Later On

Mark Bittman writes in the NY Times:

There’s a feeling of inevitability in writing about McDonald’s latest offering, their “bowl full of wholesome” — also known as oatmeal. The leading fast-food multinational, with sales over $16.5 billion a year (just under the GDP of Afghanistan), represents a great deal of what is wrong with American food today. From a marketing perspective, they can do almost nothing wrong; from a nutritional perspective, they can do almost nothing right, as the oatmeal fiasco demonstrates.

One “positive” often raised about McDonald’s is that it sells calories cheap. But since many of these calories are in forms detrimental rather than beneficial to our health and to the environment, they’re actually quite expensive — the costs aren’t seen at the cash register but in the form of high health care bills and environmental degradation.

Oatmeal is on the other end of the food spectrum. Real oatmeal contains no ingredients; rather, it is an ingredient. As such, it’s a promising lifesaver: oats are easy to grow in almost any non-extreme climate and, minimally processed, they’re profoundly nourishing, inexpensive and ridiculously easy to cook. They can even be eaten raw, but more on that in a moment.

Like so many other venerable foods, oatmeal has been roundly abused by food marketers for more than 40 years. Take, for example, Quaker Strawberries and Cream Instant Oatmeal, which contains no strawberries, no cream, 12 times the sugars of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats and only half of the fiber. At least it’s inexpensive, less than 50 cents a packet on average. (A serving of cooked rolled oats will set you back half that at most, plus the cost of condiments; of course, it’ll be much better in every respect.)

The oatmeal and McDonald’s story broke late last year, when Mickey D’s, in its ongoing effort to tell us that it’s offering “a selection of balanced choices” (and to keep in step with arch-rival Starbucks) began to sell the cereal. Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. (Not only that, they’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.) “Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).

A more accurate description than “100% natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”

Since we know there are barely any rules governing promotion of foods, one might wonder how this compares to real oatmeal, besides being 10 times as expensive. Some will say that it tastes better, but that’s because they’re addicted to sickly sweet foods, which is what this bowlful of wholesome is.

Others will argue that the McDonald’s version is more “convenient.” This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonald’s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher. (If you’re too busy to eat it before you leave the house, you could throw it in a container and microwave it at work.)

If you don’t want to bother with the stove at all, you could put some rolled oats (instant not necessary) in a glass or bowl, along with a teeny pinch of salt, sugar or maple syrup or honey, maybe some dried fruit. Add milk and let stand for a minute (or 10). Eat. Eat while you’re walking around getting dressed. And then talk to me about convenience.

The aspect one cannot argue is . . .

Continue reading, please: it’s really worth it.

My Mac came with a chess game—very nice touch, and Microsoft offers only mindless games—and I’ve been playing from time to time, generally going down in flames in fewer than a dozen moves. Very annoying. Then I decided to start playing the same opening every time, figuring that I’d gradually work my way past the various ways of losing—but, of course, the program does not unfailingly answer e4 with e5, leading into the Ruy Lopez. It also plays the French Defence (… e6), the Caro-Kann (… c6), the Sicilian (… c5), and so on.

I kept thinking I needed to dig out my book of openings, when—hello? I am playing on a computer connected to the Internet—I thought of looking for a database of openings available on-line. Man! do they have some great ones: showing, move by move (sorted from most to least used), percentage who played it and percentage of wins for white, wins for black, and draws. All derived from tournament play. I suppose you can even find databases restricted to games played by Master and above, but this one will do for now. Pretty damn nifty. Chessgames.com

With the database, I can in effect follow my plan, but instantly and drawing from thousands of games.

I really like the shaving soaps I’ve purchased from Honeybee Soaps (formerly Honeybee Spa). I recently got the note below, and I’m assuming that you might like them as well. This is a purely voluntary gesture on my part, simply because I like the products. Here’s the note:

We’re very excited to offer several new items and new fragrances.

Check out our new Gentlemen’s Colognes, available in a convenient 2 oz. size, approved for air travel. If your favorite fragrance is not yet available in cologne, please drop us an email and let us know what other scents you’d like to see.

We’ve added 2 new fragrances to our All Natural Essential Oil shaving soaps….Blood Orange and Pink Grapefruit. They smell absolutely phenomenal, so if you like citrus, these are a must try!

Fireside and Honey Ale are the newest additions to the fragrance oil shaving soap line. These are available individually, in the 3 and 6 pc variety sets, and also in jars, sticks, and jumbo shea butter bath soaps.

It’s been a busy winter and we’re gearing up for spring. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Sue
Honeybee Soaps

The article explains the reasons why each of the languages shown is in the list, but the article unfortunately omits the obvious: Esperanto. Perhaps that is because Esperanto turns out to be easy for speakers of any language to learn (it has been quite popular in Japan, for exmaple), not just speakers of English.

Their list:

1. Afrikaans
2. Danish
3. French
4. Italian
5. Norwegian
6. Portuguese
7. Romanian
8. Spanish
9. Swedish
Honorable Mention: Frisian

UPDATE: Zach points out these additional articles:

• A Turning Point in Labor History
  Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations
• Hitting the Unions Where It Hurts
  Daniel DiSalvo, political scientist
• The Essence of Democracy
  William B. Gould IV, Stanford University
• Fiscally Modest, Politically Bold
  Christian Schneider, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute
• It’s Not About Money
  Linda Kaboolian, Harvard Kennedy School
• F.D.R. Warned Us
  James Sherk, Heritage Foundation

From The Center for American Progress in an email:

Two months after taking office, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has launched  one of the most aggressive attacks on union rights since the 1960s. Purporting to rein in the state’s budget deficit, Walker is pushing legislation that marks “a lethal threat to public-sector labor” by threatening “to strip state employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything besides their pay.” Walker’s radical policy has sparked eight days of protests in Wisconsin from a range of parties, including firefighters, teachers, the Green Bay Packers, and even Egyptian unions. President Obama recently called Walker’s policy “an assault” on workers’ rights. Despite the unpopularity of his position, Walker has refused any compromises offered by the unions and members of his own party unless collective bargaining rights are eliminated. To prevent such a calamity, 14 state Democratic lawmakers took a page out of President Abraham Lincoln’s playbook and fled the state last week to prevent the bill from moving forward. Rather than following any fiscal principle, Walker’s crusade against workers betrays a political calculation to gut the rights and organizing capabilities of his political opposition. Rather than shy away from such blatant anti-democratic policies, Republican governors are following suit and threatening to derail and destroy the few remaining political voices for the middle and working class.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nine years ago today, a tiny little kitten, eyes shut and still looking sort of like a caterpillar, came into the world. Today she is known far and wide as Miss Megs, and she enjoys her life fully.

Not only the shaving soap and after shave, but the very razor (according to a commenter, used in the film Goldfinger): the Gillette slim-handle adjustable, here a rhodium-plated version holding a Schick Platinum Plus blade. Again a fine lather, this time worked up with a new brush I already like a lot: a compact Gerson, which The Wife picked up in Paris. It has a very nice thick and dense knot, and works a treat.

Three smooth passes, a splash of Floris 89 Aftershave, and I’m off to campus. And I can see why Bond liked this one—well, why Ian Fleming liked it.

I sent an email to the Microsoft store to complain about the unavailability of Microsoft OneNote in Office for Mac, and when would OneNote be ported to the Mac. (There is nothing like OneNote for rapidly taking notes in all directions and sorting them as you go, more or less.)

I immediately got a response that included:

Thank you for taking the time to email us at the Microsoft Store. I understand that you have come to enjoy OneNote on your PC, and have been unable to find the equivalent version of OneNote for your Mac. I can see how inconvenient this would be, and would be glad to assist you.

At this time Microsoft has not released a Mac version of OneNote, as I see you have discovered when looking at purchasing Office for Mac Home and Student 2011.

As an online retail store, the Microsoft Store does not have advance information about future product offerings, such as a Mac version of OneNote. I have searched using my resources, and have not found any mention of this software. It would be speculation that there will not be a OneNote for Mac in the 2011 release, as Office for Mac 2011 has been out now for some time. I understand how disappointing this would be.

I have found on Bing, a search listing for an alternative to OneNote, for use on a Mac. This listing can be found here http://www.bing.com/search?q=OneNote+for+Mac+Alternative&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC .

At the link I found quite a bit of interesting software addressing (with varying degrees of success) the OneNote functionality and niche. One in particular is interesting: according to one of the reviews, it’s from the same shop that created OneNote.

I thought this was a highly professional response that addressed the need I had expressed as well as possible. I’m impressed.

Ed Brayton has an excellent post today, summarizing what one might call the “sensible” position on Islam and Sharia law, grounded in reality. The post itself is worth reading, and the comments are intriguing as well.

My jaw dropped. Reported in the Washington Post by Joshua Partlow:

KABUL – To the shock of President Hamid Karzai’s aides, Gen. David Petraeus on Sunday suggested that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting.

Petraeus’s exact language in the closed-door session at the presidential palace is not known, nor the precise message he meant to convey. But his remarks about the deadly U.S. military operation in Konar province were interpreted as deeply offensive by some in the room. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

They said he dismissed allegations by Karzai’s office and the provincial governor that civilians were killed, and said residents invented stories, or even injured their children, to blame U.S. forces for targeting civilians and to stop the operation.

“I was dizzy. My head was spinning,” said one participant about listening to Petraeus. “This was shocking. Would any father do this to his children? This is really absurd.”

Petraeus, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

U.S. and Afghan officials have started to investigate what happened during a three- to four-day operation in the mountains of Ghaziabad district, one of the most dangerous and inhospitable parts of Afghanistan. U.S. military officials said there is no evidence innocent civilians died. The governor of Konar, Fazlullah Wahidi, disagreed, citing reports from villagers that dozens of women and children perished. Karzai’s office placed the civilian death toll at 50 . . .

Continue reading. The military’s record on reporting civilian deaths is extremely clear: the military will immediately and officially say that all deaths were armed insurgents or terrorists or whatever, and then if an independent investigation determines that there were in fact civilian casualties (and occasionally all those killed were civilians, as in the case of the wedding party), the military accepts the findings, expresses regret, and promises to make changes. And so it goes on and on.

But this is a new low.

And, failing that, simply kill everyone. Here’s an example:

In terms of understanding how the U.S. is perceived in the Muslim world — and why some people might become sufficiently enraged to give up their own lives to attack us — consider the following:

(1) On January 27, Raymond Davis, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier, shot and killed two Pakistani citizens in that nation’s second-largest city, Lahore, using a semi-automatic Glock pistol.  Davis claims he acted in self-defense when they attacked his car to rob him — both of the dead were armed and had lengthy records of petty crimes — but each was shot five times, and one was killed after Davis was safely back in his car and the victim was fleeing.  After shooting the two dead, Davis calmly photographed their bodies and then called other Americans stationed in Pakistan (likely CIA officers) for assistance; one of the Americans’ Land Rovers dispatched to help Davis struck and killed a Pakistani motorcyclist while speeding to the scene.  The Pakistani wife of one of Davis’ victims then committed suicide by swallowing rat poison, saying on her deathbed that she had serious doubts that Davis would be held accountable.

For reasons easy to understand — four dead Pakistanis at the hands of Americans, two of whom (at least) were completely innocent — this episode has become a major scandal in that nation.  From the start, the U.S. Government has demanded Davis’ release on the grounds of “diplomatic immunity.”  But the very murky status of Davis and his work in Pakistan has clouded that claim.  The State Department first said he worked for the consulate, not the embassy, which would make him subject to weaker immunity rights than diplomats enjoy (State now says that its original claim was a “mistake” and that Davis worked for the embassy).  President Obama then publicly demanded the release of what he absurdly called ”our diplomat in Pakistan”; when he was arrested, Davis ”was carrying a 9mm gun and 75 bullets, bolt cutters, a GPS unit, an infrared light, telescope, a digital camera, an air ticket, two mobile phones and a blank cheque.”  Late last week, a Pakistani court ordered a three-week investigation to determine if Davis merits diplomatic immunity, during which time he will remain in custody.  And now it turns out, according The Guardian last night, that ”our diplomat” was actually working for the CIA:

The American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US, is a CIA agent who was on assignment at the time. . . . Based on interviews in the US and Pakistan, the Guardian can confirm that the 36-year-old former special forces soldier is employed by the CIA. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. . . . He served in the US special forces for 10 years before leaving in 2003 to become a security contractor. A senior Pakistani official said he believed Davis had worked with Xe, the firm formerly known as Blackwater.

A few caveats are in order here.  Though The Guardian uses unusually strong language for its claim (“the Guardian can confirm”), the reporting appears based mostly if not entirely on Pakistani sources and is entirely anonymous (though Davis’ CIA connection has been speculated from the start and never denied by the U.S. Government).  Most countries, including the U.S., have on occasion been forced to release perpetrators of heinous crimes because they had “diplomatic” status (or were family members of diplomats):  including murder, rape and pedophilia, and it often (and understandably) engenders public rage.  The U.S. is hardly alone in spying under diplomatic cover.  And the general custom is that once a person enters a country with a diplomatic passport — as Davis did here — they are entitled to immunity regardless of their specific work.  In sum, both the factual and legal issues here are both unclear and complex (The Guardian today has an excellent article gathering all the known facts, while The Washington Post‘s “fact-checking” feature reviews the international legal issues and “withholds judgment” on who is right).

But several points are quite clear.  There’s the gross hypocrisy of the U.S. State Department invoking lofty “rule-of-law” and diplomacy principles under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations — the very same State Department that just got caught systematically violating that convention when WikiLeaks cables revealed that U.S. “diplomats” were ordered to spy on U.N. officials and officials in other countries.  Then there’s the delusional notion — heard mostly from progressives with romanticized images of the State Department — that WikiLeaks’ release of diplomatic cables was terrible because it’s wrong to undermine “diplomacy” with leaks, since the State Department (unlike the Big, Bad Pentagon) is devoted to Good, Humane causes of facilitating peace.  As this episode illustrates, there’s no separation among the various arms of the U.S. Government; they all are devoted to the same end and simply use different means to accomplish it (when the U.S. Government is devoted to war, “diplomatic” functions are used to bolster the war, as Colin Powell can tell you).

But what this highlights most of all is . . .

Continue reading.

And how is this handled by the American press? Exactly as you would expect nowadays:

Earlier today, I wrote in detail about new developments in the case of Raymond Davis, the former Special Forces soldier who shot and killed two Pakistanis on January 27, sparking a diplomatic conflict between the U.S. (which is demanding that he be released on the ground of ”diplomatic immunity”) and Pakistan (whose population is demanding justice and insisting that he was no “diplomat”).  But I want to flag this new story separately because it’s really quite amazing and revealing.

Yesterday, as I noted earlier, The Guardian reported that Davis — despite Obama’s description of him as “our diplomat in Pakistan” — actually works for the CIA, and further noted that Pakistani officials believe he worked with Blackwater.  When reporting that, The Guardian noted that many American media outlets had learned of this fact but deliberately concealed it — because the U.S. Government told them to:  ”A number of US media outlets learned about Davis’s CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration.”

Now it turns out that The New York Times — by its own shameless admission — was one of those self-censoring, obedient media outlets.  Now that The Guardian published its story last night, the NYT just now published a lengthy article detailing Davis’ work — headlined:  ”American Held in Pakistan Shootings Worked With the C.I.A.” — and provides a few more details:

The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country, according to American government officials. . . . Mr. Davis has worked for years as a C.I.A. contractor, including time at Blackwater Worldwide, the controversial private security firm (now called Xe) that Pakistanis have long viewed as symbolizing a culture of American gun slinging overseas.

But what’s most significant is the paper’s explanation for why they’re sharing this information with their readers only now:

The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold information about Mr. Davis’s ties to the agency at the request of the Obama administration, which argued that disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk. Several foreign news organizations have disclosed some aspects of Mr. Davis’s work with the C.I.A.. On Monday, American officials lifted their request to withhold publication, though George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined any further comment.

In other words, the NYT knew about Davis’ work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to.  Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so — only after it’s already been reported by other newspapers which don’t take orders from the U.S. Government.

It’s one thing for a newspaper to withhold information because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives.  But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public statements that were misleading in the extreme — Obama’s calling Davis “our diplomat in Pakistan” — while the NYT deliberately concealed facts undermining those government claims because government officials told them to do so.  That’s called being an active enabler of government propaganda.  While working for the CIA doesn’t preclude holding “diplomatic immunity,” it’s certainly relevant to the dispute between the two countries and the picture being painted by Obama officials.  Moreover, since there is no declared war in Pakistan, this incident — as the NYT puts it today — “inadvertently pulled back the curtain on a web of covert American operations inside Pakistan, part of a secret war run by the C.I.A. ”  That alone makes Davis’ work not just newsworthy, but crucial.

Worse still, the NYT has repeatedly . . .

Continue reading. I believe that Greenwald is pointing out how the democratic infrastructure of our country—including courageous and straight-talking journalism and a government that acts, if not according to its ideals, at last in accordance with law and the international treaties to which it has agreed. We have lost both, and the situation is much as when an arch loses the keystone, only a little bit slower. But the direction we’re going is quite clear, and since it is in corporate interests to continue in that direction, that’s where we’re going. Hope you like the ride and the scenery.

I read some novel about the military, and I think it was one of the well-known ones—Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead, From Here to Eternity, maybe even The Last Parallel: A Marine’s War Journal, Martin Russ’s great memoir of the Korean War. At any rate, the enlistees in boot camp have bonded under the pressure of their sergeant, who seems to criticize their every move.

The new troops are disgruntled and tired of the mistreatment, but one day, as they march back to the barracks, chanting, one says to his buddy, “Hey, the sergeant’s not yelling at us much today,” and his buddy replies, “I think we’re starting to do it right.”

I feel as though we are starting to find our groove in the Pilates work. We obviously still require instruction and correction, but we’re starting to understand what it is we are supposed to do and how to breathe in the exercises, and so on. So we have periods where we are just working on the reformer, and the only sound is our breathing.

Of course, we’re also quite a bit stronger at this point, and that helps as well.

Much still to learn, and our form is a LONG way from polished, but progress is noted.

From Giacomo Casanova’s History of My Life, Vol 2, Chapter IV:

Stupidity is far more dangerous in a housemaid than malice, and more costly to her master, for he may be justified in punishing one who is malicious but not one who is a fool; he can only discharge her, and learn another lesson in the conduct of life. Mine has just used three notebooks, containing a detailed account of what I am about to set down in outline in this one, because she needed paper for her housekeeping. To excuse herself, she tells me that since the sheets were old and scrawled all over and even blotted in places, she though them more fit for her to use than the clean white sheets on my table. If I had thought about it I would not have flown into a rage; but the first effect of rage is precisely to render the mind incapable of thought. I can say to my credit that my anger is always short-lived; irasci celerem tamen ut placabilis essem (“I become angry quickly, even as I am quickly appeased”). After wasting my time treating to epithets whose application  escaped her entirely and proving to her by the most lucid reasoning that she was a fool, she refuted all my arguments by never answering a word. I resigned myself to writing all over again, angrily and consequently badly, what had I been in a good humor I should have written well; but my reader can console himself with the thought that, as in mechanics, he will gain in time what he loses in energy.

It’s always a good idea to have something about Monday mornings that you look forward to eagerly, and for me it’s shaving smooth the two-day stubble from the weekend: I get the feeling that I’m pulling up my socks and getting things going again.

Today it was a compact shave, as you see: the Plisson HMW 12 with the horn handle worked up a fine lather from the Ogallala Sandalwood-Bay Rum shave stick, the Merkur Slant Bar smoothly sliced away the stubble, and a splash of the Ogallala Bay Rum finished the job. Highly satisfactory.

Extremely interesting post at Transform, which begins:

Those who have followed the drugs debate will be only too aware of the way that politicians play on the fears of their citizens in order to maintain the war on drugs, despite the fact that it is their citizens who bear the brunt of its counterproductive effect. The International Relations theory of securitisation describes, better than any framework I’ve seen, how the threat-based process works. Moving to a non-securitised approach is essential to ending the war on drugs.

Securitisation is described as “the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics” (Buzan et al. 1998: 23). By declaring something a security issue, the speaker entitles himself to enforce and legitimise unusual and extreme measures to fight this threat. Referenced from here.

Rita Taureck of the University of Birmingham describes securitisation:

“The main argument of securitisation theory is that security is a speech act, that alone by uttering ‘security’ something is being done. “It is by labelling something a security issue that it becomes one.”(Wæver 2004a,) A securitising actor, by stating that a particular referent object is threatened in its existence, claims a right to extraordinary measures to ensure the referent objects survival. The issue is then moved out of the sphere of normal politics into the realm of emergency politics, where it can be dealt with swiftly and without the normal (democratic) rules and regulations of policy making. For the content of security this means that it has no longer any given meaning but that it can be anything a securitising actor says it is. Security – understood in this way – is a social construction, with the meaning of security dependent on what is done with it.”

This table illustrates how the process of securitisation applies to drug policy: . . .

Continue reading.

Good post offering constructive advice so that one can avoid saying things that would come from a fool. It begins:

The past few days I have heard so many stupid things from friends, blogs, pundits, correspondents, politicians, experts, writers that I want to pull my hair.  So, I will not beat around the bush, I will be really blunt and give you a handy list to keep you from offending Egyptians, Arabs and the world when you discuss, blog or talk about Egypt.  Honestly, I would think most Progressives would know these things, but let’s get to it.

• “I am so impressed at how articulate Egyptians are.”  Does this sound familiar?  Imagine saying this about a Latino or African American?  You don’t say it.  So don’t say it about Egyptians.   Gee, thank you oh great person who is of limited experience and human contact for recognizing that out of 80 million people some could be articulate, educated and speak many languages.  Not cool.  Don’t say it.  You may think it, but it makes you sound like a dumb ass.

• “This is so sad”:  No, sad were the thirty years of oppression, repression and torture.

• ” I loved Sadat”:  Mubarak was made of the same cloth of Sadat.  Same repression, same ill-treatment of their people, yet you were all in love with Sadat.  Hmm, where and when do you think the repression started?  The State Of Emergency?  Sadat was not loved by the Egyptian people.   Why do you love Sadat?

• “What they did to the Mummies is horrible”:  Yes, but who did it?  Think, Mubarak, for years has been playing the “I am the stabilizing force”.  The one thing you know about Egypt, the stuff that was underground and from the past, you will be distraught and find the protestors to be disgusting.  Yet it was not the protesters who did it.  In Alexandria, the young people protected the library.  Did anyone carry that story?  Statement from the Director of the Alexandria Library:

The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters.  I am there daily within the bounds of the curfew hours.   However, the Library will be closed to the public for the next few days until the curfew is lifted and events unfold towards an end to the lawlessness and a move towards the resolution of the political issues that triggered the demonstrations.

• “The Muslim Brothers are Terrorists”  Maybe you should look at their English Website, or try something easy like this link Check this out: . . .

Continue reading.

On display for the world to see:

In March, 2002, American citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and publicly accused by then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft of being “The Dirty Bomber.”  Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina, where he was held for almost two years completely incommunicado (charged with no crime and denied all access to the outside world, including even a lawyer) and was brutally tortured, both physically and psychologically.  All of this — including the torture — was carried out pursuant to orders from President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials.  Just as the Supreme Court was about to hear Padilla’s plea to be charged or released — and thus finally decide if the President has the power to imprison American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind — the Government indicted him in a federal court on charges far less serious than Ashcroft had touted years earlier, causing the Supreme Court to dismiss Padilla’s arguments as “moot”; Padilla was then convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Padilla — like so many other War on Terror detainees — has spent years in American courts trying unsuccessfully to hold accountable the high-level government officials responsible for his abuse and lawless imprisonment (which occurred for years prior to his indictment).  Not only has Padilla (and all other detainees) failed to obtain redress for what was done to them, but worse, they have been entirely denied even the right to have their cases heard in court.  That’s because the U.S. Government has invented — and federal courts have dutifully accepted — a whole slew of legal doctrines which have only one purpose:  to insulate the country’s most powerful political officials from legal accountability even when they commit the most egregious crimes, such as imprisoning incommunicado and torturing an American citizen arrested and detained on U.S. soil.

Yesterday, in South Carolina, . . .

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I made this last night, using the Texsport cast-iron Dutch oven that’s listed as 2 qts but is in fact 2.5 qts (by my measure). I needed the extra room because the chard is bulky but cooks down. I won’t be making this one again until after reaching goal: it was so good I couldn’t resist and gradually ate the whole thing, so my weight is up some this morning. But I know what to do about that.

Layers from the bottom:

3 thick scallions, sliced
1/2 cup uncooked converted rice (which makes two servings)
2 Tbsp sherry vinegar, poured over rice
3 large Monterey Bay fresh sardines, cleaned and filleted (total 9 oz after cleaning)
juice of half a lime
salt, pepper, crushed red pepper (just a little for body, not so much that it’s spicy)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp capers
1/4 c chopped pitted kalamata olives
1/2 c chopped Italian parsley (parsley adds a noticeable and good flavor in this type of cooking)
1 small green bell pepper, cut into squares
3 red Fresno peppers, chopped
1/2 fennel bulb, cored and sliced, along with some of the stalks
1 yellow crookneck squash, chopped
sheep’s milk feta
chopped red chard, leaves and stalks, as much as will fit
1 Meyer lemon, cut into chunks (I generally don’t bother peeling these: Meyer lemon peel is thin and tasty)

Whisk together and pour over:

2 Tbsp vinaigrette
2 Tbsp Amontillado sherry
1 Tbsp homemade Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Cover and cook at 450ºF for 45 minutes.

It was so good. The Meyer lemon had cooked to total tenderness, the rice was exceptionally flavorful, the sardines were rich and tasty but not too “fishy.”

It’s easy to deal with the sardines: cut off the head, cut open the cavity and rinse out all the guts, then push your index finger along each side of the spine for the full length, which separates it so that it can be lifted out.

In fact, the step they’ve taken should be emulated by every city. As Ed Brayton says, it should be Federal law.