America the Dangerous ?

I found this excerpt from George Soros' Newsweek recent interview enlightening:

You say that the main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States. That's a pretty strong statement.
George Soros: Yes, but it happens to coincide with the prevailing opinion in the world. And I think that's rather shocking for Americans to hear. The United States sets the agenda for the world. And the rest of the world has to respond to that agenda. By declaring a "war on terror" after September the 11th, we set the wrong agenda for the world. This is something that people in America find difficult to understand because war seems like the natural response.

Why is a "war on terror" the wrong response to the attacks on the United States?
First of all because when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims. When you wage war on terrorists who don't announce their whereabouts, the danger of hitting the innocent people is even greater. We abhor terrorists, because they kill innocent people for political goals. But by waging war on terror we are doing the same thing. And the people who are on the receiving end see us in the same light with the same negative attitude as we have towards terrorists. It's also a threat to our democracy. Because when you wage war, the president can appropriate for himself excessive powers. He can call anyone who criticizes his policies unpatriotic. That undermines the critical process of an open society and that is how we made this tremendous blunder of invading Iraq.

Polls indicate that American public opinion on Iraq has changed.
People in America now realize that the invasion of Iraq was a disaster. But we still think that the war on terror is the natural and obvious way to deal with the terrorist threat. But it's a counter-productive policy that has done untold damage to our standing in the world and to ourselves. No outside power, or alliance of powers could really endanger our dominant position, but our own stupidity can do it and has done [it]...

We're number one... Again!

New York was ranked the most polite city in the world; could you believe it?

Reader's Digest sent reporters undercover to 36 cities, in 35 countries, to measure courtesy. New York was the only American city on the list. So, where's your Southern hospitality and Midwest gentility now? I know the rest of America loves to hate on us cause we're prettier and smarter and richer and now so much more gosh darn nicer. (I didn't say were the most modest.)

In a city with a reputation for being in-your-face, New Yorkers seem to be expressing themselves with a new one-finger salute: a raised pinkie. In fact, they seem to have even better manners than people in London, Toronto and Moscow.

In its admittedly unscientific survey, the magazine's politeness-police gave three types of tests to more than 2,000 unwitting participants.

The reporters walked into buildings to see if the people in front of them would hold the door open; bought small items in stores and recorded whether the salespeople said "thank you"; and dropped a folder full of papers in busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up.

New Yorkers turned out to be the politest: 90 percent held the door open, 19 out of 20 store clerks said "thank you," and 63 percent of men and 47 percent of women helped with the flying papers....

The rudest continent is Asia, Readers Digest said. Eight out of nine cities tested there - including Mumbai, India - finished in the bottom 11. In Europe, Moscow and Bucharest ranked as the least polite.

I finally have something good to say about NJ

Today I can finally say, nice cajones New Jersey!

The New Jersey attorney general has issued subpoenas to five telephone companies to determine whether any of them violated the state's consumer protection laws by providing records to the National Security Agency. Experts say it is the first legal move by a state to question the agency's program to compile calling records to track terrorist activities.

On Wednesday, the United States filed a lawsuit to block the subpoenas, setting up a legal showdown pitting the state's authority to protect consumers' rights against the federal government's national security powers.

People in New Jersey and people everywhere have privacy rights," the state's attorney general, Zulima V. Farber, said on Thursday. "What we were trying to determine was whether the phone companies in New Jersey had violated any law or any contractual obligations with their consumers by supplying information to some government entity, simply by request, and not by any court order or search warrant."

This latest confrontation over the invocation of national security began last month, when Ms. Farber issued the subpoenas to the companies — AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, Sprint Nextel and Cingular Wireless — to determine whether they had turned over the phone records to the federal government without a court order, in possible violation of state laws.

But when the Justice Department filed suit in United States District Court here to block those subpoenas — a suit that Ms. Farber received on Thursday — it asserted that the state was straying into a federal matter, and that compliance with the subpoenas would imperil national security.

As a matter of national security policy, the dispute represents the latest twist in the controversy over the boundaries of domestic spying and personal privacy. But as a matter of government practice and legal precedent, the dispute is significant because it transforms what had primarily been a fight between the federal government and civil liberties groups into a far knottier one pitting federal authorities against state ones...

In the lawsuit, the federal government invokes the state-secrets privilege, in which the government asserts that any discussion of a given lawsuit's claims would threaten national security...

First I would like to publicly apologize to Fenton and my other NJ homeys for making fun of their home town, never again! (Ok, maybe only a few more times.) Second, since when was it the policy of the Republican party to take the position of federal rights over state's rights? Isn't limiting the power of the government one of their main doctrines? I never want to hear them yelling out "smaller government" again, you hear me?

An Inconvenient Truth: Bears turn cannibal!

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

The study reviewed three examples of polar bears preying on each other from January to April 2004 north of Alaska and western Canada, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after it gave birth.

Polar bears feed primarily on ringed seals and use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth.

Polar bears kill each other for population regulation, dominance, and reproductive advantage, the study said. Killing for food seems to be less common, said the study's principal author, Steven Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center.

"During 24 years of research on polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region of northern Alaska and 34 years in northwestern Canada, we have not seen other incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears," the scientists said.

Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century...

Soon it will be man against man, vying for land and food after most of the world is submerged underwater. I've already got reserervations at Au humain. Zagats gives them for 18/20 for their prime cuts.

The New French Revolution

Muslim women are finally fighting back against their male counterparts in the ghettos of France. The feminist group Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissives) has defied the conspiracy of silence surrounding the extreme acts of violence perpetrated against young minority women.

Many immigrants and their descendents in France’s housing projects have refused to accept this country’s way of life, clinging to conservative, often paternalistic cultures that do not translate in the France of today.

With the added burden of high unemployment and discrimination, some young males in the ghettos, often of Muslim heritage, direct their aggression inward, acting as self-appointed morals cops and guardians of their families’ honor, said [Fadela] Amara, [President of Ni Putes Ni Soumises], the daughter of Algerian immigrants who was raised in a housing project in central France.

The group’s name is provocative — and intentionally so. “Not whores” is aimed at young thugs who refer to all women except their mothers as whores, while “not submissives” is directed at intellectuals, politicians and other observers to alert them that merely because these women are oppressed, it does not mean they are simply passive.

“The movement Ni Putes Ni Soumises is like a return to the classic feminist movement of the 1970s. The only problem left, the last (challenge) of the feminist movement, is political parity,” she said...

Teenage girls in the projects are often caught between their families’ restrictive culture and the aggression of boys their own age. The consequences — sexual harassment, forced marriage and, in some cases, gang rape and murder — are real, the stories heart-wrenching...

“There are only two types of girls” in the housing projects, Bellil, who died of stomach cancer in 2004 at the age of 33, wrote. “Good girls stay home, clean the house, take care of their brothers and sisters, and only go out to go to school. Those who … dare to wear make-up, to go out, or to smoke, quickly earn the reputation as ‘easy’ or as ‘little whores’.”

Sohanne Benziane, a 19-year-old Muslim girl from Vitry-sur-Seine, a southeastern suburb of Paris, was burned alive in her housing project’s trash area in 2002 for refusing the advances of a local thug. The alleged murderer, who in April was sentenced to 25 years in prison, was cheered by youths on the estate when he returned with police to reenact the crime.

The horrifying details of Benziane’s death shocked France and helped lead to the formation of Ni Putes Ni Soumises.

Ni Putes Ni Soumises boasts 6,000 members plus many more volunteers and dozens of local branches.

New York City Has No National Monuments

That's right, according to the Department of Homeland Security, New York has no national monuments or icons. "These are the same bean counters who think that the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge are not national monuments or icons," scoffed [New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg spokesman Jordan Barowitz.

Let me side track with a little history lesson, cause as a native Brooklynite I'm rather proud of our little bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the most historically significant and stylistically beautiful structures in the world. Built in 1870, it was the longest cable suspension bridge in the world and until the Eiffel Tower was completed some 20 years later, it was the tallest structure in the world. I won't even say anything about the Statue of Liberty, NY Stock Exchange, Empire State Building, countless museums, Grants Tomb, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, United Nations, Chrysler Building, Times Square, World Trade Center— oh wait...

So, because we have no "national monuments" to speak of, Homeland Security has seen fit to cut 40% of New York's anti-terror funding.

The city will get $125 million from the feds' high-threat bank account, a 40% cut from the $207 million it received last year. The Homeland money pot was smaller overall this year, but the rest of the country is being trimmed just 14%."

"When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 46 places or 45 places [that get funding]," fumed Bloomberg.

The thought on everyone's mind is, is this some sort of revenge against New York being a more ethnic, diverse, gayer, less Christian town? Even our Republicans look like flaming liberals to the rest of the country. Other cuts went to DC, New Orleans, San Diego and Phoenix while Jacksonville, Louisville, and Omaha are slated for increased funding. Do we see a pattern here?

Geneva Convention deemed out of touch with modern wars

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards...

The process has been beset by debate and controversy, and the decision to omit Geneva protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of U.S. detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq...

President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines.

But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars...

For decades, it had been the official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the time, touching off a wide debate over U.S. obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

This might be super obvious, but if the U.S. will not adhere to the Geneva Conventions, who will? Aren't we limiting our ability to criticize other nations who have low standards of human rights and be the world police effectively (or at least act like the world police when it suits our interests)?

Haditha Massacre

On the morning of November 19, 2005 Haditha, an agricultural community north-west of Baghdad, was the site of a bloody US-led civilian massacre. The original military statement said, "A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."

But that's not the whole story. Journalist Taher Thabet filmed the aftermath of the roadside bomb and discovered the bodies of women and children still in their nightgowns, bullet holes and bloodstains on the walls and floors of houses. After this footage came to light, the official version of the story changed to say that 15 civilians had been accidentally shot by marines during a firefight with insurgents. (The number is now suspected to be up to 24 civilians.)

The Pentagon has said little about the Haditha deaths publicly, and in Iraq the incident has caused little controversy - US troops there are already routinely viewed as trigger happy and indifferent to Iraqi casualties.

But politicians in Washington who have been briefed on the military investigation say it backs the story that marines killed civilians in cold blood.

The chairman of the Senate armed services committee, John Warner, says it will hold hearings into the incident and how it was handled.

Media commentators have spoken of it as "Iraq's My Lai" - a reference to the 1968 massacre of 500 villagers in Vietnam. "

This story is quietly being swept under the rug. The US is supposedly still investigating what happened at Haditha and for the next 30 days will force troops to undergo ethical training and lessons in "core warrior values," whatever that means...