While the cat's away

Off to Steeltown to look for apartments. While I'm gone, please treat yourself to some smart-making :) Chef recommends:

1. Lessons for the world from rioting in France, by Haroon Siddiqui-Toronto Star
2. Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin, by Pratap Chatterjee
3. Who would Jesus Torture? by David Batstone - Sojourners
4. Some kind of manly, by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
5. Ahmad Chalabi, WMDs, the CIA, No Regrets, and Page 108, by David Corn-The Nation Magazine
6. The Threat of Hope in Latin America, by Naomi Klein-The Nation Magazine

For great video clips--fun and newsy--check out Dissent, Crooks & Liars and One Good Move! E.g.:

1. *gotta* see this one: "Pork Projects" on the Daily Show
2. Daily Show: Homometer :) Ed Helms attempts to find out if "gay marriage ruined Massachusetts?" Hi-larious :)
3. The Colbert Report: "Hoser" :)

Read selected excerpts of these articles:

[click "Read on, MacDuff!" to continue reading]

Lessons for the world from rioting in France, by Haroon Siddiqui-Toronto Star:

Here are some lessons to be drawn from the nation-wide rioting by disaffected Arab, West African and other youth in France. # Equality of citizenship is the best model of immigrant integration. [...] # A discrimination-free workplace is essential to making newcomers productive. [...] # Avoid an immigrant underclass, for immigrant ghettoes bring out our worst nativist instincts. [...] # Create a more representative police force. [...] # Integrate immigrants into the political process, rather than just milking them for votes. [...] # Don't give multiculturalism a bad name because of what's happening in France. [...] # Don't Islamicize the French problem. It is not. [...] # Immigrant origins do not really matter. [...] Immigration is based on economics. Management of it is a mixture of sociology and ideology. When a society makes immigration work, it minimizes the pettiness between the foreign-born and the native-born, and leaves little room for demagogues. This is why Canada and America, unlike Europe, no longer have anti-immigrant political parties. Canadians thus have reason to feel pretty good about what we have managed here.

Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin, by Pratap Chatterjee:

[Lockheed Martin] was (also) interested in entering this lucrative new business of intelligence contracting. It bought up Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a small company with a General Services Administration (GSA) technology contract issued in Kansas City, Missouri. In November 2002, Lockheed used GSA to employ private interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Who would Jesus Torture? by David Batstone - Sojourners:

...the practice of torture so fully embraces evil it dehumanizes both the torturer and its victim. [...] Christians must oppose torture under any circumstances. Consider this: Who would Jesus torture? I cannot imagine Jesus finding a single "exemption" that would justify such an abuse of any individual made in God's image. Though I bristle whenever I hear someone refer to the United States as a Christian nation -- it is such a loaded phrase -- many in the Muslim world see us as such. How tragic it would be for Muslims to identify the message and mission of Jesus with torture and terror.

Some kind of manly, by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate:

I grew up with all this pathetic Texas tough: Everybody here knows you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs; and this ain't beanbag; and I'll knock your jaw so far back, you'll scratch your throat with your front teeth; and I'm gonna cloud up and rain all over you; and I'm gonna open me a can of whup-ass ... And that'll show 'em, won't it? Take some miserable human being alone and helpless in a cell, completely under your control, and torture him. Boy, that is some kind of manly, ain't it?

Ahmad Chalabi, WMDs, the CIA, No Regrets, and Page 108, by David Corn-The Nation Magazine:

[Chalabi's American Enterprise Institute] appearance was the major public event of a trip to Washington during which he was scheduled to see five Cabinet members (including Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld), the national security adviser, and the vice president. Not bad for a guy whom the CIA and State Department booted from the payroll and a fellow (once charged with bilking a Jordanian bank of nearly $300 million) who is under investigation for supposedly leaking classified US information to Iran that may have compromised the United States' ability to read intercepted Iranian communications. In 2004, I said to him, you were asked if you had misled the US government by providing it bad intelligence on WMD, and you said you and the INC were "heroes in error." [...] Chalabi was ready for this. "The quote is false," he stated. "I never said that." (This direct quote was reported in February 2004 by Jack Fairweather, a correspondent for the Telegraph newspaper of London.) He then went on: "We are sorry for every American life that is lost in Iraq. As for the fact that I deliberately misled the US government, this is an urban myth. I refer people to page 108 of the Robb-Silberman report that debunks this entire idea." [...] Does this passage debunk what Chalabi called the "myth" that the INC supplied bad information to the US intelligence? Instead, the report states that the INC "directed" a fabricator to give information that was false to the CIA.

The Threat of Hope in Latin America, by Naomi Klein-The Nation Magazine:

...the indigenous movement is on a roll. In the past year the Nasa of northern Cauca have held the largest antigovernment protests in recent Colombian history and organized local referendums against free trade that had a turnout of 70 percent, higher than any official election (with a near unanimous "no" result). And in September thousands took over two large haciendas, forcing the government to make good on a long-promised land settlement. All these actions unfolded under the protection of the Nasa's unique Indigenous Guard, who patrol their territory armed only with sticks. [...] Across Latin America a similarly explosive multiplier effect is under way, with indigenous movements redrawing the continent's political map, demanding not just "rights" but a reinvention of the state along deeply democratic lines. In Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous groups have shown they have the power to topple governments. In Argentina, when mass protests ousted five presidents in 2001 and '02, the words of Mexico's Zapatistas were shouted on the streets of Buenos Aires. [...] Indigenous movements are indeed a threat to the exhausted free-trade policies Bush is currently hawking, with ever fewer buyers, across Latin America.