Baghdad Burning

The author of the blog Baghdad Burning has finally fled Baghdad and become a refugee. May you find peace and safety, and healing from all you have endured. May we as Americans find forgiveness for the decisions of our elected leaders.

From "The Rape of Sabrine"
...She’s just one of tens, possibly hundreds, of Iraqi women who are violated in their own homes and in Iraqi prisons. She looks like cousins I have. She looks like friends. She looks like a neighbor I sometimes used to pause to gossip with in the street. Every Iraqi who looks at her will see a cousin, a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt…

Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed.

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Jimmy Carter blasts VP Cheney

This article (see below) reminds me of the fact that I heard Vice President Cheney speak while we were in Washington, D.C. at the Arlington Cemetery. We were simply there for something else and suddenly everyone said, "The Vice President is here! He's going to give a speech!" I looked around and realized people had been waiting in the cold for this. How interesting. I looked up and there he was. I don't remember what he said, but I remember saying to Marti afterward, "I just got to witness pure evil." He just laughed. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought so...

Jimmy Carter calls Cheney a "disaster" for U.S
(read the entire article here)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a "disaster" for the country and a "militant" who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

From Texas to the Amazon

Today we got some burgers at Burger King, and, because I am inherently a guilt-obsessed person, I got online to see where, exactly, Burger King got its beef.

I recently saw an article in National Geographic about the Brazilian rainforest and how its decimation hasn't really been slowed by environmental groups the past ten years. And holding a fast-food burger in my hand, I wondered if the beef came from a cow that stood where a rainforest used to be.

Well, I didn't get a satisfying answer to that question, meaning the answer probably is "yes." However, I did find this pretty amazing website about a Texas cowboy who decided to save the rainforest himself.

Can cattle ranchers and soy farmers save the Amazon?

The reasons for land-clearing in the Amazon are compelling: cheap land, low labor costs, and booming demand for commodities driven by a surging China and growing interest in biofuels. These factors have helped Brazil become an agricultural superpower – the world’s largest exporter of beef, cotton, and sugar, among other products – in less than a generation. Amazon landowners have seen their land values double every 4-5 years in areas that just a decade ago were pristine rainforests. The market is driving deforestation.

Given this landscape, John Cain Carter believes the only way to save the Amazon is through the market. Carter is a Texas rancher who moved to the heart of the Amazon 11 years ago with his Brazilian wife, Kika, and founded what is perhaps the most innovative organization working in the Amazon, Aliança da Terra. Carter says that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the forest, the market can succeed where conservation efforts have failed.

While deforestation rates in the Amazon have accelerated, the problem is not a lack of laws, but rather a legal system where enforcement is so slow and so corrupt that it renders the laws effectively useless. On paper, cattle ranching in the Amazon may be the most restricted in the world, with landowners required to keep 80 percent of their land forested – a limitation no rancher in Texas faces. Carter wants to see farmers in Brazil benefit in following the law, by turning this restriction into a marketing advantage. However in order to do so, Amazon producers have to ensure that consumers ( i.e., buyers of commodities like McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and Cargill) can confidently say that agricultural products are produced legally and even more sustainably than stipulated by the law. The incentive for producers is market access: Aliança da Terra helps Brazilian farmers and ranchers get the best price for their products, but only if they follow the rules. While producers get higher prices for their goods, buyers like Burger King and Archer-Daniels Midland can say they are using legally and responsibly produced beef. Meanwhile more rainforest is left standing, ecosystem services preserved, and biodiversity conserved. Everybody wins. (Read the rest of the article here.)

Get a bumper sticker

Abortion is just about the worst political issue out there. It killed the feminist movement -- feminism is now associated with abortion issues, rather than what it should be, which is more opportunities for women to realize their dreams (whatever those dreams are). I am so, so sick of seeing abortion used as a political and religious tool, that the thought of it being on a license plate...frankly, makes me nauseous. Worried about free speech? Get a bumper sticker. Or, as one commenter on the article put it, "Freedom of church and plate." :)

Abortion foes taking license-plate battle to U.S. appellate court

By Howard Fischer

Capitol Media Services

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.17.2007

PHOENIX — A coalition of anti-abortion groups wants a federal appeals court to force the state to produce special license plates with the message "choose life."

The Arizona Life Coalition charges in legal papers that a state commission that reviews requests for special plates acted illegally in rejecting its application. The lawsuit asks the three-judge panel to order the members of the Arizona License Plate Commission to approve the plate.

But James Morrow, an assistant state attorney general, said the commission did nothing wrong in rejecting the plates because the message was controversial, and the state should not allow its license plates to be turned "into a billboard for one side of a hotly contested issue."

Finally -- someone who isn't in the lap of big oil

Kudos to Governor Napolitano for taking action on this issue. Emission standards have not been raised since the 1980s, and national legislature is too afraid of cutting off oil interests and vehicle manufacturing firms to act. Napolitano took the back door on this and did the right thing. The whole "more expensive car" business is nothing more than a tactic to anger people. A thousand dollars difference in initial price is made up in three years if the car is only 3 mpg more efficient. People don't even realize...she's saving them money now, and all of us money in the long run.

Napolitano Defends Emissions Order

PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano is defending her decision to bypass the Legislature and instead order imposition of new carbon-dioxide-emission standards for vehicles sold in Arizona.

Napolitano said Friday the changes she wants certainly could go to the Legislature. But she said state law also backs her power to simply direct Steve Owens, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, to adopt a rule doing the same thing.

"I'm very respectful of the Legislature," she said.

"But we can also do it by rule,'' Napolitano continued. "We can do it now. We can do it more quickly."

Rep. Ray Barnes, R-Phoenix, acknowledged action by executive order and rule may be quicker than amending state law. But Barnes, who chairs the House Environment Committee, said he doubts Napolitano actually has legal authority to impose new standards absent legislative blessing.

The ADEQ says state laws let it regulate various air contaminants in motor-vehicle exhaust, including smoke, vapors, sulfuric acid mists and radioactive materials. That list also includes gases and "carbon," which the agency contends covers carbon dioxide even though that chemically distinct compound is not listed in statutes as a pollutant.

Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, said even if the law allows the governor to do what she wants, such a major change in state policy — one that will result in more expensive cars and trucks — should be debated and reviewed by the elected representatives of Arizona voters.

How is this legal?

In this article, a Hispanic trucker has to fork over his life savings to DEA officers and then prove it wasn't drug money -- when there was no evidence he was a smuggler and drug-sniffing dogs found nothing? This is hard to believe. There is nothing that would keep DEA from simply taking people's cash if this is the case, but apparently, it really is the case. I plan to forward this article to my senator at the very least. Unbelievable!

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained "needles or cash in excess of $10,000," according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.

Prieto told the officer he didn't have any needles but did have $23,700.

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

The Death of Traditional Journalism

When I started college, I had the idea in my head that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I loved writing and had dominated the Journalism department in my high school, even running the small town paper when times got hard, and my dream was to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, exposing corruption, educating the public...

Well, fast forward to the summer after my sophomore year. I started working for a small, local paper as a cub reporter and I had a nose for scandal. I found out that some business had come in and bought out all the buildings on Main Street and was causing each business to close, one by one, by raising rents ridiculously high (Two and three hundred percent). But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

I found out the local factory had an asbestos problem and was exposing their workers. One man had gotten in to take photos of the asbestos piled and floating in the air, and had been promptly fired. But...I wasn't allowed to report it.

Why? Advertising dollars. Relationships with owners. Big business. Money.

I quickly realized that, in most cases, reporters' hands are tied. The editor's hands are also tied. The real decisions are made in the boardroom by the owners. And becoming the owner of a media company wasn't the subject I was studying.

That was practically an innocent time. I could not have looked 12 years into the future to see how the media would consolidate...and consolidate...and consolidate. But now the content of our news is in the hands of a few extremely powerful people. Seeing yet another consolidation -- the Wall Street Journal in the hands of the man who created Fox News -- makes me glad that bloggers are out there. We are part of the last bastion of free speech available -- we and a dwindling number of small, radical local papers, a few online news' sources, podcasters. My skepticism of traditional media mounts and more and more I read the experiences of bloggers as my news (Baghdad Burning in Iraq, for example). I may have dropped Journalism in school...but I still feel wishful about the concept.

May bloggers live long and bring down more politicians!

From Murdoch Prevails by Forbes

News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones will represent a coronation of sorts for Murdoch. With a prosperous TV network, a market-leading cable news channel, a soon-to-be-launched business news channel, a major film studio, big Internet assets like social-networking giant MySpace, and now The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch has arguably become the King of All Media.

This extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of one man will trouble critics of the media industry's continuing consolidation and those who disagree with Murdoch's conservative politics.

Regardless of what one thinks of his media empire, it's clear that where he leads News Corp. from here will in many ways be the story of where the media industry itself is headed. What does the future hold for newspapers, television, the film industry and the Internet? Keep an eye on News Corp. to find out.