Month: June 2006

Timetable issues

Here’s how the Illinois vote went today in the House favoring 256-153 the Iraq war resolution that “rejects setting a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, labels the Iraq war part of the global fight against terrorism and praises American troops,” with X denoting those not voting.

Democrats — Bean, Y; Costello, Y; Davis, N; Emanuel, N; Evans, X; Gutierrez, X; Jackson, N; Lipinski, Y; Rush, N; Schakowsky, N.

Republicans — Biggert, Y; Hastert, Y; Hyde, Y; Johnson, Y; Kirk, Y; LaHood, Y; Manzullo, Y; Shimkus, Y; Weller, Y.

The Senate creamed a Dem-inspired contrary resolution — calling for withdrawal by year-end yesterday, 93-6.  It was Kerry’s idea. He did not want it voted on, however. 

Timetable issues

Here’s how the Illinois vote went today in the House favoring 256-153 the Iraq war resolution that “rejects setting a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, labels the Iraq war part of the global fight against terrorism and praises American troops,” with X denoting those not voting.

Democrats — Bean, Y; Costello, Y; Davis, N; Emanuel, N; Evans, X; Gutierrez, X; Jackson, N; Lipinski, Y; Rush, N; Schakowsky, N.

Republicans — Biggert, Y; Hastert, Y; Hyde, Y; Johnson, Y; Kirk, Y; LaHood, Y; Manzullo, Y; Shimkus, Y; Weller, Y.

The Senate creamed a Dem-inspired contrary resolution — calling for withdrawal by year-end yesterday, 93-6.  It was Kerry’s idea. He did not want it voted on, however. 

Under the rubble

Documents found since Zarqawi took on room temperature 

stressed the need to manipulate Moslem and Western media. This was to be done by starting rumors of American atrocities, and feeding the media plausible supporting material. Al Qaeda’s attitude was that if they could not win in reality, they could at least win imaginary battles via the media.

They know how to win hearts and minds.  Rush Limbaugh has taken to calling AP “al-AP.”  It’s full of useful idiots, or so the Big Z and friends thought.  There’s more.

In this morning’s New York Post, Ralph Peters writes on “Terrorist Defeatism.” Drawing on captured al Qaeda documents, Peters exposes the closely-guarded secret (closely guarded by the western media, anyway) that we are winning in Iraq, where al Qaeda says its situation is “bleak.” And that was before its leader was killed, and nearly 1,000 more killed or rounded up.

The Dems are looking like toast in November.  Viva Bush & Rumsfeld.

Under the rubble

Documents found since Zarqawi took on room temperature 

stressed the need to manipulate Moslem and Western media. This was to be done by starting rumors of American atrocities, and feeding the media plausible supporting material. Al Qaeda’s attitude was that if they could not win in reality, they could at least win imaginary battles via the media.

They know how to win hearts and minds.  Rush Limbaugh has taken to calling AP “al-AP.”  It’s full of useful idiots, or so the Big Z and friends thought.  There’s more.

In this morning’s New York Post, Ralph Peters writes on “Terrorist Defeatism.” Drawing on captured al Qaeda documents, Peters exposes the closely-guarded secret (closely guarded by the western media, anyway) that we are winning in Iraq, where al Qaeda says its situation is “bleak.” And that was before its leader was killed, and nearly 1,000 more killed or rounded up.

The Dems are looking like toast in November.  Viva Bush & Rumsfeld.

Sex on the grass

Nice June evening, man meets wife for light supper at Winberie’s, at Oak Park’s premiere corner, Oak Park & Lake.  Quiet, tasty, reasonable.  Man and wife exit Winberie’s, cross Lake to Oak Park’s premiere park, Scoville Park.  White kids playing frisbie.  “Look out, people,” he hears as one player warns the others about pedestrians.  Man and wife take the pleasant walk up the small hill past the monument and various people lounging on the grass, including interracial couple with little kid.  Pleasant.
 
They enter the library, where he picks up How Capitalism Saved America: the Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, waiting for him on the reserve shelf.  He doesn’t even have to go to the circ desk steps away, but checks it out electronically.  Upstairs she is chatting with the part-time librarian, #2 Daughter’s first-grade teacher long ago, just retired from the elementary district.  He joins for chatting.  They conclude, look at videos.  He picks one, waits for her at the huge windows overlooking the park.  What he sees horrifies him.
 
A black boy is humping a black girl on the grass.  Both are clothed.  He is holding her down, as if in a wrestling move, bouncing up and down on her crotch.  She wraps her legs around him.  A second black boy lifts a light-skinned, perhaps white girl up from behind, puts her down on her feet.  She wants to get at the boy on the ground.  He prevents her.  She leaves the three, heading to a corner of the park 100 feet or so away where others are congregated.  The humping boy gets up after several minutes.  The humped girl gets up laughing, smoothes her hair, stands there.  He gets her now from behind, standing, and humps some more.
 
“Disgusting,” says the wife, approaching the same window.
 
“Let’s go,” they say.
 
Outside, at the corner of the park mentioned before, a dozen to 15 black teens congregate at the benches, milling about with each other, talking and laughing.  The humping couple is part of this group.  This is the group’s corner.  Elsewhere in the park are kids and adults using the park for their quite different purposes.

Losing your heritage

Chicago’s Humboldt Park is in danger of being overrun by Yuppies, say some Puerto Ricans in today’s Chi Trib — a story, by the way, visible only among print-edition stuff and reachable only using the search window, meaning it’s gone from on-line items as such, maybe because late-arriving higher-up editors don’t like it. 

[This is wrong, web editor Charles Meyerson informs me:  “You, sir, are wrong.  . . .  The story has been played prominently on the Web site all morning — featured as one of the lead items in the chicagotribune.com front page Business section.”  Yes, moved to business-technology half-way down the screen shot, nowhere near as visible and eye-catching or space-taking as in p-1 hard copy, where it’s 13 by 7 1/2 inches, just below the logo, with two big color photos and two more on back page front section, where it has 12 by 8 inches to roll around in.  Believe me, it’s a play to die for in what the man threw on my walk this morning, vs. what’s reachable by not only the search window, as I say incorrectly — sorry about that — but otherwise only by careful scrutiny of web page.  THAT’S NO EXCUSE: I SHOULD LOOK HARDER!

[Moreover: Meyerson is senior producer of the Trib site and asks that I

excise that whole “late-arriving editor” fantasy, or at least correct it in context.

[I can do that: A long time ago, newspapers had night editors who, while in touch with the main editors by telephone, could be countermanded by the 9–5 (or later) editors, probably in their morning meeting, dubbed a “circle jerk” by one young city desk man who later became city editor.  At these meetings, sometimes influenced by the newspaper’s owner-publisher who heard something last night at a party, stories rose and fell.  Once I was a winner here, not a loser: something I’d called in got overlooked by the night man but given nice play for home-delivery Red Flash.  Continue now with this fascinating account.]

I saw a story shrink once.  It was about black Christians celebrating wildly in church — authentic as hell, full of speaking in tongues and shaking and swaying, but my Chi Daily News editor, the late Daryle Feldmeir, was embarrassed by it.  It confirmed too well what some whites thought about blacks, he told me when I entered his office to inquire what was happening.  This was in the days of seven editions, and the Red Streak final had reduced the front section’s back page, full of John White photos, as I recall, to a column or two.  This was white liberal protection of minorities, 1970s-style.  It still happens, of course.

“It’s taken 40 years for us to establish where we are today,” said Enrique Salgado, who heads the local Chamber of Commerce. “Once this is gone, you lose the concentration of the Puerto Rican community in Illinois.”

So what?  Does this Salgado think PR’s can’t manage cultural permanence on their own without him and other xenophobes? 

It’s gotten nasty, in fact:

Developer Anthony Zaskowski said he felt pressured to give in to community protests over a project to build condominiums near North and Artesian Avenues that would have blocked a mural featuring Pedro Albizu Campos, a hero in Puerto Rican history.

After a land swap with Zaskowski in 2004, the lot is now a small urban park.

“We were forced to settle this thing,” Zaskowski said. “We lost a lot of money.”

This is a picture, of course, of a community so unsure of itself it needs clout to survive.

Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) said he is fulfilling residents’ wishes “for the culture to remain alive.”

Citing a ward policy that forces developers to set aside a third of their projects for affordable housing, Ocasio said, “If you take a look at what’s happening, you have a plan that is able to allow people who want to stay, to stay.”

Whenever you see “affordable housing,” look out.  It means low-cost housing, for one thing, and government interference in the economy, for another, with resultant screwing things up, including killing of prosperity for all concerned.

Good story by Antonio Olivo, by the way, who if he wonders what happened on-line can probably look to late-arriving editors, the 9–to-5 ones who sit in big offices.

Losing your heritage

Chicago’s Humboldt Park is in danger of being overrun by Yuppies, say some Puerto Ricans in today’s Chi Trib — a story, by the way, visible only among print-edition stuff and reachable only using the search window, meaning it’s gone from on-line items as such, maybe because late-arriving higher-up editors don’t like it. 

[This is wrong, web editor Charles Meyerson informs me:  “You, sir, are wrong.  . . .  The story has been played prominently on the Web site all morning — featured as one of the lead items in the chicagotribune.com front page Business section.”  Yes, moved to business-technology half-way down the screen shot, nowhere near as visible and eye-catching or space-taking as in p-1 hard copy, where it’s 13 by 7 1/2 inches, just below the logo, with two big color photos and two more on back page front section, where it has 12 by 8 inches to roll around in.  Believe me, it’s a play to die for in what the man threw on my walk this morning, vs. what’s reachable by not only the search window, as I say incorrectly — sorry about that — but otherwise only by careful scrutiny of web page.  THAT’S NO EXCUSE: I SHOULD LOOK HARDER!

[Moreover: Meyerson is senior producer of the Trib site and asks that I

excise that whole “late-arriving editor” fantasy, or at least correct it in context.

[I can do that: A long time ago, newspapers had night editors who, while in touch with the main editors by telephone, could be countermanded by the 9–5 (or later) editors, probably in their morning meeting, dubbed a “circle jerk” by one young city desk man who later became city editor.  At these meetings, sometimes influenced by the newspaper’s owner-publisher who heard something last night at a party, stories rose and fell.  Once I was a winner here, not a loser: something I’d called in got overlooked by the night man but given nice play for home-delivery Red Flash.  Continue now with this fascinating account.]

I saw a story shrink once.  It was about black Christians celebrating wildly in church — authentic as hell, full of speaking in tongues and shaking and swaying, but my Chi Daily News editor, the late Daryle Feldmeir, was embarrassed by it.  It confirmed too well what some whites thought about blacks, he told me when I entered his office to inquire what was happening.  This was in the days of seven editions, and the Red Streak final had reduced the front section’s back page, full of John White photos, as I recall, to a column or two.  This was white liberal protection of minorities, 1970s-style.  It still happens, of course.

“It’s taken 40 years for us to establish where we are today,” said Enrique Salgado, who heads the local Chamber of Commerce. “Once this is gone, you lose the concentration of the Puerto Rican community in Illinois.”

So what?  Does this Salgado think PR’s can’t manage cultural permanence on their own without him and other xenophobes? 

It’s gotten nasty, in fact:

Developer Anthony Zaskowski said he felt pressured to give in to community protests over a project to build condominiums near North and Artesian Avenues that would have blocked a mural featuring Pedro Albizu Campos, a hero in Puerto Rican history.

After a land swap with Zaskowski in 2004, the lot is now a small urban park.

“We were forced to settle this thing,” Zaskowski said. “We lost a lot of money.”

This is a picture, of course, of a community so unsure of itself it needs clout to survive.

Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) said he is fulfilling residents’ wishes “for the culture to remain alive.”

Citing a ward policy that forces developers to set aside a third of their projects for affordable housing, Ocasio said, “If you take a look at what’s happening, you have a plan that is able to allow people who want to stay, to stay.”

Whenever you see “affordable housing,” look out.  It means low-cost housing, for one thing, and government interference in the economy, for another, with resultant screwing things up, including killing of prosperity for all concerned.

Good story by Antonio Olivo, by the way, who if he wonders what happened on-line can probably look to late-arriving editors, the 9–to-5 ones who sit in big offices.

He says, she says

It’s “U.S says” time at Chi Trib, where the page one Guantanamo suicide story has that the suicides are “prompting new calls for an immediate shutdown” in the lede.  (So what?)  In 2nd ‘graph, we read that “the Bush administration battles growing international criticism of its detention procedures.”  (So what?) 
 
They were “committed jihadists” who hung themselves as an act of “asymetrical warfare,” says Guantanamo commander Adm. Harry Harris, meaning “tactics of insurgents who face a militarily superior U.S. force in combat,” says Trib, explaining the term in common use by “U.S. military officials.”  (They can be eerily detached sometimes.)
Army Gen. John Craddock, the leader of U.S. Southern Command, said the men were not among detainees seeking U.S. court reviews of their cases and had not yet appeared before controversial military trial panels. Craddock insisted that the three, although not accused of any crimes, were enemy combatants and terrorists.  [Italics added]
“Insisted,” as vs. overwhelming evidence to the contrary?  Or insisting on one’s innocence?  How about good old “averred” or, God save the mark, “said.”  Chi Trib has something it’s trying to say and should spit it out.
 
They want to “become martyrs,” said (insisted?) Craddock, who arguably knows more about it than Chi Trib people, but who knows?  Some of those editors are very smart.
 
In any case, they have their talking points down well:
But as many detainees pass their four-year mark in captivity without formal charges, human-rights activists and defense attorneys said the prisoners have grown despondent over being detained without charges and without imminent prospects of a court hearing.  [Take that, Craddock and Harris, you Bush pawns.]
 
“People have been indefinitely detained for five years without any prospect of ever going home of ever seeing their families or ever being charged or having any resolution,” said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International in Washington. “There is no question serious psychological trauma comes from that.”  [Jumana Musa said that?  Well that’s another story.]
Even Kofi Annan, of oil-for-food fame, gets space in this ridiculous article, written by people with an agenda, folks!  On the other hand, at article’s end:
[Adm] Harris said one [of the suicides] was part of a Taliban uprising at the Qala-I-Jangi prison in Afghanistan, where CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann was killed in 2001, becoming the first U.S. combat casualty in Afghanistan. Another was a member of Jamat al Tabligh, an Islamic group the military considers a terrorist organization. The other was a “mid- to high-level” Al Qaeda operator, he said.
But can Harris be trusted?  We at Chi Trib doubt it.  He “insists,” doesn’t he, and officials “refuse” (vs. other standby, “decline,” used when you want to go easy on the decliner) to release suicide notes, which could then feed fanatical fires.
 
Consider, on the other hand, the AP story that by dinner time had bumped the hard-copy story on the Trib site, “Suicides Renews [sic] Criticism of Guantanamo,”out of San Juan, with its flat-out, this-is-how-it-is lede (none of this “So&So says” up front):
A “stench of despair” hangs over the Guantanamo Bay prison where three detainees committed suicide this weekend, a defense lawyer who recently visited the U.S. jail in Cuba said as calls increased Sunday to close the facility.
There we are.  You can do it, Chi Trib: give the same treatment to the U.S. military as AP gives a defense lawyer.  Go on.

He says, she says

It’s “U.S says” time at Chi Trib, where the page one Guantanamo suicide story has that the suicides are “prompting new calls for an immediate shutdown” in the lede.  (So what?)  In 2nd ‘graph, we read that “the Bush administration battles growing international criticism of its detention procedures.”  (So what?) 
 
They were “committed jihadists” who hung themselves as an act of “asymetrical warfare,” says Guantanamo commander Adm. Harry Harris, meaning “tactics of insurgents who face a militarily superior U.S. force in combat,” says Trib, explaining the term in common use by “U.S. military officials.”  (They can be eerily detached sometimes.)
Army Gen. John Craddock, the leader of U.S. Southern Command, said the men were not among detainees seeking U.S. court reviews of their cases and had not yet appeared before controversial military trial panels. Craddock insisted that the three, although not accused of any crimes, were enemy combatants and terrorists.  [Italics added]
“Insisted,” as vs. overwhelming evidence to the contrary?  Or insisting on one’s innocence?  How about good old “averred” or, God save the mark, “said.”  Chi Trib has something it’s trying to say and should spit it out.
 
They want to “become martyrs,” said (insisted?) Craddock, who arguably knows more about it than Chi Trib people, but who knows?  Some of those editors are very smart.
 
In any case, they have their talking points down well:
But as many detainees pass their four-year mark in captivity without formal charges, human-rights activists and defense attorneys said the prisoners have grown despondent over being detained without charges and without imminent prospects of a court hearing.  [Take that, Craddock and Harris, you Bush pawns.]
 
“People have been indefinitely detained for five years without any prospect of ever going home of ever seeing their families or ever being charged or having any resolution,” said Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for Amnesty International in Washington. “There is no question serious psychological trauma comes from that.”  [Jumana Musa said that?  Well that’s another story.]
Even Kofi Annan, of oil-for-food fame, gets space in this ridiculous article, written by people with an agenda, folks!  On the other hand, at article’s end:
[Adm] Harris said one [of the suicides] was part of a Taliban uprising at the Qala-I-Jangi prison in Afghanistan, where CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann was killed in 2001, becoming the first U.S. combat casualty in Afghanistan. Another was a member of Jamat al Tabligh, an Islamic group the military considers a terrorist organization. The other was a “mid- to high-level” Al Qaeda operator, he said.
But can Harris be trusted?  We at Chi Trib doubt it.  He “insists,” doesn’t he, and officials “refuse” (vs. other standby, “decline,” used when you want to go easy on the decliner) to release suicide notes, which could then feed fanatical fires.
 
Consider, on the other hand, the AP story that by dinner time had bumped the hard-copy story on the Trib site, “Suicides Renews [sic] Criticism of Guantanamo,”out of San Juan, with its flat-out, this-is-how-it-is lede (none of this “So&So says” up front):
A “stench of despair” hangs over the Guantanamo Bay prison where three detainees committed suicide this weekend, a defense lawyer who recently visited the U.S. jail in Cuba said as calls increased Sunday to close the facility.
There we are.  You can do it, Chi Trib: give the same treatment to the U.S. military as AP gives a defense lawyer.  Go on.

Good news Trib

Quite an upbeat p-one Chi Trib story here, in which we read about progress in Iraq, with only secondary, brief reference to the usual day’s death toll.

The U.S. military pressed its offensive against Al Qaeda in Iraq on Friday, staging an additional 39 raids based mostly on information uncovered during the hunt that led to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.

The fresh raids came as Al Qaeda in Iraq issued urgent appeals for money and volunteers to fight American forces, a day after the news of al-Zarqawi’s death left the organization without a clearly identifiable leader.

is the lede, details follow:

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell displayed a suicide belt, explosives and Iraqi army uniforms uncovered in 17 raids conducted soon after al-Zarqawi’s death. The raids targeted people whom the U.S. had been monitoring in the buildup to the strike, which was delayed until al-Zarqawi had been pinpointed because they were giving “indicators at different points in time as to where Zarqawi might be,” Caldwell said.

An additional 39 raids were conducted Friday, some of them directly related to information obtained in the earlier raids, Caldwell said without giving further details.

That’s us.  They?

[A web-site] statement in the name of Hamil al-Rashash (Holder of the Rifle) struck a more desperate note [than one by head of the Iraqi Mujahadeen umbrella group pleading for volunteers].

“Help, help! Support, support!” it said addressing the Islamic ummah, or community. “Assistance, assistance! Where is your money? And where are your men? There is no excuse for you.

“America won’t benefit you. History won’t be merciful to you. Wake up before it gets too late and before all the curses of Earth and heaven fall upon you.”

A bit of analysis in mid-story points out the role Zarqawi played:

As for leadership, it is unlikely Al Qaeda will quickly be able to replace al-Zarqawi with someone with the same name recognition and appeal to the global Islamist community, experts say. Helped in part by the repeated condemnations of U.S. officials and by his own headline-grabbing tactics, such as the gruesome, videotaped beheadings of hostages, al-Zarqawi had catapulted to worldwide fame over the past two years. [Italics added]

In a war of nerves as well as physical devastation, such things matter greatly.  Let’s hear it for experts, this time anyhow.