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Sunday, July 26, 2009
Ahmadinejad's Cabinet Collapses
niacINsight reports:
Just eight days before inauguration, Ahmadinejad’s cabinet becomes illegal and requires a parliamentary vote of confidence to continue working. During the past few days, Ahmadinejad has been unexpectedly replacing cabinet members. According to Fars News Agency, Safar Harandi, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran, resigned today bringing the changes in the cabinet to 11 (more than 50%). According to article 136 of Iran’s Constitution, if more half of the ministers change, the government is required to seek a fresh vote of confidence from the parliament.
link: Harandi resigns, Ahmadinejad’s cabinet no longer official « niacINsight
Senate Action on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"?
Jason Bellini writes:
The Daily Beast has learned that the Senate, prompted by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, will hold hearings on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"—a first since 1993, despite Obama's campaign promises.
After determining she didn’t have enough votes in support of a temporary suspension of the ban on gays in the military, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tells The Daily Beast she has secured the commitment of Senate Armed Services Committee to hold hearings on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” this fall. It would be the first formal re-assessment of the policy since Congress passed it into law in 1993.
A statement from the Gillibrand’s office, shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, notes that “265 men and women have been unfairly dismissed from the Armed Forces since President Barack Obama took office.”
link: Finally, Action on Gay Soldiers - Page 1 - The Daily Beast
Nigeria: Violence and a Curfew
A curfew has been imposed in the north-eastern Nigerian city of Bauchi, after violence on Sunday in which at least 39 people were killed.
A Red Cross official told the BBC the whole city was silent. He said no-one knew the exact number of dead, as the mortuary was being guarded by the army.
Officials said clashes erupted when 60 Islamist militants armed with guns and explosives attacked a police station.
They said security forces repelled the attack and arrested around 170 people.
Authorities said the militants belonged to Boko Haram, a group that wants Sharia law imposed across Nigeria.
Islamic law has been in effect in the state of Bauchi since 2001.
link: BBC NEWS | Africa | Curfew after Nigeria gun battles
David Goldblatt, Photographer
The South African photographer David Goldblatt calls himself “an unlicensed, self-appointed social critic” of his country and compatriots, “sometimes harsh, but not without love.” That description will hardly prepare you for the subtlety and incisiveness of his work.
link: David Goldblatt's Intersections Intersected : The New Yorker
What Didn't They Know? When Didn't They Know It?
Jane Harmon writes:
As ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2003 to 2006, I was part of the so-called Gang of Eight -- a group made up of the House and Senate leaders plus the chairs and ranking members of the two chambers' intelligence committees that is required by law to be briefed on the CIA's "covert" action programs. . . .
It is now clear to me that we learned only what the briefers wanted to tell us -- even though they were required by law to keep us "fully and currently informed." Absent the ability to do any independent research, it did not occur to me then that the program was operated wholly outside of the framework Congress created as the exclusive means to conduct such surveillance: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Nor did I know that the Justice Department was cut out of the process, and that one lawyer, John Yoo, had drafted the internal memo justifying the TSP under the president's Article 2 authorities. A new head of the Office of Legal Counsel repudiated that memo, citing the "shoddiness" of the legal reasoning. Among other things, it even failed to cite the key Supreme Court precedent -- the steel-seizure case -- which held in 1952 that when Congress has acted on an issue (as it did by passing FISA in 1978), the president's power is at its "lowest ebb."
And I did not know -- until I read it in the press -- of the 2004 drama at then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's hospital bedside, when Bush officials sought his sign-off on an extension of the program. I recall being told that there was a "glitch" in the approval process. A glitch? More like a near-hijacking of our democracy.
more at the link: What the CIA hid from Congress - Los Angeles Times
Falling Up: Photographer Tom Hyde
Falling up by Tom Hyde
East Fork of the Satsop River, Washington State. July 3, 2009.
I shot film for years until I started shooting digital, and that’s mostly what I’ve done for a number of years now. Until two days ago. I dropped my Canon 5d, with its expensive L glass, all of 20 inches onto my gravel road. It landed just right, or wrong, and the mounts on both the lens and the camera broke off at the same time. The camera is … toast. I didn’t even get a conciliatory self portrait of shock and rage out of it. Actually, I may have gone through all the stages of grief.
Silly really. Now I shoot film in an old rangefinder without a working light meter and an apparent two stop shift in the shutter. I like it. Faded box of cheap Kodak film courtesy of the Matlock Country Store (stored near the deep fat frier). Processing and scanning courtesy of WalMart. A good day courtesy of a bad event.
The results … well, whatever, it was a good day hunting and I never even tried to look at the back of the camera. Made some new friends. Left prints stuck on tree branches by the river bank. They’ll find them tomorrow.
--Tom Hyde
link: burn magazine
Cynthia McKinney, Prisoner
The Largest Minority writes:
Former congresswoman and presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney calls WBAIX during her second day in prison. She was kidnapped by Israel for attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. There has been no statement from the Obama Administration, which is apparently intent on making Cynthia invisible like they did during the campaign. Coverage has also been non-existent from the Western media, which recently couldn’t stop reporting about the strong arm tactics and human rights violations of the Iranian regime. Rather, what’s been dominating not only the corporate news but the blogosphere and twitter is Sarah Palin’s latest plea for attention.
link: The Latest From Cynthia McKinney, Prisoner 88794 - The Largest Minority
O Arizona: Navaho Uranium
Dan Frosch writes:
It was one year ago that the environmental scientist showed up at Fred Slowman’s door, deep in the heart of Navajo country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.
The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.
“I was angry,” Mr. Slowman said. “I guess it was here all this time, and we never knew.”
The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.
Many miners died from radiation-related illnesses, and some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families.
Now, those homes are being demolished and rebuilt under a new government program that seeks to identify what are very likely dozens of uranium-contaminated structures still standing on Navajo land and to temporarily relocate people living in them until the homes can be torn down and rebuilt.
continue at the link: Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country - NYTimes.com
Nick Olson, Photographer
Nick Olson writes:
The alternative photographic method allows me to express my views on time and change created by the passage of time.
I use alternative processes, because I am dissatisfied with the digital medium. Digital imaging is the dominant photographic medium of contemporary society because of its speed, and ability to mass reproduce experience, creating an exact likeness of the world.
My interests are exactly the opposite of those embodied by contemporary culture and digital imaging. My work is aimed at creating unique objects, which create a new perspective on the subject and involve me viscerally in the process of creation.
By creating an image that is different from the normal mode of seeing the world, the photograph allows the viewer to think and reevaluate their beliefs about the subject.
link: Artist Statement
Herman Melville Meets Jonah, Or Maybe "The Poseidon Adventure"
A rare whale was discovered wedged on to the bow of a cruise ship when it docked in a Canadian port.
The 70ft fin whale, a threatened species in Canada, was found when the Sapphire Princess docked at the Port of Vancouver, the cruise company said.
It said it had "strict whale avoidance" measures and it was unclear where, when or how the whale became stuck.
Tourists looked on as the dead whale was examined by fisheries department staff.
link: BBC NEWS | Americas | Whale wedged on cruise ship bow
Edgar Allan Poe Meets Lazarus
A preemie pronounced dead in northern Israel showed signs of life Sunday evening shortly before burial. The baby, a girl, was born prematurely at 25 weeks.
The preemie's family, which resides in a village in the Afula area, discovered that the baby was alive as it was preparing to bury it. A Magen David Adom ambulance evacuated the baby to the Haemek Medical Center in Afula. The police have launched an investigation into the incident.
link: Preemie pronounced dead 'wakes up' before burial - Israel News, Ynetnews
Chinese Internet Users: Raw Story Does the Numbers
The number of Internet users in China is now greater than the entire population of the United States, after rising to 338 million by the end of June, state media reported Sunday.
link: Raw Story » Report: China has more Web users than US has citizens
Border Game: Zelaya Pitches his Tent
Exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya sought to increase pressure on his country's interim government, promising to camp out across the border in Nicaragua with his supporters and urging Washington to slap tough sanctions on coup leaders.
Hundreds of Hondurans trickled across the border on foot through the mountains to avoid roadblocks and patrols that have paralyzed frontier crossings with Nicaragua. They awoke Sunday on makeshift mattresses of foam and cardboard at shelters in the nearby town of Ocotal.
"Here in Nicaragua we feel free. In Honduras we feel repressed" by the interim government, said Jose Bernabe, a 56-year-old coffee farmer from Villa Santa who said he hiked across the border with four brothers to join Zelaya's followers.
link: Ousted Honduran Leader Vows To Camp On Border
Rafsanjani Stands Firm
niacINsight writes:
“My standpoint (about the election) is the same as I mentioned in the Friday prayer sermon,” Rafsanjani said today, according to a Reuters, translating from the semi-official ILNA news agency.
In doing so, he continued his defiance, despite the majority of the Assembly of Experts, the body Rafsanjani heads, calling on him to be more supportive of Ayatollah Khamenei. 50 of the 86 members said in the statement that, “Many … expect the head of the assembly, who has always helped the leader in solving problems and obstacles in the past, to show more and clearer support for the leader during these sensitive times.”
The Assembly is bestowed with the authority to supervise and even replace the supreme leader by the Iranian Constitution, giving statements by the majority of its members much significance.
link: Rafsanjani’s Continued Defiance « niacINsight
Reform and the Medical Staff: An Older View
Ptak writes:
Our exhausted elected servants have retired to their native haunts, spent perhaps by their efforts to noodle through a desperate plan to reform our national health care mess. It may be that they’ve retired to make good on their wakening efforts on health care, and go full throttle into sleep-and-dream efforts. They might be able to find something there. At least for some of them there may be not a great difference between their awake and their asleep reasonings, so few will get injured.
This is not without precedent; and as a matter of fact dream mental and physical therapy is far older than any sort of medicine that we recognize as “moderns”. The dream temple was in extensive use in Egypt some 4000 years ago; people attended the temple and through various means entered a trance state, after which their visions/dreams were analyzed for medical benefit. It was in many respects a hospital of dreams, with treatments ranging through the expansive gamut of sacrifices to the appropriate deities, sweating, fasting, bathing, meditation, sleep, and of course, more sleep.
But the one degree of separation business connecting health care reform with sleep-thinking is Asclepius, on whose pillow the legislators can feel safe and comfortable.
In ancient Greece The connection between modern medicine and sleep and dreams is the staff of Asclepius—a snake-entwined staff, which is the very symbol of modern medicine. In ancient Greece, people in need would go to their Asclepieion and take their treatment, again consisting of fasting, prayers, meditation and sleep. The connection between modern medicine and sleep and dreams is the staff of Asclepius—a snake-entwined staff, which is the very symbol of modern medicine. In ancient Greece the first step in attending the benefits of an Asclepieion was to sleep in its outer courtyard, waiting for a vision of the great Asclepius, who would be recognized by this very staff.
Once the pilgrim achieved this first level of dream/sleep/vision they could proceed to the interior of the temple and seek their treatment. Perhaps now that the Congress is on vacation they might be more attuned to the possibility of entertaining a helpful sleepytime vision from the iconic benefactor of modern medicine, and proceed accordingly.
link: Ptak Science Books: Asclepius, Modern Medicine and Health Reform
Freud: The Theme Park
A vintage bumper car illustrates a proposed ride called Engines of the Id and the Psychical Apparatus, in which the colliding cars would wear labels like Sadistic Symptom, Hysterical Phobia and Infantile Impulse. A trio of funhouse mirrors is labeled “Mirrors of the Mind.”
“You get a quick peek of your inner self,” Ms. Beloff explained.
link: At the Coney Island Museum, the Strange Case of Sigmund F. - NYTimes.com
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Acquires "Indescribable" Collection
Katherine Calos writes:
A major family collection of German Expressionist art "so rare that it is almost indescribable" has found a permanent home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The gift-purchase of the Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection brings to the museum more than 200 pieces of art from the most creative years of German Expressionism.
Museum Director Alex Nyerges, who deemed it "almost indescribable," says the collection is of "not just national but international importance."
"It is a statement of an era, a statement that cannot really be duplicated. It's a snapshot of time taking us back 100 years to look at one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century. . . . This collection represents it so marvelously."
Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, among others, were collected from 1905 to 1925 by Ludwig and Rosy Fischer in Frankfurt, Germany. Half of their collection escaped the Nazis when a son fled to the United States in 1934 before World War II.
link: Va. Museum acquires prized German Expressionist art | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Books Within Books: Invisible Libraries
Ed Parks writes:
Novelists have long tucked made-up fictions inside their real ones. Sometimes these interior texts inform the plot or enhance the theme, other times they are just lively bursts of color, sparks thrown off during the authorial process. It’s easy to understand the appeal of creating these miniatures. A few deft lines can conjure perfect examples of untutored rawness (Mattie Ross, the 14-year-old heroine of Charles Portis’s “True Grit,” has a manuscript entitled “You will now listen to the sentence of the law, Odus Wharton, which is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead! May God, whose laws you have broken and before whose dread tribunal you must appear, have mercy upon your soul. Being a personal recollection of Isaac C. Parker, the famous Border Judge”), sublime dullness (“The Purpose of Clothing Is to Keep Us Warm,” in Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy-Casares’s “Chronicles of Bustos Domecq”) or anything in between. Why write the whole book when you can get so much mileage out of the title alone?
continue reading at the link: Essay - Titles Within a Tale - The ‘Invisible Library’ Contained in Literature - NYTimes.com
Ahmadinejad's Quandary
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismissed two key cabinet ministers on Sunday in the latest fallout of a bitter dispute among conservatives that has exposed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political vulnerability in the wake of last month’s disputed presidential election.
Mr. Ahmadinejad sacked the intelligence minister, Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, and the Islamic culture and guidance minister, Muhammad-Hassan Saffar-Harandi. Both men had walked out of a cabinet meeting last week in protest of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s promotion of a former culture minister, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who drew fierce criticism last year over comments that were friendly to Israel. He withdrew on Friday, days after the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered his removal.
There were also reports late Sunday that two more ministers might also be sacked.
The dismissals seemed largely symbolic, with only a week left before Mr. Ahmadinejad is inaugurated and must submit a new cabinet to the Parliament. Analysts say Mr. Ahmadinejad is trying to show political confidence in the wake of the June 12 election, which opposition supporters claim was rigged his favor in a dispute that threw the country into crisis. But as reformist factions have rallied against Mr. Ahmadinejad, his own rivals among conservatives have appear to smell blood in the water, and have pressed him hard over the promotion of Mr. Mashaei.
Mr. Ahmadinejad is now in something of a quandary: he has dismissed more than half his cabinet, which means under Iranian law that he must obtain a vote of confidence from the Parliament. There may not be time for that, but it is possible his political enemies could use the issue against him.
Conservatives were especially angry that Mr. Ahmadinejad ignored the order from Ayatollah Khamenei to drop Mr. Mashaei. After Mr. Mashaei withdrew Friday, the president named him chief of staff, in a move that is bound to stir more anger among hard-liners.
link: Iranian President Fires Cabinet Ministers - NYTimes.com
Iran: Student Protestors Die in Prison
AN Iranian student arrested in protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election has died in jail, a newspaper said today, the second such death reported in recent days.
Amir Javadifar, "a student of industrial management in Qazvin (city) died in prison", the reformist Etemad newspaper said, adding that his family has been asked to come for the body this morning.
Etemad said Mr Javadifar had been arrested in July 9 protests and had injuries in his arm and nose but it did not elaborate on the cause of death.
Iranian newspapers reported yesterday that Mohsen Ruholamini, 25, who had also been arrested on July 9 when thousands of protesters took to the streets on the anniversary of a bloody student uprising in 1999, also died in custody.
link: Another Iranian protester dies in jail | News.com.au Top stories | News.com.au
GOP Health Care "Strategy"
Hunter writes:
The GOP goal is to kill healthcare reform outright; their strategists are saying as much. Not to kill single payer or a public option, but to kill the whole notion of reform. The legislators tasked with coming up with alternative plans declared, this last week, that none were needed; Senator Inhofe muses out loud about how much his party might be helped if they can manage to stop reform outright.
I suppose it is worth pondering the how and the why of such things. Do they earnestly believe that there's absolutely nothing that needs to be done about health care in this country? Are they so transparently in the pockets of the lobbyists that they are willing make a bold stand on "everything is fine", when a mere look out the window says it's not?
It's puzzling that such a stance could even be remotely effective. Everybody in America seems to hate their insurance provider, at least everyone who has ever had to use it because they actually got sick. Everybody knows how bad getting actual healthcare has become in this country; everybody has stories of being screwed roundly by their insurance, or not being able to get insurance in the first place, or knows someone else who has had worse experiences.
And yet even in something with such widespread support, all you have to do to foul up the works is (1) invoke partisan pride, so that all the other conservatives or Republicans will simply oppose whatever-it-is out of reflex, and (2) make up a bunch of scary-sounding bullcrap, much of it provided by the insurance companies themselves, and hork it up on television via friendly hosts and anchors. (And again -- transparently. The very same scary-sounding phrases or made-up statistics make it into twenty or fifty or a hundred different political and pundit mouths in a single day, with not even an attempt to disguise the obvious commonality of the source.)
Consider it: this is all it takes to possibly stop something that has, what, 80 or 85% of the public behind it. And it's yet another example of how a single industry, spending not all that much money in the grand scheme of things, can very, very easily counter the collective will of the entire population. And how entrenched the notion is, among the majority of politicians, and pundits, and anchors, and political hangers-on, that that's not only fine but the way things should work.
link: Daily Kos: The System At Work
RIP Lady B
LADY Bustamante, highly regarded as a defender of women's and workers' rights, and widow of late former Prime Minister and National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante, died in the Tony Thwaites Wing of the University Hospital of the West Indies yesterday afternoon. She was 97.
link: 'LADY B' DIES - JamaicaObserver.com
Cirque du Soleil and the Eastern Bloc
Altogether, more than 300 of Cirque du Soleil's artists - about a third of the whole troupe - are from Russia and the former Soviet republics.
The circus owes a debt to those countries' tradition of excellence in gymnastics, athletics and the pool. Many of its artists are former Olympic, World or European medal winners.
The circus's head coach Boris Verkhovsky, a former member of Russia's national acrobatics team, says: "When Cirque du Soleil decided to produce new circus acts using what we call 'elite sportsmen', we knew right away where these sportsmen were going to come from," he explains.
"Gymnasts, acrobats, highboard divers, trampoline jumpers... the biggest number of these sportsmen was in the Soviet Union."
The company has looked after its Russian artists, placing those who, like Nastya, joined Cirque du Soleil as children, into Russian host families.
link: BBC NEWS | Europe | Russians hear the call of the circus
The Harp in the Hospice
John Faherty writes:
Karin Gunderson, is one of six harpists who play for Hospice of the Valley patients.
The organization started the harp program in 1998.
The harpists play regularly at the inpatient hospice homes, stopping in rooms at a patient's request. An at-home patient can request a session for a $50 fee.
Many find it both relaxing and spiritual.
Perhaps they always have: Harps were found in Egyptian tombs and angels were often depicted playing the instrument in Renaissance art.
Gunderson says the instrument has a unique ability to bring people together. "The harp tends to access stored emotions," Gunderson, who estimates she has played for 20,000 patients, said.
"I see those moments a lot. When I start playing, the family member in the room just has to walk over and hold their hand and kiss them. It's very powerful," she said.
Gunderson also believes harp music has physical benefits for the patient. "I see vital signs improve," she said. "I know that when I play 60-70 beats per minute, people's heart rate will come down to that range. Or up to that range if they are too low."
Barbara Crowe is the director of music therapy at Arizona State University. She is cautious when it comes to saying the harp can help people physically, as some harpists believe.
"None of it is substantiated," Crowe said. "It is certainly useful, we just have to be careful about what we claim."
But Crowe says that does not diminish the power of the music.
"Music is an amazing tool," Crowe said. "You can see the mood of a room lift. We use music to promote emotional awareness."
link: Hospice patients find peace in heavenly instrument
Spain: Gay Marriage Changed the Mainstream
In 1976, Antonio Ruiz was sent to prison. His “crime”: Being gay. A nun supposedly reported him to the authorities after his mother told her he was gay. Thirty-three years later, the state is set to pay him for that indignity.
In one and a half generations, Spain has gone from imprisoning homosexuals to seeing a priest and an army lieutenant colonel publicly come out of the closet. Gay and lesbian couples kiss in the streets. They seem to be ever-present in TV programs and fiction series. And, since 2005, they can get married and adopt children — military personnel included.
The concerns of conservatives have not been entirely allayed — they still argue that gay marriage results in the devaluation of marriage, though they no longer take to the streets in protest like they did four years ago.
But with the legal protection now afforded to gay couples, that disapproval matters less, and the prevalence of homosexuality in mainstream culture speaks to societal acceptance.
continue at the link: Holding hands in public | GlobalPost
