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Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden is still at large -- but that's not a failure of White House policy, says Frances Fragos Townsend. As she explained to CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry last night:
HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.
Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).Read more.“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”
The subtle hand-coloured engravings in 'A Celestial Atlas' marked a transition from a celestial map style that included elaborate renderings of mythological figures to a less artistic and more scientific approach. The forms of the constellation zodiacs that had begun in ancient Greece were minimised or phased out over time in favour of more accurately detailed illustrations.
"WOW! How much did this cost? Looks nice, can me and a couple hundred of my homeless friends live in it?"
Well, thank you, Time, for hyping me, overvaluing me, using me to sell my image back to me, profiling me, flattering me, and failing to pay me. As soon as I saw myself on my local newsstand, I had to buy a copy of Time.But 2006 was the year that saw print pale and online endeavors soar, from Google's wallet-lightening purchase of YouTube to the boom in expenditures for online employment ads, which now show online job listings outpacing those in print by a half billion dollars. Given the trend, who can blame dead-tree media for trying extraordinary tactics to make ends meet? Locally, that's meant plenty of media consolidation, cost-cutting measures, and new ventures. A less than comprehensive run-down of local media goings-on:
"Over thirty days, you can get a little bit of flavor. But you know at the end of the day, after 30 days, you know you can home to your wife and kid, shave off your beard and go back to being a white, Anglo-American Christian. I don't have that luxury. I know inside they hate me for who I am."Another excellent find by Peek.
In 2000, Bordeaux's contemporary art museum, the Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporains (CAPC), launched the exhibition Presumed Innocent: Contemporary Art and Childhood, featuring work by 80 artists including Jeff Koons, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ugo Rondinone, and Cindy Sherman. Shortly after the show closed, a French child-protection agency filed suit against the museum's then-director Henri-Claude Cousseau (now director of Paris' Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts) and the exhibition curators Marie-Laure Bernadac and Stèphanie Moisdon for showing "violent images of pornographic character." At issue were three works: a Gary Gross painting of a girl taking a bath, an Elke Krystufek video showing a masturbating girl, and photos by Annette Messager of children with their eyes scratched out. This week charges were finally filed against Bernadac and Moisdon; Cousseau's charges were laid November 14.
A lawyer for the organizaton, La Mouette, accused CAPC of "displaying pornographic images of children that are an attack on human dignity, and of allowing children and adolescents to see them." She added, "There is no question of trying to limit freedom of expression. Our case rests entirely on the issue of protecting children. If the show had been adults-only, we would not have gone to court." (The museum reportedly did have warning language and had cordoned off explicit sections of the exhibition.)
But a group of prominent museum directors--including the Tate's Nick Serota, Hayward gallery director Ralph Rugoff, Yale Art School dean Robert Storr, and curator/critic Hans-Ulrich Obrist--think it is about limiting speech. They and nearly 100 other curators, historians, and museum directors have come out in support of the 60-year-old Cousseau and the show's curators. Paris-based artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in an email to colleagues, writes:Cousseau says, "The show was about the fragility of children and how their image can be exploited."It is the first time in France that charges are laid against a museum director and curators in the frame of their professional activity, for the content of an exhibition. There is no jurisprudence for such a case. They face 5 years of prison and 75’000 euros penalty.
We, citizens, artists, creators, intellectuals, researchers, and above all men and women with the freedom to think, create and express ourselves, wish to assert hereby our unconditional support to Marie-Laure Bernadac, Henry-Claude Cousseau and Stephanie Moisdon, and we whish to express how appalled we are by this laying of charges that represents a serious step back, taken against hard-earned liberties.These liberties, which are the ground of democracy, are endangered today, and we wish to forcefully express our indignation at the seriousness and the injustice of this situation. We all feel concerned and wish to mobilize.
By undersigning this petition, we assert our full solidarity with Marie-Laure Bernadac, Henry-Claude Cousseau and Stephanie Moisdon. If you wish to join this petition, please indicate your Name, Profession, Town and Country and send these informations to :presumesinnocents@lamaisonrouge.org
For more links about this case, visit NEWSgrist. Cross-posted at Off-Center.
Two Antonov airplanes, five helicopters and two MIGs attacked our village at around 6am. Five tanks came into town. The attack lasted until 7pm. The inhabitants fled from their homes but our brother-in-law was killed when running away. Eighteen men and two children from our family were killed when fleeing.Given the extent of these sales, no wonder Russia, which has veto power as holder of one of five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council (another is China), isn't prone to intervening in Darfur.
We need Sudanese help, presumably, in the "war on terror." For a number of years, the Sudanese government had been harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. To alieniate the Sudanese government gets rid of sources of information for us regarding the "war on terror."Complications of Intervention
Stopping genocide only becomes possible when it is in the national interest of the country identifying an event as genocide and having the will to intervene. Since the U.S. has a volunteer army that is overextended in Iraq, I don't see any way for the U.S to get involved--hence, one must suggest that a lot of people have been snookered into the belief that something can happen.That said, he says getting medical and food aid to refugees is key, although it's difficult since "refugees are constantly on the move" and the conflict has become so unstable the U.N.'s World Food Program recently pulled its people from Darfur.
The 7-foot dots are 225 feet apart, the distance needed at the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, to stop in three seconds without rear-ending the vehicle ahead. Accompanying signs tell drivers to keep two dots apart in the stretch, traveled by an average of 16,000 vehicles a day.
Project traffic data collected on three July weekdays by the state Office of Traffic Safety showed that the dots had slowed drivers by almost a third of a second, to 2.6 seconds between vehicles monitored halfway through the two-mile section of dots.
And the space between vehicles increased by nearly 23 feet compared with gap data collected before the dots were added in June. Average speeds at the dots midpoint decreased about a mile per hour to 58.6 and remained about that speed a mile after the dots ended.
Earlier: Walker Art Center groundskeeper plays Pac-Man.
(Thanks, Tom. Photo: Christopher Morris)He said the most painful part of his presidency has been knowing that American soldiers die as a result of his decisions. His "heart breaks" for their families, he said....
...Although he said the war will require additional sacrifices, he called for no sacrifices on the home front.
"A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country," he told the reporters, "and I encourage you all to go shopping more."
"[T]here will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country."After specifically referencing "the Muslim Representative from Minnesota," Goode states, "We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country."
A problem with his logic: curtailing immigration wouldn't have prevented Keith Ellison from "demanding the use of the Koran."
A US citizen from birth, Ellison converted to Islam when he was 19.
Read the letter here.
Ambergris begins as a waxlike substance secreted in the intestines of some sperm whales, perhaps to protect the whale from the hard, indigestible “beaks” of giant squid it feeds upon. The whales expel the blobs, dark and foul-smelling, to float the ocean. After much seasoning by waves, wind, salt and sun, they may wash up as solid, fragrant chunks.Because ambergris varies widely in color, shape and texture, identification falls to those who have handled it before, a group that in a post-whaling age is very small. Ms. Ferreira says she has yet to find an ambergris expert.
“A hundred years ago, you would have no problem finding someone who could identify this,” said James G. Mead, curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, who said he hears of new ambergris surfacing somewhere in the world maybe once every five or six years. “More often, you have people who think they’ve found it and they can retire, only to find out it’s a big hunk of floor wax.”
"On what grounds will those of you defending this congressman's decision in his right to chose his favorite book... Would you allow him to choose Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?"While Hannity's innuendo--linking the Quran and Mein Kampf in the same breath--is troubling, it's his use of the term "Nazi bible" that's surprising, especially since he and Prager are so concerned that Ellison honor the book most often used in oaths.
Like the one the Führer commissioned in 1939; in an attempt to "Nazify" the church, Hitler ordered hand-picked theologians to "cleanse church texts of all non-Aryan influences" and revise the 10 Commandments to include 12, deleting several and adding these:
Keep the blood pure and your honour holy! Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers. Always be ready to help and to forgive. Honour your Fuehrer and master!Perhaps these modifications indicate my issue with the Ellison/Quran flap: what is being sworn is of greater import than what it's being sworn on.
After all, in Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that "today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”
Hitler, like anyone, was judged by his actions, those of a homicidal racist, rather than by his statements of faith. (The quote above continues: "By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.")
Congressman-elect Ellison will be rated--and berated--by the likes of Hannity and Prager, no doubt. But perhaps they could wait til after his first day in office to get started.
[A frequent rightwing commenter at Minnesota Monitor, where I crossposted his entry, seems to have a bigger problem with a mention of al-Jazeera than the utterings of Sean Hannity.]
And: The director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Dr. Stephen Feinstein, calls for the resignation of Dennis Prager from the US Holocaust Memorial Council for saying Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison shouldn't serve if he won't take his oath on the bible. Says Feinstein, "[E]veryone should see Prager's comments as bigotry enthroned... [H]is statements have single-handedly made it clear that one Jew does not understand the civic responsibilities of an organization whose board he represents."
One was the footprints of a Naga snake on top of a car. People were looking for numbers in the patterns. Another was a pig which had two faces. Today comes another story from the Thai Rath newspaper. A man from Udornthanee bought a betel nut palm to decorate his restaurant. After a short while, he noticed that the leaves of the plant were growing into the shape of the King of the Nagas, a highly respected serpent snake. As soon as the locals heard about this they came flocking to his restaurant to pay respect and also to beg for the winning lottery numbers!
The 833-foot tall building "will stretch 430,560 square feet over 48 floors, with an immense glass chimney on which an array of images will be projected at night from inside. With an observation deck at its crown, the building has a base that will contain shops, restaurants, and a museum to document 'humanity’s quest for light against darkness.'The structure is scheduled for completion before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
GREENFIELD: Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread. Or is that threads? -- Wolf.
Comic kudos: The American Press Awards have just been announced: on the list is the Star Tribune's Steve Sack, named Berryman Cartoonist of the Year.
The elephant in the newsroom: Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News has appointed a new editor and, apparently unconcerned about reader perceptions of political bias in the newsroom, he's former chair of the Utah Republican party Joseph Cannon. File under: What liberal media?
Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.
One of the reasons that traditionally people have taken oaths -- either serving as witnesses in trials or defendants, or being sworn in with the oath of office as president or a member of Congress -- one of the reasons people have put their hands on a, on the Judeo-Christian Bible -- which includes the Old Testament and the New -- is that this is one of the foundations of Western civilization, and it's also one of the foundational sources of our law. Moses was known as the lawgiver. The Ten Commandments have -- have had a great deal of influence over the creation of law in Western society. So it's consistent with that part of our society that qualifies as Caesar's element -- render unto Caesar what is Caesar's -- for people who serve in law-making and governing capacities to take an oath consistent with our foundation. For those who really believe that the Constitution is blasphemy, at least in parts when it conflicts with Islam -- these people have a right to their religious beliefs and they can operate in our society. But the question is, can they ethically and morally hold office?Rosen's mention of courtroom procedures, however, fails to recognize that the bible needn't be used to swear in witnesses in court proceedings. Last summer, when Muslims in North Carolina attempted to donate copies of the Quran for courtroom oaths (and were refused), the Christian Science Monitor wrote:
As to Rosen's mention of the Ten Commandments, a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper in 1814 casts doubt on this notion:Already, witnesses in American courts do not have to take a religious oath and can instead simply testify on pain of perjury. It's up to judges to decide what passes for an oath.
Most have apparently given other oaths wide latitude. In a federal terrorism case in 1997 in Washington D.C., for instance, the judge allowed Muslim witnesses to swear to Allah. And the practice isn't new: Mochitura Hashimoto, the Japanese submarine commander who testified in the court martial of a US Navy captain in 1945, was allowed by a military tribunal to swear on his beliefs of Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan.
[I]n answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the ten commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England? we may say they are not because they never were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.Further, Jefferson writes, British common law--which the American legal system is largely based upon--was established in England before Christianity arrived there:
...Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]
[A]s Truman said, “If we should pay merely lip service to inspiring ideals, and later do violence to simple justice, we would draw down upon us the bitter wrath of generations yet unborn.” And when I look at the murder, rape and starvation to which the people of Darfur are being subjected, I fear that we have not got far beyond “lip service.” The lesson here is that high-sounding doctrines like the “responsibility to protect” will remain pure rhetoric unless and until those with the power to intervene effectively — by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle — are prepared to take the lead.