Yuck... This guy seriously thinks he's going to become chairman of the GOP?
Candidate for GOP chairman shows his true effin' colors
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Quantifying corruption - the $42 million Ukranian bribe!
Some places are so corrupt, you can quantify just how bad. In the Ukraine, they do!
In fact, the government releases bribe totals each year in an annual report. D'oh!
From the Kyiv Post:
"In 2008, more Ukrainian officials than ever got their fingers caught in the cookie jar. This year went down as a record-breaking year in the annals of bribes uncovered by law enforcement. (Given Ukraine’s reputation for corruption, one has to wonder how many bribes escaped the short arm of the law here.) Some 1,500 public servants took bribes in 2008, totaling Hr 91.1 million, the Ministry of Interior Affairs announced on Dec. 19, almost triple last year’s totals. These are the top 10 bribes we found, mostly in the public service and real estate sectors..."
Read more at:
Kyiv Post on 'Top 10 Uncovered Bribes'
P.S. If anyone hears of bribes going on in the Mpls-St. Paul area, please do tell. I'm all ears!!!
In fact, the government releases bribe totals each year in an annual report. D'oh!
From the Kyiv Post:
"In 2008, more Ukrainian officials than ever got their fingers caught in the cookie jar. This year went down as a record-breaking year in the annals of bribes uncovered by law enforcement. (Given Ukraine’s reputation for corruption, one has to wonder how many bribes escaped the short arm of the law here.) Some 1,500 public servants took bribes in 2008, totaling Hr 91.1 million, the Ministry of Interior Affairs announced on Dec. 19, almost triple last year’s totals. These are the top 10 bribes we found, mostly in the public service and real estate sectors..."
Read more at:
Kyiv Post on 'Top 10 Uncovered Bribes'
P.S. If anyone hears of bribes going on in the Mpls-St. Paul area, please do tell. I'm all ears!!!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Eddy Burke and the Consequences
The man I wish I was is a bit of a band whore, sleeping around with all kinds of up-and-coming performing artists and name-dropping them at indie rock parties.
That man has never materialized, but I did buy a beer for a few weeks ago at the 440 Bar for a local bluegrass hero, Eddy Burke of Eddy Burke and the Consequences....
We are now friends on MySpace. I did not catch his show at the Acadia last night but if I had, we'd be fist-bumping and swapping groupies and I would have had the harmonica solo. i just know it.
Listen to the second song here with the Consequences, the bluegrass "If I remember":
http://www.myspace.com/199210144
His sadder folk stuff here -- "That Smiling Girl" is a favorite:
http://www.myspace.com/thelegendofeddyburke
That man has never materialized, but I did buy a beer for a few weeks ago at the 440 Bar for a local bluegrass hero, Eddy Burke of Eddy Burke and the Consequences....
We are now friends on MySpace. I did not catch his show at the Acadia last night but if I had, we'd be fist-bumping and swapping groupies and I would have had the harmonica solo. i just know it.
Listen to the second song here with the Consequences, the bluegrass "If I remember":
http://www.myspace.com/199210144
His sadder folk stuff here -- "That Smiling Girl" is a favorite:
http://www.myspace.com/thelegendofeddyburke
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Military drops the ball on No. 1 soldier-killer
GOP SENATOR RAPS MARINES FOR LACK OF BOMB RESISTANT JEEPS
Military commanders in Iraq asked for bomb-resistant jeeps in 2005; Marine leaders decided armored-Humvees would suffice. They didn't, and roadside bombs became the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops.
Says a Republican U.S. Senator and a new Pentagon study to the brass: YOU SUCK!
When it comes to the military, it's easy to adopt stereotypes about the right and left, to fall back on thinking that says Democrats and liberals are anti-war, anti-military slacker types, while the Republicans are all about serving the country and God bless the flag and bomb 'em all and let God sort 'em out...
Those modalities make it all the more fascinating to watch the military get dissected by a Republican leader like U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.
More here:
Republican senator lays in on Marines, military
The controversy centers on "MRAP" jeeps that military commanders requested back in 2005 to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, like the one that killed an old college chum of mine in Afghanistan in May. The Marines dragged their feet and the jeeps never arrived; the bombs quickly became the primary weapon in Iraq and the main killer of American soldiers.
Some telling quotes from the AP article:
QUOTE:
"As a result, the department entered into operations in Iraq without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines," the report said.
This is the report's most "damning conclusion," Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a critic of the military's wartime procurement practices, said Monday. "It appears that some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain to the families of American troops who were killed or maimed when a lifesaving solution was within reach," Bond said in an e-mail to the AP.
Here's another choice tidbit:
The February 2005 urgent request for 1,169 MRAPs was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.
Yet despite the stark wording of Hejlik's plea, the request was mishandled and eventually lost in bureaucracy. The inspector general puts most of blame on officials at Marine Corps Command Development Command. Headquartered at Quantico, Va., the command decides what gear to buy.
Military commanders in Iraq asked for bomb-resistant jeeps in 2005; Marine leaders decided armored-Humvees would suffice. They didn't, and roadside bombs became the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops.
Says a Republican U.S. Senator and a new Pentagon study to the brass: YOU SUCK!
When it comes to the military, it's easy to adopt stereotypes about the right and left, to fall back on thinking that says Democrats and liberals are anti-war, anti-military slacker types, while the Republicans are all about serving the country and God bless the flag and bomb 'em all and let God sort 'em out...
Those modalities make it all the more fascinating to watch the military get dissected by a Republican leader like U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.
More here:
Republican senator lays in on Marines, military
The controversy centers on "MRAP" jeeps that military commanders requested back in 2005 to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, like the one that killed an old college chum of mine in Afghanistan in May. The Marines dragged their feet and the jeeps never arrived; the bombs quickly became the primary weapon in Iraq and the main killer of American soldiers.
Some telling quotes from the AP article:
QUOTE:
"As a result, the department entered into operations in Iraq without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines," the report said.
This is the report's most "damning conclusion," Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a critic of the military's wartime procurement practices, said Monday. "It appears that some bureaucrats at the Pentagon have much to explain to the families of American troops who were killed or maimed when a lifesaving solution was within reach," Bond said in an e-mail to the AP.
Here's another choice tidbit:
The February 2005 urgent request for 1,169 MRAPs was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.
Yet despite the stark wording of Hejlik's plea, the request was mishandled and eventually lost in bureaucracy. The inspector general puts most of blame on officials at Marine Corps Command Development Command. Headquartered at Quantico, Va., the command decides what gear to buy.
Monday, December 8, 2008
How my niece learned to see through the wolf-boy and love him too
A little sumpthin' sumpthin' I've started cookin' up:
Learning to love the wolf boy
The way I explained it to my niece, I'd found the wolf-boy alone, at dusk, howling by the side of the road. True to name, he was half boy, half wolf, a werewolf in miniature, smartly dressed in a blue sweater and slacks, no older than five or six. His mother was nowhere.
My niece, being five herself, was of an age where other children fascinated her. On the 4th of July, after I'd made the mistake of pointing out a boy playing with a handheld sparkler in his driveway, she'd cried for the entire 40-minute ride home, desperate to have us turn the car around for a better look. The children in her pre-school class, the neighbor kids across the street, strangers at the playground -- they were her universe, in parallel. Future friends, acquaintances, even lovers. And enemies too.
The wolf boy wanted to get home. How he got separated from his mother , I'm not sure, and I don't believe my niece ever asked. Fathers were irrelevant in this telling. They often are. But a boy separated from his mother -- that's a story.
We were leaving the indoor playground at...
Learning to love the wolf boy
The way I explained it to my niece, I'd found the wolf-boy alone, at dusk, howling by the side of the road. True to name, he was half boy, half wolf, a werewolf in miniature, smartly dressed in a blue sweater and slacks, no older than five or six. His mother was nowhere.
My niece, being five herself, was of an age where other children fascinated her. On the 4th of July, after I'd made the mistake of pointing out a boy playing with a handheld sparkler in his driveway, she'd cried for the entire 40-minute ride home, desperate to have us turn the car around for a better look. The children in her pre-school class, the neighbor kids across the street, strangers at the playground -- they were her universe, in parallel. Future friends, acquaintances, even lovers. And enemies too.
The wolf boy wanted to get home. How he got separated from his mother , I'm not sure, and I don't believe my niece ever asked. Fathers were irrelevant in this telling. They often are. But a boy separated from his mother -- that's a story.
We were leaving the indoor playground at...
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Chicago Tribune bankrupt and the SoCal gun-for-food trade
Sigh. You know the economy is bad when the Tribune Co, the owner of the Chicago Tribune and Wrigley Field, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy ...
...and Compton gangsters are trading their guns for food!!!
Chicago Tribune on the verge of kaput-put-put-ouch-help-fudge
Guns for food in Compton
...and Compton gangsters are trading their guns for food!!!
Chicago Tribune on the verge of kaput-put-put-ouch-help-fudge
Guns for food in Compton
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Can't sleep
Yuck. Sneezing, itchy throat, runny nose... boogers!
It's the day before Thanksgiving and I feel yucky.
Lately I've been falling asleep before 10 p.m. and waking around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. Then I'm up all night.
Tonight, I must have fallen asleep around 9 p.m. and woken up at 12:30 a.m. It's 2 a.m. now and I'm wide awake. Yuck.
Achoo! Sniffle sniffle whimper ugh
It's the day before Thanksgiving and I feel yucky.
Lately I've been falling asleep before 10 p.m. and waking around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. Then I'm up all night.
Tonight, I must have fallen asleep around 9 p.m. and woken up at 12:30 a.m. It's 2 a.m. now and I'm wide awake. Yuck.
Achoo! Sniffle sniffle whimper ugh
Friday, November 21, 2008
Poem
I wrote a poem!
Worked late tonight, went to an Uptown Latin bar, and wrote my little heart out. Don't know why I was thinking of this picture, but it won a Pulitzer in 93 or 94. Then the photog killed himself. I saw a documentary piece on it. So sad.
Sudan, Child crawling toward refugee camp
(For Kevin Carter, Bang Bang Club photographer, September 13, 1960 in Johannesburg – July 27, 1994; suicide)
You failed
to see through false modesties
your arrogant talents tossing you between darkness and light, and into
Africa; where blood-thirst and slaked limbs
ran down the lens of your Nikon, fields of the dead and the dying
mining celestial deserts; and always, always, your Nikon
clicking clicking clicking
Gunmen across the avenue, gunmen at your side as
bullets traced the epilogue of reporters, translators, soldiers, heroes, killers
children; beloved friends, and everywhere, the unnamed everymen, not even yet,
if ever, footnotes in history
Gunmen at the foot and head of your bed as you
slept, gunmen in the jeep next to you
as your zoom settled on the far-off child, the bastard doll
bloated with death, but not dead, a feast for the bird
biding its time, history calling you three together
clicking clicking clicking
You were hated
in your Europe. Comfortable young mothers and fat old sons
feted and condemend you; an orgy of nothing
in the soft brittleness of cultural criticism and afternoon teas
As if the one lives could have meaning in the maw of death,
the canvas of suffering,
the particular above the general.
As if they did not.
how could they know
oh how could they know
of the fields of limbs; the ecstasy and empty suddenness of endings
the void of holy in the heart of the holy
clicking clicking clicking
your gun found your mouth
and by your own hand,
your own hand made history
-- END --
Worked late tonight, went to an Uptown Latin bar, and wrote my little heart out. Don't know why I was thinking of this picture, but it won a Pulitzer in 93 or 94. Then the photog killed himself. I saw a documentary piece on it. So sad.
Sudan, Child crawling toward refugee camp
(For Kevin Carter, Bang Bang Club photographer, September 13, 1960 in Johannesburg – July 27, 1994; suicide)
You failed
to see through false modesties
your arrogant talents tossing you between darkness and light, and into
Africa; where blood-thirst and slaked limbs
ran down the lens of your Nikon, fields of the dead and the dying
mining celestial deserts; and always, always, your Nikon
clicking clicking clicking
Gunmen across the avenue, gunmen at your side as
bullets traced the epilogue of reporters, translators, soldiers, heroes, killers
children; beloved friends, and everywhere, the unnamed everymen, not even yet,
if ever, footnotes in history
Gunmen at the foot and head of your bed as you
slept, gunmen in the jeep next to you
as your zoom settled on the far-off child, the bastard doll
bloated with death, but not dead, a feast for the bird
biding its time, history calling you three together
clicking clicking clicking
You were hated
in your Europe. Comfortable young mothers and fat old sons
feted and condemend you; an orgy of nothing
in the soft brittleness of cultural criticism and afternoon teas
As if the one lives could have meaning in the maw of death,
the canvas of suffering,
the particular above the general.
As if they did not.
how could they know
oh how could they know
of the fields of limbs; the ecstasy and empty suddenness of endings
the void of holy in the heart of the holy
clicking clicking clicking
your gun found your mouth
and by your own hand,
your own hand made history
-- END --
Oh, Missouri!!!
Who won -- Barack Obama or John McCain?
They're taking a sweet long time to figure that one out in Missouri, where officials in the "show me" state are still counting election results two weeks after the polls closed.
So far, McCain is ahead by more than 4,300 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast. But four (rather large) areas still have yet to get their results in.
Obama can rest easy, however. While he didn't do gangbusters in Missouri, he won 93 percent of the vote in Washington, D.C.
MORE FROM:
Examiner.com
Electoral-vote.com
They're taking a sweet long time to figure that one out in Missouri, where officials in the "show me" state are still counting election results two weeks after the polls closed.
So far, McCain is ahead by more than 4,300 votes out of 2.9 million votes cast. But four (rather large) areas still have yet to get their results in.
Obama can rest easy, however. While he didn't do gangbusters in Missouri, he won 93 percent of the vote in Washington, D.C.
MORE FROM:
Examiner.com
Electoral-vote.com
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Eviction Notice -- a little free write about love and stuff
I sat through a couple of half-day writing seminars at the LOFT literary center (a.ka. OPEN BOOK) in Minneapolis recently. One of them was a bit repetitive, so as I sat in the audience, I got inspired to work on a little piece.
Here it is. Don't know what, if anything, I will do with this, but I'm thinking of calling it "Eviction Notice":
EVICTION NOTICE
Back when we were living together, but shortly before the end, my last serious girlfriend angrily informed me I was not 'detail-oriented' enough. She was territorial about the kitchen and offered this criticism as we shelved canned vegetables together in a lower cabinet. She had more than a tone. Soon afterward, I called my older sister in New York to complain.
"You're not," she confirmed.
Ah, well.
I have learned this much from love: There are things we try to police in ourselves and improve in ourselves, but ultimately we are who we are, until we are changed. I still think my ex-love over-reacted. They were, after all, just vegetables.
Before I keep going, I should say that I am writing this in a certain context: sitting through an eight-hour writing seminar to which I've shown up 39 minutes late on a chilly Saturday morning in downtown Minneapolis; the elections of 2008 are just behind us; my rent is not due but the alarm clock we all keep at the back of our minds keeps fluttering back to the date, as if it were.
An hour's drive north, a 28-year-old man I interviewed in prison on Wednesday must at this moment be by laying in bed in his cell, no doubt meditating on his 2-year-old son, dreaming of his next visit. The prison unit is on "lockdown" because of acts of violence between prisoners, and except for my interview, he and the other men have not left their cells in days.
I had met his child for the first time two days earlier; he called every man "dada," even those flat images of men he saw flickering by on the television screen. Mother had divorced father months earlier. I'd written about them both, back before the child was born, in more hopeful days.
Last night, over goodbye drinks for a departing co-worker, I heard an old story about a school administrator who had a habit of popping Viagra pills and then walking down supermarket aisles in his spandex shorts. My co-workers thought they got him, eventually, on indecent exposure.
I am imagining a middle-aged man, hair like Caesar, pale as most Minnesotans are pale, round at the waist, dressed like an entrant in the Tour de France, trundling to a wide-eyed older woman in the dairy aisle, she of the big blue hat and the winter scarf, the crisp, refrigerator air doing nothing to cool the chemical want between his legs, his offering obvious but never mentioned, a silent hello protruding from beneath small talk about the rising price of Kemps milk.
What no one will understand later and what he cannot fully explain is that this is more than a thrill ride, an obscene bat attack on an unsuspecting mailbox, a sexualized cow tipping. He is not doing this because he can. He is doing this because he must.
I am glad I am not him. Or her.
But I am not sure how it was determined that I be neither of them, that I am me and not them. The soul is unique; our actions are self-chosen; but that's not the half of it. What more, I can't say.
-- cut: There was something else I was going to tell you here, but I have forgotten. --
But consider this:
At the prison I mentioned earlier, the very large associate warden came out to the guest lobby to talk to my photographer before the interview. "You're wanted in New Mexico," the very large associate warden said. "There's a warrant for you -- something about a moving violation."
"But!" my photographer said. "That was! Years ago! I thought! I paid that!"
My photographer has two or three kids. He has a wife he took to the hospital on Monday with what he prays is a cold. He did not want to be locked up with the hurt and the deadly here in Minnesota, not for breaking the speed limit a lifetime ago in New Mexico. His heart beat faster.
They did not arrest him. He promised to get to the bottom of things, to make amends.
Do you know this joke?: "How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans." The writing coach is now telling this joke to the class, and it is apropos.
That is life though. All that planning that we who call ourselves professionals pour into ourselves, it's to move us forward in one direction. But we only set the compass and head out and pray. Where we end up -- that's fate or chance or what have you.
Here's another thought: Who we are when we're miserable or tired and who we are when the sun hits us after a long gray morning are sometimes so different, it's like we've forgotten ourselves and suddenly noticed the forgetting. "I'm back," you want to say. "I feel myself again. I didn't realize I was gone but I'm back."
This may be how an alcoholic feels during lucid times. This feeling hits me often.
That girlfriend I told you about, the one of the canned vegetables. She was beautiful, that one, but it would never have worked between us. When she told me to move out, I asked her why. She said: "I'm not going to tell you. You never listen."
Ah, well.
Let me close the way a good meal starts. Here's my prayer. Here's my constant prayer: I want to let go of self-recrimination without giving up my perpetually-interrupted commitment to self-improvement; to hate my disorganization less while working on it more; to accept me without losing sight of a better me. I want to learn from the past without being tethered to it; I want to forgive everyone, including myself.
I want next year to be better than the last. I want it all fixed up and better. I want all these things and many more. But I expect nothing.
Okie dokie then. Alright. Amen.
Here it is. Don't know what, if anything, I will do with this, but I'm thinking of calling it "Eviction Notice":
EVICTION NOTICE
Back when we were living together, but shortly before the end, my last serious girlfriend angrily informed me I was not 'detail-oriented' enough. She was territorial about the kitchen and offered this criticism as we shelved canned vegetables together in a lower cabinet. She had more than a tone. Soon afterward, I called my older sister in New York to complain.
"You're not," she confirmed.
Ah, well.
I have learned this much from love: There are things we try to police in ourselves and improve in ourselves, but ultimately we are who we are, until we are changed. I still think my ex-love over-reacted. They were, after all, just vegetables.
Before I keep going, I should say that I am writing this in a certain context: sitting through an eight-hour writing seminar to which I've shown up 39 minutes late on a chilly Saturday morning in downtown Minneapolis; the elections of 2008 are just behind us; my rent is not due but the alarm clock we all keep at the back of our minds keeps fluttering back to the date, as if it were.
An hour's drive north, a 28-year-old man I interviewed in prison on Wednesday must at this moment be by laying in bed in his cell, no doubt meditating on his 2-year-old son, dreaming of his next visit. The prison unit is on "lockdown" because of acts of violence between prisoners, and except for my interview, he and the other men have not left their cells in days.
I had met his child for the first time two days earlier; he called every man "dada," even those flat images of men he saw flickering by on the television screen. Mother had divorced father months earlier. I'd written about them both, back before the child was born, in more hopeful days.
Last night, over goodbye drinks for a departing co-worker, I heard an old story about a school administrator who had a habit of popping Viagra pills and then walking down supermarket aisles in his spandex shorts. My co-workers thought they got him, eventually, on indecent exposure.
I am imagining a middle-aged man, hair like Caesar, pale as most Minnesotans are pale, round at the waist, dressed like an entrant in the Tour de France, trundling to a wide-eyed older woman in the dairy aisle, she of the big blue hat and the winter scarf, the crisp, refrigerator air doing nothing to cool the chemical want between his legs, his offering obvious but never mentioned, a silent hello protruding from beneath small talk about the rising price of Kemps milk.
What no one will understand later and what he cannot fully explain is that this is more than a thrill ride, an obscene bat attack on an unsuspecting mailbox, a sexualized cow tipping. He is not doing this because he can. He is doing this because he must.
I am glad I am not him. Or her.
But I am not sure how it was determined that I be neither of them, that I am me and not them. The soul is unique; our actions are self-chosen; but that's not the half of it. What more, I can't say.
-- cut: There was something else I was going to tell you here, but I have forgotten. --
But consider this:
At the prison I mentioned earlier, the very large associate warden came out to the guest lobby to talk to my photographer before the interview. "You're wanted in New Mexico," the very large associate warden said. "There's a warrant for you -- something about a moving violation."
"But!" my photographer said. "That was! Years ago! I thought! I paid that!"
My photographer has two or three kids. He has a wife he took to the hospital on Monday with what he prays is a cold. He did not want to be locked up with the hurt and the deadly here in Minnesota, not for breaking the speed limit a lifetime ago in New Mexico. His heart beat faster.
They did not arrest him. He promised to get to the bottom of things, to make amends.
Do you know this joke?: "How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans." The writing coach is now telling this joke to the class, and it is apropos.
That is life though. All that planning that we who call ourselves professionals pour into ourselves, it's to move us forward in one direction. But we only set the compass and head out and pray. Where we end up -- that's fate or chance or what have you.
Here's another thought: Who we are when we're miserable or tired and who we are when the sun hits us after a long gray morning are sometimes so different, it's like we've forgotten ourselves and suddenly noticed the forgetting. "I'm back," you want to say. "I feel myself again. I didn't realize I was gone but I'm back."
This may be how an alcoholic feels during lucid times. This feeling hits me often.
That girlfriend I told you about, the one of the canned vegetables. She was beautiful, that one, but it would never have worked between us. When she told me to move out, I asked her why. She said: "I'm not going to tell you. You never listen."
Ah, well.
Let me close the way a good meal starts. Here's my prayer. Here's my constant prayer: I want to let go of self-recrimination without giving up my perpetually-interrupted commitment to self-improvement; to hate my disorganization less while working on it more; to accept me without losing sight of a better me. I want to learn from the past without being tethered to it; I want to forgive everyone, including myself.
I want next year to be better than the last. I want it all fixed up and better. I want all these things and many more. But I expect nothing.
Okie dokie then. Alright. Amen.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
"My Antigone" by Chris Drury
A former co-worker has made the big leap to NYC and broken into the acting and movie-making scene out there.
Here's his latest film trailer, which is in search of backers to go into full production:
My Antigone
And a note from Mr. Drury himself:
Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you well and wallowing in a late autumn bliss.
As some of you know, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area this past summer shooting scenes from my feature length screenplay MY ANTIGONE.
It was an amazing group of people to work with and I'm happy to be able to present an extended trailer for you to watch here -
www.csdrury.com
I'm currently in the process of pitching the project to investors with an eye towards making the film in the summer of 2009.
If you or someone you know would be interested in receiving any of the following materials please let me know:
- DVD with preview scenes
- Project budget and opportunities for investment
- Detailed story synopsis
- Character breakdown
- Copy of the full screenplay
Thanks for all your support and enjoy the trailer.
-csd
www.csdrury.com
Here's his latest film trailer, which is in search of backers to go into full production:
My Antigone
And a note from Mr. Drury himself:
Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you well and wallowing in a late autumn bliss.
As some of you know, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area this past summer shooting scenes from my feature length screenplay MY ANTIGONE.
It was an amazing group of people to work with and I'm happy to be able to present an extended trailer for you to watch here -
www.csdrury.com
I'm currently in the process of pitching the project to investors with an eye towards making the film in the summer of 2009.
If you or someone you know would be interested in receiving any of the following materials please let me know:
- DVD with preview scenes
- Project budget and opportunities for investment
- Detailed story synopsis
- Character breakdown
- Copy of the full screenplay
Thanks for all your support and enjoy the trailer.
-csd
www.csdrury.com
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Another tragedy for Human Terrain
War entails death. That's true by definition. Doesn't make it easy, right or glorious.
So when I read this crap about a female social scientist being set on fire in Afghanistan by a guy who looked like a friendly local, I get sick to my stomach. This academic worked for the Pentagon's Human Terrain project, which in May claimed the life of an old acquaintance whom I loved and respected very, very much.
Wired article: Army Social Scientist Set Afire in Afghanistan
God, what a war.
So when I read this crap about a female social scientist being set on fire in Afghanistan by a guy who looked like a friendly local, I get sick to my stomach. This academic worked for the Pentagon's Human Terrain project, which in May claimed the life of an old acquaintance whom I loved and respected very, very much.
Wired article: Army Social Scientist Set Afire in Afghanistan
God, what a war.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
"Samson" by Regina Spektor... swoon to this!
Oh. My. God.
I now know love and despair... they are so damn similar!
Samson, by Regina Spektor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p62rfWxs6a8
"you are my sweetest downfall... I loved you first, I loved you first ... and the Bible didn't mention us...."
Man, she's good!
I now know love and despair... they are so damn similar!
Samson, by Regina Spektor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p62rfWxs6a8
"you are my sweetest downfall... I loved you first, I loved you first ... and the Bible didn't mention us...."
Man, she's good!
Monday, October 13, 2008
From UrbanDictionary.com - Web site worth knowing!
Three amazing definitions from UrbanDictionary.com:
October 10: Shoplift the Pooty
When a man sleeps with a single mother with a small child.
Also, when a man expresses false adornment for a women's child in order to sleep with her.
Dude, look at John and Sara. He straight up shoplifted the pooty.
imaginary bluetooth
October 13 480 up, 642 down
An imaginary telephone device popular with riders of public transport, those having manic episodes, paranoid schizophrenics, and just common talk to yourself out loud types.
a. Whoa, dude on the escalator is yakking away to no one and there's no bluetooth in his ear.
b. Imaginary bluetooth in action. Probably on his way to the bus.
by wheaty 36 comments more bluetooth paranoid schizoprenia bus talking to yourself star trek
Shower Tissue
October 12 1699 up, 569 down
When you're in a shower and have to blow your nose. You use your index and thumb and replicate the actions of blowing your nose then letting the shower wash the boogers away.
"Man, the other day I Shower Tissued and it flew onto my face!"
by Jeff Aalms 52 comments more
October 10: Shoplift the Pooty
When a man sleeps with a single mother with a small child.
Also, when a man expresses false adornment for a women's child in order to sleep with her.
Dude, look at John and Sara. He straight up shoplifted the pooty.
imaginary bluetooth
October 13 480 up, 642 down
An imaginary telephone device popular with riders of public transport, those having manic episodes, paranoid schizophrenics, and just common talk to yourself out loud types.
a. Whoa, dude on the escalator is yakking away to no one and there's no bluetooth in his ear.
b. Imaginary bluetooth in action. Probably on his way to the bus.
by wheaty 36 comments more bluetooth paranoid schizoprenia bus talking to yourself star trek
Shower Tissue
October 12 1699 up, 569 down
When you're in a shower and have to blow your nose. You use your index and thumb and replicate the actions of blowing your nose then letting the shower wash the boogers away.
"Man, the other day I Shower Tissued and it flew onto my face!"
by Jeff Aalms 52 comments more
Newspapers can't be liquidated!
From a co-worker today:
An AP look at the status of newspaper companies, including Strib . . . and if you were here in the '90s, check out the analyst in the last graf . . .
@Body:
BC-Newspapers-Debt, Adv13,1065
An AP look at the status of newspaper companies, including Strib . . . and if you were here in the '90s, check out the analyst in the last graf . . .
@Body:
BC-Newspapers-Debt, Adv13,1065
adv13
For use Monday, Oct. 13, and thereafter
Liquidation unlikely as papers miss obligations
Eds: Also moved nationally for use Monday; Note Star Tribune angle.
With BC-Newspapers-Debt-Glance
AP Photo NYBZ182, NYBZ183, NYBZ184
By ANICK JESDANUN
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) _ Newspaper companies have been skipping loan payments, missing financial targets in debt agreements and accepting higher interest rates in exchange for more flexibility _ and they're not even directly feeling the impact of the credit crisis yet.
But don't expect massive sales or closures of newspapers any time soon, even though at least five newspaper companies overburdened with debt have been forced to confront their lenders over the past few weeks.
With revenue at newspapers shrinking and few investors willing or able to buy them, lenders are loathe to force companies to liquidate assets that are plunging in value. They have few alternatives but to help newspapers stay on track with their payments and hang on until ad prospects improve _ if they ever do.
"This is not a great time to, let's say, repossess the Minneapolis Star Tribune ... and then try to turn around and sell it," said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst with the journalism think tank Poynter Institute.
The Star Tribune said Sept. 30 it skipped a $9 million quarterly debt payment to conserve cash. The next day, the investor group that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News skipped an unspecified interest payment in an apparent bid to force lenders to renegotiate.
The McClatchy Co., one of the largest U.S. newspaper chains and owner of The Sacramento Bee and The Miami Herald among other prominent papers, agreed last month to pay higher interest rates and put up more collateral.
Analysts believe McClatchy came close to a technical default under its old loan terms, which required maintaining certain a cash flow as a percentage of its debt level. The new agreement with lenders changes the formula to account for sustained reductions in revenue.
A smaller chain, Morris Publishing Group LLC, said Wednesday it also agreed to pay high interest rates and meet other conditions in exchange for lenders relaxing financial targets for nearly a year.
Meanwhile, Freedom Communications Inc., which owns The Orange County Register in Southern California, said last Monday that it likely fell short of required financial thresholds as well and was in active talks with lenders.
The troubles all result from reduced cash flow caused by advertising revenue plummeting faster than anticipated this year at newspapers across the nation. Readers and ad dollars already were migrating to the Internet; the weakening economy further reduced ad sales.
Many loan agreements were reached back when papers and the economy were relatively healthy. Loan terms call for the two Philadelphia dailies to earn higher profit each year, for instance, something nearly impossible to achieve now.
Though papers ran into trouble well before the bank failures of recent weeks, the ongoing credit crisis is likely to make it harder for newspaper companies to refinance or change the terms of their loans, analysts say. And the crisis is bound to dampen consumer and advertising spending even further, putting even more news companies closer to default.
Tribune Co., for instance, reported $12.5 billion in debt and has a $593 million principal payment due next June. To raise money, the media conglomerate _ which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, television stations and other papers _ is trying to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team and other sports properties. But the credit crunch may hurt bidders' ability to come up with an asking price estimated at more than $1 billion.
Journal Register Co., with $628 million in debt, also has been in talks with lenders. A forbearance agreement it reached with lenders in July expires Oct. 31, after which lenders could prompt a default for missing payments.
"It's possible that some newspaper companies are leveraged beyond the value of their assets," said Mike Simonton, a Fitch Ratings bond analyst who specializes in the media industry. "Some banks may need to restructure their debt and give these entities more time to pay off their obligations."
That is, many newspaper companies may owe sums much greater than the value of their parts.
To a large extent, lenders are forced to make do, Simonton said, "given that the liquidation value of newspaper assets in this market is likely very low."
Newspaper companies' assets are primarily in buildings, equipment and delivery trucks, Simonton said, and lenders typically count on future cash flow in agreeing to let papers take on extensive debt.
The situation is allowed to continue because _ despite the downturn in ad revenue _ most papers remain profitable, just less profitable than they used to be. So lenders, for now, come out ahead in letting papers continue to operate.
"Are lenders going to have to relent in the current environment? To some degree, but not forever," said Chris Donnelly, a vice president at Standard and Poor's Leveraged Commentary and Data unit.
Ultimately, rather than break up or sell a company, investors might decide to forgive some debt in return a partial ownership, Donnelly said. That's true because the entire sector is down, meaning there are few buyers.
In the stock market, too, newspapers' prospects are grim.
McClatchy shares are down 94 percent from three years ago based on Friday's close. The nation's largest U.S. publisher, Gannett Co., is down 81 percent over that period.
Journal Register, which owns 22 daily newspapers, has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and the value of all its outstanding shares stood at $315,000 Friday.
Lenders aren't backing down completely. They typically exert more control over businesses when they renegotiate loan agreements.
The McClatchy agreement, for instance, ties shareholder dividends to the company's ability to meet financial thresholds. The greater its cash flow compared to its debt, the more dividends McClatchy can give out.
There's no evidence of any forced cutbacks yet, but in the case of the Philadelphia newspapers, the current owners seeking a new deal with lenders have proposed selling the papers' headquarters building and using proceeds to reduce debt. Tribune is also considering the sale of its iconic headquarters building in Chicago, Tribune Tower, as well as the headquarters of The Los Angeles Times.
Lenders "are taking a much more active role in a sense in managing the business without having to own it," said Ken Doctor, media analyst with Outsell Inc. "They're saying, "We'll give you some more time, more flexibility, but you have to do x, y and z."
AP-CS-10-10-08 2150EDT
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The bailout sinks in Minnesota, according to STRIB poll
STAR TRIBUNE POLL as of 5:30 P.M. THURSDAY
Instant poll: Do you support a bailout for Wall Street?
# of votes % of votes
Yes 1043 26.0 %
No 2963 73.9 %
Total Votes 4006
Editor's note: Instant polls are intended as entertainment. They are not considered to be true measurements of public opinion.
The Poll
Here's my thoughts:
This plan may be gaining more traction with Democrats than Republicans in the House, but on the street, it's unpopular with everyone. Minnesota voters are a relatively liberal bunch, at least in the urban core. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is considered a left-leaning newspaper. And online readers are, arguably, younger and more liberal than print readers. (That's highly debatable, but still...)
So when these relatively liberal readers are polled about the Wall Street bail-out plan -- and they shoot it down 3-1 -- that means the plan is in trouble. If Wall Street can't win hearts and minds in Minnesota, good luck in the heartland. They'll eat you alive.
Corrollary 1: To the degree that Bush is pushing this plan -- and McCain is associated with Bush -- this hurts McCain more than it hurts Obama. Liberals are expected to support bailouts and government intervention; conservatives are not. Whatever McCain's stance on the bailout, you'll see some conservative diehards staying home on election day because of disgust with and division within the party over this. McCain looks uncertain about this plan, which means he looks uncertain about economic issues in general, already a weak spot in his campaign. And it's a bad time for the decider-in-chief to look uncertain. At a time when economic issues are at the forefront of voters' minds, he does not look like he's at the forefront of economic issues. In fact, he looks like what he is -- a rich old white man with an even wealthier wife, oblivious and impervious to downturns in the economy. Not a good thing for his campaign.
Corrollary 2: Disgusted with the bailout plan and with Bush, conservative voters are going to stay home on election day. That's going to hurt GOP races across the country. Obama will win; Dems will control the House by wider margins than at any other time in recent history. Mark my words.
Instant poll: Do you support a bailout for Wall Street?
# of votes % of votes
Yes 1043 26.0 %
No 2963 73.9 %
Total Votes 4006
Editor's note: Instant polls are intended as entertainment. They are not considered to be true measurements of public opinion.
The Poll
Here's my thoughts:
This plan may be gaining more traction with Democrats than Republicans in the House, but on the street, it's unpopular with everyone. Minnesota voters are a relatively liberal bunch, at least in the urban core. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is considered a left-leaning newspaper. And online readers are, arguably, younger and more liberal than print readers. (That's highly debatable, but still...)
So when these relatively liberal readers are polled about the Wall Street bail-out plan -- and they shoot it down 3-1 -- that means the plan is in trouble. If Wall Street can't win hearts and minds in Minnesota, good luck in the heartland. They'll eat you alive.
Corrollary 1: To the degree that Bush is pushing this plan -- and McCain is associated with Bush -- this hurts McCain more than it hurts Obama. Liberals are expected to support bailouts and government intervention; conservatives are not. Whatever McCain's stance on the bailout, you'll see some conservative diehards staying home on election day because of disgust with and division within the party over this. McCain looks uncertain about this plan, which means he looks uncertain about economic issues in general, already a weak spot in his campaign. And it's a bad time for the decider-in-chief to look uncertain. At a time when economic issues are at the forefront of voters' minds, he does not look like he's at the forefront of economic issues. In fact, he looks like what he is -- a rich old white man with an even wealthier wife, oblivious and impervious to downturns in the economy. Not a good thing for his campaign.
Corrollary 2: Disgusted with the bailout plan and with Bush, conservative voters are going to stay home on election day. That's going to hurt GOP races across the country. Obama will win; Dems will control the House by wider margins than at any other time in recent history. Mark my words.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Held at pepper-spray-point during Republican National Convention, Rage Against the Machine aftermath
Oh. Man.
I almost got arrested tonight while on assignment covering RNC-related protestors. I had to kneel in the middle of the street with my hands on my head and a pepper spray gun trained pretty much directly on me. I then had to beg my way out of a mass arrest that netted 30 others. I'm glad I didn't have to spend the night in jail, but it all worked out swimmingly given that I have such a beautiful and trustworthy smile... :)
Last night it was tear gas (which hurts like a mother f%^ker!) that got ignited a few feet behind me while I was covering a protest march. Tonight, the "on your knees! hands on head!" treatment. I hate to say it, but the kookiness of the RNC has actually been kinda fun....
Covering the protests and security skirmishes surrounding the Republican National Convention is a bit like being a kid in Disney Land trying to chase a paper airplane that keeps flying away.
You almost catch up to the airplane, but a giant spectacle or security roadblock of some sort gets in your way, and you end up detouring in and out and under novelties of all strange shapes and sizes to get back to where you wanted to go. Only by that time, the paper airplane has flown somewhere else.
Tonight the airplane I was assigned to chase was not in St. Paul but in Minneapolis. A bunch of us reporters were told to be ready for possible confrontation between police and the self-described anarchists coming into and / or out of the "Rage Against the Machine" concert at the Target Center in the bar / club district of downtown Minneapolis. I got there at 6:30 p.m. and waited and waited and waited; nothing happened until nearly midnight.
When the concert let out around 10:30 p.m., a fair number of drunk hooligans blocked First Avenue outside the performance center, trying to excite the crowd. Police had been waiting in droves for such an occurrence; they lined the sidewalk of First Avenue in large numbers and blocked off the avenue across 6th Street and 7th Street in even larger numbers, with helmeted cops on horses, bike cops, SWAT, and all kinds of vehicles. We're talking dozens, if not hundreds of officers armed with large wooden sticks, pepper spray and more.
After more than an hour, and several rebellious chants of "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me," the 6th Street crowd eventually dispersed with only one arrest. The 7th Street side was more heavily saturated with anarchists, as opposed to silly drunks, and they seemed to feel that if they could only push back the police and force them to let them march in the middle of the street, they would ignite the revolution that changes the world. Who am I to question such logic? So they marched. The police stood their ground for a while, then fell back, unwilling to unleash force.
About 200 or so marched for blocks and blocks, weaving between cars, but eventually stopping at 7th and 2nd Avenue, in front of the WCCO / Ameriprise Financial buildings in the financial district. That's where two bike cops kinda drew a line in the sand, stopping the front dozen or so in the crowd with their bikes. I thought, this crowd (which was down to about 75 at this point, all told, I bet) is going to overwhelm these guys.
Suddenly, an all-terrain vehicle with two cops on the back of it zoomed into the intersection, one guy had his beanbag or rubber bullet or pellet gun raised at us, and I heard two pops. I ran down half a block down 2nd Avenue like a #$%Q# bat outta hell. Scar-eee.
But being stupid -- and being paid to be stupid -- I just had to venture back. A group of 30 - to - 50 people were in the intersection now, including one of my coworkers. After a few minutes, a row of bike cops swooped in and circled the intersection. We were surrounded on all sides.
My co-worker and I ventured to one end of the intersection and politely asked if we could be excused from the circle. The cop said, "No, go the other way." So we did. At the other end of the intersection, we made the same request. That cop also said, "No, go the other way." We suddenly realized we weren't going to be let out.
And the bike cops were only perimeter people. They were the fence. Next came the enforcers.
The bike cops were quickly joined by armed, helmeted, Storm Trooper-like SWAT types all in black, with weapons out. A cop with a pepper spray gun was screaming at me to get down on my knees and put my hands on my head.
So I did.
I couldn't stop smiling a nervous smile. They announced that "everyone in this intersection is being put under arrest." I thought, oh man, my first night in jail!!
But then I noticed that a bunch of cameramen were walking out of the circle. "Hey, I'm media too! They're letting those guys go!" I yelled over to one of the officers. They directed me out of the circle, and I mentioned that my co-worker was media too and on his knees not far behind me. I was free! He was too! Yippeee!
That was about it.
Most everyone else got arrested, though the police chief met with the now large crowd of gathering reporters and said they'd only be charged with misdemeanors. A handful of juveniles and concert-goers who had been looking for their parking ramps were also let go.
the end bye bye see ya later!
P.S. Looks like the Pioneer Press was also there:
FROM:
30 arrested
All Headlines
Thirty people arrested in Minneapolis following Rage Against the Machine concert
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 09/04/2008 01:09:17 AM CDT
Roughly 30 people were arrested in downtown Minneapolis Wednesday evening as they marched through the streets after a much-anticipated Rage Against the Machine concert.
It began when a group of about 200 people began slowly marching from the Target Center on First Avenue, where the concert ended about 10:30 p.m., chanting slogans about democracy and "taking the streets."
The Target Center had been surrounded by dozens of police in full riot gear, anticipating trouble following clashes with protesters in St. Paul on prior days during the Republican National Convention.
As the group walked southeast down Seventh Street, police began tapping the ankles of stragglers, telling them to get off the street and onto the sidewalk. At one point, a group of officers in a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle fired two rounds from what appeared to be either a beanbag or pellet gun.
Several people who were at the concert said they also saw police use pepper spray on individuals walking from the concert.
By the time the marchers reached the corner Seventh Street and 2nd Avenue South, they were down to about 75 people. The group stopped and started cheering, before a few called out "let's keep on taking the streets."
Some of the crowd dispersed as more police arrived on bikes and horses. Just after midnight, police circled the group, ordered them to the ground and cuffed them.
"We are free citizens of America, and we are here because we love our country," said a girl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
who was leading the crowd, who refused to give her name.
"We were at the Rage concert, and they are taking it of context. We were just marching," said Dan Rarick, of Hutchinson, immediately before the arrests. Rarick said he was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in Iraq.
"They're taking it a little to the extreme," added his friend, Joe Tschumperlin, of Shakopee, also a Marine veteran. Seconds later, the arrests began.
Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan, who was on the streets monitoring the situation, said "I'm surprised it wasn't a little worse based on the last few days in St. Paul."
He estimated about 30 people were arrested for blocking traffic, and expected them to be charged with misdemeanors.
Fred Melo, John Brewer, Mara H. Gottfried and Tad Vezner contributed to this story.
I almost got arrested tonight while on assignment covering RNC-related protestors. I had to kneel in the middle of the street with my hands on my head and a pepper spray gun trained pretty much directly on me. I then had to beg my way out of a mass arrest that netted 30 others. I'm glad I didn't have to spend the night in jail, but it all worked out swimmingly given that I have such a beautiful and trustworthy smile... :)
Last night it was tear gas (which hurts like a mother f%^ker!) that got ignited a few feet behind me while I was covering a protest march. Tonight, the "on your knees! hands on head!" treatment. I hate to say it, but the kookiness of the RNC has actually been kinda fun....
Covering the protests and security skirmishes surrounding the Republican National Convention is a bit like being a kid in Disney Land trying to chase a paper airplane that keeps flying away.
You almost catch up to the airplane, but a giant spectacle or security roadblock of some sort gets in your way, and you end up detouring in and out and under novelties of all strange shapes and sizes to get back to where you wanted to go. Only by that time, the paper airplane has flown somewhere else.
Tonight the airplane I was assigned to chase was not in St. Paul but in Minneapolis. A bunch of us reporters were told to be ready for possible confrontation between police and the self-described anarchists coming into and / or out of the "Rage Against the Machine" concert at the Target Center in the bar / club district of downtown Minneapolis. I got there at 6:30 p.m. and waited and waited and waited; nothing happened until nearly midnight.
When the concert let out around 10:30 p.m., a fair number of drunk hooligans blocked First Avenue outside the performance center, trying to excite the crowd. Police had been waiting in droves for such an occurrence; they lined the sidewalk of First Avenue in large numbers and blocked off the avenue across 6th Street and 7th Street in even larger numbers, with helmeted cops on horses, bike cops, SWAT, and all kinds of vehicles. We're talking dozens, if not hundreds of officers armed with large wooden sticks, pepper spray and more.
After more than an hour, and several rebellious chants of "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me," the 6th Street crowd eventually dispersed with only one arrest. The 7th Street side was more heavily saturated with anarchists, as opposed to silly drunks, and they seemed to feel that if they could only push back the police and force them to let them march in the middle of the street, they would ignite the revolution that changes the world. Who am I to question such logic? So they marched. The police stood their ground for a while, then fell back, unwilling to unleash force.
About 200 or so marched for blocks and blocks, weaving between cars, but eventually stopping at 7th and 2nd Avenue, in front of the WCCO / Ameriprise Financial buildings in the financial district. That's where two bike cops kinda drew a line in the sand, stopping the front dozen or so in the crowd with their bikes. I thought, this crowd (which was down to about 75 at this point, all told, I bet) is going to overwhelm these guys.
Suddenly, an all-terrain vehicle with two cops on the back of it zoomed into the intersection, one guy had his beanbag or rubber bullet or pellet gun raised at us, and I heard two pops. I ran down half a block down 2nd Avenue like a #$%Q# bat outta hell. Scar-eee.
But being stupid -- and being paid to be stupid -- I just had to venture back. A group of 30 - to - 50 people were in the intersection now, including one of my coworkers. After a few minutes, a row of bike cops swooped in and circled the intersection. We were surrounded on all sides.
My co-worker and I ventured to one end of the intersection and politely asked if we could be excused from the circle. The cop said, "No, go the other way." So we did. At the other end of the intersection, we made the same request. That cop also said, "No, go the other way." We suddenly realized we weren't going to be let out.
And the bike cops were only perimeter people. They were the fence. Next came the enforcers.
The bike cops were quickly joined by armed, helmeted, Storm Trooper-like SWAT types all in black, with weapons out. A cop with a pepper spray gun was screaming at me to get down on my knees and put my hands on my head.
So I did.
I couldn't stop smiling a nervous smile. They announced that "everyone in this intersection is being put under arrest." I thought, oh man, my first night in jail!!
But then I noticed that a bunch of cameramen were walking out of the circle. "Hey, I'm media too! They're letting those guys go!" I yelled over to one of the officers. They directed me out of the circle, and I mentioned that my co-worker was media too and on his knees not far behind me. I was free! He was too! Yippeee!
That was about it.
Most everyone else got arrested, though the police chief met with the now large crowd of gathering reporters and said they'd only be charged with misdemeanors. A handful of juveniles and concert-goers who had been looking for their parking ramps were also let go.
the end bye bye see ya later!
P.S. Looks like the Pioneer Press was also there:
FROM:
30 arrested
All Headlines
Thirty people arrested in Minneapolis following Rage Against the Machine concert
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 09/04/2008 01:09:17 AM CDT
Roughly 30 people were arrested in downtown Minneapolis Wednesday evening as they marched through the streets after a much-anticipated Rage Against the Machine concert.
It began when a group of about 200 people began slowly marching from the Target Center on First Avenue, where the concert ended about 10:30 p.m., chanting slogans about democracy and "taking the streets."
The Target Center had been surrounded by dozens of police in full riot gear, anticipating trouble following clashes with protesters in St. Paul on prior days during the Republican National Convention.
As the group walked southeast down Seventh Street, police began tapping the ankles of stragglers, telling them to get off the street and onto the sidewalk. At one point, a group of officers in a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle fired two rounds from what appeared to be either a beanbag or pellet gun.
Several people who were at the concert said they also saw police use pepper spray on individuals walking from the concert.
By the time the marchers reached the corner Seventh Street and 2nd Avenue South, they were down to about 75 people. The group stopped and started cheering, before a few called out "let's keep on taking the streets."
Some of the crowd dispersed as more police arrived on bikes and horses. Just after midnight, police circled the group, ordered them to the ground and cuffed them.
"We are free citizens of America, and we are here because we love our country," said a girl
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
who was leading the crowd, who refused to give her name.
"We were at the Rage concert, and they are taking it of context. We were just marching," said Dan Rarick, of Hutchinson, immediately before the arrests. Rarick said he was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in Iraq.
"They're taking it a little to the extreme," added his friend, Joe Tschumperlin, of Shakopee, also a Marine veteran. Seconds later, the arrests began.
Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan, who was on the streets monitoring the situation, said "I'm surprised it wasn't a little worse based on the last few days in St. Paul."
He estimated about 30 people were arrested for blocking traffic, and expected them to be charged with misdemeanors.
Fred Melo, John Brewer, Mara H. Gottfried and Tad Vezner contributed to this story.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Strib has tentative labor deal, Pioneer Press to combine sections
The Star Tribune's newspaper guild has apparently accepted a three-year labor deal that preserves most jobs for a few years yet, without pay raises. It's still tentative, though.
Sounds pretty good at first blush, but MinnPost's David Brauer reports there's no layoff protection in the contract. Not so good at second blush.
And across the river...
The Pioneer Press says the rising cost of newsprint is forcing it to combine the A section (national, World news, A-1 stories) with the B section (Local news) on Mondays and Tuesdays.
In other words, that thin paper you've been seeing toward the beginning of the week? It might get a tad bit thinner, by about four to six pages a week. The number of stories, however, is not projected to shrink much (though their length might).
More here:
Minn Post's David Brauer on the PiPress combining sections
This is also probably good news. It was getting pretty depressing opening the local section and seeing a string of obituaries staring back at you from B-3.
They've also announced they're putting more energy into niche publications, like mini-magazine-style glossies with a few articles about sports, homebuying or entertainment and lots and lots and lots of advertisements.
This last part is a good thing. Advertisers like a targeted audience, and audiences like a targeted product!
Sounds pretty good at first blush, but MinnPost's David Brauer reports there's no layoff protection in the contract. Not so good at second blush.
And across the river...
The Pioneer Press says the rising cost of newsprint is forcing it to combine the A section (national, World news, A-1 stories) with the B section (Local news) on Mondays and Tuesdays.
In other words, that thin paper you've been seeing toward the beginning of the week? It might get a tad bit thinner, by about four to six pages a week. The number of stories, however, is not projected to shrink much (though their length might).
More here:
Minn Post's David Brauer on the PiPress combining sections
This is also probably good news. It was getting pretty depressing opening the local section and seeing a string of obituaries staring back at you from B-3.
They've also announced they're putting more energy into niche publications, like mini-magazine-style glossies with a few articles about sports, homebuying or entertainment and lots and lots and lots of advertisements.
This last part is a good thing. Advertisers like a targeted audience, and audiences like a targeted product!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
How Pioneer Press owner "Lean" Dean Singleton got rich in newspapers and then took on potentially crippling debt
Here's some analysis from the Poynter Institute's business desk that anyone with a remote interest in the welfare of the Pioneer Press and other MediaNews holdings will want to read:
Poynter Biz blog on newspaper debt
Poynter Media Business Analyst Rick Edmonds tracks the latest industry developments.
Add/View All The Biz Blog Feedback
More The Biz Blog RSSPrint this Page
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2008Posted at 9:54:37 AM
It's the Debt, Stupid
When Sam Zell and his lieutenants or Dean Singleton opine on the state of the newspaper industry and the drastic remedies required, as they have in recent weeks, it puts me in a mood to scream.
Yes, times are tough. But the latest draconian cuts they are imposing on employees and readers are going largely to service the ridiculous levels of debt they had the bad judgment to take on.
Let's look at the numbers. Zell's Tribune began life last December with more than $12 billion in debt. Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert wrote then that the company would face around $1 billion in debt payments this year, which cash flow from its operations would barely cover.
Things aren't working out even that well, with revenue declines much worse than expected. For the first quarter of 2008, Tribune reported cash flow of about $200 million from operations. Interest payments totaled $263 million. Forget profits, obscene or otherwise, the company operated at a loss.
Turning to Singleton's MediaNews, it reported interest payments of about $80 million in 2007, sucking up about 6 percent of the revenue its newspapers generated.
MediaNews stopped reporting its financials in April, but it is reasonable to assume debt service remains about the same in 2008 at the same time revenues, and earnings, keep falling (as they are throughout the industry).
By contrast, an extremely conservative borrower, the Washington Post Co., had interest payments of only $12 million in 2007. Its diverse businesses generated revenue of over $4 billion, more than triple those of MediaNews.
So when Tribune announces it will "right-size" by getting the split of advertising and news space to 50-50 in its papers, I wonder whether this abnormal level of shoehorning news is largely a ploy to finance debt.
When Singleton boasts to an international conference in Sweden of his progressive step of depriving various of his California papers of local-based publishers and copy desks, I think I know why no other major American publishing group has gone that far. Feeling prosecutorial about these exercises in making a difficult situation worse, I do need to add a few qualifiers.
The Tribune deal came with a huge tax benefit and an understanding that some assets would need to be sold. MediaNews operates on a model distinctly its own, including joint operating agreements for three of its biggest papers and a number of management contracts, particularly with well-heeled Hearst.
Being highly leveraged has always been part of the game plan, and Singleton has been shrewd lately about getting paid without committing his own capital. You could also argue that the industry has consistently underestimated how much revenue and earnings will fall.
If that is still the case, Tribune and MediaNews could be avatars of deeper cuts other companies may resort to in another six months to a year. Also we are past the point where cutting the newspaper expense base can reasonably be blamed on greedy, bad-guy managers.
If an industry loses 20 percent of revenues over two years, more in problem spots like Florida and California, you don't need an M.B.A. to figure out the necessity of bringing down costs. Still, I think operators like Zell and Singleton are squishy where others are forthright on the concurrent need to keep heft and quality in the print product and invest aggressively in new digital operations.
Frankly, I don't think they have the money to do it -- because the banker has to be paid first.
In December 2006, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to an investors' conference in New York. Asked the inevitable question about whether he felt guilty about helping destroy the industry's classified base, he replied that he and Craig Newmark thought the bigger problem was excessive debt. (Craigslist, essentially, has none).
Both are problems, but I do think debt has become a very important gradient now when looking at companies. Zell, Singleton, McClatchy and private groups in Minneapolis and Philadelphia all labor under the burden of having bought papers assuming earnings as they were instead of earnings as they have become.
McClatchy announced deep cuts of its own this week and carries big debt from laying out $4 billion (after the sale of some papers) for Knight Ridder just as the business turned from stalled to plunging in mid-2005. But McClatchy also sold its largest paper, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, ahead of the curve of sinking valuations and has actually been paying down debt as well as covering interest payments.
Conversely, some companies have had the good sense or good fortune not to buy any newspapers this decade. That hasn't earned them favor on Wall Street, but it does leave a lot more maneuvering room for transformation in the next several years.
That group would include, among others, A.H. Belo, E.W. Scripps, the Washington Post and New York Times companies, and Cox. I don't think it coincidental that you see some of the boldest digital experiments and strongest online growth rates at the newspapers of these companies.
-- END --
Poynter Biz blog on newspaper debt
Poynter Media Business Analyst Rick Edmonds tracks the latest industry developments.
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2008Posted at 9:54:37 AM
It's the Debt, Stupid
When Sam Zell and his lieutenants or Dean Singleton opine on the state of the newspaper industry and the drastic remedies required, as they have in recent weeks, it puts me in a mood to scream.
Yes, times are tough. But the latest draconian cuts they are imposing on employees and readers are going largely to service the ridiculous levels of debt they had the bad judgment to take on.
Let's look at the numbers. Zell's Tribune began life last December with more than $12 billion in debt. Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert wrote then that the company would face around $1 billion in debt payments this year, which cash flow from its operations would barely cover.
Things aren't working out even that well, with revenue declines much worse than expected. For the first quarter of 2008, Tribune reported cash flow of about $200 million from operations. Interest payments totaled $263 million. Forget profits, obscene or otherwise, the company operated at a loss.
Turning to Singleton's MediaNews, it reported interest payments of about $80 million in 2007, sucking up about 6 percent of the revenue its newspapers generated.
MediaNews stopped reporting its financials in April, but it is reasonable to assume debt service remains about the same in 2008 at the same time revenues, and earnings, keep falling (as they are throughout the industry).
By contrast, an extremely conservative borrower, the Washington Post Co., had interest payments of only $12 million in 2007. Its diverse businesses generated revenue of over $4 billion, more than triple those of MediaNews.
So when Tribune announces it will "right-size" by getting the split of advertising and news space to 50-50 in its papers, I wonder whether this abnormal level of shoehorning news is largely a ploy to finance debt.
When Singleton boasts to an international conference in Sweden of his progressive step of depriving various of his California papers of local-based publishers and copy desks, I think I know why no other major American publishing group has gone that far. Feeling prosecutorial about these exercises in making a difficult situation worse, I do need to add a few qualifiers.
The Tribune deal came with a huge tax benefit and an understanding that some assets would need to be sold. MediaNews operates on a model distinctly its own, including joint operating agreements for three of its biggest papers and a number of management contracts, particularly with well-heeled Hearst.
Being highly leveraged has always been part of the game plan, and Singleton has been shrewd lately about getting paid without committing his own capital. You could also argue that the industry has consistently underestimated how much revenue and earnings will fall.
If that is still the case, Tribune and MediaNews could be avatars of deeper cuts other companies may resort to in another six months to a year. Also we are past the point where cutting the newspaper expense base can reasonably be blamed on greedy, bad-guy managers.
If an industry loses 20 percent of revenues over two years, more in problem spots like Florida and California, you don't need an M.B.A. to figure out the necessity of bringing down costs. Still, I think operators like Zell and Singleton are squishy where others are forthright on the concurrent need to keep heft and quality in the print product and invest aggressively in new digital operations.
Frankly, I don't think they have the money to do it -- because the banker has to be paid first.
In December 2006, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to an investors' conference in New York. Asked the inevitable question about whether he felt guilty about helping destroy the industry's classified base, he replied that he and Craig Newmark thought the bigger problem was excessive debt. (Craigslist, essentially, has none).
Both are problems, but I do think debt has become a very important gradient now when looking at companies. Zell, Singleton, McClatchy and private groups in Minneapolis and Philadelphia all labor under the burden of having bought papers assuming earnings as they were instead of earnings as they have become.
McClatchy announced deep cuts of its own this week and carries big debt from laying out $4 billion (after the sale of some papers) for Knight Ridder just as the business turned from stalled to plunging in mid-2005. But McClatchy also sold its largest paper, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, ahead of the curve of sinking valuations and has actually been paying down debt as well as covering interest payments.
Conversely, some companies have had the good sense or good fortune not to buy any newspapers this decade. That hasn't earned them favor on Wall Street, but it does leave a lot more maneuvering room for transformation in the next several years.
That group would include, among others, A.H. Belo, E.W. Scripps, the Washington Post and New York Times companies, and Cox. I don't think it coincidental that you see some of the boldest digital experiments and strongest online growth rates at the newspapers of these companies.
-- END --
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
McClatchy newspapers slash hundreds of jobs today
Someday, the cuts to the newspaper industry will equalize with job gains elsewhere in the media world (I hope), and this brave new thing that will rise up to replace the printed word will materialize, offering us all quality journalism without the ink stains on our hands and feet. (Well, your hands... my feet...)
Someday.
But not today.
McClatchy, the former owner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, slashed 1,400 jobs across the country Monday morning, including 250 at the Miami Herald alone.
News article on this crap here
That's a 10 percent reduction.
Imagine losing 10 percent of your body weight all at once ... or 10 percent of your extended family ... or 10 percent of your co-workers.
McClatchy had previously cut 2,000 jobs over the course of 18 months, so this latest bolt of pain is just a sudden amputation on top of the loss of the larger limb that had been hacked off a little more gradually.
Cry, cry for the newsfolk....
They need it!
FYI: McClatchy-owned newspapers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, the Charlotte Observer.
McClatchy.com
Someday.
But not today.
McClatchy, the former owner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, slashed 1,400 jobs across the country Monday morning, including 250 at the Miami Herald alone.
News article on this crap here
That's a 10 percent reduction.
Imagine losing 10 percent of your body weight all at once ... or 10 percent of your extended family ... or 10 percent of your co-workers.
McClatchy had previously cut 2,000 jobs over the course of 18 months, so this latest bolt of pain is just a sudden amputation on top of the loss of the larger limb that had been hacked off a little more gradually.
Cry, cry for the newsfolk....
They need it!
FYI: McClatchy-owned newspapers include The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, the Charlotte Observer.
McClatchy.com
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Strange Days and Carrie Bradshaw
I have seen everything and it is strange.
Two women and a gay man just shared a sugar cookie three-ways in my office.
One of the women is now walking around the office, trying to unload the remaining THIRD of the cookie on whoever wants it..
It is a Carrie Bradshaw cookie. As in, the star of Sex and the City, sitting with legs crossed on a bench, looking glamorous, sugar-coated onto a cookie.
Two women and a gay man just shared a sugar cookie three-ways in my office.
One of the women is now walking around the office, trying to unload the remaining THIRD of the cookie on whoever wants it..
It is a Carrie Bradshaw cookie. As in, the star of Sex and the City, sitting with legs crossed on a bench, looking glamorous, sugar-coated onto a cookie.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Dry Drowning, the bizarrest way to die?
It works like this: You step out of the pool with water in your lungs. You don't feel perfect, nor do you feel terrible. You go home tired. Then, about 24 hours later (or less), you die. As in, you're dead.
Don't believe me? Dry Drowning supposedly kills about 300 or so people a year in the U.S.A.
You could be next, bucko!!!
I don't mean to make light. This case is truly sad:
‘Dry drowning’ claims 10-year-old’s life - Health - MSNBC.comThe tragic death of a South Carolina 10-year-old more than an hour after he had gone swimming has focused a spotlight on the little-known phenomenon called ...
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24982210/>1=43001 - 43k - Cached - Similar pages
So after reading the above article, I looked up the official Wikipedia definition of Dry Drowning here, and I nary understood nary a nary word, narily:
Dry drowning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn cases of dry drowning in which the victim was immersed, very little fluid is aspirated into the lungs. The laryngospasm reflex essentially causes ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_drowning - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
Don't believe me? Dry Drowning supposedly kills about 300 or so people a year in the U.S.A.
You could be next, bucko!!!
I don't mean to make light. This case is truly sad:
‘Dry drowning’ claims 10-year-old’s life - Health - MSNBC.comThe tragic death of a South Carolina 10-year-old more than an hour after he had gone swimming has focused a spotlight on the little-known phenomenon called ...
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24982210/>1=43001 - 43k - Cached - Similar pages
So after reading the above article, I looked up the official Wikipedia definition of Dry Drowning here, and I nary understood nary a nary word, narily:
Dry drowning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn cases of dry drowning in which the victim was immersed, very little fluid is aspirated into the lungs. The laryngospasm reflex essentially causes ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_drowning - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
Friday, May 23, 2008
More on reporter-blogger-intellectual
Pioneer Press reporter Alex Friedrich's heralded State Fair blog, pushing the envelope of toilet humor and gastrointestinal distress, here:
minnesotastatefair.blogspot.com
London School of Economics steals Pioneer Press reporter
My sources at the PiPress have forwarded me a goodbye speech for a good guy and one heck of a good reporter. It's worth reading.
--------
Union organizer and reporter par excellence, Alex Friedrich, is leaving the Pioneer Press today (Friday) to pursue a master's degree in European History at the London School of Economics.
Friedrich was a unit chair with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild, of the Communications Workers of America Local 37002.
More on him here:
http://www.shoptalknet.org/index.php?get=Alex+Friedrich
His co-worker, Fred Melo, sent this email around to everyone in the newsroom, after the 4 p.m. goodbye speeches and cake.
-----
Here's the goodbye-to-Alex speech I would have given 20 minutes ago, had that Q@#$%$^ not cut me off in traffic and had the police chief spoken a little bit faster. Not my fault, I double-pinky swear. (Well....):
Alex was my first male friend at the Pioneer Press and... (Hmmm... Let me try that again with another lede here... )
Alex's reporting life has taken him from Germany and Prague to the rain-soaked streets of a post-Hurricane Katrina Mississippi, not to forget the hazardous byways of Internet blogging (without pooping. If you don't know what I'm taking about, do a search for Friedrich and State Fair).
But this was not my primary way of knowing Alex or accessing the open library inside his head. Truth be told, I rarely read his beat stuff. Washington County? Might as well be Guam to me.
Few people realize how hard Alex worked for all of us -- as a newsroom, as a paper, and as a brave but embattled industry -- once his computer shut off and he "went home" for the day.
On a near-nightly basis, his was the face and voice of reporters, editors and photographers, writing and researching and organizing the stuff that most of us don't have the stomach for. Mondays at noon, week in and week out, he was there come heck or come highwater, meeting with co-workers across departments, planner in hand.
Whatever our remaining challenges as a paper and as an industry, the short-term results have been better than many expected. I truly believe Alex Friedrich and the loyalty he inspired is a signifcant reason why the Pioneer Press is growing circulation, while the competition isn't.
His was leadership with a smile, and he always maintained a forward-thinking, solution-oriented way of figuring how to improve life here for all of us, and not just for a particular segment of the newsroom.
Leave it to a beautiful woman to steal his heart and kidnap him off to the London School of Economics. Not too shabby, young man. Sounds like a permanent contract to me.
Now go forth and multiply....
Frederick Melo
Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press
345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101
Office: 651.228.2172 | Mobile: 651.398.5534
Fax: 651.228.5500
fmelo@pioneerpress.com | www.twincities.com
--------
Union organizer and reporter par excellence, Alex Friedrich, is leaving the Pioneer Press today (Friday) to pursue a master's degree in European History at the London School of Economics.
Friedrich was a unit chair with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild, of the Communications Workers of America Local 37002.
More on him here:
http://www.shoptalknet.org/index.php?get=Alex+Friedrich
His co-worker, Fred Melo, sent this email around to everyone in the newsroom, after the 4 p.m. goodbye speeches and cake.
-----
Here's the goodbye-to-Alex speech I would have given 20 minutes ago, had that Q@#$%$^ not cut me off in traffic and had the police chief spoken a little bit faster. Not my fault, I double-pinky swear. (Well....):
Alex was my first male friend at the Pioneer Press and... (Hmmm... Let me try that again with another lede here... )
Alex's reporting life has taken him from Germany and Prague to the rain-soaked streets of a post-Hurricane Katrina Mississippi, not to forget the hazardous byways of Internet blogging (without pooping. If you don't know what I'm taking about, do a search for Friedrich and State Fair).
But this was not my primary way of knowing Alex or accessing the open library inside his head. Truth be told, I rarely read his beat stuff. Washington County? Might as well be Guam to me.
Few people realize how hard Alex worked for all of us -- as a newsroom, as a paper, and as a brave but embattled industry -- once his computer shut off and he "went home" for the day.
On a near-nightly basis, his was the face and voice of reporters, editors and photographers, writing and researching and organizing the stuff that most of us don't have the stomach for. Mondays at noon, week in and week out, he was there come heck or come highwater, meeting with co-workers across departments, planner in hand.
Whatever our remaining challenges as a paper and as an industry, the short-term results have been better than many expected. I truly believe Alex Friedrich and the loyalty he inspired is a signifcant reason why the Pioneer Press is growing circulation, while the competition isn't.
His was leadership with a smile, and he always maintained a forward-thinking, solution-oriented way of figuring how to improve life here for all of us, and not just for a particular segment of the newsroom.
Leave it to a beautiful woman to steal his heart and kidnap him off to the London School of Economics. Not too shabby, young man. Sounds like a permanent contract to me.
Now go forth and multiply....
Frederick Melo
Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press
345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101
Office: 651.228.2172 | Mobile: 651.398.5534
Fax: 651.228.5500
fmelo@pioneerpress.com | www.twincities.com
Friday, May 9, 2008
Michael Bhatia, Brown scholar, killed in Afghanistan
A good man died in Afghanistan on Wednesday. He was an Oxford scholar and an intellectual and I'd like to think of him as a friend, though we hadn't stayed in touch like we should have over the years.
His name was Michael Bhatia, and to call him smart is like calling the Pope a Catholic. Bhatia, of Medway, Massachusetts, did his first mission in sub-Saharan Africa with a United Nations crisis team while he was a sophomore in college. He studied toward his Phd at Oxford and taught at his alma mater, Brown University in Rhode Island, in recent months.
He was 30 or 31 years old.
His subject of choice was war. But his was no mere theoretical or intellectual exercise. He was one of those rare academics that believed in putting the books down at the end of the semester and talking to people -- real, everyday people -- in their homes, in their villages, and seeing the world through their eyes. He was an idealist. He wanted peace.
He traveled to East Timor, Afghanistan, and any number of crisis locations hoping to learn and to help people. The U.S. military hired him as a cultural adviser of sorts in Afghanistan. Scattered blog and media reports indicate his convoy hit some form of explosive. I'm not sure if it was a cast-away boobie trap in the style of a landmine or more of an organized attack.
To say he is mourned and loved is an understatement. We miss you Mike. We'll see you again someday.
More on Michael Bhatia here:
Brown University's Watson Insitute memorial tribute:
http://watsoninstitute.org/news_detail.cfm?id=851
Brown University's alumni magazine posting:
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/recent_news/michael_bhatia_99_killed_in_afghanistan_1980.html
Reuters describes the attack that likely killed Mike:
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnISL72960.html
Mike's bio on the Globalist:
http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=988
Mike's three-part personal photo series on life in Afghanistan:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=6416
Zohra, a blog friend from Afghanistan, remembers Mike:
http://kabulkabul.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-memory-of-michael-bhatia.html
A Brown friend and drinking buddy remembers Mike:
http://sethresler.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/michael-bhatia/
FROM THE WATSON INSTITUTE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY:
In Memory of Michael Vinay Bhatia '99
Michael Bhatia
May 08, 2008
Michael Vinay Bhatia ’99 died yesterday in Afghanistan, where he was working as a social scientist in consultation with the US Defense Department.
In addition to graduating magna cum laude in international relations from Brown University, Michael was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute from July 2006 to June 2007. At the Institute, he was involved in a research project on Cultural Awareness in the Military, writing his PhD dissertation, and teaching a senior seminar on "The US Military: Global Supremacy, Democracy and Citizenship."
Over several years, Michael’s research and humanitarian work took him to such conflict zones as Sahrawi refugee camps, East Timor, and Kosovo, in addition to Afghanistan.
Of his work in Afghanistan, Michael wrote in November: “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population's concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”
Michael had recently published some of his research on Afghanistan.
His co-authored book on Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict: Armed Groups, Disarmament and Security in a Post-War Society was just released by Routledge in April. It assesses small arms and security-related issues in post-9/11 Afghanistan.
His edited book on Terrorism and the Politics of Naming was published by Routledge last September. Stating that names are not objective, the book seeks the truth behind those assigned in such cases as the US hunt for al-Qaeda, Russia’s demonization of the Chechens, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In August, his personal three-part photo essay, “Shooting Afghanistan: Beyond the Conflict,” was published by theGlobalist. In it, he wrote:
“Afghanistan will soon reach a desperate milestone – the thirtieth anniversary of ongoing conflict. … Though I have spent the majority of my time there researching the wars and those involved in it, conflict is not my primary memory and way of knowing it. I am compelled to write about experiences and ideas that cannot be placed into analytical paradigms, which do not speak to theories of war or peace, to destruction or to reconstruction, but instead to daily interactions that occurred in the course of research.”
His love of photography is revealing. In theGlobalist piece, he also wrote:
“Building on Robert Capa’s statement that 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough,' James Nachtwey, the preeminent photo-realist and conflict photographer, once indicated that the primary characteristic of a good war photographer was proximity, closeness and involvement.”
Michael was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was awarded a George C. Marshall Scholarship in 2001 and a Scoville Peace Fellowship in 2000, supporting residence at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, DC.
He was working on his dissertation, titled “The Mujahideen: A Study of Combatant Motives in Afghanistan, 1978-2005,” based on 350 interviews with combatants throughout Afghanistan, as well as archival and media research. He has also conducted research in Afghanistan for the Overseas Development Institute, the Small Arms Survey, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, the UK Department for International Development (via the International Policy Institute, King’s College, London), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Before his fellowship at the Institute, he was a sessional lecturer on the causes of war in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa.
He is the author of War and Intervention: Issues for Contemporary Peace Operations (Kumarian Press, 2003); and of articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Global Governance, Review of African Political Economy, The International Journal of Refugee Law, International Peacekeeping, and Middle East Policy. He was the guest editor of The Third World Quarterly Special Issue: “The Politics of Naming: Rebels, Terrorists, Criminals, Bandits and Subversives,” which was then released as a book by Routledge. He received his MSc in international relations research from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.
“It's a terrible loss of someone so young, who had already accomplished a great deal, but had so much more to contribute,” said Institute Professor Thomas J. Biersteker, who advised Michael in his studies over the years.
Details about services will be made available.
Read Michael's personal photo essays here:
Globalist essay
Michael's information from Oxford University's St. Antony's College is here.
Read a UN statement given by Michael as an undergraduate here.
His name was Michael Bhatia, and to call him smart is like calling the Pope a Catholic. Bhatia, of Medway, Massachusetts, did his first mission in sub-Saharan Africa with a United Nations crisis team while he was a sophomore in college. He studied toward his Phd at Oxford and taught at his alma mater, Brown University in Rhode Island, in recent months.
He was 30 or 31 years old.
His subject of choice was war. But his was no mere theoretical or intellectual exercise. He was one of those rare academics that believed in putting the books down at the end of the semester and talking to people -- real, everyday people -- in their homes, in their villages, and seeing the world through their eyes. He was an idealist. He wanted peace.
He traveled to East Timor, Afghanistan, and any number of crisis locations hoping to learn and to help people. The U.S. military hired him as a cultural adviser of sorts in Afghanistan. Scattered blog and media reports indicate his convoy hit some form of explosive. I'm not sure if it was a cast-away boobie trap in the style of a landmine or more of an organized attack.
To say he is mourned and loved is an understatement. We miss you Mike. We'll see you again someday.
More on Michael Bhatia here:
Brown University's Watson Insitute memorial tribute:
http://watsoninstitute.org/news_detail.cfm?id=851
Brown University's alumni magazine posting:
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/recent_news/michael_bhatia_99_killed_in_afghanistan_1980.html
Reuters describes the attack that likely killed Mike:
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnISL72960.html
Mike's bio on the Globalist:
http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=988
Mike's three-part personal photo series on life in Afghanistan:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=6416
Zohra, a blog friend from Afghanistan, remembers Mike:
http://kabulkabul.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-memory-of-michael-bhatia.html
A Brown friend and drinking buddy remembers Mike:
http://sethresler.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/michael-bhatia/
FROM THE WATSON INSTITUTE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY:
In Memory of Michael Vinay Bhatia '99
Michael Bhatia
May 08, 2008
Michael Vinay Bhatia ’99 died yesterday in Afghanistan, where he was working as a social scientist in consultation with the US Defense Department.
In addition to graduating magna cum laude in international relations from Brown University, Michael was a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute from July 2006 to June 2007. At the Institute, he was involved in a research project on Cultural Awareness in the Military, writing his PhD dissertation, and teaching a senior seminar on "The US Military: Global Supremacy, Democracy and Citizenship."
Over several years, Michael’s research and humanitarian work took him to such conflict zones as Sahrawi refugee camps, East Timor, and Kosovo, in addition to Afghanistan.
Of his work in Afghanistan, Michael wrote in November: “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned to the population's concerns, views, criticisms and interests and better supports the Government of Afghanistan.”
Michael had recently published some of his research on Afghanistan.
His co-authored book on Afghanistan, Arms and Conflict: Armed Groups, Disarmament and Security in a Post-War Society was just released by Routledge in April. It assesses small arms and security-related issues in post-9/11 Afghanistan.
His edited book on Terrorism and the Politics of Naming was published by Routledge last September. Stating that names are not objective, the book seeks the truth behind those assigned in such cases as the US hunt for al-Qaeda, Russia’s demonization of the Chechens, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In August, his personal three-part photo essay, “Shooting Afghanistan: Beyond the Conflict,” was published by theGlobalist. In it, he wrote:
“Afghanistan will soon reach a desperate milestone – the thirtieth anniversary of ongoing conflict. … Though I have spent the majority of my time there researching the wars and those involved in it, conflict is not my primary memory and way of knowing it. I am compelled to write about experiences and ideas that cannot be placed into analytical paradigms, which do not speak to theories of war or peace, to destruction or to reconstruction, but instead to daily interactions that occurred in the course of research.”
His love of photography is revealing. In theGlobalist piece, he also wrote:
“Building on Robert Capa’s statement that 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough,' James Nachtwey, the preeminent photo-realist and conflict photographer, once indicated that the primary characteristic of a good war photographer was proximity, closeness and involvement.”
Michael was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was awarded a George C. Marshall Scholarship in 2001 and a Scoville Peace Fellowship in 2000, supporting residence at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, DC.
He was working on his dissertation, titled “The Mujahideen: A Study of Combatant Motives in Afghanistan, 1978-2005,” based on 350 interviews with combatants throughout Afghanistan, as well as archival and media research. He has also conducted research in Afghanistan for the Overseas Development Institute, the Small Arms Survey, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, the UK Department for International Development (via the International Policy Institute, King’s College, London), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Before his fellowship at the Institute, he was a sessional lecturer on the causes of war in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa.
He is the author of War and Intervention: Issues for Contemporary Peace Operations (Kumarian Press, 2003); and of articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Global Governance, Review of African Political Economy, The International Journal of Refugee Law, International Peacekeeping, and Middle East Policy. He was the guest editor of The Third World Quarterly Special Issue: “The Politics of Naming: Rebels, Terrorists, Criminals, Bandits and Subversives,” which was then released as a book by Routledge. He received his MSc in international relations research from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.
“It's a terrible loss of someone so young, who had already accomplished a great deal, but had so much more to contribute,” said Institute Professor Thomas J. Biersteker, who advised Michael in his studies over the years.
Details about services will be made available.
Read Michael's personal photo essays here:
Globalist essay
Michael's information from Oxford University's St. Antony's College is here.
Read a UN statement given by Michael as an undergraduate here.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Could the Pioneer Press buy the Star Tribune?
Dean Singleton, the owner of the Media News Group (the Denver-based company that bought the Pioneer Press after Knight Ridder dissolved) has made a career of buying papers in crisis, gutting their staffs, and then cracking the whip. It's publish or perish.
It's a strategy that has supposedly made Singleton a multi-millionaire. Or is that billionaire?
For years, the talk was that the Star Tribune would oneday absorb the Pioneer Press, a stalwart underdog in one of the last great media rivalries in the United States of America.
But if the Avista Corp., which bought the Star Tribune not long ago and has no great love of media holdings, is doing as poorly financially as it claims to be, perhaps things could go the other way around?
City Pages ponders the possibility and dishes on the Star Tribune's meager finances here, as the New York Post did before it:
City Pages article on the Star Tribune
Singleton could, in theory, ride in and buy the Star Tribune, and either merge the two papers or create a joint operating agreement of sorts. Shared content. Shared printing presses. But separate identities, each capitalizing on the loyal fan base for each paper in each city.
A group of eight rival newspapers in Ohio just did something along a similar vein here, sharing content between them as an answer to the Associated Press rate hike:
More on the operating agreement-style parternship here:
Ohio papers share content
It's a strategy that has supposedly made Singleton a multi-millionaire. Or is that billionaire?
For years, the talk was that the Star Tribune would oneday absorb the Pioneer Press, a stalwart underdog in one of the last great media rivalries in the United States of America.
But if the Avista Corp., which bought the Star Tribune not long ago and has no great love of media holdings, is doing as poorly financially as it claims to be, perhaps things could go the other way around?
City Pages ponders the possibility and dishes on the Star Tribune's meager finances here, as the New York Post did before it:
City Pages article on the Star Tribune
Singleton could, in theory, ride in and buy the Star Tribune, and either merge the two papers or create a joint operating agreement of sorts. Shared content. Shared printing presses. But separate identities, each capitalizing on the loyal fan base for each paper in each city.
A group of eight rival newspapers in Ohio just did something along a similar vein here, sharing content between them as an answer to the Associated Press rate hike:
More on the operating agreement-style parternship here:
Ohio papers share content
Hillary, please go away.
Message to Hillary Clinton:
Please. go. away.
You're not helping. You will never defeat John McCain in the general election. Maybe Obama can. Maybe he can't. But at least he's got a shot. You don't. Now go clutch success from the jaws of defeat by rallying women voters and Latinos for Obama. That would get McCain on the ropes. That it would. Yes it would.
The minority vote was a hugely decisive factor in Bill Clinton's two victories. And Gore and Kerry's inability to excite and attract minorities in their close races against Bush are why they failed. Hands down.
You wanna win, go for the 'brown' vote.
More on why minority voters may stay home if Hillary wins, thereby giving McCain the advantage, here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5751006.html
Please. go. away.
You're not helping. You will never defeat John McCain in the general election. Maybe Obama can. Maybe he can't. But at least he's got a shot. You don't. Now go clutch success from the jaws of defeat by rallying women voters and Latinos for Obama. That would get McCain on the ropes. That it would. Yes it would.
The minority vote was a hugely decisive factor in Bill Clinton's two victories. And Gore and Kerry's inability to excite and attract minorities in their close races against Bush are why they failed. Hands down.
You wanna win, go for the 'brown' vote.
More on why minority voters may stay home if Hillary wins, thereby giving McCain the advantage, here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5751006.html
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Save the world!!! ... by starving the poor?
Every policy decision that fixes a problem creates a new one. Ain't that a fact.
At my last meeting of my Spanish-language discussion group, the subject was literature and the environment.
A Costa Rican economic development dude who works with Latin businesses up and down Lake Street, brought up ethanol and biofuels, and how they've been a double-edged sword for developing countries, and probably for the U.S., too. It was once foreseen that increased demand for corn-based fuel products would give poor countries something they could market to the world.
Corn is relatively common and inexpensive to grow, after all.
That plan has worked -- in a strange way, almost too well. The growing price of corn is hitting the poor where it hurts most by raising food costs everywhere.
For more on that, here's an article from the Star Tribune:
"Rush to biofuels leaves a world of emptier plates
In 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to many more empty bellies in the world. How wrong they were. It took only a year. Updated 20 minutes ago"
Here's what I have to say, and the world had better by god damn listening:
Ouch!
At my last meeting of my Spanish-language discussion group, the subject was literature and the environment.
A Costa Rican economic development dude who works with Latin businesses up and down Lake Street, brought up ethanol and biofuels, and how they've been a double-edged sword for developing countries, and probably for the U.S., too. It was once foreseen that increased demand for corn-based fuel products would give poor countries something they could market to the world.
Corn is relatively common and inexpensive to grow, after all.
That plan has worked -- in a strange way, almost too well. The growing price of corn is hitting the poor where it hurts most by raising food costs everywhere.
For more on that, here's an article from the Star Tribune:
"Rush to biofuels leaves a world of emptier plates
In 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to many more empty bellies in the world. How wrong they were. It took only a year. Updated 20 minutes ago"
Here's what I have to say, and the world had better by god damn listening:
Ouch!
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Hillary stands a better chance nationally against McCain????
DREAM ON!
Obama won purple state Iowa. Obama TROUNCED Hillary in purple state Minnesota.
Now Hillary thinks she'll play better to the purple-staters? Where is the proof of this utter nonsense?
Without a handful of purple states, the Dems will lose. And Hillary ain't winnin' em over.
Obama won purple state Iowa. Obama TROUNCED Hillary in purple state Minnesota.
Now Hillary thinks she'll play better to the purple-staters? Where is the proof of this utter nonsense?
Without a handful of purple states, the Dems will lose. And Hillary ain't winnin' em over.
Everything I have predicted....
....is coming true. All hail my powers of political divination. Romney did not stand a chance.
Onward to the future: In a match-up between McCain and Hillary, the moderate McCain beats the H.C.-polarizer to a political pulp.
But in a match-up between McCain and Obama, it's a tad more even-steven. Here's where Barack loses ground, however: Obama never seems to speak in specific details, just rhetoric. He's an incredible orator, but once he's challenged on how he'll make his populist rhetoric a practical reality, he'll lose a little steam.
And anti-black wingnuts will appear out of the woodwork to vote against him. The racists and "Hey, I'm not racist, I'm friends with a guy who golfed with Clarence Thomas" types will surely grit their teeth and vote McCain, no matter what people say. A war hero? It's not tough for the typical nationalistic flag-waver to swing that way, and justify that vote to himself.
So I give McCain the edge for the moment. But if Obama can drag Latinos, blacks and college students to the polls, and the Greatest Generation is feeling too old or disillusioned and stays home in their assisted living facilities, he could make it. Make it, he could.
Onward to the future: In a match-up between McCain and Hillary, the moderate McCain beats the H.C.-polarizer to a political pulp.
But in a match-up between McCain and Obama, it's a tad more even-steven. Here's where Barack loses ground, however: Obama never seems to speak in specific details, just rhetoric. He's an incredible orator, but once he's challenged on how he'll make his populist rhetoric a practical reality, he'll lose a little steam.
And anti-black wingnuts will appear out of the woodwork to vote against him. The racists and "Hey, I'm not racist, I'm friends with a guy who golfed with Clarence Thomas" types will surely grit their teeth and vote McCain, no matter what people say. A war hero? It's not tough for the typical nationalistic flag-waver to swing that way, and justify that vote to himself.
So I give McCain the edge for the moment. But if Obama can drag Latinos, blacks and college students to the polls, and the Greatest Generation is feeling too old or disillusioned and stays home in their assisted living facilities, he could make it. Make it, he could.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Handy Washington Post caucus map, and my little predictions
This political mapping site on WashingtonPost.com makes all this caucus-schmockus stuff so much easier to follow:
Washington Post interative caucus map
So it looks like a candidate needs about 2,000 votes to win. We're still in the double-digits on the GOP side and just breaking the triple-digits on the Democratic side, so the numbers showing Huckabee ahead of McCain I think are misleading at this point. But what do I know?
I predict:
FOR THE DEMS:
Obama the orator will beat the pants off of Hillary "stiff, tired and no fun at a party" Clinton. She seems to have picked up nothing from her husband but a funny-looking child.
FOR THE GOP:
McCain the war hero will beat the pants off of Mitt "I was born rich and look the part, which is a liability in a recession" Romney. Huckabee will garner a few hundred delegates on Super Tuesday and win some headlines, but won't really register after too long. We do not mix God and politics in this country as much as people think.
END RESULT:
In a general election race between Obama and McCain, the "war on terrorism" gun-nuts will square off against the "let's pull out and leave the middle east in even more chaos" defeatists, each calling the other wimps or Nazis. Whoever yells the loudest wins.
THE SAD PART:
Bill Richardson was the only viable candidate with international experience (former ambassador to the U.N., and hostage negotiator!), executive-level experience (Governor of New Mexico), immigration experience (Governor of New Mexico), and federal experience in a field that really affects our daily lives (former Energy Secretary). And he's out of the race.
The rest are all sad-sacks and I just don't care anymore...
THOUGHTS?
Washington Post interative caucus map
So it looks like a candidate needs about 2,000 votes to win. We're still in the double-digits on the GOP side and just breaking the triple-digits on the Democratic side, so the numbers showing Huckabee ahead of McCain I think are misleading at this point. But what do I know?
I predict:
FOR THE DEMS:
Obama the orator will beat the pants off of Hillary "stiff, tired and no fun at a party" Clinton. She seems to have picked up nothing from her husband but a funny-looking child.
FOR THE GOP:
McCain the war hero will beat the pants off of Mitt "I was born rich and look the part, which is a liability in a recession" Romney. Huckabee will garner a few hundred delegates on Super Tuesday and win some headlines, but won't really register after too long. We do not mix God and politics in this country as much as people think.
END RESULT:
In a general election race between Obama and McCain, the "war on terrorism" gun-nuts will square off against the "let's pull out and leave the middle east in even more chaos" defeatists, each calling the other wimps or Nazis. Whoever yells the loudest wins.
THE SAD PART:
Bill Richardson was the only viable candidate with international experience (former ambassador to the U.N., and hostage negotiator!), executive-level experience (Governor of New Mexico), immigration experience (Governor of New Mexico), and federal experience in a field that really affects our daily lives (former Energy Secretary). And he's out of the race.
The rest are all sad-sacks and I just don't care anymore...
THOUGHTS?
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Aqua vs. Aura
I was just invited to party tonight at Aqua, the trendy, dress-to-get-sexed downtown Minneapolis club.
I momentarily confused it with Aura, the intimate martini bar in Calhoun Square, Uptown Minneapolis, which is very Brooklyn-esque: http://www.mndaily.com/drinkanddine/details/88/Aura
Either way, I'm a bit of a fish out of water at either venue. But it's time to test my comfort zones and booty-bump with the beautiful people. Right after I do two months worth of laundry.
I momentarily confused it with Aura, the intimate martini bar in Calhoun Square, Uptown Minneapolis, which is very Brooklyn-esque: http://www.mndaily.com/drinkanddine/details/88/Aura
Either way, I'm a bit of a fish out of water at either venue. But it's time to test my comfort zones and booty-bump with the beautiful people. Right after I do two months worth of laundry.
What the Star Tribune is doing to its Jimmy Olsens
It looks like all the young talent at the Star Tribune has been put on probation -- indefinitely! For a union-paper about to enter contract negotiations, that's a clear sign that Avista Co., the Star-Tribune's parent company, is going to use the youngsters as a bargaining chip in a blood-bath of a contract dispute that will surely see an end to the STRIB as we know it. These are tough times. Sigh. Sigh.
MinnPost / MPR media media critic David Brauer has been following the re-re-restructuring of the Star Tribune, which has been so dizzying over the past few years that he deserves a cigarette and a band-aid for paying so close attention. I mean, it's like watching rough sex, man.
Just click the headline above to find out about the push toward weekly suburban coverage, and then the push away from it in favor of folding coverage of the 'burbs into the zoned daily editions, and now back toward the weekly model. Jeez criminy!
At least the Strib is honest about the fact that this is advertiser-driven. Advertisers apparently prefer being associated with a once-a-week insert that was dotted with news than with a daily package that was sparse on it.
Here's a little footnote to this advertiser-sponsored indecisiveness: The 7 or 8 20-something cub reporters who wrote for weeklies like "Strib South" and "Strib North" were folded into the newspaper (and the Minnesota Newspaper Guild / Communications Workers of America labor union) as the Strib went to daily zoning. Now, despite their AFL-CIO cards, they could all lose their jobs!
Here's why: These hard-working Jimmy Olsens were all treated as new employees and put on 3-month probation when the Strib began zoning their daily editions a couple of months ago, even though some had been with the paper for more than a year.
Well, those "three-month" probations are "over" but they just got extended ... to 9 months!
This is a bare-faced bargaining tool for parent corp. Avista Co. You're jerking your 20-something reporters around, and expecting loyalty to the paper and to the profession as the newbies mature into the profession? Ouch. Is Minnesota Public Radio hiring??
MinnPost / MPR media media critic David Brauer has been following the re-re-restructuring of the Star Tribune, which has been so dizzying over the past few years that he deserves a cigarette and a band-aid for paying so close attention. I mean, it's like watching rough sex, man.
Just click the headline above to find out about the push toward weekly suburban coverage, and then the push away from it in favor of folding coverage of the 'burbs into the zoned daily editions, and now back toward the weekly model. Jeez criminy!
At least the Strib is honest about the fact that this is advertiser-driven. Advertisers apparently prefer being associated with a once-a-week insert that was dotted with news than with a daily package that was sparse on it.
Here's a little footnote to this advertiser-sponsored indecisiveness: The 7 or 8 20-something cub reporters who wrote for weeklies like "Strib South" and "Strib North" were folded into the newspaper (and the Minnesota Newspaper Guild / Communications Workers of America labor union) as the Strib went to daily zoning. Now, despite their AFL-CIO cards, they could all lose their jobs!
Here's why: These hard-working Jimmy Olsens were all treated as new employees and put on 3-month probation when the Strib began zoning their daily editions a couple of months ago, even though some had been with the paper for more than a year.
Well, those "three-month" probations are "over" but they just got extended ... to 9 months!
This is a bare-faced bargaining tool for parent corp. Avista Co. You're jerking your 20-something reporters around, and expecting loyalty to the paper and to the profession as the newbies mature into the profession? Ouch. Is Minnesota Public Radio hiring??
Sick of flag-waving as a defense for not asking basic questions
Apologies to my untold fans for being incommunicado these many months. Life changes took precedence....
There's an Oscar-nominated documentary out that takes a look at the death of a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by U.S. troops after five days in a military prison camp. The military later released his passengers from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, finding no evidence the prisoners took part in any wrongdoing.
The soldiers were later tried and convicted of assault, but they appear on camera saying they were scapegoated by superiors who basically told them to get information out of the poor guy anyway they could. The superior officers looked the other way when these interrogators used increasingly brutal force.
The film is called "Taxi to the Dark Side." A CNN video is available through the headline link above.
Look, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, I truly believe America is a great country and allows us many freedoms other countries don't, and that our constitution is the best-written constitution around, and the most noble, notable and enduring. (Not that 200 years is all that long a time in the scheme of things, but still...)
But if you're still taking an "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" approach to our habit of detaining Iraqis and Afghanis and holding them for years without charges, then... um... you suck.
So far, 250 Americans have been tried for heinous interrogation methods, according to the CNN clip. Those are just the ones that have been caught.
Yes, we were attacked on Sept. 11. And we have a right to find those perpetrators and bring them to justice. But let's get real. A 22-year-old taxi cab driver? What did he ever do to anyone? We're squandering U.S. lives and the lives of the people we're supposedly out there to protect.
Be patriotic by holding the right people accountable up and down the line, not just the adrenaline-blinded army grunts who were pressured into these heinous crimes.
There's an Oscar-nominated documentary out that takes a look at the death of a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by U.S. troops after five days in a military prison camp. The military later released his passengers from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, finding no evidence the prisoners took part in any wrongdoing.
The soldiers were later tried and convicted of assault, but they appear on camera saying they were scapegoated by superiors who basically told them to get information out of the poor guy anyway they could. The superior officers looked the other way when these interrogators used increasingly brutal force.
The film is called "Taxi to the Dark Side." A CNN video is available through the headline link above.
Look, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, I truly believe America is a great country and allows us many freedoms other countries don't, and that our constitution is the best-written constitution around, and the most noble, notable and enduring. (Not that 200 years is all that long a time in the scheme of things, but still...)
But if you're still taking an "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" approach to our habit of detaining Iraqis and Afghanis and holding them for years without charges, then... um... you suck.
So far, 250 Americans have been tried for heinous interrogation methods, according to the CNN clip. Those are just the ones that have been caught.
Yes, we were attacked on Sept. 11. And we have a right to find those perpetrators and bring them to justice. But let's get real. A 22-year-old taxi cab driver? What did he ever do to anyone? We're squandering U.S. lives and the lives of the people we're supposedly out there to protect.
Be patriotic by holding the right people accountable up and down the line, not just the adrenaline-blinded army grunts who were pressured into these heinous crimes.
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