Washington Post Writer ‘Cringes’ at Sight of ‘Vulgar’ Americans Celebrating Bin Laden’s Death
May 2, 2011 No Comment
For the Washington Post's Petula Dvorak the sight of American college kids celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden outside of the White House gates, on Sunday night, was “almost vulgar.” In a May 2 story Dvorak described the scenes of joy as “one part Mardi Gras and two parts Bon Jovi concert” but then went on to say “It felt a little crazy, a bit much. Almost vulgar” and went on to admit “my first reaction was a cringe.” Dvorak, then doubled-down on her hand-wringing, saying the U.S. students reminded her of “those al Qaeda-guys dancing on Sept. 11 th ,” before pondering: “Are we simply creating star-spangled recruitment tapes for a new generation of terrorists killing in the name of their new martyr?” The following excerpts from the article headlined : “Complications After A Night of Jubliation”
Continue reading …
Opposition leader speaks from Nairobi hospital after attack by police during demonstrations in Kampala Uganda’s top opposition leader has said he believes his life is in danger but vowed to continue protests against the country’s president. Kizza Besigye is receiving medical treatment after police smashed into his car during a demonstration, squirted pepper spray into his eyes and tossed him into a pick-up truck. The incident sparked a violent backlash in Kampala last Friday with two people killed and 90 injured in the biggest anti-government protest in sub-Saharan Africa this year. Besigye, who has flown to a hospital in Nairobi, told a Kenyan television station: “I know that my life is in danger, without any doubt.” At an earlier protest the opposition leader was shot in the hand with a rubber bullet. But he vowed to continue with “peaceful demonstrations” and walk-to-work marches over food and fuel prices. “The population is largely marginalised and is now protesting their marginalisation,” Besigye added. He was shown addressing a press conference wearing dark glasses and a cast on his arm. He is being treated for damage to his eyes from chemicals in the pepper spray and soft tissue injuries, the hospital said, adding that he will spend the next four or five days there. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, said Besigye, whom he beat in February’s election, had provoked his assailants by attacking first – a charge Besigye denies. Demonstrations over the last three weeks in Uganda have left eight people dead, more than 250 injured and an estimated 580 arrested. Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said she was “appalled” by the repeated ill-treatment of Besigye, and described his latest arrest as shocking. She said: “The excessive use of force by security officers was plain to see in the television footage of the event. While I do not condone the violent rioting that followed, the Ugandan authorities must realise that their own actions have been the major factor in turning what were originally peaceful protests about escalating food and fuel prices into a national crisis.” Pillay said Ugandans must be allowed the right to peaceful assembly, and legitimate concerns about the increased cost of living and demands for wider political dialogue must be addressed. Her office had received information that since protests began on 11 April, police and soldiers had indiscriminately used teargas, pepper spray, and rubber and live bullets against protesters, and even individuals not involved in the protests. According to the Uganda Human Rights Commission, teargas was fired into schools, health centres and homes, affecting women and children, a UN statement said. “Many of these actions clearly constitute disproportionate and excessive use of force,” said Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge who is from South Africa. “Eight people have now lost their lives, including a two-year-old girl allegedly shot by a member of the security forces.” She urged Uganda’s government to conduct “thorough, prompt and impartial investigations into the human rights violations committed by the security forces”. Museveni, in power for 25 years, has vowed to defeat the protests and accused organisers of plotting to destabilise his government through looting. Uganda Protest United Nations David Smith guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …More than 30 detectives investigating after bodies including those of an 11-year-old and an 18-year-old found in Northampton The bodies of two adults, a teenager and a child have been found in a house in Northampton.. Northamptonshire police said the family members, who are of Chinese descent, were discovered at an address on the Wootton estate at about 6pm on Sunday. A force spokesman said: “Police have set up a major incident room and more than 30 detectives are involved in the investigation of these deaths.” The dead are thought to include an 18-year-old and a child of 11, police said. The spokesman appealed to the public to come forward with information. He said: “The four people are believed to be members of the same family. “Detectives and forensic officers are working at the scene to establish the cause of these deaths.” Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Furious Fukushima parents dump school playground earth that may have radiation levels well above the old safety level Furious Fukushima parents have delivered a bag of radioactive playground dirt to education officials in protest at government moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools. The new regulations say that children can be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. They have prompted outcry, the resignation of a senior adviser and a verbal attack on the prime minister, Naoto Kan, by lawmakers from his own party. Ministers have defended the increase in the acceptable safety level from 1 to 20 millisieverts as a necessary measure to guarantee the education of hundreds of thousands of children in Fukushima prefecture, location of the nuclear plant that suffered a partial meltdown and several explosions after the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. It is estimated that 75% of Fukushima’s schools may have radiation levels above the old safety level of 1 millisievert. The local authorities in Koriyama have tried to ease the problem by digging up the top layer of soil in school and day centre playgrounds, but residents near the proposed dump site have objected. The new standard of 20 millisieverts – equivalent to the annual maximum dose for German nuclear workers – will mean those schools remain open, but parents and nuclear opponents are angry that safety concerns are being ignored. A group claiming to represent 250 parents in Fukushima visited the upper house of parliament and presented government officials with a bag of radioactive dirt from the playground of one of the affected schools. A geiger counter clicked over it with a reading of 38 millisieverts. “How dare they tell us it is safe for our children,” said Sachiko Satou of the Protect Fukushima Children from Radiation Association. “This is disgusting. They can’t play outside with such risks. If the government won’t remove the radioactive dirt then we’ll do it ourselves and dump it outside the headquarters of Tokyo Electric.” Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other environment and anti-nuclear groups submitted a petition against the regulations. They accused the Nuclear Safety Commission of meekly accepting the new safety limit after just two hours of closed-door discussions with government officials. However, representatives of the commission denied agreeing that 20 millisieverts was safe. Education ministry officials fudged demands for an explanation. “I think 20 millisieverts is safe but I don’t think it’s good,” said Itaru Watanabe of the education ministry, drawing howls of derision from the audience of participants. He promised the government would carefully monitor the situation and do all it could to get radioactivity down to 1 millisievert. The health impacts are disputed. Physicians for Social Responsibility – a US-based Nobel prize winning organisation that opposes nuclear power – said children were more vulnerable than adults. It said the new acceptable limit exposed children to a one in 200 risk of getting cancer, compared with a one in 500 risk for adults. “It is unconscionable to increase the allowable dose for children to 20 millisieverts,” the group said in a statement. “There is no way this level of exposure can be considered safe.” This is not the first time the government has shifted safety baselines since the start of the crisis. Permissible levels of radiation exposure for nuclear workers were amended soon after the disaster struck to allow emergency operations at the stricken Fukushima reactor. Several weeks later the cabinet allowed the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric, to violate regulations by dumping 11,500 tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific. The radioactivity of the discharge was 100 times higher than the acceptable limit. The government says it has to take unprecedented measures to deal with an unprecedented disaster. Kan has lost one of his chief scientific advisers over the latest decision. Toshiso Kosako – a Tokyo University professor who was called in to help deal with the crisis – walked out on Friday and has since accused the government of ad hoc policy making and contravening internationally accepted norms for the sake of political expediency. Kan has also come under fire from lawmakers in his ruling Democratic party. Mori Yuko, an upper house member, said she was disgusted by the decision to loosen the safety limit. “Would politicians and bureaucrats allow their own children to go to a contaminated school,” she said. “This makes me furious.” She called for more rigorous and widespread health monitoring of children and criticised an earlier government policy to withhold data about radiation levels and wind direction. After a public outcry these figures are now published daily in newspapers, but the allegations of cover-ups and shifting safety baselines are taking a heavy political toll. A mere 1.3% of respondents in a weekend poll by the Kyodo news agency thought Kan was exercising sufficient leadership. But many people also criticise the main opposition Liberal Democratic party for lax nuclear regulation while it was in power. Japan Nuclear power Nuclear waste Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Deutsch Goes Gaga Over Obama Announcement: ‘I Have Never Seen A More Commanding Commander-in-Chief’
May 2, 2011 No CommentLincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Continue reading …
Big-screen fiends take note – it’s the unspecified, menacing terrors that spook us the most Slashers slash you, psychotics torture you and monsters eat you. Vampires and zombies require you to share their unappetising fate. Demons, however, are something else: they can possess your very soul. Yet they pose a problem for the fright-seeking filmgoer: what are they? During the heyday of big-screen demonic horror , from the mid-60s to the mid-80s, this wasn’t much of a problem. Fiends still enjoyed a respectable pedigree in the canon of organised faiths . Not just The Exorcist, but other landmark titles such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen drew upon timeless dogma that even unbelievers could appreciate. Thereafter, however, the great religions began to go off hell and its damnable denizens. Understandably, horror films started to rely more heavily on flesh-and-blood bogeymen. Nonetheless, there seems to be something about the demon’s allure that has survived ecclesiastical relegation. The last couple of decades have seen a revival in its cinematic fortunes. However, it’s been expected to move with the times. Some of the recent wave of demonic films, like The Rite, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Last Exorcism, have tried to root their devilry once more in a Christian context, but it’s not these that have taken off. The big hitters have been The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, and both of these chose to secularise their fiends. Insidious too has little time for the first estate. A would-be clerical exorcist is quickly shown the door in favour of geeky ghostbusters armed with complicated equipment and led by a new age seer. All goes scarily enough so long as the hobgoblins are engaged only in that teasing foreplay that seems to amuse them so much. As usual, doors slam themselves, books rearrange themselves and mysterious imprints appear, all to suitably creepy effect. Yet eventually we have to be told what’s generating these phenomena; as soon as we are, everything goes to the devil. The film-makers deserve credit for creating a logically consistent universe. It’s just that without roots in any genuine residual fears, the world they conjure becomes merely farcical. Nowadays, demons who depend on cadaverous complexions, grand Guignol makeup and Miss Havisham’s cast-off togs for their spookiness, and whose lair features dry ice and gothic candlesticks in place of the torments of hell, just can’t be expected to cut it. In the face of today’s glumly materialist attitudes, you can’t help worrying that our so recently disinterred fiends may be forced to give up the ghost, and with it their comeback ambitions. One of the most enterprising of recent demonic titles was the Spanish found-footage shocker [REC] . Yet when Hollywood remade the film as Quarantine , the supernatural prime mover was stripped out in favour of a mere rogue virus. Still, we have to acknowledge that in the first half of Insidious, the demons deliver the goods. As unexplained shadows, they conjure up a brand of dread that no other bogeyman could have managed. Fortunately for them, we seem to continue to harbour sufficient fear of unspecified, menacing malevolence; it’s just when it declares its hand that it falls flat. You can see why this might be. We’re still afraid that we or those around us may become possessed by evils – but by disease, dementia, mania, depression or rage, rather than satanic imps. In the early stages of Insidious, the diabolic atmosphere is knitted to real-life torments. Renai and Josh fear that their child has fallen prey to an incurable medical disorder. Renai fears that she’s growing old and that her husband is becoming a different kind of man. He fears that she’s becoming mentally ill. Such are our real terrors; nowadays, hints of the demonic can underscore them, but not surpass them. As is customary in a film such as this, Renai experiences spooky happenings while Josh is away. When she recounts them he doubts her sanity, but when the spookiness confronts them both at once he’s forced to come round. In fact, Insidious might have worked better if the spooks had stayed within Renai’s mind. Of all demonic films, some consider The Shining the most chilling. Yet while The Overlook may indeed be haunted, the demons that really matter are those summoned up by Jack’s own mind. In the future, fiends should perhaps settle for a merely supporting role, as metaphors for the terrors that have outlasted them. Horror David Cox guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
I know, I know…their names are similar and after two and a half years in the Oval Office, people go on auto pilot and type Obama rather than Osama…but really, do you think it’s a just coincidence that it’s happening on Fox News affiliates? Again? enlarge Credit: Nika Watts And lest you think I hold only disdain for Fox News, look at Drudge’s editorial slant on the big news of the day. enlarge Credit: Markos Moulitsas
Continue reading …Crowds Cheering Outside of White House and in New York on the News of Bin Laden’s Death
May 2, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media From CNN tonight, huge crowds gathered outside of the White House and in New York City on the news of Osama bin Laden’s death in celebration. I’ve got a lot of mixed feeling on this because of my problems with our national security policies that have contributed to these acts of terrorism in the first place. I’m glad bin Laden is gone. That doesn’t mean his organization is gone. I can understand why a lot of people felt the need to celebrate this, especially those who lost loved ones on 9-11. I truly wish we were a more peaceful people where there was not so much death and suffering around the world in the first place and that somehow we managed to be a world where we weren’t constantly at war, where there was no terrorism and with those in power constantly taking advantage of the powerless. I also fully realize that’s a pipe dream because there’s always going to be someone out there who can make a buck stepping on someone else’s neck doing what they can to enrich themselves. From a purely political view, I’m sure Mittens and his fellow GOP candidates aren’t too happy about this. And I wonder just how Fox will manage to attack the President for something they would have gone crazy lauding Bush for. I also await Donald Trump saying he needs a copy of bin Laden’s birth certificate before he believes he’s really dead. If this election cycle doesn’t go down as one of the most ridiculous and shameless and embarrassing in our country’s history, I’d be surprised because I’m not sure how you could top it before most of the potential GOP candidates have even formally announced they’re running, if they’re running.
Continue reading …
Commenting on the death of Osama Bin Laden, Rep. Gary Ackerman has gloated : “this is the 'Mission Accomplished' moment President Bush only fantasized about.”
Continue reading …
Book festival in his honour inaugurated at his Ayrshire home, and plans tabled for dedicated museum During his lifetime, James Boswell – the chippy, vain, lecherous and occasionally remorseful 18th-century biographer, whose work enshrined Dr Johnson as one of the wonders of the literary world – maintained unswerving devotion to two things: Johnson himself, and his own stately home in Auchinleck in Ayrshire. He would therefore undoubtedly have been delighted to learn that his literary descendants will converge on the gardens of his old home to pay homage to the man regarded as the inventor of the warts-and-all modern biography at the inaugural Boswell book festival , on the weekend of 20-22 May. Participants will include Diana Athill, the laureate of old age; the actor Bill Paterson, discussing his memoirs of a Glasgow childhood; and Selina Hastings, author of critically acclaimed biographies of Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh and Somerset Maugham. On the Friday the actor David McKail will perform “Bozzy: an evening of Carnality, Calvinism, Clarit and Conviviality”. Boswell’s father built the grand stone house in 1760, when he became Lord Auchinleck; one imagines he must have been less than delighted when, having finally been persuaded to take the road to Scotland, Dr Johnson said of the building: “I was less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion than with the sullen dignity of the old castle”. The library at Auchinleck House was also the scene of an epic row between Johnson, a high church Tory, and Presbyterian Whig Auchinleck, which so shattered Boswell that he could never describe it fully, except to say that it began with a mention of the name of Cromwell. A contemporary cartoon showed Johnson bashing his host over the head with a prayer book. The house’s fortune declined during the 20th century; it was derelict when, in the 1980s, it was entrusted to the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust. The trust carried out a magnificent restoration project, and now lets some of the space as holiday apartments, while opening the main rooms regularly to the public. Boswell admirers have bemoaned the fact that while the genius of his fellow Ayrshireman Robert Burns – who greatly admired Boswell and wrote to say so, but never received a reply – has been celebrated by a major new museum at the cottage where he was born , Boswell himself remains unfeted. The Boswell Museum and Mausoleum Trust, organisers of the book festival, aim to redress the balance: their ambitious plans include restoring the family graves, and creating a museum in the author’s honour in the derelict Boswell Aisle of the adjoining church. Just in time for the festival, and certain to be discussed there, comes the timely discovery of a lost Boswell manuscript. The unsigned manuscript, which was wrongly catalogued at the Bodleian Library in Oxford almost a century ago, was identified by Susan Rennie, an expert on the Scots language, as Boswell’s unfinished dictionary of Scots dialect. Entries include bubbly-jock (a turkey), dabberlock (an edible seaweed), and gardyloo (the warning cry that the contents of a chamber pot were about to cascade from an upper window). Samuel Johnson Heritage Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …