They called it “rebuilding Iraq,” and Peter van Buren knows a lot about what went wrong — he’s a career State Department foreign service officer who spent a year there on a Provincial Reconstruction Team. I spoke with him recently on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.
It says here you speak Japanese, Mandarin, and some Korean – why did the State Department send you to Iraq?
Along with the WMD’s, there was another misunderstanding . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE
In a trial that never should have taken place, ten Muslim students at UC Irvine were convicted Friday of disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador on campus last spring.. . . .
. . . . Continued at TheNation.com HERE
Cops lie. Under oath, on the witness stand. “I saw him reach for a gun.” “I found the drugs in his pocket.” But what happens when juries refuse to believe their testimony? Do cops ever get in trouble for fabricating evidence or lying under oath? Do they ever get charged with perjury?
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE
First came the news that advisers to Israel’s foreign minister had recommended that Israel provide arms for the Kurdish terrorist group PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party which has been fighting an armed struggle against Turkey for an autonomous Kurdistan. The idea was for Israel to punish Turkey for expelling the Israeli ambassador, after Israel refused to apologize for its raid on the Gaza flotilla, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE.
If you Google “Pearl Harbor and 9/11,” you get more than 4 million hits. In George W. Bush‘s 9/11 interview on the National Geographic Channel last week, he said Sept. 11, 2001, eventually will be marked on calendars like Pearl Harbor Day: a day never to be forgotten by the people who lived through it. But on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s instructive to consider the way Pearl Harbor Day was remembered on its 10th anniversary.
In fact, on Dec. 7, 1951, Pearl Harbor wasn’t remembered.
continued at the L.A. Times HERE
This Labor Day, for the first time in 45 years, there won’t be a Jerry Lewis telethon on TV. It will be a great day for people with disabilities.
The problem with the Jerry Lewis Telethon was not that he tried to help people with muscular dystrophy. The problem was the way Jerry Lewis did it. . . . Jerry’s message was simple: “crippled children deserve pity.” His critics offered an alternative: “people with disabilities deserve respect.”
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE
The tomato is in trouble. The tomatoes in Big Macs and Taco Bell tacos and in supermarkets, especially in the winter, all come from the same place: South Florida. The tomato fields there are “ground zero for modern-day slavery” – that’s what the Chief Assistant US Attorney says. And there’s one other problem: those tomatoes taste like cardboard.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE.
JW: The Village Voice called Super Sad True Love Story “the finest piece of anti-iPhone propaganda ever written.”
GS: I was a person like Lenny, fairly analogue, and to research this book I hired an assistant who got me an iPhone, and got me on Facebook and Twitter. I went from somebody who didn’t want to have anything to do with this new technology to somebody who became wildly addicted to it. Then, after finishing this book, I began developing strategies for not being online all the time.
Do you have any advice for people with the same problem? . . . contined at TheNation.com HERE
In my experience of 30 years of commuting on the 405 between West L.A. and Irvine, 55 miles each way, only one thing has significantly reduced traffic: the closing of the aerospace industry following its peak in 1987. . . . The one thing that reduces rush hour traffic is unemployment. Firing tens of thousands of aerospace workers cut my commute time by five minutes. It wasn’t really worth it.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE
A guy named Fred Seaman is all over the conservative blogs today for a new documentary in which he claims that John Lennon was “a closet Republican” at the time he was shot. This seems unlikely.
First of all, who is Fred Seaman? . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE
and see also Patt Morrison’s blog HERE