Wiki Accountability

One of the virtues and perils of the internet is that anybody can post anything, regardless of its truth or lackthereof. The online encyclopedia wikipedia has recently come under fire for that regarding information about the deaths of Senator (s) Edward M Kennedy (D-MA), 76 and Robert Byrd (D-WV), 93.

One embarassing problem; Kennedy and Bryd are still alive. Now one wiki founder is talking about having an editor review information and research posted by any new or anynomous contributors.

Calls for a review followed the embarrassing revelation that pages on Senator Robert Byrd and Senator Edward Kennedy, two prominent American politicians, falsely gave the impression that each had died.

Senator Kennedy, who is severely ill with a malignant brain tumour, went into convulsions during an inaugural lunch for President Barack Obama in Washington on 20 January. But his entry on the site wrongly stated that he had died: “Kennedy suffered a seizure at a luncheon following the Barack Obama presidential inauguration on 20 January 2009. He was removed in a wheelchair, and died shortly after.” News reports said later that, according to his doctors, he was suffering from fatigue.

A similar error was made on the entry for Senator Byrd.

Both mistakes were corrected within minutes, but its founder, Jimmy Wales, now wants a new or unknown user’s changes to be approved by an editor; some editors say that process would create “backlogs that we will be unable to manage”.

Italian prime Minister Makes Rape Jokes

                                    

Silvio Berlusconi is no stranger to controversy, but come on rape jokes?

ROME – Premier Silvio Berlusconi sparked outrage Sunday for suggesting that Italy’s women were so beautiful they needed military escorts to avoid being raped.

Berlusconi made the comments in response to questions about his proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. A series of violent attacks, including a rape in Rome on New Year’s Eve and another outside the capital this week, have put pressure on the government to crack down on crime.

But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarized state, crimes like rape can happen. “You can’t consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk,” the ANSA and Apcom news agencies quoted him as saying. “We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful.”

H/T: Americablog

Woburn Abbey Festival of the Flower Children

   Found this old 8mm film from the 1967 Woburn Abbey Festival of the Flower Children. Got to love this old footage laying around the you tube.

Abu Ghraib By Any Other Name

    The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, notorious for its mistreatment of detainees will re-open under new management and with a new name soon (H/T: Crooks and Liars). Because of course the name Abu Ghraib is what bred the problem in the first place.

    NY Times:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month, but it’s getting a facelift and a new name, a senior justice official said Saturday.

The heavily fortified compound of gray, stonewalled buildings and watchtowers has come to symbolize American abuse of some prisoners captured in Iraq after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates at the facility.

The scandal stoked support for the insurgency and was one of the biggest setbacks to the U.S. military effort to win the peace in Iraq.

The renovated facility will be called Baghdad’s Central Prison because the name Abu Ghraib has left a ”bitter feeling inside Iraqis’ hearts,” deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.

Given the techniques used there I am sure it isn’t the name leaving that “bitter feeling”, most likely it is the wires attached to their naked bodies, or the chill they feel from being stripped naked.

Hemp

   The harvesting of hemp was not always frowned upon. The plant with countless uses was actually encouraged to be grown for quite sometime, including in World War II.

Here is some of a 1942 documentary:

                     

FOIA is Back: Now That is Change I Can Believe in

Aside from the seemingly idiotic decision to exempt a former Retheon lobbyist and nominee to be Assiatant Secretary of Defense from the new Obama ethics rules, Obama has by and large done a good job restoring ethics to government and refashioning America’s image from the ruins of the Bush/Cheney era, especially through some of his first executive orders.

The closure of Guantanamo Bay, the banning of torture (”harsh interrogation techniques), and closing of CIA black sites have been the more high profile acts. Obama has also done something though consistent both with the desires of our founding fathers to have a well informed public, and his own repeated expressed desire to get the public more involved in government and accountability, and that dramatically reverses some of the largest barriers erected by the Bush/Cheney administration to keep journalists, the legislative branch, attorneys, scholars, and the American people divorced from the information that informs the public of the workings of the governed.

Here is just one that relates to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that was created in 1966, a mechanism that would allow scholars, the press, and others the information to get government documents from various agencies. Under Bush/Cheney documents would be handled under a presumption of secrecy; meaning unless they were forced to release it they would assume that it was to be kept secret. Well President Obama has reversed that rule stating that his administration and government agencies will handle the release of documents with a presumption of disclosure. Meaning that according to this act the days of keeping documents away from the public purely for the sake of shielding themselves from public scrutiny, political embarrassment, excessive reclassification, or secrecy for secrecy’s sake are over.

Here is the first part of the text of that order:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Act

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

More>>>

Now I know many will retort by saying that this will force the government to disclose information that could be vital to National security and that could be dangerous during the war on terror, however I would imagine the neoconservatives now out of power won’t be saying that. But the Freedom of Information Act has several categories of information, including National security, that are exempted from being released under FOIA.

Obama is also reversing portions of the Bush/Cheney administration Presidential Records Act that allowed a President to keep large amounts of Presidential and Vice Presidential records from being accessed by the public.

Now I have never requested such information, but as an aspiring journalist I know that a well informed public and press makes for a well functioning and ethical government. That was always one thing I hated most of all about the Bush/Cheney administration, they spent more time intimidating political and partisan opponents,journalists, and everyone else, with a garrison mindset that the public were not their masters but their enemies that the public became disengaged, uninformed, and I firmly believe in part got us in the malaise and disaster we find our selves trying to get out of today.

“Bobby”

This past week and the 2008 election as a whole galvanized people who usually are overlooked or uninspired. Despite the economic hardships, the war, and other matters; now President Obama was an unconventional candidate offering an alternative in a time when faith in our government and institutions was on the decline.

However Obama was far from the first political candidate. American History is chalk full of such figures. One of course was Sen. Robert F Kennedy (D-NY)who ran on a platform to end an unjust war and heal the wounds of poverty and division in a time of great discord and confusion, a quest that ended abruptly and far too soon. The 2006 film Bobby, written starring and directed by Emilio Estevez documents what fateful night at the Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was assassinated and a thousand dreams were dashed, through the eyes and stories of various fictional characters and what Senator Kennedy’s candidacy meant to them.

The interlocking stories include: two elderly doormen reminiscing about old times, the Hotel manager surreptitiously having an affair with an attractive telephone operator, a bigoted kitchen manager on the last night of his job, a kitchen staff of Latinos and African Americans trying to find themselves and a place for themselves in modern America, a drunk washed up singer and her manager husband, two campaign workers who ditch the campaign trail for a good time and a beautiful waitress, a married couple who realize their is more to life than materialism, and a young girl willing to marry a young classmate to keep him from being drafted into the Vietnam war.

This film is highly underrated in my opinion and well it may sound crowded it fits well together and shows both the upheaval of the times and how we are all linked in the bond of a common brotherhood.

Neocons: Iraq is Obama’s Fault?

After the Wall Street Journal opined that George W Bush is so unpopular because he is so brilliant in his execution of the surge, neoconservative writer Michael Goldfarb says that failure in Iraq could be Obama’s legacy.

The result is that Obama has inherited victory in Iraq. Bush has done more than, as McGurn quotes Biden in early 2007, “keep it from totally collapsing…[until he could] hand it off to the next guy.” Now rather than retreat in defeat, our new president must manage to withdraw American troops without undermining their success. It will be a tremendous challenge, but the press will not be able to blame Bush if security deteriorates in Iraq after Obama gives the Joint Chiefs their “new mission.” The victory in Iraq is Obama’s to lose.

Instability in Iraq seems to be a given if one looks at the history. The country is made up of Sunni, Shia, and Kurd as well as others clashing to be the one who charts the course for Iraq and gains power over the country as a whole.In the end this war is the creation and execution of the Bush/Cheney administration and the neoconservatives. Why? Was it Oil? Did they think that as long as they attacked one country in the region they would be viewed as fighting terror? Was it to gain a power base in the region? Personal revenge on George W’s part? Or maybe an academic exercises in geopolitics and military in the mold of old school colonialism gone awry for the U.S. I don’t know.

The truth is that before this war was ever waged, Obama came to the conclusion that the plurality of Americans have reached, that this has been a misguided and unnecessary venture that has been to the detriment of the United States and countless lives. Six years of shoddy planning and stupidity in the ranks of the former administration are not the fault of an administration whose war, he (Obama) has inherited, and for what all Americans have suffered for in terms of lives, commerce,and global prestige

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Academy Award Nominees Announced

I am usually not one for Award shows which I think there are way too many of and I likely won’t even watch it, but the Academy Awards (also known as the Oscars)are a classic. I can even name every film that won the best picture award between 1959 and 2007. Today the nominees were announced by the Academy of Motion pictures Arts and Sciences.

The Best Picture Nominees are:

The Reader

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Curious Case of Benjamen Button

Slumdog Millionaire

For these nominees and those in other categories check out the website for the Academy Awards. Amongst those is the late Heath Ledger, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in “The Dark Knight”

Larry King’s Son Wants to be Black

Weird, yet profound. Larry King is said to have recently forecasted that within ten years we will have a U.S President that is not only a woman but is a lesbian ( right wing conservative scream here), and now King discloses that his son wants to be black.

Interviewing a visibly uncomfortable Bob Woodward on his eponymous CNN show last night, Larry, 75, gushed: “My younger son Cannon, he is eight. And he now says that he would like to be black. I’m not kidding. He said there’s a lot of advantages. Black is in. Is this a turning of the tide?”

    Well the statement certainly invites laughter or at least a smile at first glance. But although there still remains a great many disparities in terms of income and race between whites and other ethnic minorities and they will no doubt remain, as everyone has said almost non-stop, the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency is a testament to how much progress we made. Think about it, less than two centuries ago, African-Americans were not viewed as Americans, in fact they were treated under law and under the rules of society as property, inanimate objects often battered by their masters and white counterparts. Even as much as 40 years ago vestiges of segregation remained strong not only in the south, but even in Northern parts of the country. Seriously could anyone honestly say or feel 200 years ago, forty years ago, or even 20 years after seeing the inequalities, savageries, and hardship visited upon an African-American that they didn’t even respect much less want to be?

Grateful Dead Spring Tour Ticket Price$

Tommy Devine pointed out on his blog that the price of tickets for each of the venues of this Springs Grateful Dead tour have been announced. Earlier in January, it was announced that former Grateful Dead members Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir would reunite to go on tour along with fellow jammers Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti. For the Worcester, MA show I hope to attend, tickets will cost $100.25 each. Better keep money going into that old piggy bank

The Old Man and the Archieves

Various writings and materials of the American Literary Giant that were stored in the basement for decade’s of the late writer’s Cuban home, were made available to some scholars and are in the process of being digitized. Never been a big Hemingway enthusiast, this did catch my attention though.