Political Olympics

Politics and Olympics seem to go hand in hand. In Ancient Greece, a truce was announced before and during each of the Olympic festivals, to allow visitors to travel safely to Olympia. During the truce, wars were suspended, armies were prohibited from entering Elis or threatening the Games, and legal disputes and the carrying out of death penalties were forbidden. But politics did inevitably play a role--political alliances were announced, games were declared invalid if a hosting country was out of favor, and exiles were pardoned.

In 1936, Hitler's Berlin games were possibly the lowest point in our history. In Germany, Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables" were not even allowed to compete. On the flip side, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics gave black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos (the gold and bronze medalists), a platform to demonstrate civil rights awareness by raising the black-gloved fist as the Star Spangled Banner was played.

This year is no exception and already it seems like we are starting off on on a sour note. Take our host China--in addition to the pollution, human rights violations, and overall bad vibes, they are now censoring the games for the rest of the world. China promised the International Olympics Committee that they would provide the media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics. However, today we find out that the IOC has brokered a deal with the Chinese government, which would allow Internet censorship.

"I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time," IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said, referring to Beijing's Olympic organizers.

"I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," he said.

Attempts at the main press centre to access the website of Amnesty International, which released a report on Monday slamming China for failing to honor its Olympic human rights pledges, continued to prove fruitless by mid-week.

We also have a little country called Iraq, who up until today was banned by the IOC from participating in the Olympics after the country’s government disbanded the committee and appointed a government official as its new leader. The IOC requires national committees to be elected and autonomous. But on the bright side, it looks like some of their athletes will be able to indeed compete.

[Their banning] led to widespread criticism of both the Iraqi government and the I.O.C. On Tuesday at I.O.C. headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, a compromise was reached. Iraq agreed to hold elections for its Olympic committee before the end of November. In the meantime, Iraq will have an interim committee approved by the I.O.C.

We look forward to putting politics aside and seeing sprinter Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq and discus thrower Haidar Nasir, compete for their country.

They don't call it the Dirty South for nothin'

HOUSTON — While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not.

The city’s shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world’s energy capital, but deep in Houston’s Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.

Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city...

But city officials say real progress will be hard to come by. Landfill costs here are cheap. The city’s sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.

“We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up,” said Mayor Bill White, who favors expanding the city’s recycling efforts. “Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated. But Houstonians can change, and change fast.”...

Those without the special bins must cart their recyclable garbage to one of just nine full-service drop-off depots in the city. But when Monica Pope, a locally renowned chef, approached a city-run recycling depot in her silver pick-up truck full of containers, she was turned away.“They said my truck was too full,” Ms. Pope recalled, laughing. “There are cultures that just don’t get it, and, unfortunately, Houston is one of them.”...

Gross Texas, gross.

Gentrification, Forbidden City style

Call me old fashion, (go ahead, I dare you) but when it comes to historic cities, progress and gentrification is not always a good thing. Growing up in Brooklyn, I know a little bit about the subject, but New York City is a relative new-born in comparison to, lets say, Beijing where some houses date to the Qing dynasty (mid 17-early 19th century). Very little is being done to preserve these fascinating and historic areas in China, especially now with a booming economy and the Olympics on the way. And what's more frightening is, in an Orwellian twist of fate, buildings are being razed and history censored on purpose to eradicate the 1950s-60s Socialist projects-style architecture that is viewed unfavorably by the government today.

The explosion of construction activity that has transformed Beijing into a modern metropolis over the past decade also turned many of its historical neighborhoods — known for their narrow alleyways, or hutongs — into rubble. As grass-roots preservationists began sounding the alarm, the aging wood frames and tile roofs of the ancient courtyard houses that give these neighborhoods their identity were being supplanted so quickly by mighty towers that it was hard to pinpoint where they once stood...

The current wave of demolitions was under way by the early 1990s as free-market changes gained momentum, and real estate speculators saw potential profit in redevelopment. It accelerated after Beijing’s bid to play host to the Olympics was accepted in 2001 and the city began a substantial slum-clearance program to prepare for foreign visitors.

In the Qianmen area, for example, a once poor but thriving neighborhood south of Tiananmen Square that was home to many of the city’s teahouses and theaters, hutongs have been replaced by shopping malls and office blocks with ugly postmodern facades that already look dilapidated, although many are only a few years old...

As affluent foreigners and China’s new rich buy the houses, they are embarking on multimillion-dollar renovations that are robbing the neighborhoods of their souls...

The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who seems to be everywhere in China these days, has argued that designating specific buildings as landmarks creates a distorted version of history. Rather he has proposed carving out a protected wedge through the city in which all of the city’s historical layers, from hutongs on through the Communist-style projects, would be permanently preserved. The result would be a sort of living museum, a place fixed in time even as tumultuous changes unfold around it...

The Forgotten War in Afghanistan

It's true, Afghanistan is so far off most of our radars that we have all but forgotten that there are still troops there. It's also somewhat shrouded in mystery. What's going on over there? Why has the news stopped covering it?

The Pentagon and presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain all seem to agree on the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, but they are at odds with much of the country these days on the need to send more Americans into the lawless Afghan mountains.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a startling 45 percent of Americans said they do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting, despite the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which provoked the war in the first place.

The growing disenchantment with the Afghan deployment hasn't reached the level of national frustration with the Iraq war, but after more than six years with U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan and violence on the rise, Americans are becoming increasingly wary about the country's involvement.

Fifty-one percent of Americans now say that the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan has been unsuccessful, up from 24 percent in fall 2002.

Only 44 percent of Americans consider the war in Afghanistan a success, down from 70 percent in 2002...

"I'm not shocked at all that American support is waning," [Sholom] Keller [a veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq] told ABCNews.com. "If we are in Afghanistan because the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, then I want to see the perpetrators captured and brought to justice.

"If we're not finding them in Afghanistan, then I don't know why we're there," he added. "And if they are there I want to know why we haven't found them in the last seven years if they've been giving troops the right intelligence and missions."

Experts on the Middle East told ABCNews.com that many Americans share Keller's frustration, blaming several factors, including the fatigue from hearing about not one but two wars, as well as pressing issues at home, such as the failing economy.

"It's battle fatigue," [Judith] Kipper [director of Middle East programs at the Institute of World Affairs in Washington, D.C.] said.

"American don't want war; they know it's costing a lot and the worse the economy gets at home, the more people feel a lack of confidence in their daily lives," Kipper said. "The less confident they feel, the less likely they are to support foreign wars and adventures."...

"This is many years later and life goes on," Kipper said. "It's hard for Americans to relate to what happened years ago to their battle fatigue and war weariness now.

"[They care] about the problems that they're facing on a daily basis," she added...

This Ain't Rockwell's America

“OURS ... to fight for.” That simple phrase sits atop the Rockwell “Freedom From Want” and “Freedom From Fear” posters. But today, as many returning soldiers have witnessed, that sense of collective responsibility often seems absent, except for the occasional campaign speech....

Culled from a surprising new exhibition at the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University titled “Thoughts on Democracy,” they are all artists’ responses to Rockwell’s wartime “Four Freedoms” series.

Sixty artists contributed to the show. But their creations bear little resemblance to the Rockwell paintings, which helped raise $133 million for the war effort in 1943 after the government turned them into posters. There is no folksy man standing up to speak his opinion (exemplifying “Freedom of Speech”), no devout group praying (“Freedom of Worship”) no wholesome family sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (“Freedom From Want”)...

What all of this suggests is not just a reinterpretation of Rockwell but a meditation on an American crisis of self-confidence: the sense that trust in American ideals is giving way to fear and uncertainty about how they are exploited. Culture has long been a documentarian of sorts, and this somber mood is also reflected at the box office these days, where the dystopian world of “Wall-E” is a hit, and in bookstores, where titles like “Are You There, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea” are best sellers...

Many of the artists interviewed said they felt that now was not the time to emphasize American greatness, as Rockwell did, but rather to caution people about the risks of complacency. They said they created the posters because they loved their country — about two-thirds of the 60 are American — but felt that their fellow citizens needed to wake up, to break free from anxiety and a habit of looking away...

Reuse, Recycle: 1957 Interrogation Techniques used against US Soldiers now in use at Guantánamo

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. [!!]

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods...

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

I urge you to read the entire article; it only gets worse. More shocking than this story is that there will never be any public outcry. We have become the "Evil Doers" we once detested. If we let this war continue, we are all guilty of crimes against humanity.

The government doesn't need to know about my extensive online kitty porn collection!

WASHINGTON — Advocacy groups and some legal experts told Congress on Wednesday that it was unreasonable for federal officials to search the laptops of United States citizens when they re-enter the country from traveling abroad.

Civil rights groups have said certain ethnic groups have been selectively profiled in the searches by Border Patrol agents and customs officials who have the authority to inspect all luggage and cargo brought into the country without obtaining warrants or having probable cause.

Companies whose employees travel overseas have also criticized the inspections, saying that the search of electronic devices could hurt their businesses.

The federal government says the searches are necessary for national security and for legal action against people who bring illegal material into the country...

“But,” [Senator Russ] Feingold [Democrat of Wisconsin] continued, “if you asked them whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs and examine the Web sites they have visited, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing, I think those same Americans would say that the government absolutely has no right to do that.”...