Headlines - Monday February 21

 

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A four day NATO offensive in Afghanistan's Kunar Province has left at least 64 innocent civilians dead and several others wounded, according to both the provincial governor and the provincial police chief.

 

Gen. Ziayi, the police chief, said that of the slain, 15 were men, 20 women and 29 were children. The governor later confirmed the overall total but reported only 26 children, with 16 men and 22 women.

The public health director for Kunar says that eight civilians are still being treated for major injuries sustained in the offensive, including four children. He also said that officials have called on the Red Cross to investigate the attacks.

NATO has also promised an investigation, but insisted that they had video showing their ground troops killing "36 armed insurgents." Since this was just one incident over the course of four days of offensives, it is unclear why they thought the existence of such a video would refute the claims of massive civilian deaths.

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What Conservatives Really Want

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Frank Rich notes the one thing that's absolutely deadly to right wing pundits: the slightest touch of civility.

SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It's Gabrielle Giffords's own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. ... Glenn Beck's ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month.... Sarah Palin's tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not.

Gee, do you think that, in the wake of Tucson, the rhetoric thrown around by the likes of Beck and Palin just might not be all that funny? That's a high price to pay for a wake up call.

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Bob Herbert points out something that's often left out of discussions about budget cuts to social programs. The programs were not created on a lark. There are are people who really, really need those funds.

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Michael Moore: Join My High School Newspaper

.... You've been told politics isn't cool and that one person really can't make a difference.

And for some beautiful, unknown reason, you've refused to listen. Maybe it's because you've figured out that we adults are about to hand you a very empty and increasingly miserable world, with its melting polar ice caps, its low-paying jobs, its incessant war machine, and its plan to put you in permanent debt at age 18 with the racket known as college loans.

On top of that, you've had to listen to adults tell you that you may not be able to legally marry the person you love, that your uterus isn't really yours to control, and that if a black guy somehow makes it into the White House, he must've entered illegally from Kenya......

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Turley: Judge disallows Padilla torture suit because he was tortured?

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This week in holy crimes

Over the last seven days...

Washington: Pastor Dirk Jackson arrested for the rape of a 12 year-old girl.
Tennessee: Pastor Ronnie Powe charged with aggravated statutory rape.
Kentucky: Pastor Jerry Cannon charged with posting hundreds of child porn images to Facebook.
New York: Rabbi Milton Balkany sentenced to four years in $4M hedge fund extortion.
Minnesota: Father Christopher Wenthe charged with felony sexual abuse of female parishioner.
Virginia: Father Felix Owino sentenced to nine months for molesting 11 year-old girl.
Britain: Imam Ebrahim Kazir charged with multiple counts of sexual assault on girls under the age of 14.
Washington: Pastor Royce Shorter charged with multiple felony counts of child molestation.
Massachusetts: Pastor Angel Morales on trial for rape of 14 year-old girl.
California: Pastor Alonzo McCowan pleads guilty to swindling $300K from an elderly parishioner.
North Carolina: Pastor Timothy Bailey charged in $670K Ponzi scheme.
Alabama: Pastor Steven McQueen charged with stealing $250K from his own church.
Massachusetts: Father Gary Mercure sentenced to 20-25 years in prison for the rape of two minors.
Britain: Pastor Lucy Adeniji charged with beating immigrant children and using them as personal slaves.
Kentucky: Archdiocese of Louisville sued for allowing known child molester priest to head parish.
Hawaii: Unnamed Catholic priest charged with kidnapping and sexual assault.

This Week's Winner
Florida: The Archdiocese of Miami and Father Neil Doherty have been sued for the alleged drugging and rape of an eight year-old boy. According to the suit, Doherty assaulted the boy more than 50 times over a three year period and was kept in his position by the Archdiocese despite sexual abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s. Doherty has previously been sued by 25 other victims and in 1994 the Archdiocese of Miami paid a $50,000 settlement to one of them.

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When you glance at this chart, you might get the impression that you're seeing the distribution of wealth in a family-owned country, like Mubarak's Egypt.  But, upon closer inspection, you discover that it's 'Share of Financial Wealth in the United States'. 

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Scam artist "faith healer" and mega-millionaire Pastor Benny Hinn is being sued by a Christian book publisher who says Hinn violated the "immorality" clause in their contract when he had an adulterous affair with fellow preacher Paula White.

Hinn is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions, money largely scraped out of the Social Security checks of the gullible elderly and the desperately ill. He travels the world in a $36M personal Gulfstream jet in between stays at his numerous opulent mansions.

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Awesome: WISCONSIN: Dem Rep Goes Off On GOP

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Big Ocean of Oil

It's still there.

WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012. At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

Yeah, Washington is pretending the oil spill never happened. But it's still there -- killing the Gulf of Mexico.

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Steve Hynd: Winning The (Dystopic) Future

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Skippy's environmental news stories Sunday.

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This'll break your heart.

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Billionaire Charles Koch says the return on his investment in Scott Walker is even higher than expected.  "Bernie Madoff, eat your heart out!" he adds with a smile.

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Paul Krugman today pulls the curtain aside from Scott Walker

 

What Krugman doesn't mention is the $43,000 in campaign donations that Walker accepted from the billionaire Koch brothers. Walker's marching orders from his billionaire benefactors from the day he took office were to bust the public sector unions. He's just doing the bidding of his masters.

 

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Y'all do have a rescue plan in place, right? I may be needing it soner rather than later, 'cause Texas is getting crazier every minute. In addition to Gov. Perry supporting Wisconsin Dictator Walker, he's now pushing for guns on college campuses. Drunk college kids with teenage brains and concealed-carry permits. What could possibly go wrong?

From the New York Times article on the topic:

Guns occupy a special place in Texas culture. Politicians often tout owning a gun as essential to being Texan. Concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that scan Capitol visitors for guns, knives and other contraband.

That makes me feel so safe as I plan to attend protest rallies. Or not.

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Gadhafi manages to make every dictator in the entire world look benevolent and magnanimous in contrast. "Protests against the 40-plus-year reign of dictator Moammar Gadhafi have broken out in Tripoli, the capital, for the first time, according to news reports, as protesters in other cities count the dead from clashes with troops over days of protest. ... A doctor told Al Jazeera that forces had fired on protesters in Tripoli, killing four, and Al Jazeera reported a resident saying she could hear gunfire in the city from her upscale suburb. Other sources told Al Jazeera that clashes between pro- and anti-Gadhafi sources in central Tripoli involved thousands of people. ... Gadhafi's son, Seif el islam Gadhafi, will make a televised address Sunday night, Libya TV said, according to Al jazeera. ... A doctor in the eastern city of Benghazi told Reuters that at least 50 people were killed and 100 others seriously wounded in Benghazi Sunday afternoon and evening. There were unconfirmed claims that the opposition had taken control of the city, with Gadhafi's forces holed up in a walled compound. ... "Today has been a real tragedy. ...  Since 3 p.m. (1300 GMT) and up to 9:15 p.m., we received 50 dead, mostly from bullet wounds," Habib al-Obaidi, who heads the intensive care unit at the main Al-Jalae hospital, said by telephone. "There are 200 wounded; 100 of them are in very serious conditions.""

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New York Times "visual op-ed" columnist Charles Blow has a new Blow Chart about the awful state of our union — and it's quite revelatory, but only if you didn't already know that the United States is an impoverished banana republic with millions of non-violent offenders locked up in overcrowded prisons forever. (We suck at Maths, too.) And now there will probably be deep cuts to education and basic social services, a final "screw you" to the 99% of Americans who are not Satan-worshiping war merchants. (But actually, this is the only way to reduce wasteful government spending!) [NYT]

 

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Add Morocco to the list. "Thousands of people have marched in Moroccan cities to demand that King Mohammed VI give up some of his powers. In the capital, Rabat, police allowed protesters to approach parliament, chanting slogans like "The people reject a constitution made for slaves!" A separate protest is under way in the country's biggest city, Casablanca, and another was planned in Marrakesh. Protests have spread across the region since popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt forced out leaders. Sunday's rallies in Morocco are organised by groups including one calling itself the February 20 Movement for Change. More than 23,000 people have expressed their backing for its Facebook site. The protesters have not called for the removal of King Mohammed, but for a new constitution curbing his powers."

 

And more violence in Yemen (twelve killed since Thursday). Protesters are marching silently in Iran, in hopes of not being murdered. [Al Jazeera]

 

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Researchers: Earth will be 'unrecognizable' by 2050

"We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.

Sorry, fellas. It's not gonna happen in this country.