mine was mistranslated from Tibetan into English, for the longest time. They couldn't figure out whether it meant "big-ass monster" or "big-assed monster."
#11
Entertaining review, but I never planned to see the movie (or any horror/slasher-type movie) anyway.
I've had the living bejesus scared out of me for free more than once - I'm sure not going to pay someone to do it.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/15/2008 14:31 Comments ||
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#12
To get entirely serious for a minute, I am extremely tired of this dirty little religion that MNS and the other Hollywierdians have been pushing on the country and the world for what seems to be my entire lifetime.
#13
Whatever man has done to the environment is vastly overshadowed by natural phenomena such as the ice Age(s), etc. do. There is a kind of arrogance in the environmental movement regarding the influence of man. There is also a kind of self-loathing in the environmental movement that tends to denigrate man.
#15
The number of new movies I've seen in the last decade could be counted on the fingers of both hands with some spares. I'm so disgusted with Hollyweird and their damnable leftist idiocy I simply can't stomach watching most of it. The sooner those bastards go bankrupt, the better, because they're truly hurting our country.
It's even worse in the eyes of the rest of the world. If all I knew of America was what I saw from U.S. movies and TV, I'd hate it too.
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
06/15/2008 18:22 Comments ||
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#16
I haven't seen the movie myself, but I'd talked wid a familiar adult restaurant patron whom had and claims he wasn't impressed by the film. He personally rated the movie a "C" or "C-", and proclaims the best part was a scene where a man wilfully layed himself down on the ground and was run over by his own 4-Wheeled grassmower.
PROMO FOR THE NATIONAL VOLUNTEER SUICIDE MOVEMENT???
I would like to compare THE HAPPENING wid the original MATRIX [Keanu Reeves], aka WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE EARTH LOSES GRAVITY [K.jumping building to building, Windows, Walls, etc. like Superman].
D *** NG IT, WOMAN, THE GIRL'S IN LOVE WID A DEAD PLANT [man]!
#18
Are the makers of THE HAPPENING trying to tell OWG MADONNA + GOD that when the Japanese torpedoed Madge's Daddy and the Battleship OKLAHOMA at PEARL HARBOR, THE JAPANESE = NAGUMO'S PLANES TORPEDOED A FARTY/GASSY FLOWER PLANT!
W *** T ** H*** IS GOING ON IN THIS WOT!
Not unlike LAW-AND-ORDER's JACK MCCOY = SAM WATERSTON thinking its a GENERATIONAL THINGY when his ADA Charater finds RAP MUSIC
"INCOMPREHENSIBLE" as perLW episode, THIS WOT IS GETTING HARDER TO COMPREHEND EVERY DAY???
#20
They aren't making films entirely for the U.S. market any more, JosephM, but for the rest of the world. Their last several anti-war films bombed horribly here, but I don't know how they did abroad. If poorly, then market reality will catch up with the unthinking idiots in Hollywood. If well, we'll be subject to more such nonsense.
On the other hand, we saw Don't Mess With The Zohan last night -- very cute, very silly, and very pro-U.S. and the American Dream.
They paraded through the summer-like heat last weekend in long dresses and suit coats, hundreds of families following the same paths that lead them to church every Sunday morning. They passed single-story houses and dilapidated parks before entering Trinity United Church of Christ on this city's South Side.
Across town, Sen. Barack Obama dressed in sneakers, jeans and a golf shirt. He was going biking with his wife and two daughters on a rare day off from the campaign. He strapped on a helmet, and his family pedaled north from their Hyde Park neighborhood, toward the big houses on the lake. So he's not going to any church? Good thing he's not Catholic! Maybe he should look into a nice, mainstream Methodist church in D.C.? A vast distance separates Obama from the church he quit last month, as hurt feelings continue to fester on both sides. Obama, his patience exhausted by the most recent controversial remark from a pastor, said in late May, "Our relations with Trinity have been strained." And some of the church's 8,000 members -- as well as some other black pastors -- feel abandoned, betrayed and misunderstood after their contentious turn in the national spotlight.
This was not how it was supposed to be. Obama, the biracial presidential candidate who has pledged to unite Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, blacks and whites, was going to provide an opening for Trinity and other black churches like it to shatter their stereotypes and bolster their national presence. Instead, a landslide of negative video of Trinity's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and right-wing political attacks left Obama's former church and others like it even more marginalized and vilified. We have a black congregation use our (Methodist) facilities Sunday afternoon, but I believe their Christianity comes before their blackness. Hmmmm.... Maybe I should listen in...
As the controversy over Trinity crescendoed earlier this month, the church's new pastor, Otis Moss III, released a statement to his congregation: "We, the community of Trinity, are concerned, hurt, shocked, shocked, I tell you, and that's not all! We are also dismayed, frustrated, fearful and heartbroken. . . . We are a wounded people and our wounds, the bruises from our encounter with history, have scarred our very souls." Yeah, but your souls were scarred after the first sermon.
At the very core of its mission, Trinity seeks to reveal and broadcast racial inequalities. A product of black liberation theology, it teaches members to identify with their African roots and take pride in the African American experience. Sermons sometimes mingle biblical lessons with those learned from slavery or the civil rights movement. And just where does G** d*** Amerikkka come in?
Last month, when asked why he wanted to preach at Trinity, Moss said: "This is a place where the struggle continues, where you can talk about real issues. We can recognize social injustice and then take it on." Make people feel good through hate, just like in the Bible.
Obama has largely sought to avoid discussing race or racism during his presidential campaign, except when it comes to this country's ability to overcome it. His major speech on the issue in March was an attempt to quell controversy over Wright without making race part of his political platform. The Democrat casts himself as a unifier -- the son of a white American woman and a black African man, shaped by white, working-class grandparents and South Chicago's housing projects.
"We may have different stories," he said in March, "but we hold common hopes." And commonality, Obama often indicates, is what Americans should spend their energy discussing, instead of what he termed Wright's "divisive and destructive" rhetoric. Does that apply to Harry and Nancy, too?
Because of that divide, Obama sent a letter to the church in late May tendering his family's resignation. Obama explained that it was with "some sadness" that he made the decision to leave the church where he discovered Christianity, married his wife and had his children baptized, but that he no longer felt comfortable being associated with the church's provocative rhetoric.
After Obama's decision, Trinity officials stopped speaking with the media and encouraged members to do the same. They refuse to criticize Obama, as does Moss, saying only that he will remain in their prayers.
Though several prominent pastors said Obama's decision to leave Trinity might create minor friction with some black voters, it is highly unlikely that he will lose their support. Even most Trinity members don't fault Obama, instead blaming the media and political attacks. Right. If they learned anything at church, it's that it's not their fault.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/15/2008 05:56 ||
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After Obama's decision, Trinity officials stopped speaking with the media and encouraged members to do the same. They refuse to criticize Obama, as does Moss, saying only that he will remain in their prayers.
Taking a page out of the manuals of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.
#2
They won't criticize him, but how did they come to be so hurt and wounded, scarred to their souls, if not by Candidate Obama's repudiation of his erstwhile beloved home, where he no longer feels comfortable being associated with the rhetoric, albeit presumably not the theology that brought him to what he so fondly thinks of as Christianity.
#3
They paraded through the summer-like heat last weekend in long dresses and suit coats, hundreds of families following the same paths that lead them to church every Sunday morning.
Women all heard that Brady was dead,
Goes back home and they dresses in red.
Come a snifflin' and a sighin' down the street,
In their big mother hubbards and their stockin' feet.
Lehman Bros has been consistently listed on the internet as the next big investment bank to go with a shotgun marriage.
TFA:
Senior executives at Lehman Brothers, the embattled Wall Street securities firm, have been summoned this weekend for a series of meetings as the firm prepares to release second-quarter earnings on Monday and speculation swirls that the firm may be sold to a larger bank, CNBC has learned.
#1
Wouldn't surprise me. They make a lot of money in fixed income products. And a lot of the money in fixed income was from asset-backed securities. Mortgages, car loans, credit cards - all of the things that are defaulting at high rates because of lax underwriting, resulting in major reductions in the value of bonds created out of these assets.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
ZIMBABWE police brought the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's secretary general to court this morning despite having said earlier that they were not sure his order issued yesterday was genuine. Handcuffed and wearing leg irons, Tendai Biti appeared tense as he was brought into Justice Ben Hlatshwayo's court escorted by an armed policeman. He was wearing a green tracksuit and appeared to be in good health, a reporter at the scene said. Hlatshwayo had given police an hour to produce the secretary general.
President Robert Mugabe has vowed that the main opposition party will never lead Zimbabwe and said he was prepared to "go to war" for his country.
In Obama's telling, he early on viewed downstate Illinois as a proving ground for his belief that the differences among Americans are smaller than they might appear. He describes Illinois in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," as a "microcosm of the country" and recalls the wonder of his week-long 1997 tour with aide Dan Shomon -- the "miles of cornfields" and roadside vendors with signs such as "Good Deals on Guns and Swords."
A vast distance separates Obama from the church he quit last month, as hurt feelings continue to fester on both sides. Obama, his patience exhausted by the most recent controversial remark from a pastor, said in late May, "Our relations with Trinity have been strained." And some of the church's 8,000 members -- as well as some other black pastors -- feel abandoned, betrayed and misunderstood after their contentious turn in the national spotlight.
