…In her first hours of freedom, Carroll and the Monitor were forced to counter allegations by conservative bloggers that she had betrayed a sympathy for her kidnappers.

The charge was given currency by the New York Times, which suggested Carroll had come to identify with her abductors’ aims.

In a statement posted on the Monitor website on Saturday, Carroll dismissed any suggestion she shared the aims of her kidnappers: “Let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes.”

…On Saturday, Carroll also disavowed an interview granted to Iraqi television immediately after she was freed in which she said she was never threatened by the kidnappers. “In fact, I was threatened many times,” she said. “Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not.”
guardian.co.uk

All she said was that the insurgency will win: you don’t need a gun to your head to say that, just some common sense.

“See those kids by the river/Drop some napalm/Watch them quiver/Napalm sticks to kids” ~ U.S. Army cadence

It’s a popularly accepted truth that art is an expression of culture. American culture, then, is obsessed with sadism. The movie theater has become our Colosseum, the actor our gladiator. Blood is our artistic medium of choice, the human body our canvas. God’s command to meditate on what is right, pure, and lovely has been perverted by society to an implicit command to meditate on whatever is evil, whatever is polluted, and whatever is hideous.

Sadism commands top dollar at the box office these days, according to an article in the latest issue of Newsweek. Confirming what I’ve long suspected, the article quotes horror magazine editor Tony Timpone, “In 1990, I had to pull my hair out just to find a movie to put on the cover. There were only three or four major horror releases a year. Now there’s three or four a month. We’re like pigs in slop.”

…While stateside audiences munch popcorn and revel in the sight of an eyeball being cut from a woman’s skull, as portrayed in Hostel, is it any wonder that each day reveals a new story about American troops abusing Iraqis in one way or another? True, the Abu Ghraib MPs confined themselves to techniques for producing humiliation and mental distress, bypassing outright “torture,” but their motivation was to abuse for time-killing giggles. Mistreatment became a recreational sport, a form of diversion like you might find in your friendly neighborhood theater.

Of course, the American occupation in Iraq has produced more than perverted shenanigans. Aidan Delgado, who was profiled in a New York Times article after being discharged from the Army for conscientious objection, says, “Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They’d keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people’s heads.” Delgado also says he “witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old.” Hysterical, right? Why should American troops behave any differently when the movies tell us our culture approves of torture as entertainment?
pieterfriedrich.com

… ”While the United States remains a spectacularly rich country by any standard, we are drifting toward a Third-World-like distribution of our riches. For tens of millions of Americans, the alternative to unemployment has become a dead-end job that doesn’t necessarily pay enough to cover basic living expenses,” writes co-editor James Lardner, a senior fellow at Demos, a New York-based think tank.
strib.com

WASHINGTON – Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who triggered the demise of the Soviet Union’s Communist empire, said in an interview published Sunday that the United States was “intoxicated” by its power and should not impose its will on others.

“This talk of pre-emptive strikes, of ignoring the UN Security Council and international legal obligations — all this is leading toward a dark night,” Gorbachev told Time magazine.
turkishpress.com

AUSTIN – A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

“Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine,” Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward’s University on Friday. Pianka’s words are part of what he calls his “doomsday talk” – a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity’s ecological misdeeds and Pianka’s predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.

…”This is really an exciting time,” he said Friday amid warnings of apocalypse, destruction and disease. Only minutes earlier he declared, “Death. This is what awaits us all. Death.” Reflecting on the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, “May you live in interesting times,” he wore, surprisingly, a smile.

So what’s at the heart of Pianka’s claim?

6.5 billion humans is too many.

In his estimation, “We’ve grown fat, apathetic and miserable,” all the while leaving the planet parched.

The solution?

A 90 percent reduction.

That’s 5.8 billion lives – lives he says are turning the planet into “fat, human biomass.” He points to an 85 percent swell in the population during the last 25 years and insists civilization is on the brink of its downfall – likely at the hand of widespread disease.

“[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity,” Pianka said. “We’re looking forward to a huge collapse.”

But don’t tell local “citizen scientist” Forrest Mims to quietly swallow Pianka’s call to awareness. Mims says it’s an “abhorrent death wish” and contends he has “no choice but to take a stand.”

Mims attended the educator’s doomsday presentation at the Texas Academy of Science’s annual meeting March 2-4. There, the organization honored Pianka as its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist – another issue Mims vocally opposes.

“This guy is a loose cannon to believe that worldwide genocide is the only answer,” said Mims, who filed two formal petitions with the academy following the meeting.
seguingazette.com

Meeting Doctor Doom
…there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka, the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.

This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka’s strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.
sas.org

Many of us have learned – with good reason – to distrust the corporate media and have turned increasingly to a host of internet web sites and other non-corporate-controlled sources for news and analysis. Of course it’s in our interest to make all our grassroots information sources as trustworthy as possible. So it’s troubling when incorrect or otherwise misleading information is distributed by our own sources. Initially my focus was on the misunderstanding of the Morales’ speech in the Science for the People group. But then I realized it was probably fairly widespread among those of us who, because of our left-oriented ideology, tend to accept what we learn from our preferred sources without being sufficiently critical.

… I find it remarkable, though perhaps not too surprising, that much of the liberal and even radical left media share with the corporate media an emphasis on personalities and the instruments of power in their choice of “news” and commentary. Of course the nature of the commentary, especially that of the radical left, is entirely opposed to that of corporate media. But my point is that even when arguing from a radical left perspective, the framework of the discussion, the choice of what is important to argue about, has almost always been established by “the enemy”. When we do this, we are fighting on their turf, a great mistake.
umb.edu

It had all the ugliness of the Old South in an institution that prides itself on being a pillar of the New South: a brutal collision of race, sex and class at one of America’s most prestigious universities.

In an episode that has deeply divided opinion at North Carolina’s Duke University and beyond, this much is clear. On March 14, an African American working her way through college at North Carolina Central University, Durham, reported to police that she had been gang-raped by three white men at a party organised by the lacrosse team of Duke University, which is on the other side of town.

…Duke, one of America’s most sought after private institutions, is an island of affluence in a working-class African American town where the median income is less than the $41,000 (£24,000) annual tuition. The other college is a traditionally black institution. Lacrosse, unlike sports that are viewed as an escape from urban poverty, is seen as an elite pursuit.

The lacrosse team at Duke, the Blue Devils, is by reputation hard-drinking. Last week, the News & Observer reported that 15 members had received cautions for under-age drinking and other minor offences. Meanwhile, neighbours have accused team members of painting racist graffiti on cars, and yelling racist insults at the woman as she left the party.

Those tensions have deepened in the days since the party, with neighbours banging pots and pans outside the players’ house in nightly vigils. Meanwhile, the university has struggled to counter criticism that it has been too tolerant of rowdiness among sports teams, and was slow to discipline the lacrosse team for the excessive drinking at the party.

University officials waited two weeks after the alleged incident to cancel the rest of the lacrosse season.
guardian.co.uk

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is poised to launch a bid to transform the global politics of oil by seeking a deal with consumer countries which would lock in a price of $50 a barrel.

A long-term agreement at that price could allow Venezuela to count its huge deposits of heavy crude as part of its official reserves, which Caracas says would give it more oil than Saudi Arabia.

“We have the largest oil reserves in the world, we have oil for 200 years.” Mr Chávez told the BBC’s Newsnight programme in an interview to be broadcast tonight. “$50 a barrel – that’s a fair price, not a high price.”
guardian.co.uk

Israeli artillery fired about 150 shells into the Gaza strip over the weekend, some from gunboats for the first time, in the largest barrage against the territory since the withdrawal of Jewish settlers and the army in September. The military said the assault, aimed principally at open land, was in response to the continued firing of rudimentary rockets from Gaza by Palestinian factions.

The air force also hit a number of buildings in northern Gaza which it said sheltered rocket launchers. They included a casino complex under construction and partly owned by Israelis.

The assault did not stop Palestinian factions from launching at least six rockets into Israel but neither they nor the army’s barrage caused casualties.

The air force also dropped leaflets over Gaza city that read: “Where are the terror organisations leading you? How much longer are you going to allow terrorists to control your lives and your future? The military response will worsen as long as the firing continues.”
guardian.co.uk

Haaretz: Army, navy pound Gaza launch sites in massive assault

KIZILTEPE, Turkey (Reuters) – One thousand Kurdish protesters set fire to two banks on Saturday and youths set up barricades in a town in southeastern Turkey where violent clashes with security forces this week have killed eight people.

Security sources said one protester died in the latest clashes in Kiziltepe and 10 people were injured.

…The latest death brought the toll in this week’s violence — Turkey’s worst civil unrest in decades — to eight dead.

Riots erupted on Tuesday after funeral ceremonies for 14 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed last weekend by security forces.
news.yahoo.com