Since others are covering a certain landmark in the History of Narcissism today, the only narcissism running rampant here will be that of El Somnambulo, the Ne Plus Ultra (remember, kids, the universally-beloved ‘bulo is both multi-lingual and a master of cunning linguistics) of Masked Bloggers. As such, there is no lead story today, b/c The Beast Who Preens Proudly IS the lead story. Isn’t he always?

NYTimes: Machines Threatening to Outsmart Man?

No, not Renaissance Men like The Beast Who Ponders in Latin, but mere ordinary intelligentsia:

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

This is truly alarming. If machines can simulate empathy, they can falsify birth certificates (What? That’s allegedly been done already?) and successfully run for office. Faking empathy is the #1 requirement for any successful politician. Tom Carper has made a career of it. Say-y-y, does anyone have proof that Obama is a human and not a machine?? Time to come clean with the American people, Robama…

Washington Post: Japanese Crows a Threat to Machines?

Sort of a Circle of (Artificially-Intelligent) Life thing going on here. The best that Man (co-starring “Woman” in a sweet and submissive role) and Machine have to offer has come up short against Corvus Macrorhynchos, aka Jungle Crows:

The conflict had gone Tokyo’s way until 2006, when the formidably beaked carrion-eaters launched a counterattack. The crow count has since risen about 30 percent.

Besides indulging in their usual high jinks — ripping open plastic garbage bags, scaring children in parks, pooping on passersby — crows have been sabotaging the city’s high-speed Internet network. Hundreds of fiber-optic cables have been slashed open by crows scrounging high-tech stuffing for their nests. The birds are also blamed for periodic blackouts. At least one has been implicated in shutting off power to a bullet train in northern Japan.

Think what this could mean should these crows migrate to the Russell W. Peterson Wildlife Preserve.  They could swoop down on ‘Tom Carper’ at the ribbon-cutting (there’s a reason he’s called Robo-Candidate), leaving only a pile of carefully-calibrated springs and sprockets in their wake. 

Der Spiegel: Frauleins Gone Wild/Berlin Culture in the Gutter

A city once teeming with intellectual and cultural vibrancy has been reduced to faux-Parisian coffee thingies and Wet T-shirt contests (the contests do not necessarily take place at the coffee-thingies, although showing off their thingies is what they’re all about), and of course, overindulgence in Homer and Smitty’s beverage of choice. Some people, including reporter Reinhold ‘Less Is’ Mohr,  consider this a bad thing:

After the Wall fell, Berlin became a vibrant place teeming with creativity and excitement. But now Berlin has lost its soul and become a playground for the partying hordes of tourists who are driving away the very people who made the place so attractive and unique. It’s gotten as bad as Mallorca.

The place has been overrun by present and future British hooligans:

But that’s something you surely don’t have to tell the herds of British teenagers marching around — and around and around — the city’s Hackescher Markt area well past midnight. And instead of lugging around your average tourist accoutrements, like maps or digital cameras, these soldiers of insobriety are armed with half-empty beer bottles. Their cruelest moments come during the march between bars when their beer must hold out until, of course, they can duly shatter their glass bottles on the curbs.

These so-called “pub crawls,” which come with an early bird rebate, are the crusades of the modern age. But whereas the latter are about journeying to holy cities to pray, the former are about drinking yourself a path to the emergency room. And occasionally these pub crawlers will end up in the company of police. How dare these hypersensitive dorks, these ignorant killjoys call the police to file a noise complaint at six o’clock in the morning!

The Beast Who Pukes in the Gutter loves angry rants. And, when they’re as well-written as this one, he can only finish his first beer of the day and nod in approval.

Anchorage Daily News: Does This Seem Like Someone Who Is Criminally-Insane?

Ha! Gotcha! Not the name that is almost as famous as Jon and Kate. (BTW, who the bleep are Jon and Kate and why does anybody care? Seriously. The Beast With the Omnivorous Thirst for Knowledge HAS NO CLUE.)

And, indeed, it does seem more than a little ironic to post a story about an Alaskan who is/was criminally insane w/o an allusion to the Delusional One. But, when this (cribbed from Rugrats) poopetrator  “is a schizophrenic who killed his wife in 1984 because, as he explained at the time, her body was invaded by red square crystal beings from outer space“, El Somnambulo has no choice but to take notice. It looks like insanity has taken hold of the judge and attorneys for both sides as well. Perhaps it’s some type of petroleum distillate in Alaska’s drinking water. When said distillate is fossilized, it is alleged to take the shape of red square crystals. Hmmmm…

The (UK) Independent: A Whole New Meaning to ‘Dumpster Diving’

Make that Dumpster Swimming and Diving. Why swim in shark-infested waters when you can commune peacefully with orange peels, coffee grounds and condom wrappers–and never come in contact with them? The craze is sweeping Great Britain and New York, which may or may not speak to the worthiness of the idea:

Some ideas are great; others are rubbish. This, it would seem, combines both. In what has become a summer phenomenon in New York, bathers are swimming in water-filled dumpsters – that’s American for skip – and queuing up for the privilege. The idea of swimming in rubbish skips originated in the UK. But, like many of Britain’s inventions, it has been taken up and given an injection of enthusiasm by the US.

 Three giant skips have been hauled to an industrial lot in Brooklyn, where they were fitted with plastic liners and filled with 19,000 gallons of water. The skips are arranged in a half-circle and connected by a wooden deck, with folding chairs set out. Pool filters keep the water clean.

“We are trying to do a kind of lo-fi urban country club,” said David Belt, who, with associates Jocko Weyland and Alix Fienkind, masterminded the project. “It’s very ironic: it’s a trash receptacle, but it’s clean and refreshing. It’s funny how many people assume that people in New York would swim in really dirty water.” Uh, no it’s not. People just know New Yorkers.

These facilities do not employ lifeguards. Rather, they are watched by–drum roll, please–skip tracers. Ba-dum-bump.

NY Daily News: Best Beer to Bury Gates/Cop Feud?

Ever patriotic, the NY Daily News ponders the question of what beer Obama should serve to both quench the respective thirsts and to quell the lingering animosities between Professor Gates and Cambridge cop Crowley. While the Beast Who Slumbers’ thirst for knowledge is omnivorous, his thirst for beer is less so, and ‘pales’ in comparison to its stoutest supporters like RSmitty. So, El Somnambulo, in the only note of humility to be found in this entire article, calls on the experts to determine what brew is best to keep the Gates/Crowley dispute from remaining at ‘lagerheads’.

Thus ends El Somnambulo’s Valentine to Himself. As always, the pleasure has been all yours.

“We interrupt this Very Special Larry King Roundtable to bring you this Breaking News. Sources are reporting that former Vice-President Dick Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold any and all information from Congress regarding highly-secret programs pertaining to illegally gathering information about, and from, American citizens.”

“We now return you to “Michael Jackson-Is He in Heaven or in Hell?”, featuring Larry’s special guests, Brooke Shields, Rep. Peter King, and Bubbles the Chimp.”

LK: “Now, Bubbles, how did it feel to meet the Mayor of Osaka….”

There are Friday Afternoon News Dumps, and then there are Friday Afternoon News Dumps. This Friday featured perhaps the most disgraceful bold-faced news dump in history. Reports from Inspectors-General from five U. S. intelligence agencies detailing Cheney’s and the Bush Administration’s success in breaching institutional and constitutional barriers to conduct their illegal operations. Released at the optimal time to minimize coverage.  For the most part, a successful operation, what with the second- and third-stringers subbing for what passes for America’s journalistic royalty.

So, El Somnambulo will try to (metaphorically) scream over the vitiligo-induced White Noise to let you know what your guv’mint’s been up to. He will deviate from tradition, and simply find the best analysis and information arising out of this news dump, regardless of whether or not the content has appeared in one of today’s papers.

LEAD STORY: NY TIMES-Cheney Concealed CIA Project From Congress and American People

Cut-to-the-chase Department:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director,Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.

Frankly, a pretty weak effort from the Times, included to provide the vital context.

Associated Press: “Program Extended Far Beyond Wiretapping”

The News-Journal made this its lead story on Saturday. Kudos to whoever remains there, and whoever had the common news sense to identify the story’s importance.Highlights of the article:

The Bush administration authorized secret surveillance activities that still have not been made public, according to a new government report that questions the legal basis for the unprecedented anti-terrorism program.

(Sunday Update, from the AP’s Pamela Hess:  WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.)

President George W. Bush authorized other secret intelligence activities — which have yet to become public — even as he was launching the massive warrentless wiretapping program, the summary said. It describes the entire program as the “President’s Surveillance Program.”

The IG report said an unnamed White House official inserted a paragraph into the first threat assessment prepared by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks, which was used to justify the extraordinary intelligence measures.

The report also questions the legal advice used by President Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo at the Justice Department.

The report suggests (former WH attorney and current Philadelphia Inquirer ‘contributor’ John) Yoo ignored an explicit provision in the FISA law designed to restrict the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime. And it said flaws in Yoo’s memos later presented “a serious impediment” to recertifying the program.

Talking Points Memo: Dubya Personally Tried to Force Ashcroft to Sign Off on Illegal Surveillance

Turns out that Alberto Gonzales was telling the truth about President Bush directing his staff to go to then-AG John Ashcroft’s bedside to try to force him to sign off on his electronic surveillance program. From the IG Report:

According to notes from Ashcroft’s FBI security detail, at 6:20 p.m. that evening Card called the hospital and spoke with an agent in Ashcroft’s security detail, advising him that President Bush would be calling shortly to speak with Ashcroft. Ashcroft’s wife told the agent that Ashcroft would not accept the call. Ten minutes later, the agent called Ashcroft’s Chief of Staff David Ayres at DOJ to request that Ayres speak with Card about the President’s intention to call Ashcroft. The agent conveyed to Ayres Mrs. Ashcroft’s desire that no calls be made to Ashcroft for another day or two. However, at 6:45 p.m., Card and the President called the hospital and, according to the agent’s notes, “insisted on speaking [with Attorney General Ashcroft].” According to the agent’s notes, Mrs. Ashcroft took the call from Card and the President and was informed that Gonzales and Card were coming to the hospital to see Ashcroft regarding a matter involving national security.

From TPM:

In other words, President Bush, apparently knowing that Ashcroft’s wife did not want him seeing visitors or even speaking on the phone, nonetheless informed her that his staff would be coming to the hospital to get the sign-off they needed.

The passage essentially confirms a report from last year by Murray Waas in The Atlantic that Gonzo had told investigators that it was indeed President Bush who directed him to Ashcroft’s bedside. And the president’s call itself was first reported by Barton Gellman in his 2008 book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.

Of course, in Ashcroft’s finest moment, Card and Gonzales were unsuccessful. But they would soon find ways to get around the problem.

Talking Points Memo: Gonzales to DOJ-Shut Up

More brilliant (pardon the expression, MSM) reporting from the absolutely essential TPM. (Seriously, you need to be reading this site at least once a day.)Before he became AG, Gonzo was a ‘White House Attorney’. Here he lets Justice know just who’s runnin’ the show. The White House Counsel Gonzales to Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who had questioned the legality of the surveillance program, in a 2004 letter:

Your misunderstanding appears to have been based on a misunderstanding of the President’s expectations regarding the conduct of the Department of Justice. While the President was, and remains, interested in any thoughts the Department of Justice may have on alternative ways to achieve effectively the goals of the activities authorized by the Presidential Authorization of March 11. 2004, the President has addressed definitively for the Excutive Branch in the Presidential Authorization the interpretation of the law.

Just read that paragraph slowly a few times through. Orwell, meet Kafka.

Washington Independent: Lotsa Important Stuff Missing from IG’s Reports

There’s really no need to even look at the MSM anymore. The best reportorial digging and analysis is taking place elsewhere. One of the best, Spencer Ackerman, spells out what is missing from the reports, and why what’s missing is every bit as important as what is there.  Some great grist for the legalistic mills of the Esq.’s among us. El Somnambulo would love their feedback, translated into English that even the Beast Who Slumbers can understand.

Newsweek: AG Holder Weighs Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture

Weighs? This story broke before the release of the IG reports. If shredding the Constitution, running rogue operations out of the VP’s bunker,  and torturing and lying about it, do not warrant a Special Prosecutor, what, other than lying about oral sex to a priggish sex-obsessed partisan, would warrant such an investigation?:

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”

It had better not be. ‘Bulo defies anyone to identify any president, including Nixon, whose contempt for the Constitution has risen to this level of criminality. To fail to investigate this is tantamount to endorsing it.

Now, had the MSM been doing their jobs all along, as they were during Watergate, all of this would have been unearthed earlier and the Bush Administration at least would have been held accountable.

In fact, several top reporters, including Seymour Hersh and Murray Waas, did unearth pieces of this, in fact most of the puzzle, but were marginalized by the clueless talking heads and the corporate print media.

El Somnambulo believes, and he believes that the evidence demonstrates, that the Bush Administration has committed crimes that go far beyond even those of Watergate. They have, on their own, made a mockery of the constitutionally-sacrosanct “Separation of Powers”. They have violated both Federal law and international law.

The MSM meme has been to ‘move past this’, that ‘this is old news, people are tired of it.’ It is not old news. Thanks to the MSM, who failed to cover this hijacking of government by all the President’s men, this is NEW news. The media, which has become both complacent and corporatized since the early ’70’s, has unequivocally demonstrated that it is neither willing nor able to practice the timeless art of journalism in cases like this when journalism is vital to maintaining a democracy.

Fortunately, however, they’ve still got Michael Jackson to keep us comfortably numb.

“Larry will be right back after this message from Extenze…”

The Washington Post’s self-inflicted loss is the Huffington Post’s gain. Glenn Greenwald at Salon is reporting that Dan Froomkin has been hired by the Huffington Post.

Seeing as how his sources include Dan Froomkin and Arianna Huffington, Glenn has nailed the story. As always, his take is at least as interesting as the facts:

In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive,The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger.  

…Though the precise reasons for Froomkin’s firing by The Post remain unclear, there’s no question that his penchant for aggressively criticizing establishment media behavior escalated tensions.  In recent months,The Post spiked columns of his that contained pointed media critiques.

And here, IESHO, is the ‘money’ graf from Greenwald:

Indeed, nothing eliminates the possibility of establishment journalist jobs more quickly or decisively than criticizing the establishment media as being too sycophantic to political power, manipulated by the Right, and, in general, slothfully devoted to doing nothing other than uncritically repeating what “both sides” say (by stark contrast, the tired right-wing grievance about The Liberal Media is not just permitted but welcomed; Bill Kristol spent years depicting The New York Times as an anti-American, Terrorist-loving beacon of left-wing bias, only to be hired by them as a full-time columnist, while right-wing polemicists who voice similarly trite claims about the media — Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Bennett — are routinely heard in the very venues they attack).  As Brad DeLong documented in a thorough retrospective on Froomkin’s firing, the first attempt at The Post to remove Froomkin from his status as “reporter” was driven by right-wing complaints that the content of his column was inappropriate for a reporter.

As El Somnambulo wrote in the wake of Froomkin’s firing,  “When the final chapter on who killed newspapers is written, the answer will be simple. The newspapers themselves.”

Lead Story-The (UK) Independent: The Harrowing Tale of A Forced Marriage

Thankfully, the Independent isn’t just reporting on the story and its aftermath, but employed its reporters and resources to play a key role in exposing this story and helping to gain the freedom of the victim.

In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Dr Abedin told of the moment she was abducted: “My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background.” 

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.

This story is both horrifying and inspirational. And here is the vital context:

Last December, Dr Abedin was dramatically freed after frantic efforts – highlighted by the IoS – by lawyers in the UK and Dhaka, together with Ask, a human rights NGO, led to her release. The majority of victims are not so lucky; hundreds of missing schoolchildren each year are feared to have been married off abroad by their families.

When you picture a victim of forced marriage, whom do you see? Probably an uneducated, young Asian girl, from a deeply traditional and authoritarian family. But research published last week suggests there could be 8,000 forced marriage cases in England each year, affecting African, European and Middle Eastern communities as well. Victims in 14 per cent of cases are male; 14 per cent are under 16. A worrying proportion involves people with learning disabilities who may not have the capacity to consent.

Essential reporting on an issue that will remain shrouded in the shadows only as long as people don’t get involved. 

The (UK) Guardian: Who Needs Bush When There’s Berlusconi?

Schedules G-8 Summit in earthquake-prone town. May now have to move it at last minute due to…earthquakes:

Diplomatic eyebrows were raised when Berlusconi decided to move the conference from Sardinia – where work building a G8 conference centre was way over budget – to the site of April’s earthquake, which left 300 dead and 53,000 people still homeless. Much was made of how leaders would stay in a “barracks” at L’Aquila, a police college, setting a suitably austere tone to discussions on climate change and economic disaster. Even the beds in which delegates slept would later be donated to the homeless.

Guido Bertolaso, the civil protection chief, said the compound could withstand an earthquake stronger than April’s 5.8 magnitude, but aftershocks this weekend are reported to have sent crockery crashing to the ground.

The Italian green group Legambiente said the decision was always madness. “It’s a good idea to talk about the suffering of the earthquake victims, but you don’t actually have to go there to do it,” said spokesman Maurizio Gubbiotti. “The homeless are already having a miserable time and this G8 will restrict their movements even more. Is it wise to get over 3,000 people up there to the conference while aftershocks rumble on?”

Al Jazeera: Reports from the Afghan Front

You almost certainly missed it with all the breathless MJ/Palin/Sanford coverage in what passes for the American press, but United States and Afghan troops have launched a ‘major military operation’ in Afghanistan. The Beast Who Slumbers has tried in vain to find any American reporting placing this in context, which leaves it to foreign outlets to cover the story:

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, said: “There has been little resistance in this US offensive in the south of Helmand but the Taliban can move from one village to another and most of them are a part of the civilian population so it is very difficult.

“They [Taliban] do not engage coalition and Afghan forces in direct combat. Their tactics are suicide bombings, creating insecurity, ambushes, roadside bombs,” she said.

The biggest concern is the sweltering heat:

“Even in the tents it is extremely hot, and there’s no where to go to escape the nature of the heat. The troops in villages like Nawa have it much worse because they’re suppose to carry all the food and water they need so they don’t have to be resupplied for up to six days,” he said.

‘Bulo recommends the story not just for itself, but for the accompanying links that can be found in the box labeled “In Depth”.

In depth? What a journalistic concept. 

Sunday News-Journal(!): ‘From Delaware to San Marcos’

While El Somnambulo generally steers clear of local coverage b/c he figures that those stories can be addressed in individual threads, he found Summer Harlow‘s story on how Guatemalan migrant workers in Georgetown fueled a building boom in Guatemala fascinating:

Ten years ago, none of those buildings were there. Ten years ago, three- or four-floored houses would have been unheard-of; shacks made of adobe and bamboo walls and sheet metal roofs were the norm. Back then, there were few businesses, and even fewer paved roads.

 Because 10 years ago, immigration from this mountain city to Georgetown, Del., was just beginning to hit its stride and remittances, the money migrants living abroad send home, were just starting to trickle back to Tacaná.

 “Tacaná is so different now than it was when I left,” said Santizo, 31, who lived in Delaware from 1999 to 2004, earning $8.50 an hour working at Perdue. “My life is so much better now. I have a house, a car, possibilities. If I hadn’t gone to the United States, I never would have been able to own my own business. I’d be working in a corn or bean field, maybe earning enough to eat, but nothing else, with no way to better myself or my children.”

This is not simply a feel-good story. It addresses how the economic downturn in the US is impacting migrant workers. And, tomorrow, in the second of this two-part series, Harlow will address the issue of undocumented immigrants in Georgetown. ‘Bulo will be reading.

McClatchy Papers: Fighting to Save a Complex Eco-System

How the fates of salmon and Orca whales are intertwined along a 700-mile stretch from northern California to the Puget Sound, and how it might impact the farming-rich California Central Valley.

Nobody said it would be easy, but it’s at least nice to know that the Feds are finally acknowledging the complexity of the situation, and trying to fashion a pro-active solution:

WASHINGTON — A plan to restore salmon runs on California’s Sacramento River also could help revive killer whale populations 700 miles to the north in Puget Sound, as federal scientists struggle to protect endangered species in a complex ecosystem that stretches along the Pacific coast from California to Alaska.

Without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American rivers as part of their diet, the killer whales might face extinction, scientists concluded in a biological opinion that could result in even more severe water restrictions for farmers in the drought-stricken, 400-mile-long Central Valley of California. The valley is the nation’s most productive farm region.

The plan has faced heated criticism from agricultural interests and politicians in California, but environmentalists said it represented a welcome departure by the Obama administration from its predecessor in dealing with Endangered Species Act issues.

This is one of many issues that intrigues El Somnambulo, not least b/c he knows so little about it. But he knows that UI and several DL readers are much better grounded in the sciences. He encourages their input.

Dallas Sunday News: Privatized Toll Roads-Yet Another Bad Idea From Texas

Just as Texas led the mindless headlong rush into privatized correctional facilities, Texas has led the nation in privatizing toll roads. So here’s a cautionary note to ‘Fast’ Eddie Rendell, and other fat-cat governors looking for the easy way out: Turns out it ain’t all that it was cracked up to be.  In fact, Texas has called a ‘time-out’:

Lawmakers quit the Capitol on Thursday after refusing Gov. Rick Perry’s pleas to extend the state’s authority to enter long-term contracts with private toll-road developers beyond this summer.

 The decision won’t kill all private toll roads in Texas – not yet. But it signals a significant halt to one of Perry’s signature initiatives, and a pause for a policy that not only helped launch a powerful trend in statehouses across the U.S., but also sparked an explosion of toll roads in Texas, nowhere more extensively than in Dallas.

The situation is more complicated than the mere issue of privatization. After all, money for new roads and infrastructure improvement have to come from somewhere. The Dallas News article does a good job of describing the advantages and disadvantages of the policy.

Well worth reading. Especially when you’re sitting bumper-to-bumper on the way home from the beach.

LEAD STORY-Asia Times: Anatomy of a Pentagon Coverup

As was predicted here several weeks ago, US media lost whatever little interest they had had about recent U. S. air strikes killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

So, when the Pentagon released its ‘study’ a week ago Friday, it disappeared into a media black hole. Which is just as well, as there were apparently serious ‘omissions’ from the story:

WASHINGTON – The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the United States command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the “Taliban” were fraudulent.

 The declassified “executive summary” of the report on the bombing issued last Friday admitted that mistakes had been made in the use of airpower in that incident. However, it omitted key details which would have revealed the self-serving character of the US command’s previous claims blaming the “Taliban” – the term used for all insurgents fighting US forces – for the civilian deaths from the airstrikes.

An analysis of the report’s detailed descriptions of the three separate airstrikes also shows that the details in question could not have been omitted except by a deliberate decision to cover up the most damaging facts about the incident. 

While it is unfortunate that one has to seek out the Asia Times to get serious reporting on stories like this, ‘bulo is thankful that at least someone, in this case, Gareth Porter, seeks to hold the Obama Administration and the Pentagon accountable for their behavior.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Part of I-95 to Be Torn Down??

El Scoobnambulo sez, “Ruh-roh.”

Urban planners are encouraging that a portion of I-95 south of Center City be torn down as a way to reconnect Philly to the waterfront.

Actually, what Hack and Steinberg envision is less a Big Dig than a No Dig.

Instead of burying the highway in an expensive tunnel, they would entirely rip out a stretch of I-95 that runs south of the Ben Franklin Bridge and I-676. Traffic volume drops off there, proponents argue, because the bulk of the highway’s users are commuting into Center City from the north. Airport travelers, they point out, can take I-676 to I-76.

With I-95 out of the picture, cars would flow along the Delaware River on Columbus Boulevard. That road would still give drivers access to Penn’s Landing, the South Philadelphia retail chains, and the sports complex. But drivers would be traveling on a city street bounded by sidewalks and bike lanes and regulated by traffic signals. The highway could pick up again around South Street, or perhaps Washington Avenue.

The transition would be similar to what happens near Cape May where the Garden State Parkway downsizes to a local boulevard.

Opponents, who include planners and traffic experts, point out that tie-ups can overwhelm the southern end of Columbus Boulevard, near the big box stores. But Philly Dig supporters maintain that problem is manageable.

Now, lissen up, the Beast Who Slumbers is only gonna say this once (deep cleansing breaths to lower his pulse rate…) Don’t do it, you bleepers!! People driving I-95 don’t want to ‘connect’ with the waterfront. They don’t want to ‘connect’ with Philly! They just want to get the bleep through there with minimal agita! 

Aaaarrrghhh!

(One needle later). We now return you to the calm and collected Beast Who Self-Medicates…

Washington Post: More Women Running Farms

 Bringing sustainable practices and serving as both antidote and alternative to corporate agribusiness:

While men tend to run larger farms focused on such commodity crops as soybeans and wheat, women tend to run smaller, more specialized enterprises selling heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef to well-heeled, eco-conscious consumers.

These smaller enterprises have gotten a boost from the popularity of farmers markets and programs in which people pay in advance to receive weekly produce baskets, as well as renewed consumer interest in buying locally.  

Women say they are drawn to farming for a number of reasons. Many like the independence and flexibility that comes with running a farm. Many younger women choose farming to do something positive for the environment by employing sustainable farming techniques, said Amy Trauger, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Georgia who has studied women in agriculture.

While the global warming deniers who have migrated to this site in droves recently will no doubt scoff, El Somnambulo sees this as yet another very encouraging trend. When in doubt, eat local, and you too can be a locavore. Or don’t, and you can be loco.

McClatchy Papers: Another Bush Epic Fail-Afghan Bridge Project Boon to Drug Traffickers

“Couldn’t Bush do anything right?” has long since become a rhetorical question. The answer is ‘No’. Just check this out. After all, to borrow an ill-considered statement from Condi Rice, “No one could possibly have anticipated that, if you build a bridge from Afghanistan to another country to assist Afghani commerce, the product most exported would be drugs.” Of course not:

NIZHNY PANJ, Tajikistan — In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia’s poorest countries.

Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.

Much of the ballooning supply of drugs shipped across Afghanistan’s northern border, up to one-fifth of the country’s output, has traveled to and through Tajikistan. The opium and heroin funded rampant corruption in Tajikistan and turned the country, still hobbled by five years of civil war in the 1990s, into what at times seems like one big drug-trafficking organization.

The Beast Who Slumbers will leave it to DL’s latest group of cabalistic crackpots to explain why this is all Obama’s fault. He won’t be reading what they have to say.

The (UK) Independent: Blair’s ‘Green Policies’ Were Just So Much…Smoke

Not much of a shock. Bush’s lapdog spoke ‘Pretty Words’ (Elvis Costello reference) which turned out not to ‘mean much anymore’ when it came to implementing green policies:

When it comes to environmental sustainability, the prognosis is grim: Britain is “winning battles, but still losing the war”.

 The UK is failing to hit a raft of key targets on sustainable living, according to a new report to be published this week. In its critical analysis, released on Wednesday, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) warns that progress on a number of green targets has been “undermined by stasis or even reversion”. Jonathon Porritt, outgoing SDC chair and one-time “green guru” to Tony Blair, claims sustainability plays second fiddle to the drive for consumption-driven economic growth. “The thing that stands out is the very limited progress we’ve made on reducing inequity in our society… it’s a startling indictment of this Government that more people will be living in fuel poverty at the time of next election than were living in fuel poverty in 1997,” he said.

The “review of progress on sustainable development” details how the “Securing the Future” strategy launched by Tony Blair in 2005 has failed in a number of areas. It says Britain remains the EU’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and is not on track to meet its target of a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010.

Why? Oopsies:

An apparent decrease becomes a significant increase once emissions embedded in trade and travel are taken into account.

Once again, Condi does the honors: “No one could have possibly anticipated that emissions embedded in trade and travel would have an impact on energy sustainability.” So, they just didn’t count ’em.

San Francisco Chronicle: How California Descended Into Budgetary Chaos

There’s something here for everyone. Increased partisanship due to gerrymandering, referendum and initiative leading to programs with no funding source, term limits, Prop. 13, you name it. 

A fascinating glimpse into what appears to be a case of Unintended Consequences on Steroids.

Dallas Morning News: Cowboys’ Football Bubble Collapse Result of Deliberately Shoddy Work

Here’s why all those ‘tort reform’ advocates are full of shit and why victims of shoddy work deserve their day in court:

When Cover-All Building Systems named a new engineering director in late 2003, it was just wrapping up construction on the Dallas Cowboys practice facility – and just beginning the long process of losing a lawsuit over the recent collapse, in Philadelphia, of another big tent-like building.

The newcomer, Brooke McLarty, came to believe that Cover-All’s products needed an engineering overhaul. He told The Dallas Morning News he gave management a dire warning in 2004:

“We can’t continue to operate this way or we’re going to kill somebody.”

When confronted a few years ago with the “we’re going to kill somebody” warning, Stobbe initially responded well, McLarty said. Cover-All hired a consultant to redesign its existing mass-market product lines.

But there was no systematic effort to beef up structures they’d already erected, including the customized jobs for the Cowboys and Patriots.

And, of course, the lizard-like Jerry Jones had Dallas municipal government wired, so there was no serious inspection of the facility. 

Please explain to El Somnambulo while all of those complicit in the erection of an unsafe structure should not be held liable for their actions.

Or, better yet, don’t waste your purple (or blue and silver) prose.