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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
