Click here to view this media Dear Sarah Palin, You are an ass. A moose’s ass. You just opened the lid on Pandora’s Box — a lid you can’t slam shut easily, and now I’m gonna call you on it. Now that you’ve been completely hosed and defeated over the Birther issue that you so happily trump-eted, I see that you have fallen in lockstep with the newest Donald Trump stupidity; that is, the assertion that the president got into Harvard without having the academic credentials to belong there. All code for affirmative action, which I think you probably have even said aloud more than once. But this little rant of yours really cannot go unchallenged: Well, I think the media is loving this because they want to make Birthers as they call people who are just curious about the President of the United States and his background and his associations and his consistency with what he says today versus what he said in both the memoirs that he wrote — or Bill Ayers or whomever wrote — the media is loving the fact that some curious Americans are actually asking the questions and they’re trying to make those curious Americans sound kinda crazy, so the media is loving this issue and they’re perpetuating the issue trying to make sound really worse than it is. What the heck is wrong with asking the President of the United States to disclose what his college thesis was, what some of the um, uh, Harvard Law Review papers were that he wrote? I don’t care about his grades. I don’t care if he was a C student, more power to the C student. (You wish, Sarah, you just wish) What I care about is what goes into his thinking today, what is his foundation? From his background, a lot of that could be reflected in the writings he produced as a college and a grad student. Here’s my simple challenge, Sarah. You attended four universities in six years , before finally managing to eke out a degree from the University of Idaho in journalism. Over that fine university career, did you write anything? If so, would you be kind enough to produce it? And let’s say you can’t really produce any documents you wrote when you were in college. Let’s talk about the tens of thousands you’ve spent on ‘advisors’ to assist you with your knowledge of foreign affairs, your messaging, and your strategies. Let’s see. There’s the right-wing journalist Joshua Livestro , who you pay $4,000/month . What does he add to your thinking, your views? Is his background your background? How about Orion Strategies , who you pay $10,000 per month for “issue consulting”? What, exactly, does Randy Scheunemann contribute to your thinking for that 120K per year salary? Then there’s the matter of the $10,000 per month retainer your PAC pays North Star Strategies to ghostwrite your Facebook posts? Certainly you wouldn’t have a Bill Ayers of your own would you? You know, for the $59,500 per month you shell out to consultants like those I’ve named, you must be getting a hell of an education. That’s pricier than Harvard, and you didn’t even have to avail yourself of affirmative action to get in on the action. Plus, it’s all paid for by taxpayers!!! Wow, Sarah, that’s a real deal. So what the heck is the matter with me asking you, Sarah Palin, to satisfy my ordinary-person curiosity about what you’re learning from all these highly-compensated consultants? How do these people shape your views? Also, what the heck is wrong with asking a few questions about your husband and his secessionist ways? After all, you can’t really live with a man for over 20 years and not pick up a few of his attitudes, right? Kind of what you think about Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers? And if, by osmosis, you’ve picked up a few of your hubby’s radical right-wing anti-American secessionist thought patterns, don’t I, as an ordinary curious citizen, have a right to know? Anxiously awaiting your reply, Karoli Note: Dave N. has some notable insights into Palin’s academic background : A word about Sarah Palin’s journalism degree: She and I graduated from the same school, the University of Idaho. (She arrived at the school a year after I graduated.) The difference is that when I attended there, I was highly active in the communications community, and was editor of the school paper for a year. Sarah Palin, in contrast, never even wrote a story for the Argonaut, let alone for the J school’s other chief outlet, the UI News Bureau; no one at the school’s TV station remembers her or has any record of her doing work there. Indeed, the professor who signed her degree barely remembers her, as she was one of those students who simply showed up for class, got a grade, and went home. Given that kind of background, Palin was lucky to even get a shot at sports reporting for a small Alaska TV station, which was the extent of her actual experience as a journalist.
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Click here to view this media Dear Sarah Palin, You are an ass. A moose’s ass. You just opened the lid on Pandora’s Box — a lid you can’t slam shut easily, and now I’m gonna call you on it. Now that you’ve been completely hosed and defeated over the Birther issue that you so happily trump-eted, I see that you have fallen in lockstep with the newest Donald Trump stupidity; that is, the assertion that the president got into Harvard without having the academic credentials to belong there. All code for affirmative action, which I think you probably have even said aloud more than once. But this little rant of yours really cannot go unchallenged: Well, I think the media is loving this because they want to make Birthers as they call people who are just curious about the President of the United States and his background and his associations and his consistency with what he says today versus what he said in both the memoirs that he wrote — or Bill Ayers or whomever wrote — the media is loving the fact that some curious Americans are actually asking the questions and they’re trying to make those curious Americans sound kinda crazy, so the media is loving this issue and they’re perpetuating the issue trying to make sound really worse than it is. What the heck is wrong with asking the President of the United States to disclose what his college thesis was, what some of the um, uh, Harvard Law Review papers were that he wrote? I don’t care about his grades. I don’t care if he was a C student, more power to the C student. (You wish, Sarah, you just wish) What I care about is what goes into his thinking today, what is his foundation? From his background, a lot of that could be reflected in the writings he produced as a college and a grad student. Here’s my simple challenge, Sarah. You attended four universities in six years , before finally managing to eke out a degree from the University of Idaho in journalism. Over that fine university career, did you write anything? If so, would you be kind enough to produce it? And let’s say you can’t really produce any documents you wrote when you were in college. Let’s talk about the tens of thousands you’ve spent on ‘advisors’ to assist you with your knowledge of foreign affairs, your messaging, and your strategies. Let’s see. There’s the right-wing journalist Joshua Livestro , who you pay $4,000/month . What does he add to your thinking, your views? Is his background your background? How about Orion Strategies , who you pay $10,000 per month for “issue consulting”? What, exactly, does Randy Scheunemann contribute to your thinking for that 120K per year salary? Then there’s the matter of the $10,000 per month retainer your PAC pays North Star Strategies to ghostwrite your Facebook posts? Certainly you wouldn’t have a Bill Ayers of your own would you? You know, for the $59,500 per month you shell out to consultants like those I’ve named, you must be getting a hell of an education. That’s pricier than Harvard, and you didn’t even have to avail yourself of affirmative action to get in on the action. Plus, it’s all paid for by taxpayers!!! Wow, Sarah, that’s a real deal. So what the heck is the matter with me asking you, Sarah Palin, to satisfy my ordinary-person curiosity about what you’re learning from all these highly-compensated consultants? How do these people shape your views? Also, what the heck is wrong with asking a few questions about your husband and his secessionist ways? After all, you can’t really live with a man for over 20 years and not pick up a few of his attitudes, right? Kind of what you think about Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers? And if, by osmosis, you’ve picked up a few of your hubby’s radical right-wing anti-American secessionist thought patterns, don’t I, as an ordinary curious citizen, have a right to know? Anxiously awaiting your reply, Karoli Note: Dave N. has some notable insights into Palin’s academic background : A word about Sarah Palin’s journalism degree: She and I graduated from the same school, the University of Idaho. (She arrived at the school a year after I graduated.) The difference is that when I attended there, I was highly active in the communications community, and was editor of the school paper for a year. Sarah Palin, in contrast, never even wrote a story for the Argonaut, let alone for the J school’s other chief outlet, the UI News Bureau; no one at the school’s TV station remembers her or has any record of her doing work there. Indeed, the professor who signed her degree barely remembers her, as she was one of those students who simply showed up for class, got a grade, and went home. Given that kind of background, Palin was lucky to even get a shot at sports reporting for a small Alaska TV station, which was the extent of her actual experience as a journalist.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Dear Sarah Palin, You are an ass. A moose’s ass. You just opened the lid on Pandora’s Box — a lid you can’t slam shut easily, and now I’m gonna call you on it. Now that you’ve been completely hosed and defeated over the Birther issue that you so happily trump-eted, I see that you have fallen in lockstep with the newest Donald Trump stupidity; that is, the assertion that the president got into Harvard without having the academic credentials to belong there. All code for affirmative action, which I think you probably have even said aloud more than once. But this little rant of yours really cannot go unchallenged: Well, I think the media is loving this because they want to make Birthers as they call people who are just curious about the President of the United States and his background and his associations and his consistency with what he says today versus what he said in both the memoirs that he wrote — or Bill Ayers or whomever wrote — the media is loving the fact that some curious Americans are actually asking the questions and they’re trying to make those curious Americans sound kinda crazy, so the media is loving this issue and they’re perpetuating the issue trying to make sound really worse than it is. What the heck is wrong with asking the President of the United States to disclose what his college thesis was, what some of the um, uh, Harvard Law Review papers were that he wrote? I don’t care about his grades. I don’t care if he was a C student, more power to the C student. (You wish, Sarah, you just wish) What I care about is what goes into his thinking today, what is his foundation? From his background, a lot of that could be reflected in the writings he produced as a college and a grad student. Here’s my simple challenge, Sarah. You attended four universities in six years , before finally managing to eke out a degree from the University of Idaho in journalism. Over that fine university career, did you write anything? If so, would you be kind enough to produce it? And let’s say you can’t really produce any documents you wrote when you were in college. Let’s talk about the tens of thousands you’ve spent on ‘advisors’ to assist you with your knowledge of foreign affairs, your messaging, and your strategies. Let’s see. There’s the right-wing journalist Joshua Livestro , who you pay $4,000/month . What does he add to your thinking, your views? Is his background your background? How about Orion Strategies , who you pay $10,000 per month for “issue consulting”? What, exactly, does Randy Scheunemann contribute to your thinking for that 120K per year salary? Then there’s the matter of the $10,000 per month retainer your PAC pays North Star Strategies to ghostwrite your Facebook posts? Certainly you wouldn’t have a Bill Ayers of your own would you? You know, for the $59,500 per month you shell out to consultants like those I’ve named, you must be getting a hell of an education. That’s pricier than Harvard, and you didn’t even have to avail yourself of affirmative action to get in on the action. Plus, it’s all paid for by taxpayers!!! Wow, Sarah, that’s a real deal. So what the heck is the matter with me asking you, Sarah Palin, to satisfy my ordinary-person curiosity about what you’re learning from all these highly-compensated consultants? How do these people shape your views? Also, what the heck is wrong with asking a few questions about your husband and his secessionist ways? After all, you can’t really live with a man for over 20 years and not pick up a few of his attitudes, right? Kind of what you think about Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers? And if, by osmosis, you’ve picked up a few of your hubby’s radical right-wing anti-American secessionist thought patterns, don’t I, as an ordinary curious citizen, have a right to know? Anxiously awaiting your reply, Karoli Note: Dave N. has some notable insights into Palin’s academic background : A word about Sarah Palin’s journalism degree: She and I graduated from the same school, the University of Idaho. (She arrived at the school a year after I graduated.) The difference is that when I attended there, I was highly active in the communications community, and was editor of the school paper for a year. Sarah Palin, in contrast, never even wrote a story for the Argonaut, let alone for the J school’s other chief outlet, the UI News Bureau; no one at the school’s TV station remembers her or has any record of her doing work there. Indeed, the professor who signed her degree barely remembers her, as she was one of those students who simply showed up for class, got a grade, and went home. Given that kind of background, Palin was lucky to even get a shot at sports reporting for a small Alaska TV station, which was the extent of her actual experience as a journalist.
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European governments apply diplomatic pressure in attempt to stem violence believed to have left at least 450 dead Dozens of tanks have been reported to be en route to Deraa, the Syrian city at the centre of protests against President Bashar al-Assad, as a series of EU nations protested at the increasingly bloody government crackdown that is now believed to have killed more than 450 people. Deraa remained largely cut off to outside communications but sources reported gunfire again on Wednesday. Amnesty International quoted eyewitnesses who said army snipers were shooting at injured people on the streets and those who tried to reach them. Witnesses reported seeing a convoy of at least 30 army tanks leave an area near the Golan Heights front line with Israel and head south, apparently towards Deraa, where the protests against Assad’s authoritarian regime began six weeks ago. In an apparent toughening of the official response to the dissent, activists reported an increased security presence in the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Harasta and the coastal city of Banias, and a wave of arrests in towns including Tartous, Harasta and al-Tel. On Tuesday night hundreds of soldiers arrived in full combat gear in Douma. Residents in Deraa are now reportedly lacking basic services such as water and bread. “They are using a military operation to build the wall of fear again,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of the Syrian human rights group Insan. “They are saying: ‘We can use the army’. It is scary to see a city totally cut off and the military invading.” According to Insan, at least 25 people died on Monday and Tuesday in Deraa, with reports of a further six early on Wednesday. Human rights groups say the total death toll since 18 March has risen to more than 450. There is rising concern over the situation at Deraa’s Omari mosque, which has been turned into a field hospital where medical supplies are believed to be running low. Despite the intensifying crackdown, activists pledged to turn out again on Friday – traditionally the biggest day for protests – in the wake of demonstrations which activists said took place in 17 different cities on Tuesday night. Several EU governments summoned Syrian ambassadors for a dressing down on Wednesday, pushed into action by the rising death toll as well as criticisms that the international community has dragged its feet over Syria while focusing on Libya. The UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain told the ambassadors they condemned the violence and that Assad must end the crackdown. The foreign secretary, William Hague, told BBC Radio 4 that there was “a major diplomatic effort going on” to make sure Assad’s regime changed course. “President Assad has made two major speeches on reform in Syria,” he said. “It is not too late for him to say he is really going to do these reforms, and additional reforms.” Separately, the UN human rights council has agreed to a US request for a special session on Friday about the situation in Syria. The diplomatic pressure has had no immediate impact on the official line, which has seen Assad blame the unrest on a “foreign conspiracy” and armed thugs. Of the latest crackdown the country’s state news agency, Sana, said: “Army units in Deraa and the countryside carried on their duty in hunting the terrorist groups which had targeted military sites and security personnel.” There are, however, signs that a previously fragmented opposition movement is beginning to coalesce. On Wednesday, a new umbrella opposition alliance called the Syrian National Initiative for Change called on the army to protect people, boosted by reports of defections. The Guardian saw the names of some of the 150 signatories to the statement, many of whose identities were not publicly released. These suggest the group is a fairly weighty coalition involving a range of prominent figures, including those from the secular, Kurdish and Islamist communities. Exiled signatories include Ammar Abdulhamid, the veteran US-based Syrian rights activist. Syrian protesters and activists have welcomed growing criticism of the Assad regime from the international community, but they are angered at the silence of Arab states and say concrete action needs to be taken quickly. “We want the president and the regime to be referred to the international criminal court,” said one human rights monitor in the capital. Radwan Ziadeh, the US-based head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights, and another signatory of the new opposition group, said he wanted immediate sanctions, the freezing of assets and travel bans on all those responsible for opening fire on protesters. “This is the only way to protect the people,” he told the Guardian. Activists in Damascus are keen to emphasise that, while they are seeking further international condemnation of the Syrian regime and legal measures to be taken against it, they do not want military intervention. Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus Syria Bashar Al-Assad Middle East Protest Arab and Middle East unrest Katherine Marsh Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
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Billionaire Donald Trump claims credit for forcing president to speak out on birther controversy That’s a relief. The 44th president of the United States, commander-in-chief of the world’s mightiest fighting force and leader of its sole superpower is a natural-born American and not an alien interloper. A previously unseen birth certificate produced to scotch a chorus of doubters revealed that Barack Obama was indeed born in Hawaii, not in Kenya – the claim at the heart of many of the wild conspiracy theories that have dogged him. On a day when he had other pressing matters to deal with – three military conflicts, massive national debt and rising oil prices to name a few – Obama appeared in front of television cameras to explain why he had decided to confront the “birthers” who have questioned his eligibility for the most powerful office on Earth. “We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.” He didn’t name names, but there can be little debate about who he meant. Step forward Donald Trump, reality TV judge, self-publicist supreme and carnival barker-in-chief who has made birther doubts a central plank of his highly theatrical flirtations with a presidential run. Obama launched his counteroffensive on the day Trump was making his first visit to the electorally sensitive state of New Hampshire. That was a taste of the tactics that will become familiar as the presidential race gathers pace, though Trump pretended to be unfazed and even claimed credit for the release of the birth certificate. “I am very proud of myself. I have accomplished something nobody else has accomplished,” he said. The billion dollar question is this: by coming forward now with his detailed birth documentation, will Obama have contained the birther tide? The idea that he was not born on US soil, and therefore does not have the right awarded to any American citizen to be voted into the White House, began to pick up momentum in 2007 when Obama’s presidential ambitions became clear. It has grown steadily ever since, with polls suggesting that one in four Americans harbour doubts about his birth, a proportion that rises to an astonishing four out of 10 Republican voters. In 2008 Obama put out a shorter form of his birth certificate that acts as the legal proof of his Hawaiian birth, but birthers simply demanded to see the longer archived paperwork. Obama also pointed to a birth notice in the local Honolulu Star Bulletin newspaper from 1961 that said “Mr and Mrs Barack H Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, son, Aug 4.” But that, the detractors said, could have been planted. Senior Hawaiian officials who said they had met Obama as a newborn baby and had seen with their own eyes the long-form birth certificate also failed to have any impact. “I have watched with bemusement, I’ve been puzzled at the degree at which this thing just kept on going,” Obama said. The problem is, even this dramatic riposte by the president is unlikely to silence the nay-sayers. Prominent birthers contacted by the Guardian insisted this was not so much a battle lost as the start of a new engagement. Orly Taitz (place of birth: Moldavia) welcomed the release of the birth certificate but added: “Now we need a federal inquiry into Obama’s social security fraud.” Taitz said her fellow birther Neil Sankey (place of birth: UK) had discovered Obama had used multiple social security numbers suggesting he was covering up his ineligibility for the highest office. “We will continue our work,” Taitz said ominously. One of the earliest campaigners, Philip Berg, said he too had no intention of hanging up his birther boots. “The issue isn’t Obama’s birth in Hawaii. It’s whether he was adopted in Indonesia which would have removed his status as a natural born American,” he said. Berg, a former senior prosecutor in Pennsylvania, has lodged three lawsuits and four supreme court pleadings relating to Obama’s nationality. All were rejected by judges, but he said that he “absolutely” planned to continue the legal struggle. For John Avlon, Daily Beast columnist and author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, this is yet more evidence of the paranoid style of politics that he believes is strangling debate in America. Birther conspiracies have brought the base of the Republican party and the extreme fringe together. “It has become a cycle of incitement,” Avlon said. “As Jonathan Swift once said, you can’t reason somebody out of something they were never reasoned into.” Obama administration United States US politics Barack Obama Donald Trump Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Where wrong is right and false is true: The inverted moral world of the American Right
April 27, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Digby, commenting on Rick Perlstein’s marvelous piece in Mother Jones on the rise of our current “mendocracy” and the legitimation of lying by the modern media, added this : This history provides an important foundation for my ongoing quest to understand the right’s ability to operate without the constraints of hypocrisy or consistency in an environment of epistemic relativism so extreme that we end up believing that wrong is right. It’s literally mind-boggling. There are a couple of mechanisms by which this is occurring. An example of the first kind was this truly mind-boggling exchange between Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney the other day on Fox News, wherein Crowley leapt upon the recent releases of intelligence from Guantanamo via WikiLeaks to declare that they established once and for all that, by golly, torture really did work! VARNEY: I want your judgment. Do you think President Obama would order it done? CROWLEY: I think if there were an imminent threat, the commander in chief, regardless of who it was, would order it done, yes. VARNEY: And you think it should be done. CROWLEY: I absolutely think it should be done. Listen, the commander-in-chief has one job, and that’s to protect American lives. You need to do what’s necessary when faced with an imminent threat to do it. Nevermind that Crowley’s evidence that torture works is dubious at best. But it’s breathtaking how quickly Crowley and Varney leap over the question: If torture works, should you do it? What seems not to cross either Crowley’s or Varney’s minds is the notion that the president might have a higher calling to the nation than simply keeping Americans alive — that preserving the Constitution and, concomitantly, both our long-term security and our standing in the world as a moral beacon, might be such a higher purpose. The president has an obligation not to make America into a nation of torturers, too. (Of course, it’s worth observing that the previous president — an object of ardent admiration by both these pundits — not only had a disastrous record on this latter obligation, he was also an abject failure in terms of preserving American lives, too.) This really is a simple and clear moral issue: Does America torture or not? It is not just a cliche but a great truth that “the torturer is the enemy of all mankind”. Which side are we on? But in the inverted moral world of conservatives, that is not even an issue. All that is at stake for them is criticizing any liberal politician or policy and ardently defending any conservative or Republican. That’s their moral compass. This same imperative is what drives the second mechanism by which the Right’s world is turned inside out. And that is a simple and uncomplicated refusal to accepts facts as realities and to embrace lies in their place — if those lies burnish the emotional narratives upon which the Right ultimately relies for its appeal. This is manifest particularly in the case of the Birthers, who are singularly immune to fact, logic, reason, or rationality, and ultimately reality. Instead, they’ve built their little bubble world and nothing, NOTHING will draw them out. Here’s Michelangelo Signorile dealing with a Birther on his radio show the other day, which provides a classic example of this: Click here to view this media This is why President Obama’s release this morning of his long-form birth certificate will not be the air-clearing catharsis he hopes it will be — it’s just the beginning of the next phase in the Birthers’ conspiracism. Because the overriding narrative in all this is what matters to these folks — namely, that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president. They absolutely need to believe this, you see, because these folks are all right-wing authoritarians . As I’ve explained previously : Right-wing populism is always fueled and populated by right-wing authoritarians — people who believe that the nation/state needs strong rulers and that it’s the duty of citizens to obey them assiduously. This why they suffer so much cognitive dissonance when the nation’s top authority is a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Marxist/fascist — and why their first impulse, in such situations, is to embark on a vicious campaign of delegitimization (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). It’s why they basically go insane. And it’s true not merely of the Tea Partiers, but of Beltway Village Establishment conservatives too : Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority — and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle. So they turn the world upside down: Torture is hunky-dory, truth is falsehood, facts are fiction. It’s the only way they can continue to cling to a worldview that constantly runs aground on the hard shoals of reality.
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Danny Cohen justifies decision to axe Rufus Sewell drama Zen, saying he wants to ‘broaden the palette a bit’ Television is in danger of airing programmes with “too many male detectives” and “too much crime”, according to the BBC1 controller, Danny Cohen. Discussing the decision to axe BBC1′s Rufus Sewell drama Zen two months ago, Cohen said: “You can’t keep on doing everything if you want to bring in new things. I felt that we risked having too many male detectives and arguably we have had maybe too much crime. He went on: “Detectives and crime is the real staple of quite a lot on the BBC but also a huge amount of ITV drama … I want to broaden the palette a bit.” Speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in London, Cohen said: “I want to broaden the range and make sure we have got enough that is not detectives and crime.” Cohen pointed out that BBC1 already has hit series Sherlock and Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, which is returning next year. Other BBC1 male detective dramas include Luther and George Gently, while ITV1 has Lewis, Midsomer Murders, DCI Banks and the recent well-received one-off drama The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. ITV is also due to air new dramas starring female detectives – Vera and Case Sensitive. Following Life of Riley actor Caroline Quentin’s recent call for Cohen to address the issue of more television roles for older actresses, the BBC1 controller said: “I think we know there’s more work to do there. It’s not a BBC issue, it’s an industry issue, we have to get better.” When asked why one of his channel’s most famous faces, David Dimbleby, has yet to agree a new contract with the BBC, Cohen at first said Dimbleby has signed up to host more editions of Question Time. However he then corrected himself and said a deal has not yet been done and that it is being dealt with by the BBC News director, Helen Boaden. Cohen said “I want him to stay and do Question Time”, adding that part of the talks with Dimbleby include the veteran presenter doing a landmark series for BBC1 following the success of programmes such as Seven Ages of Britain. He went on to say that he sometimes wonders about “the degree of scrutiny of the BBC” on a daily basis in newspapers and warned: “Britain would be a poorer place without the BBC, we should be careful how far we kick it.” •
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More than half of the 650 sessions are already oversubscribed after last-minute surge on website London 2012 organisers said they were “thrilled” after revealing they had received applications for more than 20m Olympics tickets during the first phase of sales. More than half of the 650 sessions are already oversubscribed at the end of the first round of ticket sales, with track cycling, rhythmic gymnastics, triathlon and the equestrian cross country among the first sports to sell out. After a last-minute surge in applications that caused the website to slow to a crawl and forced a last-ditch extension of the deadline early on Wednesday, the London organising committee (Locog) said 1.8 million people had submitted applications for the 6.6m tickets available to the public. Locog also confirmed that anyone who had not applied for tickets in the initial 42-day phase would not get the chance to do so until much later this year. Instead, those applicants who have received none or only some of the tickets for which they bid will be offered further opportunities in June and July to apply for other events. The opening ceremony, for which tickets range from £20.12 to £2,012, was the most popular event and was more than 10 times oversubscribed. Successful applicants will have money taken from their accounts between 10 May and 10 June and will be notified which tickets they will receive before 24 June. That has drawn criticism from some consumer groups, which claim the system tilted the scales in favour of those able to rack up a large potential bill in the hope of securing the most sought-after tickets. Track cycling, in which Team GB won an unprecedented eight gold medals in Beijing, was always expected to be among the hottest tickets, as were the opening and closing ceremonies. But some of the other sports to sell out are more surprising. They include rhythmic gymnastics, modern pentathlon, the cross country equestrian events in Greenwich Park and the triathlon in Hyde Park. All have a committed following, a limited number of sessions and tend to be reasonably priced. Locog said that most swimming and tennis sessions had also sold out. Lord Coe, the chairman of Locog, said: “We are thrilled with the response right across the board, in all sports and all sessions. What is most encouraging is that the majority of applications are for multiple tickets and for several sports, which shows that friends and family are planning to go to the games together.” Locog did not reveal which sports have the most spaces remaining, though tickets for those with lots of sessions in relatively large venues will inevitably be among the most difficult to shift. They include volleyball, football, basketball and handball. There was also criticism of the technology underpinning the ticketing process from some who claimed they were unable to access the site in the hours running up to the midnight deadline. Locog said the site was overburdened for only 20 minutes, but some users reported being unable to process their orders for two hours or more. Locog, which extended the deadline to 1am, said all those who kept trying were eventually able to process their order. Andreas Edler, managing director of a web hosting company Hostway UK, said: “Irrespective of the sudden late surge of demand, you would expect ticketing websites in this day and age to build in adequate capacity and utilise better traffic management practices to cope with the excess of visitors.” Olympic Games 2012 Sebastian Coe Owen Gibson guardian.co.uk
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• BP takes additional $400m in charges from oil spill costs • UK budget changes cost BP £414m in extra taxes BP has predicted it will be back drilling in the Gulf of Mexico within a matter of months despite continuing legal threats and rows over pollution from last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. “We expect to be back and actively drilling during the second half of the year,” Byron Grote, the company’s chief financial officer, told financial analysts from the City of London on Wednesday. The comments are likely to infuriate environmentalists who believe BP should be kept away from the Gulf and could upset a US offshore regulator still considering whether to grant permits to BP. Verbal gaffes by former chief executive Tony Hayward in the wake of the Macondo well accident 12 months ago sent the company’s reputation in America into freefall as it attracted widespread criticism from the White House downwards. Grote was speaking as BP revealed it had taken a further $400m of extra charges relating to Macondo in its first quarter financial results which helped dent profits. The company has not drilled any wells in the US Gulf since a moratorium was introduced last summer but formally lifted again in October. Some rival firms have already been granted permission to drill new deepwater wells but not BP. A spokesman for the British company said it had applied to resume drilling production wells to keep up output levels at key fields such as Thunderhorse and Atlantis. “This is clearly subject to the regulator’s permission being granted,” he added. Hopes that drilling could begin soon come barely a month after the US Justice Department confirmed it was still considering a range of civil and criminal charges against BP. It also comes amid continuing arguments over how much oil or dispersant chemicals used in the aftermath of Macondo continue to damage the waters of the Gulf. The financial figures for the first three months of the year were boosted by much higher oil prices but were also damaged by chancellor George Osborne taking a billion dollar bite out of profits. Changes announced in the March budget on North Sea oil fields cost BP $683m (£414m) in extra taxes over the first quarter of the year while a further $400m is expected to go in 2012 owing to fiscal treatment covering the decommissioning of platforms. The higher tax charge in the first three months helped replacement cost profits dip to $5.5bn from $5.6bn during the same period a year ago but the figures were also hampered by an 11% slump in production volumes and higher operating costs. These special items outweighed a substantial increase in oil prices year on year and a very strong performance from its Russian business, TNK-BP, where BP is in conflict with its oligarch partners over a proposed tie-up with another local group, Rosneft. The tax hit from Osborne has infuriated a wider North Sea oil and gas industry which claims hundreds of jobs stand to be lost. There has been a series of meetings between company executives and government officials but so far Osborne has shown little sign of backing down. Osborne presented the move last month as a “fair fuel stabiliser” which would raise the tax rate on oil producers to avoid having to increase the tariff on pump petrol which has reached record levels. The chancellor said the change would raise £2bn of extra taxes but BP’s figure of $683m is the first from a company and BP is still one of the largest in the North Sea. The BP tax rate went up from 30% to 37% over the first quarter as a result of the move, said a company spokesman. The oil group has gradually been running down its UK interests and is talking to potential buyers about various gas fields it wants to sell along with the Wytch Farm onshore field in Dorset. BP has disposed of $24bn worth of assets worldwide as part of a cash-raising move to help pay for the $41bn cost of Deepwater. BP Oil Oil and gas companies Energy industry Tony Hayward BP oil spill George Osborne Terry Macalister guardian.co.uk
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Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, holds his first ever live press conference to explain monetary policy 2.44pm: A silly question from a nameless interlocator, asking what can the Fed do about providing more jobs. Oh god, it was from the New York Times. Really. “Clearly it is the case that we have done extraordinary things” to get the economy moving, Bernanke argues. And now a question about the ineffectiveness of the second round of quantitative easing – in which the Fed attempted to push on a piece of string using a wodge of cash. Bernanke unsurprisingly thinks that the policy he piloted was effective. It wasn’t going to be a panacea, Bernanke says. 2.43pm ET: And now a question about the end of quantitative easing. Something something something. 2.38pm ET: At last a lovely British accent, via a question from Robin Harding of the FT, looking like a young Michael Caine. The question was about inflation expectations. The answer is so fascinating that words alone can’t convey it. 2.37pm ET: For how long will US economic growth and growth in the labour market continue to be moderate, asks a polite man from Bloomberg. “The pace of improvement is still quite slow, we are digging ourselves out of quite a big hole,” Bernanke says. Basically, a while yet. 2.33pm ET: What can or should the Fed do able Americans being upset about high gas and food prices, wonders the Wall Street Journal. “Gas is of course a necessity, people need to drive to get to work,” notes Bernanke. Well I walked to work this morning, but his broad point is accurate. Demand from growing economies has driven up the demand for oil, while disruptions in the Middle East has restricted supply. “This is a very adverse development,” says Bernanke. “There’s not much the Federal Reserve can do about gas prices per se.” “Our view is that gas prices will not continue to rise at the recent pace… that will provide some relief on the inflation front but we’ll have to wtach that very carefully.” 2.30pm ET: Critics say Fed policy has driven down the value of the US dollar. What does Mr Bernanke have to say to those critics? (That’s asked by someone called Steve.) Bernanke doesn’t really answer the question, and basically says that if the US economy is strong then the US dollar will be strong. Which is true. Low inflation and a strong economy, that’s the ticket. 2.28pm ET: Not a huge PR success so far, based on this tweet from uber-blogger Felix Salmon of Reuters. Still, it’s early days. I think it might have helped if Bernanke had provided a simultaneous translation from Latin. 2.25pm ET: Cracking stuff so far, assuming you have a PhD in macroeconomics from a decent university. If you don’t, it’s slightly on the dry side. 2.15pm ET: And right on time, Chairman Bernanke takes the stage and starts speaking from his prepared text. Alongside Bernanke’s press conference, the Federal Open Market Committee has issued its latest announcement regarding US interest rates: Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in March indicates that the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace and overall conditions in the labor market are improving gradually. Household spending and business investment in equipment and software continue to expand. However, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector continues to be depressed. Commodity prices have risen significantly since last summer, and concerns about global supplies of crude oil have contributed to a further increase in oil prices since the Committee met in March. Inflation has picked up in recent months, but longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable and measures of underlying inflation are still subdued. The upshot to all this is that the FOMC is leaving interest rates unchanged: The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 0.25 per cent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period. 2.10pm ET: Here’s how the Fed explains today’s event: Chairman Ben S Bernanke will hold press briefings four times per year to present the Federal Open Market Committee’s current economic projections and to provide additional context for the FOMC’s policy decisions. The introduction of regular press briefings is intended to further enhance the clarity and timeliness of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy communication. The Federal Reserve will continue to review its communications practices in the interest of ensuring accountability and increasing public understanding. 2pm ET: Welcome to live coverage of an unusual event: for the first time the chairman of the US Federal reserve, Ben Bernanke, holds a press conference to explain the Fed’s interest rate setting decisions and to explain to outlook for the US economy and its monetary policy. The press conference kicks off at 2.15pm ET, and you can follow it on streaming video through this link – and the Guardian’s analysis right here. For background, here’s how the Financial Times’s Lex column [subscription required] reads today’s historic press conference: Longer term, however, conferences should strengthen the chairman’s control over the Fed’s message. Of late, Fedspeak has come largely from hawkish regional governors. This obscures Mr Bernanke’s feat at the last meeting in mustering unanimous support for a highly controversial policy. He is still guiding the Fed. Now he will have ample opportunity to demonstrate this, and lay out his case. Ben Bernanke US Interest rates US economy United States Economics Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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