Saturday, August 9, 2008

MESSAGE FROM PETER ST GEORGE

I've been on the computer too much lately, so I'm gonna take a break from News de Intrigue. If you guys are reading it and missing it, leave me a comment. Until next time, here's a video for you guys!!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Washington Post Reporters Spew Misinformation

I hate nothing more than supposedly-credible news outlets spewing misinformation, twisting truths, or just plain lying and passing it off as facts. It seems to me, however, that Rupert Murdoc-owned news/entertainment machines have a habit of this---or maybe this is my hippie-birkenstock-wearing-Eugene living self talking. Take a look at the column below, featured on the Huffington Post, written by Jason Linkins.---PETER ST. GEORGE

JASON LINKINS--THEHUFFINGTONPOST.COM

Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman gave the McCain campaign a nipple-stiffening moment today after they picked up a statement by Barack Obama, and used it, apparently, entirely out of context, presenting it for the consumption of Post readers in a way that made it look like Obama was being arrogant.

For Milbank's part, it was all because he wanted to wedge the statement into his preferred frame: "Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee." I believe it was Oscar Wilde who cautioned: "Reality is a MADE thing."

And, as it turns out, Milbank's "reality" is something of a deconstruction. Milbank's remake reads:

"This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

According to a Democratic leadership aide in attendance, the full quote from Obama is:

It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.

(For what it's worth, before Milbank's column was published, we received a separate eye-witness account of Obama's meeting with House Dems that mirrored the full context quote above.)

So, in actuality, Obama was attempting to diminish his own importance, not place himself on a pedestal. It was an attempt at humility, not arrogance.

And speaking of arrogance, really - Milbank is a fine one to be speaking on the subject. Via Wonkette, we present to you this video of a slurring Milbank, pompously declaring, "I will not read blogs, I'm sorry...If something is important enough, it will be brought to my attention."

Which is just the sort of toxic nonsense you get from the high-toned clique of anointed political reporters these days, I'm afraid. Naturally, the difference between Milbank and the blogs he won't read (he's sorry!), is that Milbank is wrong.

And that's not all he gets wrong. Over the course of the article, Milbank - desperately panting - attempts to make the case that foreign travels, adherence to Capitol Hill protocol, Secret Service protection, and meeting with Cabinet officials and foreign dignitaries are all signs of "pride" and "presumptuousness," when in reality, these are the simple, entirely protean tasks that any Presidential candidate performs. McCain has done all of those things. Milbank would have a case were he to bring up the stupid "Presidential seal" the Obama campaign briefly deployed before realizing how asinine a gesture it was (and, as Ben Smith points out, the McCain campaign is no stranger to similarly inane gestures), but Milbank would rather fill his readers' heads with misleading pastry where commonplace activities take on some sort of diabolical dimension.

Worse yet, is this part of the case Milbank builds against Obama:

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House, causing Republicans to howl about premature drape measuring.

But, once again, planning for the transition in July is not something Obama is doing out of presumptuousness, he's doing it because that is what presidential nominees are supposed to do. In the summer of 2000, both George W. Bush and Al Gore did the exact same thing.

The Washington Post is located at 1150 15th Street, NW in Washington, DC, for all those interested in hand-delivering the news to Milbank, so that important things are brought to his precious and presumptuous attention.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Golden Retreiver Adopts Tiger Cubs

Alright, enough of this political stuff...time to get cutesy on the News de Intrigue! A golden retriever dog at a Kansas zoo has adopted three abandoned tiger cubs. Look at the picture below and TELL ME you haven't seen anything cuter!!!---PETER ST. GEORGE

Golden retriever adopts tiger cubs at Kansas zoo

Image courtesy of the Associated Press

Thu Jul 31, 7:27 AM ET

CANEY, Kan. - A dog at a southeast Kansas zoo has adopted three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother. Safari Zoological Park owner Tom Harvey said the tiger cubs were born Sunday, but the mother had problems with them.

A day later, the mother stopped caring for them. Harvey said the cubs were wandering around, trying to find their birth mother, who wouldn't pay attention to them. That's when the cubs were put in the care of a golden retriever, Harvey said.

Harvey said it's unusual for dogs to care for tiger cubs, but it does happen. He said he has seen reports of pigs nursing cubs in China, and he actually got the golden retriever after his wife saw television accounts of dogs caring for tiger cubs.

Puppies take about the same amount of time as tiger cubs to develop, and Harvey said the adoptive mother just recently weaned her own puppies.

"The timing couldn't have been any better," he said.

The mother doesn't know the difference, Harvey said. He said the adopted mother licks, cleans and feeds the cubs.

The Safari Zoological Park is a licensed facility open since 1989 and specializes in endangered species.

It has leopards, lions, cougars, baboons, ring-tailed lemurs, bears and other animals. It currently has seven white tigers and two orange tigers.

Because whit tigers are inbred from the first specimen found more than a half-century ago, they are not as genetically stable as orange tigers.

The zoo's previous litter of white tiger cubs was born April 23, although one of the three has since gone to a private zoo near Oklahoma City.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Professor Obama

I've been reading a lot about one of the many sections of Obama's past. The whole community organizer angle is amazing and wonderful, but his time in the world of academia says quite a bit about the man who could be President. The New York Times recently published a piece about the years Senator Obama spent as a professor at the (very conservative) University of Chicago Law School. This Slate article takes it a bit farther, detailing the Senator's inner scholar. It's impressive.

This article also makes it painfully obvious that Obama is toning down his natural intelligence and vocabulary for the benefit of the common man. Oh well. If it gets him elected...---ERIN MILLER

Obama Takes His Own Law Exams:

How did he do?

By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at 7:02 PM ET

Could this guy really be running for president? I asked myself this question about Barack Obama after reading his, at turns, quite angry memoir Dreams From My Father. I'm asking it again today after reading through the exams he gave when he was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago—and in particular the model answers he wrote up for his own questions.

It's not that the book or the class materials scream fomenting liberal or fomenting anything. If they did, you'd have heard about it already. These writings are tempered and thoughtful and sophisticated and nuanced, as the law professors asked to comment on the exams point out on the Web site of the New York Times, which posted the exams. Obama either kept sharp or out-there views out of the classroom because he had an eye on his political future or because he wanted to make sure his students felt comfortable expressing opposing ideas. (For what it's worth, most of the professors I took classes from in law school did the same, at least in front of the lectern.)

But even more than his memoir, Obama's exam answers offer complex ruminations on some of the most contentious social and legal questions out there. Can a state pass a law barring doctors from treating unmarried couples for infertility, with a special slap at gay couples embedded in the statute? Can a city in which black students are failing open a special career academy for black boys?

Can a presidential candidate really afford to sail into these roiling waters, however skillfully? Obama gets away with it—if he does, come November—primarily because … law exams are hard! The questions are long fact patterns that branch out in all directions. The answers rely on tracking the facts through a series of doctrinal moves and countermoves—this Supreme Court case sends me north, but then this other one turns east, or is that ruling heading upside down? You can write a lot that's descriptive rather than proscriptive. As in, "The courts have never recognized unmarried persons as a 'suspect class.' "

At one point, Obama asks his students to sound off about their own policy views. But after asking whether the hypothetical "Ujamaa School" for black boys is "good public policy," he doesn't write out his own potentially enlightening model answer. Instead he retreats to finding it "interesting" that a slim majority of students came down on Ujamaa's side, "based on a justifiable skepticism in the prospect of truly integrated schools and an equally justified concern over the desperate condition of many inner city schools." Isn't it lucky that cagey politics is consistent with respectfully deferring to students' views?

More revealing, however, are passages in Obama's 1996 discussion about whether a lesbian couple could successfully challenge the constitutionality of his made-up "Preservation of Family Values Act," which would block the women from conceiving via in vitro fertilization. Obama writes of a "troubling" issue: "the Court's tendency, in cases since Roe, to embrace notions of 'tradition' as a means of curtailing the potential expansiveness of rights recognized under the Due Process Clause." Then he starts duking it out with Justice Antonin Scalia. As Chapman University law professor John Eastman points out in the NYT discussion, Obama calls Scalia's approach to defining the scope of substantive due process rights "cramped." And then he parries. Scalia would argue, he thinks, that the right to procreate applies only in the context of a "monogamous, heterosexual marriage." But how do you square that with the court's abortion jurisprudence and with Eiesenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that gave unmarried couples the right to have contraception? Scalia isn't just cramped; when Obama reads the justice against his colleagues, he also finds him to be wrong.

This mano a mano repeats in Obama's answer to a 1997 exam question about whether a state ban on cloning violates the constitutional rights of parents who want to clone their daughter, who is in a vegetative state, after turning off her life support. Obama channels Scalia here by pointing out that the justice might argue that cloning isn't even "procreation," according to the dictionary definition of that term. He goes on, "In the absence of any deeply rooted tradition, Scalia would argue," the Supreme Court should mind its own business and let the state ban stand. But whether a majority of the court would "embrace such a cramped reading"—that word of distaste again—Obama says, "is not entirely clear." In some ways, the argument for upholding the cloning law is stronger than the one for upholding the fertility-treatment ban in the earlier exam, because the science behind cloning is so much less certain than for in vitro and because there's no anti-gay impulse at issue. But Obama doesn't give Scalia an inch. The justice gets his due, and then he gets stuffed into the box for judges who talk loudly but don't carry a majority.

And then there's this flourish in Obama's model answer to his 1996 question: He picks up on a suggestion from some of his students "that courts do not use the tools of Equal Protection or substantive Due Process doctrine … to guide their analysis, but rather, use these labels to justify, after the fact, what are inescapably decisions based on policy calculation, ethical and political considerations, and the idiosyncratic values of particular justices." Here's another similar sentiment, "What is safe to say is that the views of particular justices on the desirability of rearing in [sic] children in homosexual households would play a big part in the decision."

Whoa. So here are the roots of Obama's statements that he will pick judges who have "heart" and "empathy" because he thinks that in a small but key set of cases, a judge must fall back on "his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings." Obama is not a man, or a lawyer, who believes that at least in these hellishly difficult matters of constitutional interpretation, judges are truly guided by legal precedent, or abstract reasoning, or anything other than their gut and the outcome they prefer. This is not the way most politicians talk about the court. Certainly not John McCain. And it's not clear that Obama's candor about the role of the judicial gut is a political winner. "These are tricky questions," Obama confides to his law students at another point in his exam answers. No kidding.

Vanity Fair Parodies New Yorker Parody...???!?!

By now everyone has seen the incredibly controversial New Yorker cover of Barack Obama dressed as a muslim below a portrait of Osama bin Laden, fist-bumping his AK-47-toting wife while the American flag burns in the fireplace. Not to be outdone, Vanity Fair has come back with a parody of the New Yorker cover, showing decrepit McCain bent over a walker under a portrait of George W. Bush, fist-bumping his prescription drug-clutching wife while the Constitution burns in the fireplace. Both cartoons take place in the Oval Office, and both are posted below.---PETER ST. GEORGE

Image Courtesy of newyorker.com
The original image that caused such controversy

Image Courtesy of vfdaily.com

Voight Accuses Obama Campaign of Propaganda, Subliminal Messages

You guys have to check out this op-ed in the Washington Times written by Academy Award Winner Jon Voight. In it he accuses Obama and the Democratic Party of "manag(ing) a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way," and claims that if Obama were elected we would live in a "socialist era." Further, he calls decorated war hero General Wesley Clark a "lying fool."---PETER ST. GEORGE

VOIGHT: My concerns for America

Obama sowing socialist seeds in young people

Monday, July 28, 2008

NY TIMES

Actor Jon Voight. Associated Press.

OP-ED

We, as parents, are well aware of the importance of our teachers who teach and program our children. We also know how important it is for our children to play with good-thinking children growing up.

Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset.

The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.

Those same leaders who were in the streets in the '60s are very powerful today in their work to bring down the Iraq war and to attack our president, and they have found their way into our schools. William Ayers is a good example of that.

Thank God, today, we have a strong generation of young soldiers who know exactly who they are and what they must do to protect our freedom and our democracy. And we have the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus, who has brought hope and stability to Iraq and prevented the terrorists from establishing a base in that country. Our soldiers are lifting us to an example of patriotism at a time when we've almost forgotten who we are and what is at stake.

If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there's not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb. And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend.

Gen. Wesley Clark, who himself has shame upon him, having been relieved of his command, has done their bidding and become a lying fool in his need to demean a fellow soldier and a true hero.

This is a perilous time, and more than ever, the world needs a united and strong America. If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way.

Jon Voight is an Academy Award-winning actor who is well-known for his humanitarian work.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Batman's Joker Caught in Michigan!!

Well, not really...a man dressed up like the Joker from the recent blockbuster The Dark Knight was arrested for attempting to steal Batman posters and memorabilia. Seems like this guy's a little too into the whole Batman vibe...---PETER ST. GEORGE

'Joker' arrested for stealing Batman materials

Posted by The Associated Press July 28, 2008 22:45PM

Categories: Statewide News

AP PhotoBooking mugs released by the Three Rivers
Police Department show Spencer Taylor, 20, of Three Rivers.

THREE RIVERS -- Three Rivers police have arrested a man who they say tried to steal posters and other items related to the new Batman movie from a cinema lobby while dressed up as the Joker.

Detective Mike Mohney said Monday he expects 20-year-old Spencer Taylor of Three Rivers to be charged with larceny and malicious destruction of property.

Taylor is scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 5 in St. Joseph County District Court.

There is no telephone listing under his name in the Three Rivers area.

Mohney says police officers who were dispatched early Sunday to the Three Rivers 6 theater arrived to find employees restraining a man wearing a purple suit, a green wig and face paint in the style of Batman's nemesis in "The Dark Knight."

Tales of Obama, the Professor

Well, anybody who knows anything about me knows that I am an Obama freak. I've tried not to let that flavor this blog too heavily, but here is an Obama post that I found quite compelling. It talks of him in a different light, one where he was a professor at Chicago Law School.---PETER ST. GEORGE

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”--from nytimes.com
NOT AFRAID TO PROVOKE Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years. Former students say he tested many of the ideas of his presidential campaign in the classroom.

As a Professor, Obama Enthralled Students and Puzzled Faculty
Courtesy Obama Campaign

By JODI KANTOR
Published: July 30, 2008

CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other junior faculty dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.
At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between one of the country’s most elite law schools and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois State Senate.

Before he pushed campaign finance legislation there, or outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw the map of his own state Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

Standing in his favorite classroom in the law school’s austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs.

“He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour, for example, brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it.

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — during which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

Mr. Obama had other business on his mind, embarking on five political races during his 12 years at the school. Teaching gave him satisfaction, along with a perch and a paycheck, but he was impatient with academic debates over “whether to drop a footnote or not drop a footnote,” said Abner J. Mikva, a mentor whose own career has spanned Congress, the federal bench and the same law school.

Douglas Baird, another colleague, remembers once stopping Mr. Obama for his assessment of potential gubernatorial candidates.

“First of all, I’m not running for governor, “ Mr. Obama told him. “But if I did, I would expect you to support me.”

He was a third-year state senator at the time.

ARTICLE CONTINUED HERE

Monday, July 28, 2008

Citizen's Arrest on Karl Rove Attempted in Iowa

Looks like Americans are starting to stand up for themselves, albeit 98 days or so from the end of the Bush presidency. Four Iowans were arrested during a GOP fundraiser in Iowa for the attempted citizen's arrest of Karl Rove.---PETER ST. GEORGE

Former Bush advisor Karl Rove was invited to speak at a GOP fundraiser in Des Moines, Iowa, but he did not get the warmest of welcomes from four residents who pledged to arrest him.

Law enforcement officers arrested Rev. Chet Guinn, 80, and three members of the Catholic Worker peace movement, Edward Bloomer, 61, Kirk Brown, 25, and Mona Shaw, 57, on Friday for their attempt to make a citizen's arrest, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. They were cited for trespassing and released.

Reuters reported that the arrest was prearranged and happened when the group stepped past a gate. The protesters accused Rove of, among other things, conspiracy to defraud the United States ahead of the Iraq War, leading to the deaths of United States military and Iraqi civilians, the Gazette reported.

Two of the protesters, Brown and Shaw, were previously arrested and released without charges when they tried to arrest Rove in March at the University of Iowa.

A group of netroots activists is also pushing for the prosecution of Rove for his refusal to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington.

Earlier this month, the former White House deputy chief of staff, refused an order to testify about the firing of federal prosecutors and allegations of selective prosecution of Democrats seen as political opponents.

The committee asked Rove to testify about whether he influenced the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges. While he refused to testify, Rove wrote a letter to ranking committee member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) that he did not try to influence the prosecution in any way.

Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) have threatened to hold Rove in contempt. The White House has argued executive privilege allows immunity for Rove from testifying.

The committee has also subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over documents relating to the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, including complete FBI interview reports with Rove and others.

by Katie Fretland

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Keira Knightley Refuses Photoshopped Breast Augmentation

Finally someone in Hollywood decides to be themselves...while being someone else. Keira Knightly has refused photoshopped breast enhancement in promotional materials for her new movie "The Dutchess." ---PETER ST. GEORGE

Original photo on the left, with the Photoshopped version on the right.

British film star Keira Knightley has always been open about her sexuality and her body. She is one of the few actresses who says she has no problems with nude scenes in movies if the script calls for it.

Keira will appear topless in her upcoming film written by her mother and appeared topless briefly in her last movie, Atonement. But she draws the line on some things movie studios do to "pump up" a film. The controversy involves her role in a new movie called The Duchess.

Knightley refused to allow any enhancement of her cleavage on publicity photos for "The Duchess," Britain's Daily Mail reports. Studio heads reportedly want to enlarge Knightley's breasts in publicity photos but the actress, 23, threw down her bra, so to speak. "She has insisted that her figure stay in its natural state," an insider said. "She is proud of her body and doesn't want it altered."

"I always bare my breasts," Knightley said at a press conference to promote The Edge of Love, a film written for her by her mother, Sharman Macdonald. It was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, giving viewers a surprise glimpse of Keira sans top. "It's not like it's only in this film!" the actress noted.

Knightley, who is small-chested, has dealt with this problem in the past. The actress was shown with larger-than-usual breasts in publicity stills for the movie "King Arthur" and was criticized for it.

"Those things certainly weren't mine," she told Fox News when the movie was released. The studio marketing team was behind her suddenly C-cup breasts, but gave her final approval on the photos. "I was like, 'OK, fine. I honestly don't give a shit,'" she recalled

Knightley has expressed dissatisfaction with her small bustline. "I would love to have [breasts]!" she told Britain's GMTV last year, adding, "I'm never going to get [them]. I'm naturally who I am." While she's a fan of going au naturale in "The Duchess," Knightley looks "flat-chested in the whole movie," the source says.

The 23-year-old British actress is best known in the United States for her roles in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film series, a squeaky clean Disney production. But last year she also doffed her top in the World War II period drama “Atonement,” which was lauded by critics and nominated for several Academy Awards.

Knightley has appeared nude, or topless in “Silk” (2007), “The Jacket (2005),” “Domino” (2005), “Doctor Zhivago” (2002), and “The Hole (2001).” The latter was her most revealing movie and she was only 16 when she filmed it (see photo) Although, Knightley has exposed herself, numerous times, the scenes have always been brief. Most European actresses view nudity in films the same way.

By TheImproper.com

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Beijing Olympics '08-Protest Zones to be Set Up

Looks like China is prepping itself for dissent. After rumors of countries boycotting the Beijing Olympics due to China's involvement in the Darfur situation and human rights violations, it is quite obvious that protesting and demonstrations will be on display in early August. In preparation ,"Protest Zones" have been set up, albeit miles from the Olympic Stadium, complete with miniature replicas of such American buildings as the Capitol Building. --PETER ST. GEORGE

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A Chinese girl poses near a replica of the Capital Building in the United States seen at the World Park in Beijing, China, Wednesday, July 23, 2008. The World Park is one of three parks designated for protesters during next month's Olympics, security officials said Wednesday, in a sign China's authoritarian government may allow some demonstrations during the games. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

CHARLES HUTZLER--BEIJING — China will allow a modicum of dissent at the Olympics, setting up special protest zones far from the main sports venues, in a shift that supporters and detractors said Wednesday is meant to safely channel criticism and avoid disrupting the games.

The designated protest areas will be in parts of three public parks, none of them closer than several miles from the main Olympic stadium. One zone is in a park that features large-scale mock-ups of the White House and other world monuments, raising the prospect that protesters will appear to be elsewhere in televised images and news photos.

In making the announcement, the Beijing Olympic organizing committee's security director, Liu Shaowu, cited the use of protest areas at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"People or protesters who want to express their personal opinions can go to do so," Liu told reporters.

The move, however, doesn't mean Beijing is inviting a flood of protests at the games, which open in 16 days. Liu suggested demonstrators would need to apply for permission in advance.

Tightened visa checks have prevented or deterred foreign groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists from coming to Beijing, although actor Mia Farrow's Dream for Darfur said its visa application was pending. Overseas broadcasters, such as NBC which paid hundreds of millions of dollars to air the games, are still wrangling with organizers over restrictions on live coverage around the city.

"Until it begins, we will not know how the officials and police will react," said John Barton, director of sport for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, which represents broadcasters in 57 countries. "It's a lottery."

Beijing is now ringed with police checkpoints, designed to keep out bomb-making materials, would-be terrorists and domestic protesters, and dotted with half-empty hotels. But it is also festooned with banners, creating an odd mixture of festiveness and tension.

Still, the decision to permit even small demonstrations marks a turnaround for an authoritarian government that has seemed set on smothering any protests at an Olympics it wants to be a flawless celebration of a friendly, modern China.

"This will allow people to protest without disrupting the Olympics," said Ni Jianping, director of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, who lobbied Chinese leaders to set up the protest zones. "We're giving people a platform to express their views."

While protests have become common throughout China _ from workers upset about factory layoffs to farmers angry about land confiscation _ the communist leadership remains wary about large demonstrations, fearing they could snowball into widespread anti-government movements. Three violent protests have occurred in far-flung provinces in recent weeks.

After foreign groups critical of China's human rights, media controls and foreign policies in places like Sudan's Darfur area began targeting the Olympics a year ago, Beijing ramped up an intelligence-collection effort to identify critics to keep them out. The melee of protests that greeted Beijing's international torch relay in April brought a redoubling of efforts.

Amid the uproar, some sought to persuade Beijing that flexibility and openness would deflect the criticism. Ni, working with Susan Brownell, an American academic at Beijing Sports University, pointed out there were protest zones at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002 as a positive example in a paper forwarded to officials they declined to identify.

Security is still the utmost priority. Liu, the security official, reiterated the government's view that terrorism poses a great threat, saying the half-million expected visitors offer an opportunity for terrorists to infiltrate. Brownell said Chinese leaders would not have agreed to protests unless they felt it would enhance control.

"It was about placating the West. They were really concerned about social order," said Brownell, a China expert at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "They must have come up with a plan to improve social order rather than make it worse."

Human rights campaigners assailed the protest zones as cosmetic, with one likening them to a "fishbowl" _ sealed off from society at large.

"Designating unilaterally 'protest zones' for demonstrators does not equate to respecting the right to demonstrate, because in this situation control comes first and the right second," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.

Signs abound that the government intends to keep a tight rein. Housing activist Ye Guozhu, who was jailed for trying to organize a protest of evictions for Beijing's Olympic makeover, was taken from the Chaobai Prison to an undisclosed location Tuesday, four days before his release, said the China Human Rights Defenders activist group.

In Shanghai, which hosts preliminary Olympic soccer games, dissident lawyer Zheng Enchong was taken away Wednesday by police, Bequelin said. Police in Shanghai and Beijing said they did not know about those two cases.

The special protest areas are not near the Olympic green where most venues, the main media centers and the medal ceremonies are concentrated, but rather are in distant parks: the World Park in the southwest, three miles from the softball field; the Purple Bamboo Park in the west, south of the volleyball arena; and Ritan Park in the east, near no venues.

Mention of the protest zones was expunged from the briefing's official transcript. Ni, the Shanghai scholar, said that Chinese protesters may be allowed only in the rather far World Park, not in the other venues.

Liu also reiterated that Chinese regulations require that all protesters apply and receive permission in advance. "Generally speaking, we will invite those participants to demonstrate their demonstrations in designated places, and this is also a common practice in other countries," Liu said.

Even if protests do occur, they are unlikely to find favor with Chinese at large. The raucous protests abroad of the Olympic torch relay incited a patriotic backlash among Chinese. Brownell said her research found that many Chinese view the Olympics as a solemn affair in which they are inviting guests into their homes and all sides should show respect.

"Whereas we see controlled protests as a way of venting steam, Chinese see this as inviting people to riot," she said.

___

Associated Press reporters Stephen Wade in Beijing and Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this report.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Obama's Western Wall Prayer Published

--UPDATED BELOW--

........This news is an accurate barometer of the ridiculous and insane scrutiny that Senator Obama has been receiving over his presidential candidacy and beyond. During a visit to the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, in Israel, Obama partook in the 2000-year old practice of writing prayers on paper and placing them in the cracks of the wall.

........As reported by CNN, it looks like after Obama left the Wailing Wall his prayer scroll was pried from the cracks. It was later published in an Israeli newspaper.

........I believe this is a despicable intrusion. What is more private that one's personal relationship with his God? The article has not been posted here, and the link omitted, for I would be a hypocrite to do so. If you feel the need to see the prayer, you have the means to do so. I will, however, post the reactions of the rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz.--PETER ST GEORGE

"The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them," he told Army Radio. The publication "damages the Western Wall and damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves."--Shmuel Rabinovits via CNN

--UPDATE--

Here is a well-put together article that discusses the leak of Obama's Western Wall paper. I have removed the quotes of Obama's prayer...

Obama's Private Prayer 'Leaked'

extracted from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1826734,00.html?cnn=yes
Obama's Prayer quoted at this url-please proceed with caution

Senator Barack Obama probably thought that the prayer he penned in the solitude of his King David hotel room in Jerusalem would remain between him and the Almighty. But an Orthodox Jewish student had other ideas.

Following Jewish tradition, Obama donned a yarmulke and went to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, where shortly before dawn on Thursday he stuffed his prayer into a crevass between the giant white stones, hewn over 2,000 years ago. Traditionally such prayers, and there are over a million every year, some arriving by fax and email, are collected twice a year and buried on the Mount of Olives. It is considered taboo to read the prayers.

But after Obama and his entourage left the sacred site, an orthodox seminary student went to the Wall, fished out Obama's personal note and delivered it to Maariv newspaper, which duly printed the senator's prayer.

The newspaper's decision to publish Obama's private words was "an outrage", said Rabbbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, supervisor of the Western Wall. "It damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves," the rabbi told Army Radio. "The note placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make use of them."

Obama didn't pray for an election victory, a lottery win to help pay for his campaign, or for his Republican rival Senator John McCain to be felled by lightning or a pecadillo. On the contrary; his prayer hints at the struggle within, how Obama is seeking divine guidance to surmount the obstacles that lie ahead of him in his lonely, awesome challenge to become the next president of the United States. On hotel stationary, he penned the following prayer, according to Maariv, which ran a photo of the note: PASSAGE DELETED BY NEWS de INTRIGUE DUE TO DECENCY

Obama, now finishing up the European leg of his tour, has not commented on his private prayer being made public in Jerusalem.

Beijing Olympics '08-Chinese Military Masters Technique of Balancing, Driving, and Shooting Simultaneously

What can I say? Apparently the Chinese military have been trained to pilot Segways while shooting at terrorists. Cool...? I think? ---PETER ST. GEORGE

Visitors to this summer's Olympics in Beijing may see a familiar American gadget on the go, according to a report from the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of China.

China's military demonstrated on Tuesday their skills at balancing and shooting while on Segways during a series of drills of anti-terrorist units in Jinan, Shandong Province, according to Xinhua.

The Segway was demonstrated as a useful tool since it allows soldiers, once they are trained in balancing and maneuvering the machine, to keep both hands on their weapon while still accelerating and turning the device with their body movements. In skilled hands, a Segway could be kept still enough to offer a stable position from which to shoot.

While visually amusing, the use is not entirely surprising as Segway proudly touts its Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP) on its Web site and lists all four branches of the U.S. military as clients.

This one doesn't have anything to do with Segways, but it does show the Chinese military operating a flame sprayer during an anti-terrorism drill. Kinda seems like overkill to me, but, whatev.

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