What just happened in Stockholm?

Al Jazeera is reporting that a pair of explosions has rocked downtown Stockholm, Sweden.

A car exploded near Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street in the center of the city, Ulf Goranzen, a spokesman for the Swedish police, told al Jazeera on Saturday.
Shortly afterward, a second explosion was heard higher up on the same street, and a man was found injured on the ground. Goranzen said that it is still unclear what caused the blasts.
"There was series of minor explosions, causing a fire in one of the cars in the street. Some minutes later, we found a man seriously injured 300 metres away from the scene of the first explosion. This man died."

The exact cause, and whether this was intentional or accidental are both still under investigation. One cannot help but wonder if this is some kind of angry, if sloppy, lashing out against Wikileaks, which is based in Sweden, by a party affected by the recent cable disclosures.
Or perhaps Al Qaeda is making good on its vague threats to terrorize major European cities.

Fears are rising across Europe of an al-Qaeda outrage before Christmas as intelligence services work frantically to track down radicalised western nationals returning from terror camps in Pakistan.
Two scenarios are on the table; a Mumbai-style massacre using automatic weapons stored at safe houses or suicide bomb attacks using explosives also stored among radicals within the country’s massive Muslim population.

 Or maybe a car just exploded and nothing sinister is at work.

Growing Pains

A pair of truly horrific building related calamities in the world's two most populous countries this week. First, a high rise fire killed 53 people in Shanghai, a city of 20 million that has seen an explosion of construction in recent years, and unsound building practices seem to be the culprit:

Chinese police are holding four suspects after a Shanghai apartment fire that killed 53 people and injured 70 others was blamed on unlicensed welding, state media said.

The fire, which gutted a 28-storey building in China's commercial hub, was sparked by "unlicensed welding carried out contrary to rules," Xinhua, the official news agency, reported without citing a source.

The report did not say whether those detained were workers or managers. 

The swift arrests come as authorities tackle public concern over why the fire took more than four and a half hours to extinguish.

A second and even more deadly disaster transpired in New Delhi, when a tenement housing mostly migrant workers from India's eastern countryside collapsed, killing 64 people. Apparently, it might as well have been built on a swamp:

The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear, but suspicions immediately centered on this year’s heavy monsoon rains, the building’s location near a swollen river and shoddy, illicit construction.

“There is already a question mark on the legality of the construction of buildings in this area,” said Tajendra Khanna, the city’s lieutenant governor, and the owner of the building, Amrit Singh, was being sought for arrest.

 New Delhi has upwards of 15 million people, and some say it is poised to overtake Mumbai in the that arena if current rates persist. China's and India's big cities are swelling so rapidly they seem tragically overwhelmed and at a loss to keep up; these twin disasters are certainly symptoms of that.

Top: A high rise burns in Shanghai (AP) Bottom: Rescuers search for survivors in New Delhi (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

A New Faith

On Veterans' Day I was inspired to pluck the Civil War novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara off my shelf and began reading it. The book is enthralling and magnificently written. I attempted to read it once when I was 14, but I remember it only being a chore. Now, however, I can't put it down. Each page is so packed with deep brilliance and revelation, yet at the same time is spartan and to the point.
One passage I found fascinating and rather timely comes early in the book when Colonel Chamberlain of the 20th Maine Regiment is lost in thought:

He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God.
...
But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigners; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

 Photo: November 12th, 2010, U.S. Marines help their wounded comrade to a helicopter during a Medevac mission in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province. (REUTERS/Peter Andrews)

Sometimes Creeps Do Look Like Creeps

CNN reports on developments in an ongoing missing persons case out of Ohio:



And witness accounts of the alleged perpetrator, Matthew J. Hoffman, now in custody, don't line up with the typical "he was normal but quiet" descriptions of men who turn out to be rapists and serial killer:

Donna Davis, who lives on the same street as the home where the girl was found, told WBNS Hoffman was a "weirdo" and that she made her children come indoors when he was outside.

 The rescued 13-year-old's brother, mother, and her mother's friend are still missing.

The Sad Fate of the Discovered Native

Just when you think there are no more unexplored corners of the world, one suddenly presents itself. Oh, if these people only knew the fate that awaits them now, should the pattern that afflicts their cousins' remain the same.

Eric Cantor Flirts with Treason

Andrew Sullivan highlights a shocking trend among GOP congressional leaders:

It is not the first time that this kind of direct attack on the president's ability to conduct foreign policy has occurred under this administration. John McCain and Joe Lieberman have gone abroad to assure Israel that they will undermine their own president to advance the interests of a foreign country in a critical diplomatic discussion with the US on that country's soil. But Eric Cantor has gone one further, openly bragging about something he once described as a felony.

Eric Cantor, a US lawmaker, has given assurances to the leadership of a foreign nation, namely Israel, that he and his fellow party members are putting Israeli interests ahead of those of their own Commander-in-Chief. The same US politicians who would, during the previous administration, accuse any critic of the President of being a traitor are now promising the leaders of another country that they will actively work against the American President.

Aung San Suu Kyi Released

NPR reports:

Myanmar's military government freed its arch rival, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
Suu Kyi appeared at the gate to her home, smiling and dressed in a traditional Burmese jacket. "There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk," she told the  hundreds of cheering supporters. "People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal," she said.

Al Jazeera gives some good historical context:



Is Myanmar edging closer to some semblance of democracy? Their recent elections might have been racked with fraud and accompanied by violent skirmishes with ethnic rebels, but it was the first national vote in two decades there. While their votes may not have counted this time around, perhaps a new generation of Burmese have acquired a taste for democracy that they will find hard to ignore until it is truly satiated.

(Photo: Suu Kyi greets the crowd outside her compound in Yangon. Getty Images)

For Women's Rights or for Politics?

On Wednesday, The United Nations launched UN Women, a new agency devoted to promoting and protecting women's rights around the world, with seats for 41 member nations. Many nations, including Nigeria, DR Congo, and Saudi Arabia applied and were granted seats on this new council. One notable and controversial exclusion was Iran, who applied as one of the 10 members from Asia but was replaced at the last minute by East Timor. The AFP reports:

"They lost and they lost handily," commented US ambassador Susan Rice on Iran's defeat.
"We have made no secret of our concern that Iran joining the board of UN Women would have been an inauspicious start to that board," she told reporters.

The claim of Iran's exclusion being due to their abysmal women's rights record would be easier to buy were it not for DR Congo's and especially Saudi Arabia's easily obtained seats on the council. The epidemic of mass rape in DR Congo would not seem to make the nation an exemplar of protecting women, and Saudi Arabia oppresses their female citizens to such a complete and inhuman degree (they are not allowed to even leave their own homes without the company of either a spouse or blood relative, and of course must remain covered when in public) its like the Islamic Kingdom is trying to win some bizarro Nobel prize for violating human rights.
This is not to diminish the suffering of Iran's women at all; from the Islamic dress code, to being banned from places like soccer matches, to unjust and cruel imprisonment and execution by stoning, the gross mistreatment of Iranian women is legendary and ongoing. But for the UN to imply that Iran's record is worse than a country like Saudi Arabia, the world leader in oppressing women, is just ridiculous. Iranian women outnumber men at universities, and, unlike Saudi Arabia, women in Iran are allowed to go pretty much where they choose, although not without hazarding threats from the Morality Police should a headscarf be out of place or a blouse be too formfitting.
It seems blatantly political that the UN would take care to keep Iran off this new council while accepting Saudi Arabia and DR Congo seemingly without issue. One must not ignore the ongoing sanctions against Iran, which today brought this development:

Nigeria has vowed to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council if Nigerian investigators find evidence that an apparently illegal arms shipment seized in Nigeria violated UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

 Is Iran's seemingly deliberate exclusion from UN Women yet another sanction against this moment's global pariah? If the United Nations prime concern here was truly protecting and advancing women's rights, then they would keep Saudi Arabia as far away from that council as possible.

"Goodbye, baseball!"

It's being reported that beloved sportscaster Dave Niehaus has passed away at the age of 75. Dave was the announcer for the Seattle Mariners for their entire existence until he retired from broadcasting at the end of last season; he was deservedly inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Dave Niehaus was a Seattle institution and a giant in sports broadcasting. Many have rightfully dubbed him the Voice of the Mariners, a moniker I whole-heartedly agree with. As a kid, I listened to Dave call games all the time, and I credit his boundless joy and infectious enthusiasm for baseball with helping to form my rabid Mariners fandom, and I know I'm not the only one. It's hard to imagine the Mariners without him.

This glorious moment in Seattle sports history would not have been nearly as electric and memorable without Dave Niehaus:

Islamophobia Backfires, ala France

Across the pond, outcry against the recently passed French "Burqa Ban" is taking a number of forms. One of the most notable is the ongoing work of a mysterious graffiti artist who goes by the moniker Princess Hijab.

Princess Hijab is Paris's most elusive street artist. Striking at night with dripping black paint she slaps black Muslim veils on the half-naked airbrushed women – and men – of the metro's fashion adverts. She calls it "hijabisation".

 The Guardian managed to snag a rare interview.

"The veil has many hidden meanings, it can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism on race, sexuality and real and imagined geography."

 Meanwhile, a pair of women who call themselves Niqabitch have taken a stand against the burqa ban with this video:




(Top: photo by Princess Hijab)

"Ken lives on in our hearts."

Today is the 15th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, a political activist who campaigned against the insidious activities of Shell Oil in his native Nigeria, specifically the Niger Delta region, but you wouldn't know it by reading or watching the major US news media. When it happened in 1995, Saro Wiwa's murder at the hands of his own government, ordered by Shell, was a huge international story that got loads of coverage in the American media, but today passed without so much as a mention of it.

I did find this article by the AFP, which gives some good historical context as well as how Saro Wiwa is being commemorated in Nigeria today. And yesterday, the Guardian published an article about Shell's efforts to control negative PR after the execution.

The suffering and injustice that Saro Wiwa fought against so many years ago persists; the lives and livelihoods of the Ogoni people continue to be sacrificed at the alter of corporate greed and western petrol-lust. And no one is listening.

Islamophobia Backfires

Oklahoma may have just banned official use of the Ten Commandments along with Sharia Law. From The Raw Story:

Residents in Oklahoma thought they were voting to ban Sharia law last Tuesday but it turns out that the new constitutional amendment may also extend to the Ten Commandments.

The Oklahoma ballot measure orders judges not to consider Islamic or international law when deciding cases. 

But Rick Tepker, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Law believes the "Save Our State" constitutional amendment may have the unwanted side effect of preventing judges from referencing the Ten Commandments. Tepker called the measure "a mess."

As Patton Oswalt puts it:

Ha ha! AHHHH-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, good Lord, this is just...HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! HAAAH-HAAAH-HAAAH-HAAAH!!! 

A Forsaken Country

A tent city set up for earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Wednesday, September 29th, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Haiti has narrowly avoided another level of devastation recently as Hurricane Tomas brushed by, soaking the place but leaving things relatively unharmed. The Associated Press:

U.S. Marine helicopters buzzed the southern coast from the USS Iwo Jima, reporting back good news.
"It sounds like from what everybody's seeing that it's no worse than after a major storm here. There's some standing water out there but nothing's washed away," U.S. embassy spokesman Jon Piechowski said.

Unfortunately, what little flooding Tomas did bring is only exacerbating the on going cholera epidemic that has already killed 500 people in recent months.

Cholera? Why is this allowed to happen? How can such massive and protracted suffering take place so close to the richest country on earth? Recession or not, the US could easily fund the reconstruction of Haiti. But what do we spend our vast national wealth on? Market Watch reports that campaign spending during our recent midterms reached nearly $4 billion. That's equal to more than half of Haiti's GDP. Where does all that money go? Meg Whitman alone spent over $140 million to lose the California Governor's race, the most ever spent on a campaign in US history.
Luckily there are ways to help the people of Haiti, by donating money or even your time and energy if you are able.

UNICEF

Food For The Poor

All Hands Volunteers

Checking in with Kyrgyzstan post-Bakiyev

Above is a really fascinating profile from Radio Free Europe about a group of disabled young people who have taken up residence in ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev's burned out former house. They're selling the bread that they make, fixing the home, and building a community in the aftermath of great political turmoil and ethnic violence in their country. Unfortunately, not all is well in Kyrgyzstan:

A group of ethnic Kyrgyz today occupied land belonging to ethnic Uzbeks in the villages of Kyzyl-Kyshtak and Ishkevan, just outside Osh, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports. The group of some 500 Kyrgyz -- mainly from the Nookat, Aravan, and Alai districts -- showed up in the villages in the morning with plans to divide the land into parcels. District authorities have warned the land occupiers to vacate the area by November 8 or face "severe measures."

Future Overlords Watch

Above is the trailer for a documentary by director Weijun Chen called Please Vote For Me, which chronicles a democratic experiment carried out using a typical class of Chinese 3rd graders. Three students are nominated for class monitor, and then set out to campaign for their peers' votes. What the trailer hints at is a fascinating and kind of frightening study of the ruthlessness of these tiny politicians; these kids, raised in the world's largest Communist state, take to democracy, in all its good and bad facets, so naturally you'd think they had run some of the most amoral campaigns in the latest US midterms. These are the future leaders of government and commerce in China and most likely the world at large.

Meanwhile, the current Chinese business leadership is renting white people to pose as foreign investors in order to impress the locals:

A Hoosier in 2012?

There's a movement underway to draft Indiana governor Mitch Daniels into the 2012 presidential race. He's apparently very well liked in his home state, having been elected to two terms so far, but I don't know if he has a chance at the presidency or even the nomination. He's rather moderate for a Republican, having signed the Healthy Indiana Plan, which, to many of his likely GOP primary opponents, would too closely resemble President Obama's health care reform that is so hated on the right. He also presided over the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, during which time a surplus of $236 billion sank to a deficit of $400 billion, not exactly lining up with Republicans' stated goal of fiscal responsibility or the Democrats' actual practice of fiscal responsibility. In his favor, however, he had managed to lower taxes for businesses and homeowners in Indiana, as well as taking steps to create thousands of jobs in that state. If anything, he will appeal to independents, and moderates from both major parties, but who knows what things will look like in 2 years. He's certainly a more appealing candidate than any of these characters:

CNN asked Iowa Republicans leaving their polling places last Tuesday who their likely 2012 favorites were. Romney and Huckabee tied at 21 percent, followed by Palin at 18 percent and Gingrich at 7 percent.

 (Above: Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana. AP photo.)

Checkpoints of Death

More info from the Iraq Papers, this time detailing more than 600 civilian deaths at US military checkpoints. Usually in these situations, an Iraqi civilian vehicle will approach a checkpoint, and the soldiers there will instruct it to stop so they can inspect it for bombs and the like. If the vehicle does not stop as instructed, standard procedure is to fire warning shots, then shoot out the tires if the car continues towards the checkpoint. The military refers to this procedure coldly as "escalation of force" and many of these encounters have turned deadly. Al Jazeera has an excellent piece on this on-going problem -

It Was Iran All Along

Thousands of US government and military documents, obtained by the provocateurs at WikiLeaks, have just flooded onto the Internet and front pages world wide shedding a pale, sickening light on the Iraq War. Perhaps the biggest detail that the papers reveal is just how involved Iran has been in the conflict. The New York Times breaks it down here, and the level to which the Islamic Republic and their Republican Guards have meddled in Iraq is just staggering. Iran has been supplying weapons and given guidance and training to anti-US Shiite militias in Iraq, much the same way they support Hezbollah. Perhaps most astoundingly of all is the revelation of numerous border skirmishes between American and Iranian forces-

 - including a Sept. 7, 2006, episode in which an Iranian soldier who aimed a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at an American platoon trying to leave the border area was shot and killed by an American soldier with a .50-caliber machine gun. The members of the American platoon, who had gone to the border area with Iraqi troops to look for “infiltration routes” used to smuggle bombs and other weapons into Iraq, were concerned that Iranian border forces were trying to surround and detain them. After this incident, the platoon returned to its base in Iraq under fire from the Iranians even when the American soldiers were “well inside Iraqi territory,” a report noted.

What these documents make clear most of all is that the current Iraq War is simply the latest in a series of long battles that have made up our 30 year war with Iran, which has its roots in the CIA ousting of their democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, but began in earnest with the overthrow of the US-backed Shah and the siege of our embassy in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Then came the Iran-Iraq War from 1980-1988, where-in we supported Saddam Hussein against Iran, supplying money and weapons, stationing US war ships in the Persian Gulf, and even shooting down an Iranian passenger plane. Now this latest and bloodiest chapter, and we seem to be losing, what with the persistence of the militias, and Iran's hand print on the formation of the new Iraqi government. As genocidal and maniacal as he might have been, Saddam was the only thing that, for a time, prevented his country from becoming a big Lebanon, which is now what Iraq is turning into.

(Top: Iranian soldiers wear gasmasks to protect from Iraqi chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. photo from Wikipedia.)

Talk About Entitlement

The French government raises the national retirement age from 60 to 62 and the citizenry goes berserk. Airports and gas stations have been shut down by protests and strikes, and most French students are boycotting classes. All this over a measly two more years of work. In the US, millions of people work until they die or are unable to work, at which point they settle into a meager existence of choosing whether to eat enough or take pills to keep them from pissing on themselves.

 The Big Picture has a great overview of the strikes in France. Makes the whole country look like one giant Romain Gavras video.

"The Future is Here, it's Just Not Evenly Distributed."*

In an age of file-sharing, flying killer robots, and cyber-organized protests, it is easy to forget that parts of the world still fall victim to fates that are almost as old as agriculture. Exhibit A:

Bride abductions are an endemic phenomenon in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In Chechnya alone, rights activists say as many as one in four marriages begin with the woman being kidnapped and forced to wed against her will. 

The president of Chechnya has pledged to end so-called "bride snatching." Glad he's finally getting around to that.

Exhibit B illustrates the importance of good sanitation and the horror of societal breakdown:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's government and its aid partners fought on Friday to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 138 people in the nation's worst medical emergency since the January 12 earthquake.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the virulent diarrheal disease, which had affected 1,526 people as of late Thursday, would be the first cholera epidemic in a century in the disaster-prone Caribbean nation, already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 

What a strange contradiction that one can blog about problems like forced marriage and cholera as happening now.

*(William Gibson, quoted in The Economist, December 4th, 2003)

"May God Get Rid of America in Iraq."

Growing up American during this past decade, I have come to think of Iraq and Afghanistan as colonies of the US, as extensions of the soil that is my homeland; I don't think I'm alone. I don't agree with this notion, and on further analysis it breaks down, but the sentiment is so strong I cannot ignore it. Perhaps I have some idea of how many average Brits felt about India, Ireland, and a large swath of Africa back when the sun never set on their empire.
And so, though I've never been to Iraq and it is thousands of miles outside my country's borders, I feel strangely protective and violated when I read about Iran making machinations in Iraqi politics and government-making. The Guardian has the scoop:

Iran has brokered a critical deal with its regional neighbours that could see a pro-Tehran government installed in Iraq, a move that would shift the fragile country sharply away from a sphere of western influence.

This should come as no great surprise; Iran was only waiting for us to pull most of our forces out of Iraq and focus our media and military on Afghanistan. Now they are swooping in to secure Iraq as an ally. And why shouldn't they? The two countries share a large border, and Iraq is 60% Shiite, the dominant sect of Islam in Iran. If anything, the Islamic Republic has more right to help decide Iraq's political fate than the US, if anyone other than the Iraqi people has that right at all.

"They saw a freezer. They opened it up, and there he was."

Bizarre story out of North Carolina:

The girlfriend of a missing North Carolina man has been charged with murder after police found the man's body stuffed in a freezer in their home.

Adding to the mystery - the couple's children:

The eyes of a killer?

Alexis Green, 17, has been incarcerated at the Wake County Jail since Sept. 16 on multiple charges, including contempt of court and failure to appear, stemming from a July arrest on burglary charges. 15-year-old David Green III is missing and investigators are concerned about his safety.

Is David III on the run, perhaps because of involvement in his father's death, or is he also waiting to be discovered in some dark, drippy freezer?

whoops.

From NYT:

Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that a British aid worker killed in an American rescue raid in Afghanistan last week may have been killed by a grenade detonated by a United States special forces unit — not in an explosion of a suicide bomber’s vest detonated by her Taliban captors, as the American command in Afghanistan suggested when it confirmed her death on Saturday.

Hm. Botching a rescue. How French of us. In all seriousness, though - I realize that shit happens and hostages can die, even at the hands of their would-be rescuers, but for the military leadership to lie about the circumstances like a bunch of cowards (as they appear to be doing) is just inexcusable and uncalled-for. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson after lying to the Tillmans, or after the Jessica Lynch episode.

Linda Norgrove. Her death is still under investigation.

The Return of White Terrorism

While Britain, much like the rest of the world, has been distracted by terror threats from the Middle East, what remains of the Irish Republican Army has regrouped and is apparently looking to blow something up in London. From Al Jazeera:

There is no specific target identified, but there is a desire among the dissident groups to mount an attack on the mainland.
The Real IRA recently warned of potential attacks on financial and banking centres, saying they had helped support Britain's "colonial and capitalist" system.
Since the beginning of the year, the dissident groups are thought to be behind around 60 incidents in Northern Ireland.
Hadn't heard about them? Well that's part of the drive to launch operations on mainland Britain.
The Provisional IRA used to claim one bomb in London was worth ten in Belfast in terms of publicity, economic damage and "prestige" for the cause.

 The Gaurdian UK gives us some idea of what the Brits might be facing:

There is growing concern over the sophistication of attacks being carried out in Northern Ireland. Second, bomb makers with expertise gained from the long Provisional IRA campaign of violence are believed to be now helping dissident republican terrorists. And the capability of the dissidents to stage attacks is thought to be nearly as dangerous as was that of the Provisional IRA.

More Votes with Honey

In a couple contentious US Senate races here on the West Coast, a trend may be emerging. First lets look at the race here in Washington State. Long time US senator and woman of the people Patty Murray (Democrat) is facing a considerable challenge from professional loser and former Space Needle floor waxer Dino Rossi (Republican). Tonight while I was watching the news, each of their campaigns ran an ad. Murray's was as follows:



What impression are we left with? That Dino Rossi is in the pocket of big bad Wall Street, yes. But what does it tell us about Murray? Nothing, really. She only appears at the start for the standard message approval bit, then isn't seen or mentioned again. We've likely forgotten about her by the time it's over. By contrast, here's Rossi's ad:



It is still an attack ad, but what is the main difference? Rossi is present the whole time. We begin and end on his image, and it is his voice, not some anonymous baritone, that narrates throughout. Rossi's is much warmer and more personal; he speaks in a tone as if to say "it's a shame, but Patty Murray just isn't working out. Why don't we give someone else a chance?". Compare that to the coldness of Murray's ad, which comes across like the Senator sending one of her henchman after mean old Dino Rossi.

Now another incumbent democrat defending her seat from a formidable opponent; this time it is Barbara Boxer vs political newcomer Carly Fiorina in California

Boxer's piece:


Very similar in tone and structure to Murray's. In fact, that might even be the same voice. Now Fiorina's:



Again, like Rossi's, Fiorina herself narrates and is on screen most of the time.

I should be clear and say that I support Patty Murray and plan to vote for her, and I don't want Dino Rossi elected to anything, but I have to admit that his more personal touch is appealing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it succeeds in bringing him votes he might otherwise not have gotten. Ditto for the California race. Democrats should definitely take notice of what their challengers are doing, and try to learn something.

Ahmadi is a 9/11 Truther

While addressing the UN General Assembly, the Iranian President took his assholery to a new level:

Ahmadinejad said there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.
"The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he said.

 Naturally, the US delegation walked out, followed by several others. When will insane ideologues stop using 9/11 for petty political attacks? I fear perhaps never.

Dear Mr. Mayor

My letter to Mike McGinn, Mayor of Seattle, advising him on what to do with the Fun Forest space at Seattle Center.

Mayor McGinn,

I am writing to urge you not to follow the Selection Committee's recommendation to build a Dale Chihuly museum at the Seattle Center space currently occupied by the Fun Forest. Of the myriad proposals put forward for what should replace the Fun Forest, the Chihuly museum idea is far from the best. It would not be free to the public, a notion which is incongruous with the spirit of the Seattle Center. Multiplying the Chihuly proposal's inappropriateness is the suggestion that, should the museum be built, an 8 foot wall would be erected around the new structure, quite literally creating a barrier between it and the rest of the Seattle Center. I don't think I need to remind a politically aware person such as yourself of the negative history associated with large, divisive walls.

The proposal you should choose is the one submitted by KEXP. They have proposed to use the open space currently filled with amusement park rides to create a free, outdoor performance space for local and international musical talent. As for the building that currently functions as an arcade, KEXP proposes using that building to house their offices, studios, and other facilities. Anyone, such as myself, who has spent time at KEXP's current location near the corner of Dexter and Denny will tell you that, while the staff does make very efficient use of the space, the building they now reside in is far too small for their operation. Allowing them to move to the Seattle Center would give them plenty of space; this coupled with a free, open air performance space would greatly enrich not only the Seattle Center itself, but the Seattle music scene as a whole, further maximizing the very positive artistic and civic duty that KEXP has made it their mission to carry out. Put simply, KEXP's proposal is a win-win; everyone benefits.

I should acknowledge the financial angle which the Selection Committee uses to support its recommendation of the Chihuly proposal. The committee claims that using the space for a museum that charges patrons for admission is the most financially sound option. Now while, on the face of it, a museum of this nature would appear to bring in more money than a free performance space, the Selection Committee is being narrow-minded and short-sighted. A museum dedicated to the glass artwork of Dale Chihuly will attract only a very specific subset of the local public, and, by some estimates, nearly 2/3 of all patrons will be tourists. I recognize that tourism is a lucrative and essential part of Seattle's economy, but the proposed museum fits into that economy in only the most cynical and superficial way. People will be drawn only to the museum, and perhaps the Space Needle, while bypassing the rest of what the Seattle Center has to offer. If, however, the space is transformed into a free concert venue, it will still be a destination for tourists and locals alike, but will appeal to a vastly wider audience than a glass museum. Very few people are aware of blown glass art, and of those even fewer can appreciate this niche art form, whereas almost everyone listens to and appreciates music, which is what KEXP and the proposed concert space will provide. Additionally, KEXP is a world famous indie radio station, listened to in dozens of countries. Placing it in convenient proximity to other Seattle landmarks such as the Space Needle and the Pacific Science Center only makes sense. KEXP will bring in more tourists than a glass museum, and enrich the Seattle Center in the process.

I know that you will make every consideration before deciding what should be done with the Fun Forest space at the Seattle Center. I hope I have made a strong case for the KEXP proposal. I await your decision with great interest.

All the best,
Dan Howes

American Taliban?

Last night in an interview via satellite on Real Time with Bill Maher, Michael Moore called for all Americans to refer to the likes of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin as the US equivalent of the Taliban. Now, while Gingrich is a jackass who has been irresponsibly spreading misinformation about Muslims, and Palin is an ignorant, fame-hungry megalomaniac, they are nowhere near as backwards and destructive as the actual Taliban. I direct your attention to an article in today's New York Times:

Those who did vote in Kandahar were nervous. “I am so scared to come to the polling station,” said Shafiqa, 49. “My family insisted I not come, but I have to because this is my country and I want to use my vote for someone I like.”
The Taliban used every conceivable tactic to dissuade people from voting, firing rockets at polling places, kidnapping campaign workers, planting a bomb in the toilet of a mosque that was to be used as a polling place, and threatening to amputate not only fingers with voting ink on them, but noses and ears of those who dared to vote.

In the US, when we have elections, people yell lies and insults at each other. When they have elections in Afghanistan, the Taliban terrifies the people so much that barely any of them vote, and those who do are under constant, real threat of being maimed or killed.
Palin and Gingrich are negative and hateful, but to compare them to a violent army of terrorists is simply disingenuous. Moore is, however, not completely filled with pithy, divisive sound bits; he called our attention to a non-profit organization to help finance the Park 51 Islamic Community Center, which Donald Trump has threatened to buy. You can donate here, and do the American thing by supporting religious freedom and tolerance, moving us one step closer to a more peaceful planet.

3 Soldiers

This story of a female soldier driven to cold-blooded murder by blind jealousy has recently caught my attention. Homicide in the Pacific Northwest is rare, but when it does happen, it usually takes on a markedly macabre aesthetic, and this case is no exception. According to her testimony, Ivette Davila shot fellow soldiers Randi and Timothy Miller when Davila suspected Randi Miller of stealing her boyfriend. Davila loaded up her Glock, took a cab to the Millers' home, and then it gets weird:

When the couple didn't show up, she took the cab to a nightclub where she thought she would find them.
She had a couple of drinks, but was not intoxicated, she told the court. The couple wasn't there, however, so she called them for a ride.
Randi Miller, according to Davila, picked her up and took her to the couple's house, where Davila said she played video games with Timothy Miller and lay with the couple in their bed.
Around 5 a.m., Davila said, she retrieved her handgun, went into the bedroom and shot Randi Miller in the head.
She said she then went to the bathroom and shot Timothy Miller several times while he was in the shower.

 What gets me is the way Davila does not immediately murder her victims; she hangs out with them for hours before pulling the trigger, with the Millers unaware of their impending fate until they are suddenly shot to death at dawn. She plays with her prey, the same way a cat will bat around a mouse before finally killing it. Things get weirder still:

After the slayings, Davila cleaned the crime scene and took the [Millers'] baby to Home Depot, where she purchased muriatic acid, according to court papers. Davila then returned to the home and poured the acid on both bodies "to get rid of them," court documents say.

 What was she planning to do with the baby? Perhaps we'll never know, as she turned herself in soon thereafter, before needing to make such a decision about the infant.

Maybe the eeriest part of this whole ordeal is the way it has scarred members of the Miller family:

Timothy Miller’s younger brother Daniel Gray said he looked up to Timothy as a hero and now is haunted by violent, unwanted images.
“A lot of times when I picture him now, I picture him with holes in his face,” he said.
Greg Taflinger, Timothy Miller’s half-brother, said, “Tim was the man. He was always there for all of us.”
Images of the murders have made it difficult for him to take showers, Taflinger said, and to be in rooms with closed doors.
“Now I carry a gun with me everywhere I go,” he said.

 (Randi and Timothy Miller with their daughter, Kassidy. Above: Ivette Davila in court.)

She's no Lynndie England

People in Israel/Palestine are making a big fuss about this and another such photo that were posted on Facebook by the female Israeli soldier pictured. NYT reports on the comments they generated.

A few friends on her page praised the pictures, including one who wrote, “You look so sexy like that.” Ms. Abergil’s reply, using the shorthand of the medium, was, “Yeah I know lol honey. What a day it was. Look how he completes my picture. I wonder if he’s got Facebook! I have to tag him in the picture!”

 Officials in that corner of the Middle East are not LOLing, however.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the photos and said they pointed to a deeper malaise - how Israel's 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.
"This shows the mentality of the occupier," Khatib said, "to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting."

"These are disgraceful photos," said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. "Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately,"

 Look, I appreciate how horribly the Palestinians are treated, I really do, but, being from the country that brought the world Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, I fail to be shocked or dismayed at the above photo. And to address Mr. Khatib's comment about the mentality of the occupier; it took American troops and their superiors no time at all become corrupted and filled with malaise after invading Iraq, and our transgressions towards our captors far exceed the trifle at the top of this post. Does this mean that Israelis inherently have higher moral fortitude that us? If this is the case, is it at an individual or systematic level? The infamous events at Abu Ghraib point to a problem in the system, but of course it, like every system, is run by and made up of individuals.

The Internet Bleeds onto Old Media

(click to enlarge)

This is America

In the above speech, President Obama not only fully endorses and defends the controversial and so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", but also successfully weaves Muslim-Americans into the historical tapestry of our country.

Like so many other immigrants, generations of Muslims came to forge their future here.  They became farmers and merchants, worked in mills and factories.  They helped lay the railroads.  They helped to build America.  They founded the first Islamic center in New York City in the 1890s.  They built America’s first mosque on the prairie of North Dakota.  And perhaps the oldest surviving mosque in America —- still in use today —- is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He also makes it clear that our struggle is not against Islam, but against extremists and mass murderers, with Islamic leaders standing fast beside us against the evil of terrorism.

Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Pehaps I Should Brush Up on My German

While most of the industrialized world still struggles to keep from teetering off the recession cliff into depression gulch, Germany is actually seeing economic growth. Believe it or not, the German unemployment rate has actually gone down in the last five years, a trend that they maintain now, even after spiking up slighting at the beginning of this year. 

As this graph attests to, in spite of US and European Union trends, Germany has managed to slash unemployment while their allies have seen their own rates explode. Clearly the Germans are doing something right. Hopefully they can drag the rest of us out of the hole with them, or at least the EU; as the NYT notes, higher employment in Deutschland means more German tourists vacationing and spending euros in places like Spain and Greece, the later of which saw their economy shrink by 1.5% this year, as compared to Germany's growth by 2.2%.
Being an unemployed American, and looking at the gulf between US and German unemployment rates in the above graph, I have a strong urge to dust off my German dictionary from high school and become fluent enough to work in a land that has more promising job opportunities than here.

Apple Falls into the Uncanny Valley

You may have seen ads in Apple's latest iPhone campaign like this one:

Clearly, the intent here is to advertise the device's video chat feature that will allow the user to have touching, memorable moments with his or her loved ones even when they are thousands of miles apart. I have no problem with this. Sometimes a traditional phone conversation or email exchange just won't do. What I do have a problem with are the ads themselves. They show these touching moments, but each one is obviously scripted by cynical advertisers and performed by actors; they fall into what robotic scientists call the uncanny valley.

Wikipedia explains:

The [uncanny valley] theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.

 This theory can and has been applied to various forms of media, most notably the not-quite-human CGI characters in films such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Polar Express. And now I'm applying it to these iPhone ads. If these commercials featured actual footage of regular people having real, spontaneous conversations, then I would not find them disturbing. Similarly, if they swung in the other direction, and were perhaps animated, they'd be just as acceptable. But as they are, I cannot help but be repulsed; they're are like the TV equivalent of one of these creepy Japanese robot girls:

(shudder)

Iran the Nation vs. Iran the Idea

In America, we talk about Afghanistan and Iran separately, as if they are worlds apart, when in reality they share a border.

The way we separate these two countries in our political discourse is completely dissonant. It would be like discussing New Jersey without ever mentioning New York, or visa versa. It's just absurd. Tehran Bureau has a great piece on this very subject: the Iranian-Afghan connection.

After spending several weeks in Kabul, one can hardly deny the extent of Iranian influence in Afghanistan. As a major player in the region, Iran has a vital stake in how its Afghan neighbors are governed. I paid closer attention to this after spending several days with an elite Afghan commando unit tasked with guarding a key site for high-level meetings. These commandos had been trained not only by U.S. Special Forces, but also by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the highly skilled paramilitary group accused of arming and training the Shia insurgents in Iraq.

 Should it really be a surprise that Iran has such a cultural, political, and military influence on its neighbors? We talk about Iran as if it is some esoteric concept, when really it is sitting right between the United States' two biggest current military commitments, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a living, breathing country.
I'm reminded of a film by Iranian auteur Majid Majidi called Baran, which explores the relationship between these two countries. It's a really charming, gorgeous, and Chaplin-esque fable about a young Tehrani man who falls for an Afghan girl who works illegally in Iran disguised as a boy.

Wild Fires in the Nuclear Age

The Russian wild fires have apparently spread to areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster.

The Emergency Situations Ministry also said that at least six wildfires were spotted and extinguished this week in the Bryansk region - the part of Russia that suffered the most when a reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during a test in 1986, spewing radioactive clouds over much of the former western Soviet Union and northern Europe.

More from Al Jazeera.

Disaster Round Up

Deadly floods in Pakistan, deadly wild fires leading to deadly smog in Russia, and now a deadly mudslide in northwest China.

Sanction Fallout

Just because Iran's Green Movement is opposed to the hardline regime in Tehran doesn't mean they agree with everything the US does either. Case in point: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the opposition movement's leaders, has criticized President Obama's recent sanctions against the Iranian nuclear program. According to AFP:

"The world arrogance (US) is trying to intimidate countries of the region, so they go along with bullying policies against Iran, but will not succeed in this act," Rafsanjani said at a session of the Expediency Council, Iran's top political arbitration body which he heads.

This is a stark reminder that, though there is dissent in Iranian politics, it doesn't simply boil down to anti-American and pro-American. Rafsanjani even uses the word arrogance to refer to the United States, a comparison we usually hear from Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. We need to be careful not to make the strife in Iran all about us.

Electioneering: How the Supreme Court and David Bossie Have Compromised American Democracy

(originally written June 7th, 2010)

    In January 2010, the US Supreme Court handed down an historic and controversial decision on the case of Citizens United v FEC; the ruling effectively overturned a century of limits on corporate funding for political tv ads. The case brought by Citizens United against the FEC was self-serving and politically motivated. It is clear from the films they produce that Citizens United is simply interested in exposing the public, through any methods necessary, to conservative propaganda, even if that means compromising our democracy.