Heh, I still laugh when I read that disclaimer. :-D

I remember clearly when it was created by NA, back in the heated days...

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Israel invokes its nonproliferation policy

San Diego Union-Tribune editorial

September 27, 2007

The recent Israeli air strike on a target in northern Syria remains shrouded in mystery. The governments of Israel and Syria won't comment publicly on what was attacked or why. President Bush pointedly declined three times this week to answer reporters' questions about the incident.

Why all the secrecy?

The likelihood is that those who know aren't talking because of the extraordinary sensitivity and magnitude of what occurred. Drawing together all the circumstantial evidence and the best informed speculation, here is what may have happened: After many months of intelligence gathering, Israel dispatched fighter-bombers to attack some sort of nuclear facility the Syrians were developing with illicit technical assistance from North Korea.

In a Middle East already increasingly on edge over Iran's presumed drive for nuclear weapons, learning that Syria, too, may have nuclear-related ambitions is deeply unsettling, and not only to Israelis, Americans and Europeans. None of Syria's Arab neighbors, otherwise quick to denounce Israeli “aggression,” uttered a peep of protest over the Sept. 6 attack.

If, in fact, North Korea is covertly working with Syria on anything related to the export of nuclear technology or materials, that would violate the Feb. 13 framework agreement. Under that agreement, Pyongyang pledged to give up its nuclear weapons program and to refrain from any nuclear proliferation. Oddly, North Korea immediately protested the Israeli strike, which certainly suggests some involvement or interest in whatever Syria was doing.

Israel's apparent willingness to act unilaterally to pre-empt any Syrian nuclear option surely sets off alarm bells in Iran, which may have been an ancillary objective of the Israeli strike. Any hope of deterring Iran from developing nuclear weapons may depend on demonstrating that at least Israel is prepared, as a last resort, to strike Iran's most important nuclear facilities.

Bush may want to say nothing now about all this, first, to avoid confirming what the Israelis aren't willing to acknowledge publicly and, second, to protect the North Korean nuclear agreement from collapse. There may be a third reason, too, for Bush's silence. The Israelis are said to have kept the Bush administration informed about Syria's apparent nuclear project and, some say, to have obtained tacit U.S. approval for the air strike.

Syria lacks the financial resources and the scientific-industrial base to pursue a nuclear weapons program on its own. What the Syrians might envision with covert assistance from North Korea is another matter. The poor man's alternative to real nukes is the so-called dirty bomb, conventional explosives wrapped in radioactive material. This is not a weapon the world should want Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to wield, or to pass off to any of the terrorist groups the Syrians sponsor.

Israel, it would appear, did what it had to do.

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me@rescam.org

Why all the secrecy?

Because it's a matter of 'national security'... [rolls eyes]... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Free Speech or Libel - You decide.

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me@rescam.org

Free Speech or Libel - You decide.

to call someone a whore is always a libel as long as this someone is not a prostitute.

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Account frozen...

Free Speech or Libel - You decide.

to call someone a whore is always a libel as long as this someone is not a prostitute.

I'm pretty sure that libel laws only apply if the claim is meant to be believed by reasonable people that hear it.

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Free Speech or Libel - You decide.

to call someone a whore is always a libel as long as this someone is not a prostitute.

I'm pretty sure that libel laws only apply if the claim is meant to be believed by reasonable people that hear it.

In California, as a public figure there is a higher standard of proof necessary in a libel case.

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me@rescam.org

Why was evidence destroyed in NFL scandal?

San Diego Union-Tribune editorial

September 29, 2007

Local NFL fans preoccupied with the Chargers' disappointing performance may not have noticed. Fans elsewhere may have been distracted by new twists in Michael Vick's ugly legal saga or by the many interesting early season plot lines. But we expect that before long, the single NFL event from September 2007 that will be most remembered is Commissioner Roger Goodell's inexplicable, mysterious decision to destroy all of the evidence in the New England Patriots' spying scandal within 72 hours of receiving the evidence in the league's Manhattan offices.

Even if the NFL had solid, credible reasons, its shredding inevitably would have inspired Oliver Stone-style speculation about what the league was trying to hide. But the explanations of league spokesman Greg Aiello of ESPN.com columnist Gregg Easterbrook – the only journalist who's taken a hard look at the league's actions – invite conspiracy theories.

What was gained by destroying the evidence? Aiello said it would ensure the materials the Patriots turned over couldn't be used by any team to gain a competitive advantage. But as Easterbrook points out, given that the NFL had the evidence under lock and key, this doesn't make sense.

Did the Patriots' videotaping of other teams' defensive signals – illegal under NFL rules – help them win any of their three recent Super Bowl titles? Aiello wouldn't offer a clear answer.

Since taking over as NFL commissioner last year, Goodell has gotten high marks, particularly for getting tough with what's fair to call the league's criminal element. But his reputation could and should take a huge hit unless he can immediately offer a plausible reason as to why all the evidence was destroyed in one of the worst scandals ever to hit America's most popular professional sport.

As things now stand, the only reason that makes sense is that the NFL has something to hide – something so embarrassing that it must be covered up, whatever the cost to the league's credibility.

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me@rescam.org

Why was evidence destroyed in NFL scandal?

Are the referees up to no good again? ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

My first movie:

"Our World Too"

~An Observation

Soundtrack provided by one of my website members:

Band: The Heat
Track: "Our World Too"

From Dane: Percussionist, "The Heat."
Music © Bazz Cooper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0uCTXuAjbw

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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

Beware of Iran in Latin America

ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
THE MIAMI HERALD

October 2, 2007

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must love the tropics. He has spent more time in Latin America than President Bush over the past 12 months, and is promising billions in economic aid to his friends in the region.

Last week's visit by Ahmadinejad to Venezuela and Bolivia marked his third trip to the region since September 2006. By comparison, Bush has only made one visit to the region over the same period.

Ahmadinejad – whose reported support of terrorist groups and vows to “annihilate” Israel have raised U.S. and European concerns over Iran's nuclear program – could hardly be signing cooperation agreements with Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua at a faster pace.

Last week, hours after German Chancellor Angela Merkel compared Ahmadinejad to Adolph Hitler in her speech at the United Nations, the Iranian president got a hero's welcome in La Paz from Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales and pledged $1.1 billion in “industrial cooperation” aid to that country over the next five years.

Later, in Venezuela, Ahmadinejad confirmed a recent pledge to create a $2 billion joint investment fund.

Iran has already become the second-largest investor in Venezuela, after the United States, and recently inaugurated a weekly Iran Air flight between Tehran and Caracas. Flights are packed with government officials and government-friendly business people, according to Venezuelan press reports.

In addition to opening an embassy in Bolivia, Iran is expanding its diplomatic missions across the region. After attending the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and receiving two state medals from him in January, Ahmadinejad has stationed about 20 Iranian officials at his embassy there, which has by now become one of the largest in that country, Western diplomats say.

Earlier this year, the Iranian foreign ministry held its first International Seminar on Latin America in Tehran.

What is Ahmadinejad looking for in Latin America?

First, he is seeking Latin American support to counter U.S. and European pressures to stop Iran from developing nuclear capabilities. Venezuela and Cuba were, alongside Syria, the only three countries that supported Iran's nuclear program in a February 2006 vote at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

Second, Ahmadinejad wants to strike back at the United States in its own hemisphere. Iran may want to be able to finance anti-American groups and possibly destabilize U.S.-friendly governments in order to negotiate with Washington from a position of greater strength. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran seems to be saying: “You got into my neighborhood; now I'm getting into yours.”

Third, Ahmadinejad's popularity at home is falling, and he may want to show his people that he is being welcomed as a hero abroad.

Thomas Shannon, the top State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs, told me in a recent interview that Iran “wants to show to its own citizens that it is not diplomatically isolated.”

Is Washington worried? I asked Shannon. He responded that the United States worries about Iran's ties to Hezbollah terrorists, who among other things are believed to have carried out the 1994 attack on the Jewish Community Center in Argentina that left 85 dead and 300 wounded.

“What worries us is Iran's history of activities in the region and especially its links to Hezbollah and the terrorist attack that took place in Buenos Aires,” Shannon said. “Past is prologue.”

My opinion: If Ahmadinejad were cooperating with Argentina in the investigation of the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires or abstained from calling for the “annihilation” of other countries, there would be nothing wrong with Latin nations welcoming aid from a new oil-rich partner, regardless of its Islamic fundamentalist-fascist ideology.

But the growing presence of obscure Iranian “diplomatic personnel” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries in the region raises questions over whether Iranian agents will soon start slipping into other countries to support terrorist or totalitarian groups.

Importing the Middle Eastern conflict or bringing the Iran-U.S. conflict into Latin American territory is clearly in the interest of Iran, but it's a dangerous game for Latin America. Barring evidence that Iran was not tied to the 1994 bombing in Argentina, Latin American nations should keep Iran as far away as possible, before it's too late.

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me@rescam.org

There is a nice quotation by Goethe which I like to see dedicated to all politicians and bureaucrats who waste time with talking boloney whilst doing nothing to avoid all good deeds which need to be done:

Words have been interchanged enough,
Let me at last see action too.
While compliments you're turning idle stuff!
Some useful thing might come to view.
Why talk of waiting for the mood?
No one who dallies ever will it see.
If you pretend you're poets good!
Command then, poets, poetry!
What we're in need of, that full well you know,
We want to sip strong drink, so go
And start the brew without delay!
Never is done tomorrow what is not done today
And one should let no day slip by.
With resolution seize the possible straightway
By forelock and with quick, courageous trust;
Then holding fast you will not let it further fly
And you will labour on because you must.

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Account frozen...

After a recent visit to Barns and Noble, I suggest everyone check out the 'current affairs' section... What a political hoot... Then mosey on over to the 'christian' store where you'll be surprised to find out that it's official, Jesus was God... Gee, just last year they tried to convince us that he was a 'trinity'... God help us all... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Thomas is angry but hardly a victim

RUTH MARCUS
THE WASHINGTON POST

October 5, 2007

To read Clarence Thomas' book is to be struck anew by the blast furnace of his anger – at Democrats; at liberal interest groups; at the media; at, of course, Anita Hill.

There are wounds that never heal, but, for most, time tends to at least salve the injury. Not for Thomas, even 16 years later. The 289 pages of “My Grandfather's Son” pulsate with Thomas' rage.

“Whoop-dee damn-doo,” Thomas relates telling his wife when she interrupted his bath to report that he had been confirmed. “Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me.”

Thomas v. Hill is one of those questions destined to remain disputed – Did Al Gore actually win the presidency? Was the intelligence manipulated to mislead us into Iraq? The conundrum of Thomas-Hill is the continuing forcefulness of their conflicting assertions about what happened when he was a Reagan administration official and she a young lawyer working for him.

If Thomas did what Hill claims, how to understand his undimmed anger, his absolute denials, his willingness to pick the scab anew? If he didn't, how to understand her motive for lying – and her summoning such unlikely details as pubic hairs on Coke cans?

I covered the Thomas hearings for the Post, every excruciating hour, and I can imagine, as Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher suggest in their book, “Supreme Discomfort,” that the entire story has not been told. Perhaps there was some flirtation, maybe more, that it behooved neither party to acknowledge.

But I also believe the evidence then backed Hill's version of events. What has emerged since only further buttresses her assertions.

Thomas describes Hill as a “touchy and apt to overreact” employee whom he'd refused to promote; who asked to follow him from the Education Department to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after the alleged harassment; and who continued to seek his professional help after leaving the agency.

“I felt sure that I had never said or done anything to her that was even remotely inappropriate,” he writes, and, if he had, “she would have complained loudly and instantly, not waited for a decade to make her displeasure known.” For his part, Thomas describes himself as “one of the least likely candidates imaginable for such a charge.”

Here is some of the evidence Thomas omits:

First, Hill did not wait 10 years to complain about his behavior. Susan Hoerchner, a Yale Law School classmate of Hill's, described how she complained of sexual harassment while working for Thomas, saying the EEOC chairman had “repeatedly asked her out . . . but wouldn't seem to take 'no' for an answer.” Ellen Wells, a friend, said Hill had come to her, “deeply troubled and very depressed,” with complaints about Thomas' inappropriate behavior. John Carr, a lawyer, said that Hill, in tears, confided that “her boss was making sexual advances toward her.”

Second, Hill was not the only former subordinate of Thomas' with complaints. Former EEOC employee Angela Wright described how Thomas pressured her to date him, showed up uninvited at her apartment and asked her breast size. “Clarence Thomas would say to me, 'You know you need to be dating me. . . . You're one of the finest women I have on my staff,” Wright told Senate investigators.

Wright's account was corroborated by Rose Jourdain, a former speechwriter who, like Wright, was dismissed by Thomas. Jourdain said Wright had complained that she was “increasingly nervous about being in his presence alone” because of comments “concerning her figure, her body, her breasts, her legs.”

Another former Thomas employee, Sukari Hardnett, said of his office, “If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female.”

Third, as Merida and Fletcher found, some of the behavior Hill complained about resonated with episodes from Thomas' past. Hill described an episode in which Thomas, drinking a soda, asked, “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?” James Millet, a college classmate of Thomas, recalled “an almost identical episode” at Holy Cross. “Pubic hair was one of the things he talked about,” another classmate said.

Similarly, Thomas had a well-known taste for the kind of extreme pornography Hill said he brought up with her. “Listening to her, it was as if I was listening to the guy I knew speak,” said law school classmate Henry Terry. Washington lawyer Fred Cooke saw Thomas, while EEOC chairman, checking out a triple-X video of “The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama.”

Thomas dismisses these claims as the workings of a mob – in pinstripes instead of white robes – seeking to “keep the black man in his place.” He may have convinced himself of this. The record suggests otherwise.

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me@rescam.org

“Whoop-dee damn-doo,”

Dats what I said too... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Punishing Clarence Thomas

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.
THE UNION-TRIBUNE

October 7, 2007

The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may be the ultimate Rorschach test. Americans look back at what transpired in that Senate hearing room in October 1991 and see what they want to see.

For those who believed Anita Hill's claims that Thomas – while serving as her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – made advances and created a hostile work environment, the hearings were about sexual harassment.

In a recent interview tied to the release of his new book, “My Grandfather's Son,” Thomas said the treatment he received was really about abortion and the lengths to which the pro-choice lobby will go to keep a pro-life justice off the court.

I prefer a third explanation. These events were really about freedom – the freedom of affirmative action babies to engage in independent thinking and draw their own conclusions about whether racial entitlements actually benefit the folks they're supposed to, or are not worth preserving. That's not easy to do when you have to put up with silly accusations that you're pulling up the ladder behind you if you criticize affirmative action.

What ladder? Does anyone really think that under the status quo – where powerful, and mostly white teachers unions are derailing higher standards for Latino and African-American students – minorities are enjoying an educational windfall that they must preserve at all costs?

Oh great. Now I'm going to be in trouble, too. As a Mexican-American Harvard graduate, I have benefited from the very educational system I'm criticizing. And I've been accused of “selling out” my own people because I oppose racial preferences and bilingual education. I also support the education reform law, No Child Left Behind, which empowers Latino students and yet which a host of Democratic presidential candidates promised, during a recent Spanish-language debate, to overhaul or scrap.

But wait, shouldn't I have the right to process all available information and reach my own conclusions just like anyone else? Dream on. White liberals won't allow it. And many of them aren't beneath insinuating that – without the opportunities that they alone provided me, out of the goodness of their hearts – I'd be out hawking oranges at an intersection.

You should read the mail I got from liberals who were furious at me – oops, I mean, “disappointed” in me – for defending former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. I'll summarize: “You got your job because you're Mexican. Gonzales got his job because he was Mexican. So naturally, one Mexican defends another. Have a nice day.”

And this from people who insist they're trying to help me, and people like me, live full and productive lives.

So I can appreciate firsthand some of what Clarence Thomas – and Alberto Gonzales, Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown, Michael Steele – and other conservatives of color have had to endure to hold on to their beliefs. Thomas figured out what his ordeal was about in real time. And he shared those insights at the hearings in words that must have come across to liberals like fingernails on a chalkboard.

In addressing the Senate Judiciary Committee, after Anita Hill had made her accusations, Thomas blasted the proceedings as a “national disgrace.” Most memorably, he called them a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves” and a “message that, unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

Thomas was angry then. And, according to his critics, he's still angry now. The pages of the book, wrote the left-of-center Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, “pulsate with Thomas' rage.” Marcus also seems surprised that time hasn't healed these wounds, “not for Thomas, even 16 years later.”

To recap, here are the rules of grievance as dictated by white liberals: If you're an African-American and your politics lean to the left, you can be righteously angry over slavery, segregation and discrimination and preserve that anger for more than 200 years. But, if you're an African-American and your politics lean to the right – and you're wronged in any way – then you have no right to be angry. And if you do succumb to anger, you must get over it in, oh, say, 16 years.

Personally, I'm glad Clarence Thomas is angry. He should be angry. And the rest of us should be ashamed.

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me@rescam.org