Associated Press | November 21

Al Jazeera -
The US justice department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, according to court documents.

A one-paragraph notice filed on Friday says only that prosecutors have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten be dropped.

The government's detailed request to the court was filed with the judge and with the defendant, but was not made public.

The shooting in Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

Gina Keating & Carol Bishopric | Los Angeles | November 20

Reuters - A Florida jury on Thursday ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

Scott Lanman | Washington | November 19

Bloomberg - A U.S. House committee advanced a proposal to remove a three-decade ban on congressional audits of Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, a measure backed by a lawmaker who has called for the abolition of the central bank.

The House Financial Services Committee today, in a 43-26 vote and a second voice vote, attached the amendment for a broad audit of the Fed to legislation creating a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk. The proposal was offered by Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, and based on a bill with more than 300 co-sponsors.

Rachel Donadio | Rome | November 16

NYT - The 200 women who answered a Rome modeling agency’s advertisement for tall, attractive party guests thought they would be attending an elegant soirée on Sunday. They were — only the host turned out to be the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and instead of hors d’oeuvres he offered them copies of the Koran and urged them to convert to Islam, the Italian news media reported Monday.

The women, all between the ages of 18 and 35, assembled in a Rome hotel before being screened by both metal detectors and the fashion police, who turned away anyone in a miniskirt or provocative clothing, according to Paola Lo Mele, a journalist for the ANSA news agency, who answered the modeling agency’s request and went undercover to the event. The women were each paid $75 to attend.

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

Maggie Fox | Washington | November 16

Reuters - American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday.

Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.

I've spent a good part of the last week re-reading Neil Sheehan's book, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Partly, this is just happenstance; I found a nicely annotated hardback copy in a local used book store. But it's also because I wanted to look again at the 1962-64 period of the Vietnam War to see how much it resembles our current situation in Afghanistan. I don't have good news to report.

Starting in earnest in 1962, the U.S. began arming the Viet Cong inadvertently through the strategic hamlet and strategic outpost programs. The communist side in the South was not relying on Chinese or Soviet supplies, except for heavy weapons that could not easily be captured. They got all the guns and ammo they needed simply by taking them from the people the U.S. handed them out to. The strategic hamlet program turned the peasants against the Saigon regime for good. Indiscriminate bombing of villages turned the rural populace into mortal foes of the United States. The cities were lost because the Catholic regime was brutal, corrupt, and attempted to crush the power of the Buddhist leadership.

Minorities find a warm reception through online channels

Washington Post, By DeNeen L. Brown, November 15

A black superwoman appears on your laptop in shimmering blue tights, green socks and a midnight blue cape. Her hair in Afro puffs, she is sitting on a promenade bench. She looks worried and a bit worn out. Her makeup is smeared, probably from crying.

She tells us she has just caught her boyfriend with a "second-rate superhero." The nerve of him.

Washington | November 13

CBC - Omar Khadr will be transferred to the United States from Guantanamo Bay to face charges in a military commission, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday, on the same day that the Supreme Court of Canada heard a federal government appeal in his case.

It is unclear when or where the 23-year-old inmate will be transferred, but he is one of 10 high-profile detainees to be sent to the U.S. to face justice.

Kenneth Chang | Moffett Field, CA | November 13

NYT - There is water on the Moon, scientists stated unequivocally on Friday, and considerable amounts of it.

“Indeed yes, we found water,” Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, said in a news conference.

November 13

Al Jazeera -
US authorities have moved to seize four mosques in New York City and a Manhattan skyscraper owned by a non-profit Muslim organisation suspected of having secret links with Iran.

In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in US history, federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint on Thursday seeking the forfeiture of more than $500m in assets from the foundation.

They said the Alavi Foundation have long been suspected of illegally sending money to the Iranian government.

Columbia, SC | November 11

BBC - A US judge has ordered South Carolina not to issue a vehicle number plate with a Christian image and slogan.

The state legislature had approved a licence plate with a cross in front of a stained glass window and the words "I Believe" written along the top.

The highly disturbing mass murder at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas reveals the obvious truth and some more obscure ones. Surely there is no surprise anymore when a person kills because of some religious conviction. This has gone on as long as humans have had religious beliefs of any kind, from the most primitive societies to the most advanced ones. What is more intriguing is what truths about the event are not so easily diagnosed and accepted.

Please read the rest of my article at:

http://searchwarp.com/swa555069-Killing-For-God.htm

New York Times, By Paul Krugman, November 9

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

Ariel David | Rome | November 8

WaPo - The United Nations says it is running out of food for millions of starving Somalis, in part because the United States is delaying aid amid fears it could be intercepted by militants linked to al-Qaeda.

Last month, the U.N. World Food Program began cutting rations by up to half for some people in the lawless, impoverished East African nation, and it will run out of supplies in December, the Rome-based agency said Saturday.

Anne Eisenberg | Los Angeles | November 7

NYT - Microscopes are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

Carl Hulse & Robert Pear | Washington | November 7

NYT - Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.

After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.

The 18-foot-tall utensil was stealthily erected as a birthday present. Now the city is considering keeping it as a piece of street art.

Los Angeles Times, By Nicole Santa Cruz, November 7

Pasadena has a fork in the road. And it's 18 feet tall.

Where south St. John and south Pasadena avenues divide, there's a towering wooden silver fork in the traffic median. The utensil has a black steel skeleton and is rooted in 2 1/2 feet of concrete.

The art was originally intended as a surprise for Bob Stane of Altadena, who celebrated his 75th birthday Oct. 29. But Caltrans, which owns the median, and Pasadena, which maintains the land, are deciding whether to keep it up for a while as an impromptu piece of street art.

Steven Cuevas | Riverside, CA | November 7

NPR - The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, is holding two rallies in Arizona and Minnesota on Saturday to demonstrate against illegal immigration. Similar rallies in Riverside, Calif., near Los Angeles, have led to violent clashes with counter-protesters.

Late last month, a rally near a day-laborer site in Riverside attracted about two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), who wore World War II-era Nazi garb. They were outmatched by about 700 counter-protesters.

Orlando, FL | November 6

Orlando Sentinel - Eight people have been shot at an office building in downtown Orlando. Four of the eight are in trauma condition. The building is called Legions Place. Interstate 4 is shutdown eastbound.

Two people are dead and six are wounded, Orlando police said.

Office workers are still inside. They have barricaded themselves inside and have received little information from authorities on whether it's save to leave. One woman inside the building said they have been told the shooting possibly took place on the fourth or eighth floor.

Nina Tottenberg | November 4

NPR - The justices of the Supreme Court struggled Wednesday to figure out whether they should allow lawsuits against prosecutors for framing a suspect. Iowa prosecutors, backed by the federal government and prosecutors across the country, contend that there is "no freestanding constitutional right not to be framed."

Michael J. de la Merced & Andrew Ross Sorkin | November 1

NYT - General Electric and the cable giant Comcast have moved closer to a deal giving control of NBC Universal to Comcast, and a formal announcement could be made sometime next week, people briefed on the talks said Sunday.

After a series of meetings last week, the two companies reached a tentative agreement on Friday over the main points of a deal, these people said. Comcast would own about 51 percent of NBC Universal, contributing several billions of dollars in cash and its own stable of cable networks to the new venture.

From the incredible Narco Polo blog.

Our current system is almost a perfect storm for making bad laws. There is no deliberation in the era of the sound bite and the 30 second ad. Hysterical nonsense rules.

From a MyDD diary by Joe Trippi:

What voters are ready to tell anyone who will listen is that they would like to reject both parties right now if they could. They are trying to find a way to say to both parties, "We want you to change or get out of the way." Both party establishments are in denial. Both party establishments are hard of hearing. And, both party establishments are likely to see the results on Tuesday as Karl Rove sees them - a victory of one party over another. That is the real danger in 2010 and beyond for both parties.

I've heard again and again from Democrats here in D.C. that the Republicans are too damaged by the Bush hangover to really be a threat in 2010 or 2012.

That's really the best we've got, the cold comfort of knowing no matter how shitty a job our party is doing in office, no matter how little we are delivering on our promises that the other party is even less popular and therefore our nominal power will be safe in the coming elections.

Joe Bageant has written something relevant that really pains me as a card carrying Deaniac whose movement ultimately kick-started total regime change in the U.S. only to end up with more of the same weak tea middle-of-the-road corporatist bullshit:

That's what I find disheartening about the so-called grassroots initiatives for change. They are well meaning, but nobody seems to understand that the grass is growing on the turf of a totalist corporate state, with its roots dependent upon the corporate hegemony for nourishment. If the big dogs don't continue to shit on them daily, they whither and die. The big dogs know that, and they know that the grassroots-ers are moreover powerless, and that only the local pups need worry about them at all...

Read the rest at Joe's site.

Thom Shanker | Washington | October 28

NYT - American military officers are expressing concern over the spreading use of makeshift bombs beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan to other countries in the region, as well as in East Asia and South America.

Improvised explosive devices, as the military calls them, have been the largest killer of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, showing up with devastating effect in Pakistan and India, but also with less notice in Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Colombia, Somalia and parts of North Africa.