The Nightowl Newswrap

Will the Olympics even happen at all? One whiff of that Beijing air...Olympic torchbearers trotted through the cordoned streets of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa Saturday as China displayed its tight grip on a region that only three months ago was ravaged by bloody rioting. Militarized police stood arms distance apart along a route that ended at the foot of the towering 1,000-room Potala Palace, the abandoned former residence of Tibetan Buddhism's exiled leader. Local authorities used the event to attack the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, and offer a visible gesture of their sovereignty over Tibet. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Zhang Qingli, secretary general of the Communist Party in Tibet, said at a relay ceremony. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique." Only a few hundred handpicked spectators were allowed along the route to cheer the torch. Most Lhasa residents were told to stay home and watch the relay on television. You gotta love the verbal machinations of those old school communists...

The Secretary of Energy tells a whopper: The U.S. energy secretary said Saturday that insufficient oil production, not financial speculation, was driving soaring crude prices. Secretary Samuel Bodman's comments on the eve of an energy summit in the Saudi port city of Jeddah set the stage for a showdown between the U.S. and conference host Saudi Arabia, which has largely blamed speculation in the oil markets for record prices. The U.S. and many other Western nations have put increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, to increase production. Saudi officials have been hesitant to do so, arguing that soaring prices have not been caused by a shortage of supply. Bodman disputed that assertion Saturday, saying oil production has not kept pace with growing demand, especially from developing countries like China and India. The question is--how is Bodman able to make that assessment when oil speculation is unregulated?

El Baradei speaks: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is warning that any attack on Iran could turn the Mideast into a "ball of fire." IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei spoke in an interview aired today on Al-Arabiya television, a day after reports emerged of a large-scale military exercise by Israel. U.S. officials say they think the Israeli exercises were meant to warn Iran of Israel's abilities to hit its nuclear sites. ElBaradei also warned that he will resign as chief of the UN nuclear agency if Iran is attacked by any country. He says a military strike against Iran now would make him unable to continue his work.

Another Bush cabinet official who will not be missed: The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was on the losing end of a vote for the first time in his tenure when his colleagues sided with the cable industry in a dispute over marketing practices. Late Friday night, the commission voted to reverse a staff decision and uphold a complaint that Verizon Communications Inc. had violated privacy laws, according to an agency official who asked not to be named because the decision has not yet been made public. Cable companies claimed that Verizon had improperly used proprietary information in an attempt to keep their customers from switching providers. Agency enforcement staff originally dismissed the complaint. But by a 4-1 vote, with FCC chairman Kevin Martin the lone dissenter, the commission upheld the complaint and sided with the cable industry.

Levees continue to fail: Amid the battle to hold back the swollen Mississippi River, some towns got an unwelcome surprise Saturday as river levels rose higher than projected. Recent levee breaks north of Canton had allowed the river level to drop at towns like Canton and Hannibal in northeast Missouri. Officials knew the water would rise again to crests expected during the weekend, and while the amount of the increase caught them off guard, it did not make things any worse. The folks in Canton were keeping a tight watch over the city's levee, but it continued to hold strong against the Mississippi. Flooding and widespread storms this month have forced thousands from their homes and inundated towns and cities along rivers in six U.S. states, killing 24 and injuring 148 since June 6.

Failing to safeguard our nukes over there as well: Most European air force bases that house US nuclear bombs are failing to meet security requirements to protect the weapons, according to an internal US Air Force investigation. The air bases often fall short of US Defense Department (DOD) standards, with fencing, lighting and buildings in need of repair and security guards lacking sufficient training and experience, said the document, obtained by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The 30-member air force team looking at the safety of nuclear weapons said that "inconsistencies in personnel, facilities, and equipment provided to the security mission by the host nation were evident as the team traveled from site to site" in Europe. "A consistently noted theme throughout the visits was that most sites require significant additional resources to meet DOD security requirements," said the report, titled "Air Force Blue Ribbon Review of Nuclear Weapons Policies and Procedures."

Our "Soviet Expert" continues to amaze: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will land in Prague on July 8 to sign an agreement with the Czech government to site a US anti-missile radar in the country, Dnes newspaper reported Saturday. Rice "is scheduled to come to Prague on the morning of Tuesday July 8 to sign the deal. She is due to leave after a formal dinner," according to a high-ranking foreign ministry source who requested anonymity, cited by the paper. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told the paper simply that Rice would come to the Czech Republic "during the second week of July." The ministry said details of her visit would not yet be officially announced for security reasons. In the interim, officials from both countries expect to conclude the second part of the radar deal, which deals with conditions and status issues for US servicemen and women on Czech soil. Thereafter, the two accords will still have to be ratified by the Czech parliament, which as with the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, cannot be considered a formality. One wonders if they'll negotiate that Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) as badly as they did the one with Iraq.

Because we still think we're badasses in our own hemisphere, you know: The United States downplayed the European Union's decision to lift its sanctions on Cuba, even after a White House official a day earlier called it disappointing. "The US and the European Union share common objectives in Cuba: freedom, democracy and universal human rights," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday. On Thursday, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Washington was "disappointed" at the EU decision, which he said should have come after human rights conditions improved in Cuba. McCormack refused to describe the US reaction as disappointment, saying: "This is a tactical difference."

We Will Know Them By Their Incompetence

The New York Times has a story about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and, sure enough, there's another reason to condemn the Bush administration buried in the details:

In the Hollywood cliché of Fox’s “24,” a torturer shouts questions at a bound terrorist while inflicting excruciating pain. The C.I.A. program worked differently. A paramilitary team put on the pressure, using cold temperatures, sleeplessness, pain and fear to force a prisoner to talk. When the prisoner signaled assent, the tormentors stepped aside. After a break that could be a day or even longer, Mr. Martinez or another interrogator took up the questioning.

Mr. Martinez’s success at building a rapport with the most ruthless of terrorists goes to the heart of the interrogation debate. Did it suggest that traditional methods alone might have obtained the same information or more? Or did Mr. Mohammed talk so expansively because he feared more of the brutal treatment he had already endured?

A definitive answer is unlikely under the Bush administration, which has insisted in court that not a single page of 7,000 documents on the program can be made public. The C.I.A. declined to provide information for this article, in part, a spokesman said, because the agency did not want to interfere with the military trials planned for Mr. Mohammed and four other Qaeda suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The two dozen current and former American and foreign intelligence officials interviewed for this article offered a tantalizing but incomplete description of the C.I.A. detention program. Most would speak of the highly classified program only on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Martinez declined to be interviewed; his role was described by colleagues. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A., and a lawyer representing Mr. Martinez asked that he not be named in this article, saying that the former interrogator believed that the use of his name would invade his privacy and might jeopardize his safety. The New York Times, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked undercover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news articles and books, declined the request...

The very fact that Mr. Martinez, a career narcotics analyst who did not speak the terrorists’ native languages and had no interrogation experience, would end up as a crucial player captures the ad-hoc nature of the program. Officials acknowledge that it was cobbled together under enormous pressure in 2002 by an agency nearly devoid of expertise in detention and interrogation.

“I asked, ‘What are we going to do with these guys when we get them?’ ” recalled A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. from March 2001 until 2004. “I said, ‘We’ve never run a prison. We don’t have the languages. We don’t have the interrogators.’ ”

In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.

We kind of suspected this all along--when faced with the question of what to do when it came time to do what was necessary to defend America, the Bush Administration went with the Soviet option. Oh, and they videotaped it. And lost the videos, of course. But it was legal. Except it wasn't.

The fact that Condoleeza Rice was the National Security Advisor at the time--and is heralded by anyone who still believes it as an "expert" on the former Soviet Union--do you think she was the one who suggested that they go with the Soviet techniques? Do you think someone like Bob Woodward or David Broder would ask that question? Do you think anyone in the elite media is going to make that connection?

Is anyone paying attention when these little details emerge?

--WS

Conflict of Interest? At the Washington Post? You Don't Say...

While we tend to avoid talking about the media when it talks about itself, there was a curious disclosure this past week about concern troll extraordinaire David Broder and his practice of giving speeches to people in exchange for money.

The propriety of David Broder and Bob Woodward taking fees or having expenses paid for speeches to special-interest groups was raised recently by Ken Silverstein, Washington editor of Harper's magazine, in his Washington Babylon blog. Silverstein found the fees unseemly and asked whether editors had approved them.

Broder, 78, has worked at The Post 42 years, been its premier political writer and is probably the country's best-known political columnist. Woodward is the rare print reporter who became rich and famous on investigative journalism.

Both took an early retirement buyout last month. Broder continues as a columnist on contract. (Disclosure: I have known Broder for more than 25 years and consider him a professional friend.) Woodward has ties to the paper going back to the Watergate scandal, and he still consults for the paper. He has a token contract for $1,200 a year, and he said he is available for consultation and assignment.

The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned.

Thanks for the disclosure. It's always great to kick off a blog post by quoting an ombudsman. The problem is, everything Howell wrote is fairly self-serving and glosses over what really went on. Silverstein responds:

Howell acknowledges that Broder and Woodward broke the Post’s own rules and “did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned.” She extracts an apology from Broder, and says the Post “needs an unambiguous, transparent well-known policy on speaking fees and expenses. . . . Fees should be accepted only from educational, professional or other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and politics are not a major focus–with no exceptions.”

But Howell goes very easy on Broder—who has been flagrantly dishonest with his own employer and with Howell–and Woodward, who is allowed to glide away from some very embarrassing matters. Also, Howell deals with only a few speeches by Woodward and Broder, even though Woodward gave dozens and Woodward gave roughly a score. I understand that she could not deal with each instance individually (nor did I), but she could have mentioned prominently the fact that the two men, and especially Woodward, are regulars on the talk circuit and that the problem is not restricted to the few speeches she discusses in her column.

Broder first told Howell, “I have never spoken to partisan gatherings in any role other than [that of] a journalist nor to an advocacy group that lobbies Congress or the federal government.” That turned out to be false, as Howell discovered, so Broder came back to say, “I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper.”

Broder told Howell he attended an event at the American Council for Capital Formation, “but did not give a speech.” So apparently someone at the ACCF made up this account of Broder’s speech to the group?

I reported that Broder gave a speech at a meeting of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors (which paid him, he now admits, $7,000), which was a PAC fundraiser. Howell writes: “Mary Beth Coya, the Realtors’ senior vice president for public and governmental affairs, said the event was not a fundraiser but was attended by elected officials ‘to promote our government affairs programs’.” The event in fact was clearly promoted as a PAC fundraiser. And by the way, “government affairs program” is Washington-talk for lobbying.

I also reported that Broder spoke to the Gartner Healthcare Summit in 2007. “He was advertised as a speaker on an Internet site, but Broder said he canceled the engagement,” Howell reported. That’s possible, but since Broder has been so dishonest about all of this I wouldn’t take it to the bank. (I did note in my earlier posts on this topic that I could not confirm all details, in part because neither Broder nor Woodward replied to requests for comment about their speaking gigs.)

Howell doesn’t mention this—Post reporters, it seems, will call people to ask about their actions but won’t take calls about their own. More outrageous is that Broder specifically denied to Howell that I had sought comment from him (which I know only because Howell told me during a phone conversation), even though I contacted him several times, by phone and email, beginning forty-eight hours before posting the first story.

[SNIP]

Finally, Woodward told Howell “all his speaking fees — which range from $15,000 to $60,000 — go to a foundation he started in the 1990s.” He added, “It’s a straight shot into the foundation that gives money to legitimate charities. I think that’s doing good work.”

St. Woodward can don his halo and gaze in the mirror all he likes, but he really shouldn’t treat Post readers with such contempt. The facts are clear. He reaps significant tax savings by giving the fees to a “charity” that gives away a small fraction of its assets, and by far the biggest beneficiary of his foundation is Sidwell Friends, the elite private school sitting atop a reported $30 million endowment and attended by his own children.

How can we believe anything that David Broder or Bob Woodward publish after this? Both got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and both got caught by Silverstein's legwork and reporting. They got caught, they lied, they twisted in the wind, and then they were nailed for what they had done.

The Washington media elite does whatever the hell it wants, and who are we to judge? These people are the serious people, after all, and what's a few hundred grand here and there between the elite and the rabble who are to hang on their every word? If you ever want to get to the "why" about things--as in, "why are we in Iraq?" and "why did the press let Bush get away with destroying the Constitution?" and "why do they tell us it's raining when they're all pissing on our legs?" you need look no further than the system which allows a David Broder to become America's concern troll and Woodward to become the insider with inside information that makes people like Bush look one way when, if the "insider" had done his job, he would have revealed a mountain of evidence that would have shown every single American that Bush had no idea what the hell he was doing when he ordered US troops to invade Iraq.

Broder and Woodward may have come to Washington to write stories that would challenge the status quo, but here at the end of their careers they have become the status quo, they have become the so-called elite without having risen by a merit system but having risen by arranging to never seriously challenge the power structure, and they have become people who need to be brought down because of their arrogance and their corruption. In short, they became the people they were supposed to stop. They sold out. They allowed themselves to become corrupted. Hey, I hope you've made a great living out of it. Enjoy your retirement. Hope the cash doesn't run out on you.

Don't worry--there are no 'young Broders and Woodwards' out there looking to really bring down Broder and Woodward. There are bloggers out there, but who would ever listen to anything a smelly blogger would say? How uncouth. They say fuck too much. And they're not sending their kids to the right school, you know.

As much as I would like to believe Silverstein's work has made all of this possible, it's more likely that, years from now, both Woodward and Broder will still be churning out their tired insider-laden crap.

How'd we get through all of this without saying something awful about Howard Kurtz? Beats the fuck out of me.

Well, duh...

Shockingly, when people have less money and when things cost more, and when wages have failed to keep up, they steal...

One morning last month, the manager of a Stop & Shop in Methuen, Mass., noticed a man, along with his young daughter, leave the store without paying for several bags of shrimp. When police arrived, they found something else on him, too: 20 cans of baby formula.

Call it a sign of the times. Steadily and alarmingly, shoplifting seems to be rising at many retail chains, and experts are pointing at a prime cause: the sputtering economy.

"Wages aren't keeping up with inflation, especially the price of food and energy," says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. "It just leaves less money for everything else, and that breeds a lot of temptation."

Retail and law enforcement experts agree that they've seen an increase in store theft during the current slowdown — and not only from customers.

"It's clear that both employee theft and shoplifting are up," says Richard Hollinger, professor of criminology at the University of Florida who compiles the annual National Retail Security Survey. "The most recent rise is being driven by the economy. A lot of people are on the financial edge."

I wouldn't say "a lot of people" because that makes it an idea no one can comprehend. I would say that "there's a good chance the people you see every day are suffering in ways you probably couldn't have imagined two or three years ago."

Of course, the solution is pretty simple: summary executions or life sentences for offenders, right? The only candidate who spoke about class and poverty on a regular basis was John Edwards, and he might as well have been talking about the price of tea in China for all the good it did for him to make this an issue.

--WS

Saturday Squirrel Blogging

In atonement for missing catblogging yesterday...



I've been crazy busy the past couple of days, but I did manage to get some pretty good pictures...if I were ever asked to give a commencement address, I would advise the graduating class to never get so wrapped up in anything that you forget to take time to watch the squirrels.

Last night, waiting for the Max in Brookside after a trip to Price Chopper before coming home for the night, I realized another benefit from my switch to public transit. Riding the bus forces me to stop, and sit down and wait patiently sometimes. When I was driving everywhere I needed to go, I would go months on end without sitting on a bench in a greenspace and just stopping for a minute and watching the squirrels, and now I look back and consider that wasted time. I highly recommend twenty minutes on a park bench at least once a week. It does wonders for ones mental health. Especially in this, the age of constant outrage.






Saturday mornings were made for the City Market! If you live in the burbs or an outlying area and don't go down there because it sucks to drive down there - park and ride. The Max and the 57 both drop you right there -

If you need a hand getting your bounty to your car, help is available!

I am a loyal customer of this family farm operation from Bonner Springs.

I love to see all these people eating locally grown foods!

That's me.

Magic for the kiddies.

Pony rides - that is Domo the mule.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has an interesting and practical community outreach project going on - they are setting up a tent at a different farmers market every Saturday and giving away these awesome reusable grocery bags to everyone who signs up to get their email newsletter. Look for them at the farmers market you frequent. The bags are great. They are sturdy and they have a hard bottom. Trust me - you want one.

Two final things before I get back to work in the physical realm...

I will be back with some quick hits this afternoon, and I'll check email and comments at that time, looking for an answer to this question - now that the farmers markets are open and we have all this delicious, wholesome local food, should I resurrect the Saturday kitchenblogging feature that I did last summer? Or is it pretentious and insufferable and best left lie?

And finally...Happy Anniversary - two days late - to Mr. & Mrs. Gone Mild. May you enjoy at least 26 more happy and interesting years together. Being married to someone you fall in love with over and over is a blessing to be treasured, and I know you do.

Changing the World, Right in Kansas

Chase away those Saturday morning blues and get yourself organized. Find yourself motivated and allow yourself to be inspired.

Last May, an EF 5 tornado hit western Kansas. In Greensburg, the storm leveled every building, picked up cars and tossed them into rooftops, demolished the streets, left more than two-thirds of the town’s population homeless and killed 11 people.

Out of this tragedy, an opportunity arose to reconstruct and rejuvenate not only the buildings but also the town itself. As is the story for many small farm towns, the future of Greensburg looked bleak. Even before the tornado, jobs were growing scarce and the population was shrinking by two percent every year.



To educate and motivate the townspeople to create the vision and become involved in the transformation, some residents started a community-owned nonprofit called Greensburg GreenTown. The organization offers townspeople technical counseling for green programs, an energy rater who will assist homeowners to maximize energy savings at home, as well as access to a plethora of educational materials in their library, on their website and educational classes and lectures.

Many Greensburg residents are seeing this move toward sustainability not as a push toward granola-crunching, hippie-dom, but as something their great grandparents would have supported – a wise use of what they have and independence.

The mindful reconstruction measures are bringing more than just innovative design and sustainable development to the town; the new ideas are bringing youth interest back to Greensburg. Levi Schmidt, 15, told NPR that before the tornado, he had no intention of coming back.

“I was going to go to college, and who knows where. This community was dying.” Schmidt said. “Now I'm definitely coming back, and I know a good majority of my friends are.”

The town’s efforts have garnered the attention of green savvy business interested in investing in renewable energy, such as various biodiesel companies, GM and Google, who is interested in opening a wind-powered data center nearby.

Is this the wave of the future? Is this how we should approach the rebuilding of areas in the midwest that are going to need a new plan and a new way of doing things after the flooding subsides? There are smart ways to improve each and every community and make the world around us greener. This story is proof that an American town can get knocked on its ass and jump right back up and do something smart about it.

The model we see in Greensburg should give everyone hope.

--WS