"C.A. Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), let it be nationalized," Chavez said. "The nation should recover its property of strategic sectors."
He doesn't have an issue, he has a thousand issues, which is the same as having none, in the sense that a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. And on those issues he seems not so much to be guided by philosophy as by impulses, sentiments. From "The Audacity of Hope," his latest book: "[O]ur democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect." "I value good manners." When not attempting to elevate the bromidic to the profound, he lapses into the language of political consultants--"our message," "wedge issues," "moral language." Ronald Reagan had "a durable narrative." Parts of the book, the best parts, are warm, anecdotal, human. But much of it pretends to a seriousness that is not borne out. When speaking of the political past he presents false balance and faux fairness. (Reagan, again, despite his "John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote and his gratuitous assaults on the poor" had an "appeal" Sen. Obama "understood." Ronnie would be so pleased.)
The Bush administration condemned Iran on Tuesday for convening a conference of people who deny the Holocaust happened, calling the move "an affront to the entire civilized world."
From the UK's Daily MirrorDaily protests occur in Dearborn. At one recent demonstration, organized by the Congress of Arab-Americans, about 1,000 people attended. College-age men asked, in call and response fashion, "Who is your army?" Protestors responded: "Hezbollah." "Who is your leader?" they were asked. "Nasrallah," the chanters responded. Many carried placards of the Hezbollah leader. A few days earlier at an even larger demonstration, more than 15,000 turned out, about half of Dearborn's Arab community.
Those who regularly attend the demonstrations tend to be the most strident.
"Oh, Jews, remember Khaibar," the marchers chant. "The army of the Prophet will return."
The line is a reference to Khaibar, a Jewish town north of Medina that, according to Islamic tradition, was overtaken by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Once defeated, the surviving Jews of Khaibar were forced into serfdom. Two decades later, they were expelled from the Arabian peninsula.
"...there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce--if we're lucky."
Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, originally proposed legislation (click here for PDF) in April that would require Internet service providers to retain activity logs to aid in criminal investigations, including ones involving child abuse.
Now DeGette and some of her colleagues in the House of Representatives are suggesting that social-networking sites should be required to do the same thing.
"How much would it cost your company to preserve those IP addresses?" DeGette asked at a hearing on Wednesday that included representatives from Facebook, Xanga and Fox Interactive Media, the parent company of MySpace. "You're going to store the data indefinitely?"
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
The known facts are that, in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop more of them. The UN call for him to stop the programs and destroy the weapons was to be enforced by inspections, but he threw the inspectors out. By 2003, there was no way for the new inspectors to determine whether or not Saddam was in compliance. No records existed of the destruction of the weapons known, on the basis of Saddam's own earlier statements to UN officials, to have existed. No documentation existed to show what had become of the facilities, materials, and organizations involved in the WMD development programs known, once again on the basis of Saddam's own admissions, to have existed. The fact that Saddam was probably being conned by his own people is irrelevant.
But, leaving aside completely the issue of WMD, Saddam's régime was a blatant, open and public supporter of international terrorism. For the world to allow this thug and his henchmen to thumb their noses at the whole world, and continue to supply arms, money, training and sanctuary to Hamas and its fellow travellers was intolerable. It was essential to send a clear message, to every government who might be tempted to use terrorism as a tool of foreign policy, that the world would no longer sit idly by and let this happen.
As a result, Erupoean terrorist groups like the IRA, the ETA, and the Corsican separatists have been largely defanged, deprived of money, weapons, and popular support. Suicide attacks on Israeli civilians have dwindled to a tiny percentage of what they used to be. Governments of countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Libya, Columbia, have all cracked down on terrorist activities, rather than risk being the next to suffer the wrath of American outrage.
Pragmatically, this administration has achieved a watershed in the elimination of terrorism as a tool for change. The war is not yet over, and it probably never will be, but at least the problem has suddenly been cut down to manageable proportions.
Akinyele Umoja, a professor of black studies at Georgia State University, complained: "What he's doing is providing credibility and legitimacy for some of these corporations that have policies that just reinforce inequality."In the meantime, "the new store has received more than 8,000 applicants for 500 jobs." What is Umoja's advocacy of socialism doing for those 8,000 applicants?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic senators said on Friday they would introduce legislation aimed at blocking Dubai Ports World from buying a company that operates several U.S. shipping ports because of security concerns.
Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Hillary Clinton of New York said they would offer a measure to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.
"We wouldn't turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either," Menendez said in a statement. The Senate Banking Committee also plans to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.
P&O, the company Dubai Ports World plans to buy for $6.8 billion, is already foreign-owned, by the British, but the concern is that the purchaser is backed by the United Arab Emirates government.
This is a bit more than normal political grandstanding - Hillary considers this an opportunity to look tough on terrorism in her seemingly ever-failing attempts to capture political middle she needs to ascend to the presidency. While seeing past her actions to her political aims might be easy for many, understanding the unintended consequences of a successful blockage of the port sale might require a second look.
Chicago Merc to Trade Snowfall Futures
CHICAGO (AP) -- First came temperature futures, then frost-day futures. Now - futures involving how much snow falls at Logan Airport in Boston or New York's Central Park.
The world's largest derivatives exchange said the new product, which will trade electronically starting Feb. 26, should help cities manage risk associated with snow accumulation. Insurance companies, retailers and other businesses with a lot riding on the weather also can use the futures to hedge their risk.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez now rivals Fidel Castro as the Western Hemisphere's most visible symbol of anti-Americanism, which explains why "peace activist" Cindy Sheehan is climbing abroad the Venezuelan firebrand's bus. She has announced plans to attend the World Social Forum in Caracas, which kicks off today and will celebrate, among other things, Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution.
The annual "forum," which began in Brazil in 2001 as an anti-globalization conference, is also sometimes referred to as the "carnival of the oppressed." Like most events of its kind, it has become flypaper for the planet's kookiest activists, including many who still espouse the "armed struggle" against capitalism, the "North," whatever. Perhaps the grieving Ms. Sheehan, an avowed peace lover, has been so busy with the makeup artists and the cameras to pay attention to the violence-prone types she's now embracing. But the name of one of the forum's organizers -- Ernesto "Che" Mercado -- could have given the anti-Bush publicity hound a hint. A Latin American revolutionary who takes the moniker of a legendary Cuban executioner is hardly a follower of Gandhi.
Indeed, the Sheehan tour to Caracas belongs in the "you-can't-make-it-up" category: A bitterly outspoken American citizen who has made a career of lambasting her president, she travels abroad to celebrate with a dictator who has thrown his own critics out of work and even put them in prison, stripped the press of its freedom, destroyed property rights and militarized the government. His political supporters are known to be armed and dangerous and many Venezuelans in poor neighborhoods have reported that they are afraid to dissent from the Chavez agenda. Venezuela's arms build-up is frightening his neighbors and threatening regional stability.
We're glad Ms. Sheehan has the freedom to travel abroad. Many of Chavez's critics are denied that right, as are the critics of Castro. But she shouldn't wonder why, when she opens her mouth in the U.S., nobody takes her seriously.
"Yes sir my name is Mark Seavey and I just want to thank you for coming up here. Until about a month ago I was Sgt Mark Seavey infantry squad leader, I returned from Afghanistan. My question to you, (applause)
"Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn't have a herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to endure in Afghanistan.
"And Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just returned from Afghanistan. We never got a letter from you; we never got a visit from you. You didn't come to our homecoming. The only thing we got from any of our elected officials was one letter from the governor of this state thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan. That's reprehensible. I don't know who you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high."
There is a stirring among the young, and talk of a "new radicalism." The timing could hardly be better...
