Albert Einstein on Racial Prejudice

Radio blogging here...
I learned something the other day listening to Speaking of Faith.
Albert Einstein spoke out against racial prejudice in 1946.

In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one's fellow-man.

There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the "Whites" toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.

Many a sincere person will answer: "Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavorable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability."

I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.

Popular You Tube links from Hootsbuddy

My time is limited this morning, but just noticed something my little handful of readers might enjoy know about. Some thirty percent of hits are now looking for You Tube videos. The phenomenon is like a forest fire in the Internets. And that doesn't reflect all the private messages being exchanged that never make the big time.
Here in no particular order is a list of posts from Hootsbuddy's Place that have been hit by searches in just the last 24 hours or so...

Tow Chinese Boys Singing "My Way"
Nina Simone: For all We Know and Others
Ray Bethell flying kites...Unbelievable!
ABBA -- Dancing Queen
Fun Two, Guitar Whiz, with Pachelbel’s Canon (This one got ten hits. Kid may be going places...)
Russian Climbing Video -- Parkour (My personal favorite set of three videos...)
Chris Bliss, Fantastic Juggler Video
Edith Piaf Returns
Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting - 1997 (Yesterday. Profanity advisory. But his profanity is nothing compared to the profane war in Iraq.)
Yet another animal video from You Tube

There are a couple more, but I'm out of time. That list can keep you busy for the rest of the hour. Unless, of course, you stay out of YouTube itself...in which case you might get hooked for longer.

Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting - 1997

Let's see...
That would be a decade ago, about four years before the WTC attack. Long before we got into a war in the Middle East.
Those Massachusetts libruls are always talking nonsense, ya know?
Nail.
Hit.
Head.

Children with PTSD -- the Mother of all IED's

Preeti Aroon is an assistant editor at FP, which she joined in January 2007. She holds a master's degree in public policy from Duke University, where she was an opinion columnist and editorial page associate for The Chronicle, the university's student-run newspaper. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Ms. Aroon was previously a copy editor and contributing columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and she holds bachelor's degrees in Spanish and chemical engineering from the University of Kentucky. [LINK to Foreign Policy Blogger Bios.]

This post from FP is one of the most important and ominous warnings I have read concerning the real legacy of the war in Iraq. Thoughtful readers are invited to read it fully, exploring every supporting link.

I wish I had more words of hope than I do. All I can say is that the sooner the madness is brought to an end, the sooner the traumatizing of children will diminish. Unfortunately, if peace came tomorrow morning it would still be too little, too late for many.

There's a time bomb ticking in Iraq, but it isn't made from chemical explosives. It's made up of traumatized children.

U.S. newspapers have given extensive coverage to the mental health issues faced by U.S. veterans of the Iraq war. Most recently, the New York Times published a lengthy account of women's struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),and earlier this month, we blogged about a video-game treatment for traumatized troops.

If grown adults who are in Iraq for just a few deployments suffer such mental health problems, then what about the children there who have grown up surrounded by nothing but war and violence?

A recent CNN report brings attention to these "silent victims." CNN cites a World Health Organization study that found that 30 percent of children surveyed in Mosul, and 10 percent of those surveyed in Baghdad, showed signs of PTSD. Examples of traumatic experiences children have suffered include a fourth-grader whose father and uncle were killed before his very eyes, and a 16-year-old girl who was abducted, raped, and forced to sleep next to a dead body.Traumatized children grow into very troubled adults. What does that say about the future of Iraq? In the coming decades, it will become a nation run by psychologically damaged people, if the country isn't stabilized soon.

For a preview of what to expect, just look west to the children of the second intifada. Today, they are a nihilistic generation of young adults, filled with little hope and much despair.

The Middle East is filled with demographic time bombs. The latest may be the Iraqi trauma time bomb.

.
It isn't just Iraqi children, of course. To some degree everyone is affected...
I'm thinking about our own children now in uniform whose character scars sometimes remain long years after their uniform has been left behind.

Two New Blogs: Hippy Gourmet and Ketchup Art

I can't believe it. In the short space of a few hours surfing I have come across two delightful spaces in the Internets that appeal to my geriatric Sixties-era heart. Well actually only one is an echo of the Sixties. The other is more or less timeless. You'll see which is which in a moment. Three and a half decades in the food business set me up to be a sucker for both.

First, here is a video from the Hippy Gourmet. I found it via Motion Abbey. Their video pick, also worth a look, is a short documentary about the solar-powered chariot. Surely the name alone is enough to prick your interest. Meantime, here is a recipe for Roasted Mixed Nuts Snack Mix. My favorite line: "I'm smellin' that nutty flavor again...I think my nuts are toasted!"

.

The other site, the timeless one, is also food related.

It's a photo blog consisting of, well...you can see for yourself.

Ketchup Art

When you go to the site the first image will be a random selection from what is apparently a growing collection of creations.

There is no archive that I could find and little in the way of credits or explanation. My guess is that it's a fairly new site which will swell as people all over the world start messing up public eating places even more than they have in the past, this time with digital cameras (or cell phones that take pictures) in hand to capture various creations.

My work in a retirement community dining room has spoiled me. I remember well how often we had to clean jello off the carpet, dropped by unsteady toddlers and unnoticed (I will be charitable) by their busy parents who then were able to step in it on their way out, insuring an indelible trace of their dining experience would remain until the carpet finally got irredeemably nasty and had to be replaced. I shudder to think how this new trend will impact the dining set, especially if kids start doing it to be cute.

Hurry, retirement. Come quickly!

Here, thanks to 3Quarks, is "Mao Tse Tchup."

GPS-Microchip Shooting Rifle

Here's a neat little number to add to police inventories.

This ID Sniper from Empire North is used to implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lense fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis.

So what is the use of ID Sniper? As the urban battlefield grows more complex and intense, new ways of managing and controlling crowds are needed. The attention of the media changes the rules of the game. Sometimes it is difficult to engage the enemy in the streets without causing damage to the all important image of the state. Instead Empire North suggests to mark and identify a suspicious subject on a safe distance, enabling the national law enforcement agency to keep track on the target through a satellite in the weeks to come.

The ID Sniper rifle was presented by Empire North in Beijing at the China Police 2002 exhibition.

Amazing. Not the technology, the impulse. And the obvious questions: Who's buying them? What's the nature of the market? I can't decide which is more sinister, this or roving bugs.

CFR on the Iran / Saudi Struggle for Leadership

This piece from the Council on Foreign Relations outlines the emergence of Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two countries compete for leadership in the region. It includes these remarkable lines...

Sunni Arab fears of a rising Shiite Iran have only strengthened Saudi Arabia’s position. It has also helped lessen the tension Saudis feel toward Israel. With Iran now the “evil empire,” writes Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “Israel almost stops being an enemy and perhaps becomes an ally."
.

They have managed to knock out half a dozen paragraphs without mentioning Syria. Issues are never as easy to simplify as we would like.
.
There is a Byzantine complexity to international politics. Most Americans don't have a clue. We can carp all we want about the president's shortage in the articulamation department, but this is not a problem as long as he holds on to power. Political power, not bullshit, is what makes the difference in most of the world. Like it or not, the Vice President and the president's advisors know how to play their cards. This snip is from the link above.
.

We might be witnessing a transition to the ambitious crown prince and long-serving defence minister, Sultan, one of the so-called Sudairi Seven princes (who have been reduced in number to six since the death of King Fahd in 2005). He has the backing of his full brothers (all sons of a mother from the Sudairi tribe, hence the sobriquet) including Interior Minister Prince Nayef and Governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman.

Such a shift in political fortunes might be of limited significance but for the advanced age of the crucial players. King Abdullah is 84 years old this year; Sultan, his putative successor, is 83 years old. (Other published ages are wrong, particularly for Sultan, who has a Zsa Zsa Gabor-like reputation for trimming years.) Both men have ailments reflecting their age -- Sultan successfully battled colon cancer a few years ago. Both probably have only months, rather than years, to live. (If Abdullah survives this year, he will become the longest-living son of the kingdom's founder, Ibn Saud.) What happens after him is a matter of conjecture: a system of succession announced by Abdullah in October 2006 is, as yet, untested. Senior princes will gather to choose in secret. Given his uncertain health, and a reputation for being grossly corrupt, Sultan's accession cannot be assumed. Indeed, he might pre-decease Abdullah.

As the events and probable dramas of the year play out, remember that the real players in the consensus-driven, decision-making of Saudi Arabia are Abdullah, Sultan, Nayef, Salman et al, the sons of Ibn Saud. Not formally educated and not necessarily intelligent, they have, however, acquired the wisdom of statesmanship over the years. (Nayef's wisdom is questionable, which is why he appears to have been sidelined to some extent.) The likes of Turki, Saud and Bandar, despite being so often in the news, are only grandsons of Ibn Saud. Although they each have years of public service, they are really only advisers. (Oil Minister Naimi is merely a technocrat and has zero power.)

In watching Riyadh, remember that Riyadh is also watching Washington DC, apparently disturbed by Democratic advances in Congress and the growing sharpness of the daily political sniping at the Bush White House. The United States and Saudi Arabia have had their problems over recent years, but the current Saudi leadership appears happier with this administration rather than any alternative prospect. Hence the sudden November invitation to Vice President Cheney to visit Riyadh for a tete-a-tete dinner with Abdullah. It was one hell of a long way to go for a meal. But Abdullah wanted to know Cheney's mind and Cheney found the Saudi monarch "on top of his game" on the issues discussed. Given the year's impending crises, and Saudi Arabia's centrality, it was probably vital. Keeping the kingdom away from any temptation to dabble in the quiet support of any al-Qaeda operation, provided the House of Saud itself is not targeted, would also be worthwhile.

Fareed Sabri Interview by Mahan Abedin

Saudi Debate is a forum publishing a " range of views about life, society and reform in Saudi Arabia. Business people, academics, political figures and journalists both within the kingdom and around the world have contributed to these discussions, and reached the conclusion that open and constructive debate is vital if issues of importance are to be addressed and better understood."

Mahan Abedin, former editor of the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, is the director of research at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism, a London-based organisation studying Islamism, democratization and extremism in the Muslim world. Born in Iran but raised and educated in the United Kingdom, he writes regularly on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Islamic movements and terrorism.

In this very candid interview one of Iraq's leading political figures, no special friend of the occupation, speaks clearly about the situation in Iraq. This is not the language of spin. The man advances cold, hard facts.

MA: Some American military commanders have claimed that the “surge” could last as long as 12 months, and maybe well into 2008. Is this possible?

FS: I don’t think it is viable to sustain an operation on this scale for such a prolonged period. I don’t envisage this operation lasting for more than 4-5 months. The Americans need to use the improving security situation to build something politically. Because if there are no breakthroughs on the political front then this operation will fail and the Americans will have to come up with a new strategy.

MA: But I thought you said this was the last chance to save Iraq!

FS: I meant this is the last chance for the Americans to stabilise the situation so as to save the political process which they established in Iraq after the invasion. I did not mean this was the last chance for the Iraqis to work together to save the country. But if the Americans fail again they will have to come up with a radically different strategy.

MA: What do you mean by a radically different strategy?

FS: If they fail they will probably reduce their forces, withdraw into their bases and just let Iraqi society implode. They will effectively be spectators to a civil war. I don’t think the Americans are going to leave Iraq anytime soon as some people envisage.

The entire interview is worth reading.

Climate Alchemy -- Turning Hot Air Into Gold

No, I haven't read the details.

.

I'm an essential Luddite about the issue.
.

The post title says it all.

.

That's one of the best post titles I ever saw.

Yet another animal video from You Tube

No excuse for posting this.
I just had to grab it before it got away...

Amanda Baggs on Drug Withdrawal

If the reader is not familiar with Amanda Baggs, this post is not going to make a lot of sense.
So if you don't know who she is, first do a bit of homework. Check out this link and come back and finish reading here.
I'll wait.

§§§►►►000◄◄◄§§§

Okay then.
NOW go to this most recent post by Amanda and read her account of the variety of medications to which she has been subjected and her various responses. Sounds like she's been there, done that...

Many years ago, I was on a neuroleptic. I was found to be toxic on that neuroleptic (very toxic, in fact) and put on another one instead. That one was heavily sedating (among other things). Instead of doing anything with the dosage of the neuroleptic (Zyprexa, which they’d cranked up to 45 milligrams in their continuing tradition of overdosing me on things by prescription), they added Wellbutrin (lots of it) to the mix. I immediately felt deliriously and unreasonably happy, started believing all sorts of weird and grandiose things (and I’d been recently exposed to a lot of New Age crap, so that had a heavy influenced on what weird things I believed), and had way too much energy.

Now, when you have this kind of side-effect on Prednisone (and I have had an extremely similar one on that recently), it’s considered a side-effect of a drug. An unpleasant one, and one that needs to be watched out for and guarded against, but a side-effect, not something innate. When you have a side-effect like this on a psych drug, the assumption is too often that you had this all along as an “underlying issue” and that the proper thing to do is to “treat that issue” rather than to reduce or eliminate the psych drug.

So the next thing I knew I was being put on Lithium for either bipolar or schizoaffective disorder depending on who you asked. And I was beginning to think that maybe they were right about me being out of touch with reality for real, and becoming far more likely to want to take every drug they shoved at me, because even I was aware that something was a little “off” here.

.
She's just getting warmed up at this point.
Go to the link and read the rest.
This remarkable young woman is changing the way I look at people, medicine and just about everything else.

The "O-Word" Lifting its Ugly Head

It only took two or three years and several thousands of dead or wounded US and Iraqi men and women, but a diplomatic effort finally got off the ground, sort-of, aiming at negotiating an end to hostilities. It's not polite to say it out loud, but it seems clear that unless and until they cried "Uncle" our policy was to keep their feet to the fire for a good deal on behalf of Big Oil. No need to be prissy about these things. After all the fluff is blown away the term "interests" translates more into economic realities than humanitarian impulses to be charitable.

Comes now the Senate with an eye on the bottom line...
Do we really want to get our troops out and bring an end to the war in Iraq, or do "national interests" link our commitment to the profit margins of the petroleum industry?

The Iraqi Cabinet's approval of a draft law privatizing the country's oil industry was hailed as a political milestone by the Bush Administration last month, but critics are now blasting a House bill that makes the law a precondition for continued U.S. military support.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called for the removal of the Iraqi hydrocarbon law, as it is called, from a supplemental war appropriations bill to be considered on the House floor next week, saying that the law "is a concerted effort to ensure that American oil companies are granted access to Iraqi oil fields."

The hydrocarbons law, which must still be passed by the Iraqi parliament, is one of six "performance measures" that Baghdad would have to meet in order to receive more funding from Congress this year, UPI reports. Failure by the Iraqi parliament to meet these benchmarks would result in redeployment of U.S. troops.

Kucinich called for reconsideration of the benchmark in a Monday letter to House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) and plans to propose an amendment on the House floor next week that would remove it from the supplemental. By requiring enactment of the law by the Iraqi government, "democrats will be instrumental in privatizing Iraqi oil," his website quoted him as saying.

Kucinich's amendment "in all likelihood is not going to get past the Rules Committee," a congressional staffer told Iraqslogger.com, adding that the Congressman had not actively sought his colleagues' support for the amendment.

As Iraqslogger reported previously, the draft hydrocarbon law empowers Iraq's regional governments to negotiate production contracts with international oil companies, while calling for national distribution of oil revenues on a per capita basis.

But other provisions in the law undercut this revenue-sharing plan, opening Iraq's oilfields to foreign control, writes Antonia Juhasz in a New York Times op-ed:
"The law would transform Iraq's oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control."

The draft legislation is expected to encounter stiff opposition in Parliament from the Iraqi Accordance Front and the Iraqi National slate, as well as Iraq's oil unions, which represent tens of thousands of workers, UPI reports.

The Bush Administration "has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law towards passage," writes The New York Times' Juhaz, and has made the law a performance benchmark for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

It's not clear whether Kucinich's proposal to strike the law will garner much attention on the House floor, as no one in Congress has yet publicly supported him. Robert Naiman writes in the Huffington Post, "It's quite plausible that with a little public attention and lobbying, this amendment could pass."

Love that term: Iraqi hydrocarbon law.
Makes it sound like some kind of clean environment effort on the part of tree-huggers, doesn't it? Reducing greenhouse emmissions, maybe?
When I read stuff like this it makes me want to throw up.

"Oil Spot" Pacification and Economics

New term for me: Oil Spots, as in cleaning stains out of a garment one spot at a time, presumably before washing the whole thing. This clever little image is used to explain how the famous "surge" is being applied to peace-making and counterinsurgency in Iraq. John Robb explained last year in plain English.

A simple rendition of the oil spot process is:
►isolate (cordon off) an area,
►cleanse it of insurgents, and
►provide it with political goods (the process is then repeated in a new area while maintaining a cordon around the first and so on until the country was pacified).

.
He links to a Foreign Affairs piece explaining the process in more detail. It is very much like an approach I thought about two years ago, after Saddam was taken out but before a couple thousand US casualties and many more thousands of Iraqis were sacrificed to a very different wrong-headed approach. In other words, before we pissed all over our feet.

Whatever other drawback the plan may have (such as too-little, too-late), the economics of the approach seems to be the worst fly in the ointment.

...the oil spot approach to counter-insurgency is running into a major problem: it will likely wreck what's left of the Iraqi economy. Here's why. Oil spots require extreme restrictions on movement. That is Ok when the people that are involved are dirt farmers. However, in big cities like Baghdad, cars are needed to shuttle workers from home to job and back, everyday. Hence the problem. According to Iraqslogger, with the security plan in place, commutes that used to take 30 minutes now take 3 to 4 hours.

.
File this under "When will they ever learn."

Doc Searls Prophecy

Not to put to fine a point on it (I will leave that to others better informed than I) this caught my attention this morning.

We have to stop believing what our phone and cable bills tell us: that the Net is gravy on top of telephony and television, when it should be obvious that the Net is a base public utility while voice and video are just two forms of data that can ride on it.

Trust me: This will be a cause you care about sometime in the next two years.

It should be already.

This is why I try to keep up with this man.
He's the most well-informed source I have found not trapped in some little corner of cyber-space or sailing the nose-bleed heights of technology, never to be understood by ordinary mortals.
A few people still look at the big picture and see the forest as well as the trees.
Make a mental note when this comes to pass that you read it here first (presuming that you did...).

Foreign Policy Magazine -- What's going on this morning?

Blake Hounshell is a regular part of my morning reading.
This morning I can't get a connection, either through Bloglines or a Google search.
Instead the browser gets a message I have never seen...

"Too many connections"

What the heck is that?
I thought at first this new IE7 browser had too many tabs open, so I closed all but one. Still it didn't work.
I tried putting the simple address directly into the address field and that isn't working.
There is an old link that returns something, but trying to access anything on the sidebar gets a bunch of crazy clicking noises or the same "too may connectins" message.
I'm not very techno-savy, but is this what a DOS attack looks like?
I dunno.
I just hope it is taken care of soon. The preview window in Bloglines had a couple of stories that I wanted to read, but alas that window cannot be retrieved...
Is Blake Hounshell trying to spill some beans on someone and getting hit with a DOS attack to slow him down?
I'm no conspiracy nut, but some stories make me suspicious about people in high places.

Atrorney General Alberto Gonzalez Notes

Deborah White is one of this blog's most durable and on-task contacts. I've known her since before she started to work for the New York Times. (Betcha didn't know About.com is a Times property; scroll to the end of the page and check out the fine print.) This morning's comments on the attorney general is a bundle of links that illustrate both his deficiencies and Deborah White's diligent homework.

I'm already in the choir, so I don't listen too closely when this kind of preaching begins. But for someone shocked that anyone these days would not only admit to being Liberal but says it in your face, this might be a good place to start reading.

In my opinion, this man's influence on U.S. policy has been nothing short of evil incarnate. Furthermore, Gonzales has not the slightest interest in democracy as a form of governance, and has routinely disregarded Americans' constitutional liberties.

For a refresher on what Mr. Gonzales is all about, see my article The Strong-Arm Ideology of Alberto Gonzales , in which I reviewed his judicial rulings (when he was a Texas judge) and stances on many key issues.

The sooner George Bush loses Alberto Gonzales, the better off our country will undoubtedly be. And the sooner the United States can commence healing from the terrible damage wrought by the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Gonzales triad.

I'm admittedly prone to holding strong views... but I'm not alone in this one.

On March 11, 2007, the New York Times unequivocally stated, "Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution."

And Tom Head, About.com's Guide to Civil Liberties and author of many reference books on civil liberties, American history, and international human rights, gives three primary reasons Why Alberto Gonzales Must Resign.

I say dump Alberto Gonzales now, and let the healing commence!

§§§

hilzoy puts in her two cents as well.

§§§

Friendly reminder...
Check out the Pajamas Media straw poll in the sidebar. Anyone can vote every week from now til they take it away, both Democrat and Republican, at the same time.
I'm looking forward to finding out if I have more than one or two readers and how their political proclivities are reflected in this little precinct.

Pajamas Media Presidential Candidates Straw Poll

It's a trend.

They say almost three hundred sites have the widget now. So I'm on the bandwagon.

Imagine that. Old turkey librul like me with a PM feature in the sidebar! Makes me feel like an observant Jew with a shabbat goy. I heard once that Colin Powell did that in his younger days. That's why he was able to carry water for the boss up to the last minute. He had practice.

Who knows? Maybe I'll learn to justify the war and argue with Brzezinski when he grades this administration's foreign policy as "historically catastrophic" after giving the first George Bush a "B" and Bill Clinton a "C." That would be about one minute into tonight's seven-minute NPR interview.

The Crucial Importance Of Personality In Politics

Tom McMahon is a very smart man.
That's why I'm stealing his post and title vebatim.


An excerpt from the Irish AtlanticBlog:

It continues to surprise me that some people can survive and even prosper with what appears to be a complete lack of tolerable personality. Bill Clinton has it in spades, Hillary a lot less, Kerry none. Similarly in Irish politics. The Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, is charming. But I offer a story from a friend here in banking. An Irish TD (basically the same as a British MP) walks into a bank to cash a check. He is fairly well-known, but the teller is fairly young and does not recognize him, so asks for ID. Instead of showing it to her, he starts getting upset, doing the whole "Don't you know who I am?" routine. An older teller who recognized him rushed over to settle his ruffled feathers, leaving the young bank teller upset and embarrassed. I won't say who it is, because I do not want the legal hassle, but I will note who it is not. It was not Bertie, obviously. Bertie would have shown her ID, and then spent five minutes, Bill Clinton like, persuading her that it was all his fault, and he would have left the bank with her worshipping him to the end of her days.

This is the very reason, my friends, that it really doesn't matter that Barack Obama had 17-year-old parking tickets, or that his church is a tad too Afro-centric.

Halliburton CEO moving to Dubai

Interesting.
Veeery interesting...

Halliburton Co. is making a big push to expand its presence in the Middle East, with Chief Executive Officer Dave Lesar spending a substantial part of his time running the company from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Lesar said that from his Dubai office he will be concentrating on building the Houston-based oil-services company's business with national oil companies in the Eastern Hemisphere, including Asia, Africa and the Middle East. "Growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," Mr. Lesar said in a statement. ...

.
That would be "Dubai," as in "Dubai Ports?"
Wasn't that the outfit we didn't want running our North American ports?
Hmm...
The Vice-President's previous affiliation with Halliburton is probably a coincidence.
Uh-huh.
Got it.
.
USA Today puts this into the middle of their story...

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Iraq Dick Cheney Mideast Dubai Oil United Arab Emirates

.
Why would they mess with Cheney like that?
.
Cernig noticed...

I presume Halliburton will pay its taxes in Dubai after the move - that is to say, no taxes at all.

.
Somebody at UAE Community Blog sure noticed.
Love this comment...

Quick - let's move our IP offshore to a sharia law tax-free haven before our protector Bush gets out of office! I guess that it's closer to their main income source of Iraq.

.
Timing of the announcement was perfect. AFTER the Sunday talking heads but at the start of the week. Plenty of time for steam to blow off before next weekend.
Heck, this weekend is already an hour shorter thanks to the time change, and on St. Patrick's day everybody's gonna be drunk on green beer. These things take planning, you know.

Sorry. This was too good to pass up. I'm a sucker for chocolate and cheap shots.

Edith Piaf Returns

According to a feature by Anita Elash on this morning's Weekend Edition yet another generation is discovering the magic of Edith Piaf. A movie of her life has been released in France and will come to America in June.

Although her short life ended about the time I was finishing high school, the sound of her voice echoed through most of my development years and the decade following. There is in her singing a tragically romantic quality (Romance is often a spin off of tragedy, it seems.) that may fade but never disappears. Few readers will not immediately recognize the melody and voice timbre of this video, even if they don't know the meaning of the words or anything about the singer. Such is the imprint of Piaf's reputation and gift for singing.


Wikipedia lists ten films that include Edith Piaf, from 1936 to 1959. Her repertoire was short but impressive. My guess is that everything she ever sang is embedded somewhere in the memory of anyone over the age of sixty, even if they didn't like her singing. But who would ever admit to being such a Philistine?

Billboard.com provides a comprehensive litany of an uneven but unstoppable rise to fame. Was she saintlike? Puh-lease.
Did she touch a lot of people? Read for yourself.
Did she really ever hurt anybody? As far as I can tell, only herself. Maybe that's why she is still loved. Even among the ruins of her many love affairs, my guess is that her lovers would all be willing to say it was better to have loved and lost...you know the rest.

As an interpretive singer, Piaf was at the height of her powers during the mid-'50s, even in spite of all her health woes. Her international tours were consistently successful, and the devotion of her massive French following verged on worship. She scored several more hits over 1956-1958, among them "La Foule," "Les Amants D'un Jour," "L'homme à la Moto," and the smash "Mon Manège à Moi." During that period, she also completed another stay in detox; this time would prove to be successful, but years of drug and alcohol abuse had already destabilized her health. In late 1958, she met another up-and-coming songwriter, Georges Moustaki, and made him her latest lover and improvement project. Teaming once again with Marguerite Monnot, Moustaki co-wrote "Milord," an enormous hit that topped the charts all over Europe in early 1959 and became Piaf's first successful single in the U.K. Later that year, she and Moustaki were involved in another car accident, in which her face was badly cut; in early 1960, while performing at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, she collapsed and began to vomit blood on stage, and was rushed to the hospital for emergency stomach surgery. Stubbornly, she continued her tour, and collapsed on-stage again in Stockholm; this time she was sent back to Paris for more surgery. Piaf was soon back in the recording studio, eager to record a composition by the legendary French songwriter Charles Dumont. "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" became one of her all-time classics and a huge international hit in 1960, serving as something of an equivalent to Frank Sinatra's "My Way." Piaf went on to score further hits with more Dumont songs, including "Mon Dieu," "Les Flons-Flons du Bal," and "Les Mots D'Amour." She staged a lengthy run at the Olympia in 1961, and later that year met an aspiring Greek singer named Théo Sarapo (born Theophanis Lamboukis), who became her latest project and, eventually, second husband. Sarapo was half her age, and given Piaf's poor health, the French media derided him as a gold digger. Nonetheless, they cut the duet "À Quoi Ça Sert l'Amour" in 1962, and performed together during Piaf's final engagement at the Olympia that year.

Despite her physical weakness -- on some nights, she could barely stand -- Piaf had lost very little of the power in her voice. Piaf and Sarapo sang together at the Bobino in early 1963, and Piaf also made her final recording, "L'Homme de Berlin." Not long afterward, Piaf slipped into a coma, brought on by cancer. Sarapo and Simone Berteaut took Piaf to her villa in Plascassier, on the French Riviera, to nurse her. She drifted in and out of consciousness for months before passing away on October 11, 1963 -- the same day as legendary writer/filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Her body was taken back to Paris in secret, so that fans could believe she died in her hometown. The news of her death caused a nationwide outpouring of grief, and tens of thousands of fans jammed the streets of Paris, stopping traffic to watch her funeral procession. Her towering stature in French popular music has hardly diminished in the years since; her grave at Père-Lachaise remains one of the famed cemetery's most visited, and her songs continue to be covered by countless classic-style pop artists, both French and otherwise.