One More Time (News)

Make your decision you know that it's long overdue....


Who Needs Working Fire Systems In a Warzone Anyway?
So the continuing spiral of corruption in constructing our huge (bigger than the Vatican), fortified (yet still in range of Iraqi mortars) compound... err, embassy in Baghdad gets worse every time you look. This time?

It turns out the fire systems, aka sprinklers, detectors and the like... doesn't work. Or to be more precise, since it's not been tested, is likely to catastrophically fail in the event of a fire.

Specifically at issue here are the underground pipes that feed high pressure water into the sprinkler system.. pipes which don't seem up to code.

WASHINGTON — The fire-fighting system in the mammoth new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who said that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed.

"As far as I know, nothing's been fixed," said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking to the news media. "The lives of the people who are working in that building are going to be at stake" if the complex doesn't meet building codes, he said.

What reason could one have for cutting corners on such a huge project on which so many lives will depend, I wonder?

Last month, 19 days before he retired, State Department buildings chief Charles E. Williams certified key elements of the embassy's fire-fighting system as ready for operation, according to the documents McClatchy obtained.

His own fire-safety specialists and an outside consultant, however, had warned Williams and his aides repeatedly about numerous fire safety violations.

Moreover, Williams' thumbs-up was based on tests run by another contractor that was hired, not by the State Department, but by the company building the embassy, First Kuwaiti General Contracting and Trading Co. State Department officials, members of Congress and others have accused First Kuwaiti of shoddy construction and questionable labor practices.

Mindboggling.

Anyone want to lay odds that he has a financial tie to the contractors? This IS the Bush administration after all.

Source: McClatchy

Reason Enough to Vote For Him, Right Here
Reuters Headline: Corporate elite fear candidate Edwards

Apparently, according to various corporate lobbyists (aka, scum), the big money world is scared to death that Edwards might end up President.

That right there should secure your vote, ladies and gentlemen.

Source: Reuters

WGA Strike Grinds On; Oscars in Doubt
So the Writer's strike is grinding on due to complete intransigence on the part of the owners, despite their ever-mounting losses (now at 1.4 BILLION dollars to the Los Angeles economy), and now it looks like they're going to lose their single biggest PR move of the year -- the Oscars.

No red carpet, no Keira or Angelina, no best-dressed/worst-dressed lists, no goody bags, no limo rides, no parties and no champagne. Tonight's lacklustre Golden Globe awards will sound an alarm across Los Angeles: the show does not go on.

Hollywood is on strike and it is beginning to hurt the city built around the entertainment industry. People are out of work, the local economy is suffering and the biggest blow to both revenue and prestige could be yet to come - the cancellation of the Oscars.

See, the strike already killed the Golden Globes, because the nominees, and good for them on this btw, would not cross a picket line.

Usually one of the most glamorous events in the showbusiness calendar, tonight's Globes at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be reduced to no more than a one-hour press conference in which the winners' names will be read out. The losses incurred by caterers, hairdressers, hotels, jewellers, limousine firms, party planners, stylists and other support workers are estimated at $70-80m.

I actually feel badly for the collateral damage the strike is causing, but we all know who to blame -- the same people who won't share a couple percent of their revenue with the people who write their products.

For shame.

Source: The Guardian

Blackwater Coverup
So immediately after the shooting spree that led to the Iraqi government demanding that the mercenary company be thrown out of the country, Blackwater repaired and painted over all the vehicles involved.

Conveniently destroying all the evidence.

Blackwater SAYS there were lots of bullet holes and damage and such, and can produce unverifiable photographs to prove it -- but the actual cars are now mint.

So, either they were riddled with the enemy fire that most observers believe never existed, in which case Blackwater destroyed their best legal defense, or, in an attempt to obsfuscate their role in a spree killing, they repaired basically intact vehicles, then lied about what repairs they had done.

You can tell which theory I buy into.

Source: Raw Story/AP

Student Rights
Ahh, the University. A place of learning, of reasoned discussion, of disagreement in a civilized atmosphere.

Or failing that, a place where the administration can screw you because they feel like it.

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

...

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.


...


As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.” The appeal also mentions that Barnes’s profile stated, at one point, that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes.”

I'm not entirely sure where oil comes into it, mind you, but, yeah, not a huge threat here.

The letter also said that in order to return as a student, a non-university psychiatrist would have to certify that Barnes was not a threat to himself or anyone else, and that he would receive “on-going therapy.” After he appealed, with endorsements from a psychiatrist and a professor, the Georgia Board of Regents “didn’t do the right thing and reverse the expulsion,” said William Creeley, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that defends students’ free expression rights and helped Barnes secure legal counsel.

Oh-ho, the changing goalposts defense! My how I love that one.

So his grand total of offenses runs: he made a collage, he had a link on his page to a photography contest, and he was cleaning his room to relax.

WHAT A MONSTER.

Yeeeeesh.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Insert Newsy Title Here

If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods..

Three Hour Tour
So some Russkie fishermen got 'lost', more like stranded, at a Russian military base after horrid weather during a fishing trip in October off the Kamchatka. They made their way to the base and survived off of old rations until some recently ventured out and found help.

Oddly, they still face charges, as technically they were fishing in military waters. Come on, guys, I think they learned their lesson. How about '3 months time served' and be done with it?

Source: Raw Story

Writer's Strike Progress
After Letterman's production company struck a deal with the WGA, it seems the floodgates may be creaking open. Now, what's left of United Artists, after it was converted into a vanity studio for Tom Cruise, is looking to cut a deal with the WGA, which would serve as a prototype for other studios. Supposedly the Weinstein Company and Lionsgate arelooking for a similar out.

I guess we can see who's going to win this one.

Source: The LA Times

Women In Refrigerators
So Gail Simone, famous for penning the 'Women in Refrigerators' rant, is now helming Wonder Woman. I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, it's good to see someone who bitches about the comics industry step and try to help solve the problems, rather than just making a buck at the expense of the medium's flaws; on the other hand, having checked out their list of grievances for female comic characters, I'm a bit... underwhelmed.

Sure, women were treated badly for much of the history of American comics. Your point? How were minority characters treated during this time? Not terribly well, I can assure you. It was a big deal that Marvel, in the 80s, started having minority heroes on big teams. Marvel. You know, the least stodgy of the comic companies.

Besides, in their long list of things that female characters have suffered, they fail to note that the longest and greatest suffering hero of all is a male: Spiderman.

Let's see what I can think of, off the top of my head, without being by any means a Spidey scholar:

Spiderman: Gained powers through negligent science experiment; long-standing survivor's guilt; alcoholic; villains routinely target and kill his friends and family; best friend went insane, tried to kill him, died; wife routinely targeted; may be sterile due to spider-DNA; bones broken (countless times), eye gouged out, turned into spider-man-monster with 6 arms; violated and DNA used to make army of lame clones; clone took over life and relationship with mary jane; lost powers and ceded title to clone; violated mentally and physically by alien symbiote, which stole his memories and powers, conferred them to professional rival; endlessly humilated in work life by boss, who is rabid spiderman hater.

etc. etc. etc.

Face it, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has taken it like Spiderman. He's the Christ of Comics; he suffers for the sins of the other heroes.

Sources: WIR Rant
Slashdot


Magic Typewriters, But Not Like Stephen King's Story
A frontpage Slashdot article, probably a paid one, links to two new word processors for writers, claiming to be the best thing since moveable type (not the blogging software, you sad nerds). One has every whizzy design feature under the sun; the other claims to remove distractions from you and your work by essentially turning your modern computer into a terminal from the good old days.

I guess different strokes, and so forth, but I'm not sure that your word processor is going to solve a lack of attention span. The words should come from your brain, and if they don't, then not much is going to help you. On the other hand, a comfortable writing environment...

*shrug*

Just musing, no conclusion here, let alone a point.

Sources: Whizzy Scrivener
Ultra Simple Writeroom

That Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does
So I sort of bought this Brandi Carlile CD, "My Story", thinking she did a song that I wanted that in the end was by someone else. No problem, it's a decent cd of its own. I particularly like the way the one song, 'Turpentine', that has been all over the radio, sounds.

Here's the thing though: part of the lyrics of said song really bugs me.

These days we go to waste like wine
That's turned to turpentine

Here's the problem: turpentine isn't made from wine. It comes from tree sap that's been fermented. When wine goes bad, it turns into vinegar.

Not turpentine.

Someone should have told her before they recorded this, I think. Surely another rhyme could have been worked out.

Sources: ME
Wikipedia on Turpentine
Wikipedia on Vinegar

Huge Sundry News Post

I'm going to get around to a big post about the Bhutto assassination, but the story over there seems to be changing by the hour, so there's not a lot of point. I had just finished my post on Afghanistan when she was killed and I saw the rumors floating down the newsie sites to that effect, but the same rumors came out a month ago at the last attempt on her life, so I just sort of shrugged and went ahead.

Oops. At any rate, have some regular news in the meantime.

Those Scientists are Real Good at Fightin', Tuggah!
So a couple of researchers at one of our Antarctic bases got drunk and into a brawl. One of them was hurt badly enough that he had to be flown to New Zealand for treatment with badly busted jaw.

Fellows, honestly, it might be a good idea to keep your tempers in check if the nearest hospital is on another continent. Just a hint.

Source: The Guardian

Uruguay Is Ahead of Us in Civil Rights
It's nice when South America joins the civilized world in making us look bad on gay rights. In this case, Uruguay has passed a national civil union law, which is a good first step.

Personally I think the government should be out of the idiot marriage business entirely, but if you're going to give tax breaks to one set of couples it's not fair to deny them to others.

Source: Page One Q

Huckabee Makes Some Hay
Bhutto's dead, so he thinks we have to clamp down the border against all those 'unusual' Pakistanis that must be headed here to assassinate OUR Pakistani politicians.

Which we have an abundance of.

This thinly veiled call for pointless racist profiling comes along with a statement about how much he respected the late politician for, well, being a woman and not a religious crazy.

Huckabee called Bhutto's death is a tragedy, but he suggested she had been a threat to Islamic fundamentalists. "An educated, sophisticated, strong, capable woman leader -- that does pose a threat to those who don't believe that women should be given that platform and that level of equality," Huckabee said.

Hmm, people who don't believe women should be given an equal platform in life... I wonder...

In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: "I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention." What was in the family statement from the SBC? "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ

Wow. Pot, meet Kettle.

Sources: Radio Iowa (for the Huckabee haymaking)
The Daily Kos (for the woman-hating)

Cost of War in Iraq
This Firedoglake entry is a handy rundown of how your money is being spent, and how the death is being distributed. Short answer: 15 billion a month, and there's a handy geographical breakdown of the Lancet study showing the way we've killed 650k Iraqis in this war.

Fifteen billion per month. More dead in Iraq than died from our Civil War.

Great job, El Presidente!

Source: Firedoglake

Kucinich Mad Over Pizza Ad
His supporters are tired of him being made fun of for believing in UFOs, or refusing to say he doesn't.

Guys, seriously. I know he's got solid positions on most of the issues, but the man is a flake. Nobody's going to stop making fun of his flakiness.

Source: Plain Dealer Blog

Bush Cronies Everywhere
So there's a big kerfluffle at the Fish and Wildlife service because their top political appointee for a while was, err, sabotaging her agency's work in favor of big business. Since she got shitcanned for improperly influencing a decision to remove an animal from the Threatened species list (said animal happened to live on land she owned), they've had to reverse a ton of similarly tainted rulings, and the whole institution is in a humiliating state. Wildlife groups are now suing the administration to get records of just how corrupt she was and asesss the damage.

Aside from the all too typical Bush administration story here, you have a bit of life's unintentional humor.

"This is a lawsuit we've been forced to file to receive documents that we're entitled to that demonstrate the severity of Julie MacDonald's involvement in overturning endangered species and habitat decisions," said William Snape, the group's senior counsel. Snape filed the suit under the Freedom of Information Act.

When a guy named Snape says you're overdoing the villainy, you might want to listen.

Source: Raw Story

What a Great Venue
Beijing's legendary air pollution is still astoundingly bad, despite their draconian efforts to clear the air.

Beijingers were warned to stay indoors on Thursday as pollution levels across the capital hit the top of the scale, despite repeated assurances by the government that air quality was improving.

"This is as bad as it can get," a spokeswoman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau told AFP.

This isn't a fluke either, by any means.

Beijing's air quality is routinely rated among the worst in the world by international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, with rampant coal burning, regular dust storms and a growing number of cars cited as the main reasons.

Heckuva job, whoever made the call to hold the Olympics there, lol.

Source: Raw Story

You Don't Need Health Care If You're Old, You Just Need A Tar Pit To Jump In
New ruling says that once you're eligible for what's left of Medicare, your employer can reneg on your health benefits and leave you out in the cold.

What a wonderful country we live in.

Source: The New York Times

"Terrorist" Walks
So there was once a guy named David Hicks. Still is, if you want to get technical. The US's mercenary allies, the drug-dealing Northern Alliance, picked him up in Afghanistan. The military said he was aiding Al-Queda, and after a sham trial, 'proved' it. He was sentenced to a long term, but allowed to serve only 9 months of it, the last of which he could serve in his home country of Australia. He's about to go free.

You have to read between the lines on this one, but if you do, the real story is readily apparent.

Hicks became the first person convicted at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II when he pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida.

The former Outback cowboy was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban. A month later, he was sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he spent more than five years without trial.

A U.S. military tribunal sentenced Hicks — a Muslim convert who has since renounced the faith — to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended, after he confessed to aiding al-Qaida during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following Sept. 11, 2001.

Under a plea bargain, Hicks was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence at Yatala prison in his hometown of Adelaide in South Australia state, but was ordered to remain silent about any alleged abuse he suffered while in custody.

So, here's how it goes. This man was picked up in Afghanistan by the NA at a time we offered bounties on anyone from Al-Queda. We didn't check those claims very carefully, or at all, because the more we caught, the better it looked on paper. We sent this guy around our world tour of torture sites and did some monstrously heinous things to him, things so bad that they're still terrified he'll talk. Having not actually done anything or been a terrorist, after they beat a confession out of the man and broke him, they sent him home, to live out the rest of his days as a shell of a human being.

This is life in the American Empire, folks. Don't turn your backs.

Source: Raw Story

Wall Street Weighs In On Writer's Strike
Bear Sterns, a large investment firm, has concluded that if the writers were given absolutely everything they want it would amount to less than 1% of the annual revenue of the major studios.

Basically, the big institutional investors are starting to get pissy about how badly the studios are handling this, and I imagine this is the first in a slew of leaks designed to pressure them to settle already, before the bottom falls out of the market.

Source: Firedoglake

Denturist: A Non-Dentist Who Makes Dentures
The things you learn reading about the appalling state of dental care in Kentucky and West Virginia.

A sickening article in some respects; in others, well... if you lose all your teeth because you do meth or chew tobacco, I feel less sympathetic.

Also, the evil bastard in me can't help but joke: People in Kentucky have teeth?

Source: The New York Times

Think About This When You See One of Those Annoying Whopper Commercials
In an article about the appalling and inhuman slavery that fuels our fresh fruit industry in the US, it's nice to know that some people will go the extra mile to be dicks. Burger King is fighting an effort to slightly increase the pay given to tomato pickers because it won't 'solve' the problem. No shit. But doing nothing is better? Meanwhile, Whole Foods has been getting their tasty yuppie tomatoes from some of the more notorious slaver operations.

Ahh, corporate greed. Is there nothing they won't do for a dollar?

Jimmy Carter has been doing his usual exemplary work, trying to help these poor people. He may have been a week chief executive, but honestly, he has to have been the best human being to serve in the White House in the last century.

Source: The Independent

Lit Majors Need Help
A short article about how I Am Legend is supposedly some kind of grand symbol for the War on Terror era.

Riiight. Or, alternately, and this is just a theory: it's a shitty mediocre action movie based on a mediocre action movie based on a Vincent Price scare-flick based on a mediocre Matheson story. Written almost a half century ago. Having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

Source: NPR