Yostivanich

“Accord­ing to the hand­ful of sur­vivors of the raid, Cou­ture work­ers were first immo­bi­lized by gun­shot wounds to the knees before being shot execution-style in the back of the head. PETA offi­cials assured that no ani­mals were harmed dur­ing the destruc­tion of the com­plex. ” Lol.

“I am root­ing for them and fear­ing for them. Any real mod­er­a­tion of Iran’s lead­er­ship would have a hugely pos­i­tive effect on the Mid­dle East. But we and the reform­ers must have no illu­sions about the bul­lets and bar­rels they are up against.” My one com­plaint with Friedman’s analy­sis is his auto­matic assump­tion that the vote was “stolen” by the Iran­ian author­i­ties, this has yet to be proven and may never truly be proven.

“Ethiopia has refused a request by Soma­lia for mil­i­tary sup­port to fight insur­gents, say­ing such an inter­ven­tion would need an inter­na­tional man­date. The Somali author­i­ties have been bat­tling Islamist insur­gents who con­trol much of the coun­try. The speaker of Somalia’s par­lia­ment had ear­lier urged neigh­bour­ing coun­tries to send troops within 24 hours. Ethiopian troops helped top­ple an Islamist move­ment in Soma­lia in 2006, but were with­drawn ear­lier this year.” Soma­lia could very eas­ily fall back fully into the mil­i­tants hands.

“Sev­eral years before, the Mis­souri Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion had lost a long legal bat­tle to try and pre­vent the Ku Klux Klan from adopt­ing a high­way on freedom-of-speech grounds. So the state decided to counter the Nazi group’s speech with more speech, in the form of another road­side sign. Offi­cials are renam­ing the stretch of high­way near Spring­field that the orga­ni­za­tion cleans after Rabbi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel, who fled Nazi Ger­many and became a promi­nent Jew­ish the­olo­gian and civil rights advo­cate in the United States.” That’s a pretty good tatic by the state.

“But I’m begin­ning to won­der about Michael Gra­ham. First, the Oral Roberts grad­u­ate and for­mer come­dian, now a right wing radio pun­dit made com­ments about how he would like to see Pres­i­dent Clin­ton and his wife gunned down in a cof­fee shop. Now, from Think Progress, we learn that his homi­ci­dal rhetoric is both more intense and more eclec­tic.” And you won­der why the right wing of the Repub­li­can party is going crazy.

“At least 44 peo­ple have died in a series of clashes between gov­ern­ment forces and Tal­iban mil­i­tants in north-west Pak­istan, the mil­i­tary says. Those killed include 38 mil­i­tants and six sol­diers across North West Fron­tier Province, offi­cials said. The worst vio­lence was in South Waziris­tan, where the army said it was clear­ing the way for mil­i­tary con­voys ahead a full-scale offen­sive.
The area is the strong­hold of the Tal­iban leader, Bait­ul­lah Mehsud. The reports from the army are hard to ver­ify because the region is inac­ces­si­ble to the media.” It’s nice to see Pak­istan work­ing to clear out the Tale­ban, not so good to hear of peo­ple dying, though hope­fully none are civilians.

“Zimbabwe’s Prime Min­is­ter Mor­gan Tsvan­gi­rai has been forced to cut short an event where he was address­ing Zim­bab­wean exiles due to jeer­ing. Mr Tsvan­gi­rai was address­ing more than 1,000 exiles, whom he urged to return home to rebuild the coun­try, dur­ing an event at London’s South­wark Cathe­dral. But his appeal was poorly received as ques­tions were raised over assur­ances he made about the country’s sta­bil­ity.” Not so friendly crowd.

“The naked por­trait once belonged to Napoleon’s uncle, Car­di­nal Joseph Fesch (1763−1839) and was ensconced within the wood walls of Fesch’s pri­vate library for nearly a cen­tury, before trad­ing more hands within the Napoleon fam­ily.” I doubt it, based upon the orginal Mona Lisa but prob­a­bly not an da Vinci painting.

“To Mr. Zeiler there is no doubt that the days when diplo­matic his­tory dom­i­nated the pro­fes­sion are gone. Fewer tra­di­tional courses in the sub­ject are taught, fewer arti­cles are pub­lished in ref­er­eed jour­nals, and grad­u­ate stu­dent train­ing has changed. Nonethe­less Mr. Zeiler is not as wor­ried as some of his col­leagues. The shift does not nec­es­sar­ily mean stu­dents aren’t learn­ing the mate­r­ial, he noted, but rather that a new approach to teach­ing it has devel­oped. The shift in focus began in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when a gen­er­a­tion of aca­d­e­mics began look­ing into the roles of peo­ple gen­er­ally miss­ing from his­tory books — women, minori­ties, immi­grants, work­ers. Social and cul­tural his­tory, often referred to as bottom-up his­tory, offered fresh sub­jects. Diplo­matic his­to­ri­ans, by con­trast, gen­er­ally work from the top down, div­ing into offi­cial archives and con­cen­trat­ing on peo­ple in power, an approach often tagged as elit­ist and old-fashioned.” Old story for me.

“The con­sen­sus may be that single-sex schools offer an edu­ca­tional advan­tage for women, but as J. Court­ney Sullivan’s “Com­mence­ment” presents it, the real power of a women’s col­lege has lit­tle to do with what goes on in the class­room. This affa­ble first novel about four friends who bond dur­ing their first week at Smith unfolds mainly in dorm rooms, din­ing halls, the Quad — any­where the girls can freely inhabit the pas­sion that is the cen­tral fact of their col­lege years and that stays charged-up into their 20s.” I think I need to read this book to make a real judge­ment call.

“An esti­mated 20,000 peo­ple have marched in Lon­don in sup­port of the minor­ity Tamil pop­u­la­tion in Sri Lanka.”

“Mixed-income devel­op­ments ori­ented toward fam­i­lies, with trendy shops, golf courses and Y.M.C.A.’s are emerg­ing where bleak, uni­form tow­ers once stood. Dis­placed res­i­dents are receiv­ing vouch­ers to move to pri­vate hous­ing. And a land­mark exper­i­ment in hous­ing the urban poor in large government-run facil­i­ties that began under the New Deal is being undone. “We’ve real­ized that con­cen­trat­ing fam­i­lies in poverty is very destruc­tive,” said Renée L. Glover, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Atlanta Hous­ing Author­ity. “It’s destruc­tive to the fam­i­lies, the neigh­bor­hoods and the city.”” I for one think this is an awe­some plan.

Hodg­man was awesome.

“Stranger still are new accounts emerg­ing from France describ­ing how for­mer pres­i­dent Jacques Chirac was utterly baf­fled by a 2003 tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion in which Bush report­edly invoked fanat­i­cal Old Tes­ta­ment prophecy – includ­ing the Earth-ending bat­tle with forces of evil, Gog and Magog – in his argu­ments to enlist France in the Coali­tion of the Will­ing.” Oh my gosh, this is crazy.

“Things get trick­ier when Alix gets to Twit­ter” WSJ try­ing to con­trol what their employ­ees say on Twit­ter. I go with on com­pany time and when dis­cussing com­pany related infor­ma­tion be care­ful, every­thing else have fun and don’t be stupid.

“So we’ve gone from com­mit­ments to even­tu­al­i­ties, tar­gets, and non-specific under­stand­ings. This just proves what the Amer­i­can peo­ple have known all along: You can’t trust the insur­ance indus­try with health care reform. Why have these com­mit­ments gone soft? It’s about prof­its. Every dol­lar of health care “waste” in the sys­tem, every dol­lar that goes some­where other than to your health, that’s a dol­lar more in the pock­ets of a rich hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor or insur­ance indus­try CEO. For health care costs to come down, somebody’s prof­its have to come down as well.” Oh prof­its the end all, be all. I take the posi­tion that it is pretty stu­pid for a busi­ness designed to pro­vide health care to be a for-profit sys­tem, the two are directly in con­flict with one another.

“As part of what it calls an “infor­ma­tional web­site,” the com­pany has hired an out­side PR com­pany to make a series of videos sound­ing the alarm about a government-sponsored health insur­ance option, known as the pub­lic plan. Obama has con­sis­tently main­tained that a government-run plan, absent high-paid exec­u­tives and the need for prof­its, could be a more afford­able option for Amer­i­cans who have trou­ble pur­chas­ing pri­vate insur­ance. The indus­try argues that cre­at­ing a pub­lic insur­ance pro­gram will under­mine the mar­ket­place and even­tu­ally lead to a single-payer style sys­tem.” Ahh yes because cre­at­ing a national health care insur­ance sys­tem on the same basis as tone hones already in place all be it not run by the insur­ance com­pa­nies is a sin­gle payer sys­tem, logic is so hard.

“But now banks, eager to get Wash­ing­ton out of their hair, are push­ing to undo those invest­ments as quickly — and cheaply — as pos­si­ble. If the Obama admin­is­tra­tion acqui­esces, bil­lions of tax­payer dol­lars could be left on the table. At issue are so-called war­rants that the gov­ern­ment received from the banks last autumn, when the finan­cial world was tee­ter­ing. Like options, war­rants give their own­ers the right to buy stock at a set price over a cer­tain period of time, in this case, 10 years. Now, with many banks itch­ing to return their bailout money, the war­rants are rais­ing some thorny ques­tions. What are these invest­ments worth? Should the gov­ern­ment drive a hard bar­gain, or let the banks off easy? Should it max­i­mize profit for tax­pay­ers, or min­i­mize pain for banks?” I vote for the admin­is­tra­tion to get as much money as legally possible.

“Binga­man said that deci­sions on pro­vid­ing roy­alty relief as part of lease sales should be left up to the Inte­rior sec­re­tary, which he noted was the pol­icy before the Energy Pol­icy Act of 2005.” Just rewrote the law to what it was pre 2005. I still don’t under­stand how pre­vent oil com­pa­nies from pay­ing roy­al­ties on land use will remove incen­tives. For one oil com­pa­nies already enjoy some of the best tax breaks out there for any business.

“REAL ID and PASS ID have the exact same pur­pose — to cre­ate a nation­ally uni­form iden­tity sys­tem. A card or sys­tem that is one of many options for prov­ing iden­tity or other infor­ma­tion is not a national ID if peo­ple can decline to use it and still eas­ily access goods, ser­vices, or infra­struc­ture. But if law or reg­u­la­tion make it very dif­fi­cult to avoid car­ry­ing or using a card, this presses it into the national ID cat­e­gory.” Reword­ing it but still the same result.

““Tears in the Dark­ness” is author­i­ta­tive his­tory. Ten years in the mak­ing, it is based on hun­dreds of inter­views with Amer­i­can, Fil­ipino and Japan­ese com­bat­ants. But it is also a nar­ra­tive achieve­ment. The book seam­lessly blends a wide-angle view with the sto­ries of many indi­vid­ual participants.”

“Nulo — Span­ish for null and void — is draw­ing sup­port from dis­grun­tled Mex­i­cans who say the country’s politi­cians are focused more on their own power games than on the peo­ple they are sup­posed to serve. So, instead of urg­ing vot­ers to throw their weight behind any of the real can­di­dates vying to be elected may­ors, gov­er­nors or mem­bers of Con­gress on July 5, Nulo’s back­ers are call­ing on Mex­i­cans to nul­lify their bal­lots — and vote for no one at all. Mex­ico was essen­tially a one-party state until 2000, when the Insti­tu­tional Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Party, known as the PRI, finally lost its grip on the pres­i­dency. But a sense of frus­tra­tion has devel­oped in recent years as more choices on the bal­lot have not, in the minds of many Mex­i­cans, trans­lated into a more respon­sive gov­ern­ment.” This is so cool.

“Why would a mother burn her child, even for reli­gious rea­sons? How messed up must you be to put reli­gious beliefs over com­mon sense and human decency? If you think this mother did some­thing unspeak­able and deserves all sorts of pun­ish­ments, how is this dif­fer­ent from the Bible story in which we’re told to admire Abra­ham for being will­ing to kill his son Isaac?”

“EFF is look­ing for more evi­dence about the chill­ing effect of the export restric­tions on dig­i­tal tools of free expres­sion. In addi­tion, it seems time for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion pro-actively clar­ify that the Web 2.0 free speech tools do not require affir­ma­tive licens­ing under the export reg­u­la­tions.” Same issue Face­book is fac­ing with it’s TOS that could poten­tially vio­late US law.

“A new report con­ducted by the Human Impact Part­ners and released by the National Part­ner­ship shows that pass­ing the Healthy Fam­i­lies Act, which would let employ­ees at firms with at least 15 employ­ees earn up to seven paid sick days a year, would have a pro­foundly pos­i­tive effect on pub­lic and indi­vid­ual health.” No duhhh.

“Just a few years ago, some broad­cast­ers and movie stu­dios argued that this tran­si­tion couldn’t hap­pen with­out a DRM man­date — a legal require­ment for devices to obey the broad­cast flag and apply DRM restric­tions to free, over-the-air broad­casts. And they said they would hold up and obstruct this tran­si­tion unless they got their way. We and our col­leagues said no; we said that enter­tain­ment indus­tries already have too much con­trol over our liv­ing rooms. It’s six years later and these threats have all fallen flat. This week, CBS will broad­cast dozens of pop­u­lar pro­grams, like CSI, With­out a Trace, Sur­vivor, and The New Adven­tures of Old Chris­tine, in high def­i­n­i­tion via over-the-air broad­cast. So will all the other major net­works. Dig­i­tal TV also con­tin­ues to fea­ture pop­u­lar movies with no DRM.” Haha, good job EFF.

“The Obama Administration’s deci­sion to sup­port Bush-era con­ceal­ment poli­cies has forced the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion (EFF) and Pub­lic Knowl­edge (PK) to drop their law­suit about the pro­posed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agree­ment (ACTA). EFF and PK had been seek­ing impor­tant doc­u­ments about the secret intel­lec­tual prop­erty enforce­ment treaty that has broad impli­ca­tions for global pri­vacy and inno­va­tion.” I still don’t under­stand how a copy­right law is ‘National Secu­rity’ issue?

“In the orig­i­nal reex­am­i­na­tion request, EFF and Rick Mc Leod of Klar­quist Spark­man, LLP, showed that the method Ideaf­lood claimed to have invented was well known before the patent was issued. In fact, web­site devel­op­ers were hav­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions about how to cre­ate these vir­tual sub­do­mains on an Apache devel­oper mail­ing list and on Usenet more than a year before Ideaf­lood filed its patent appli­ca­tion. The open source community’s pub­lic record of the tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment pro­vided the linch­pin to EFF’s patent chal­lenge.” Another stu­pid and ridicu­lous patent busted by the EFF.

“EFF is proud to stand with the Gray Lady in call­ing for the repeal of the FAA, and hopes that more edi­to­r­ial boards will join in the call. Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, for one, pledged last year when the FAA passed that the Sen­ate would revisit the issue this Fall as Con­gress con­sid­ered whether to renew USA PATRIOT Act pro­vi­sions that are set to expire. House Speaker Pelosi has also said that FISA may have to be revis­ited dur­ing the PATRIOT debate, and we aim to turn that “may” into a “must”.” I’m with the EFF.

“A New York Times reporter who was kid­napped by the Tal­iban has escaped and made his way to free­dom after more than seven months of cap­tiv­ity in the moun­tains of Afghanistan and Pak­istan. David Rohde, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin and their dri­ver, Asadul­lah Man­gal, were abducted out­side of Kabul on Nov. 10 while Mr. Rohde was research­ing a book.” Good to hear.