• 5:30: The rescheduled Urban Planet holiday party will be at the Wild Colonial
• 600: Big Obama organizing meeting, downtown at the new campaign HQ. Corner of Westminster and Union.
• 6:30-7:30: NPR Pentagon reporter Tom Bowman will be speaking at the downtown branch of the Providence Public Library.
• 10:00 Tim O’Keefe’s weekly Listening Party at Local 121
• Other stuff too, I’m sure.

I’m going to do something different this week so, this column won’t take its standard gush-about-stuff-from-this-week format, because I’m responding to something Newbury Comics has done in their weekly comic book and graphic novel e-mail newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. For my thoughts on this week, you can check my blog.

Okay, so down to business. Publishing 10 best comic book titles of 2007 lists from your superexploited employees (I say superexploited because people who work in Newbury Comics don’t make a lot and tend to be people who chose the work environment because of an affinity for some superfluous product the store sells–i.e. comics, cds, hello kitty dolls–and so end up spending a huge portion of their limited income at the company store. I don’t even want to imagine the kind of debt I’d wrack up if I spent 5 days a week surrounded by comics for sale. Yikes. Sorry, huge tangent.) would not seem to be a task that the first week of February 2008 would call for. I know if I were left to my own devices I would never dream of publishing a list of my 10 favorie comics from 2007 this week, but Newbury Comics had to go and do that. What’s worse is that the lists provided by these guys (and they were obviously all male) demonstrate that they are even less equipped to provide such a list to the general public than I am. In the course of human events, there comes a time when I must cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war against Newbury Comics’ tardy best of 2007 lists. more »

Evangelical nutbags still have a strangle-hold on the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The New York Times reports that three speakers invited to participate in a recent conference on terrorism may not be former Muslim terrorists as they claim, but rather proselytizing Christians.

Members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group suing the federal government to combat what it calls creeping evangelism in the armed forces, said it was typical of the Air Force Academy to invite born-again Christians to address cadets on terrorism rather than experts who could teach students about the Middle East.

“This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues,” said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member.

Experts say their stories just don’t add up and they aren’t even the correct ages, but the three former Muslim terrorists are very sure of one thing… “Jesus can change your life”.

Yup, that’s right. I guess the downside of the surge working is that even a small modicum of stability allows Iraq to crap on America, I mean, decisively surpass our commitment to stop global warming, in this manner.

Iraq has formally ratified the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on climate change, according to a government statement seen by AFP on Saturday.

“The presidential council ratified in its session on January 23 a law according to which the Republic of Iraq will join the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol,” the statement said.

Funny how this didn’t make it into the State of the Union…

Over the past few weeks, our political debate has centered on the intersection of race and gender in American politics. Clinton claims to be “proud” of Obama’s transcendence of racial discrimination, and Obama claims to be proud of Clinton’s success in shattering the glass ceiling. And both campaigns have instrumentally used race and gender, both publicly and deceitfully, to smear their opponents.

Journalists, commentators, and public figures have contributed to this debate, at times stirring feminist or African-American solidarity and, at other times, commending a nation that seems, perhaps, finally colorblind and egalitarian. “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” wrote Gloria Steinem, in an attempt to explain the importance of female support for Hillary Clinton. Chris Rock, opening for Obama at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, warned the audience not to waste their votes on “that white lady.” Others still use this contest between a black man and a female front-runner as evidence of our progress as a nation.

Are we left with the realization that we are still racist? Still sexist? Or are we left with the warm feeling that we are somehow less sexist and less racist than ever before? Perhaps this is the most dangerous of all the assumptions. Noticeably absent from the Race/Gender debate over the past few weeks has been a discussion of the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment that has played a significant role in the formation of our voters’ choices.

more »

Online sympathizers of al Qaida from across the internet have submitted hundreds of questions for deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahri over the past two months for an “on-line interview” on a militant Islamic website, and many supporters seem to be as in the dark about their activities and future plans as the rest of the world.

“Knight of Islam,” asks, “We are awaiting a strike against American soil. Why has that not been done? Why are the Jews in the world not struck?”

“We hear a lot about the non-centralization of al-Qaida,” one supporter writes. “Is the loss of direct control by al-Qaida’s leadership over the jihadi cells harmful to al-Qaida? … Does al-Qaida intend to try to reassert its control?”

(HuffPo)

Would be, say, to bribe Saddam Hussein.

I can be incredibly cynical about the political process, but even I naively thought that there’d be unanimity about the above. Apparently not, per some of the comments over at RIFuture.

So while members of the Assembly will introduce resolutions congratulating basketball teams and marching bands, or designating Del’s and/or coffee milk the official drink of the state, with nary a peep from the right wing, I’m catching a ton of crap for introducing a resolution admonishing Textron FOR BRIBING SADDAM HUSSEIN’S REGIME!!! Such are the politics of our time.

The resolution condemns Textron’s payment of $650k in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime from 2001-2003 under the United Nations Oil for Food Program. For their actions, Textron was fined $4.7 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007. (Textron is headquartered in downtown Providence.)

It calls on Textron to issue a public apology to “the people of Rhode Island, the people of Iraq, and the people of the world for its payment of such kickbacks.” It’s co-sponsored by Republicans Victor Moffitt, Joe Amaral and Democrats Al Gemma and Anastasia Williams.

From Wired, a story that seems ripped out of amemorable part of Carl Sagan’s Dragons of Eden:

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.

Everybody wants to perform like well-rested monkey, right?

RI Rep Patrick Kennedy was on his way to meet with slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto when she was assassinated. He and Sen Specter instead went to her party headquarters to lay a wreath and offer their condolences.

“The country now has obviously become engulfed in flames,” Kennedy said this afternoon from Islamabad, in a telephone interview with The Providence Journal.

Great news for humanitarians and humans alike, but bad news for local arms fiend Textron: The appropriations bill approved by Congress this week bans the export of most cluster bombs to most countries.

“An export moratorium is a good first step,” said Lora Lumpe, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “We will work in the coming year to make the export ban permanent and to prohibit the U.S. military’s use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”

Heads-up — I’m working with Lora Lumpe and the FCNL, other peace organizations, and legislators from other states on local legislation to help push the anti-cluster bomb and land-mine causes this year.

Blackwater bodyguards took out another victim: the New York Times’ Iraq bureau dog, Hentish. Is this shit for real? Reuters thinks so:

Staff at the newspaper’s Baghdad bureau said Blackwater bodyguards shot Hentish dead last week before a visit by a U.S. diplomat to the Times compound. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the dog had attacked one of Blackwater’s bomb-sniffer dogs while a security team was sweeping the compound for explosives.

Do you think maybe America isn’t a real country and instead it’s a French sitcom, and some folks are being paid to do stupid shit to amuse Europeans? I think so. Thanks to special tipster Nick Renzler for the scoop on this.

The Huffington Post reports today that 64 journalists died while covering the news in 2007

“The Committee to Protect Journalists said in an annual report that Iraq led the list for the fifth year in a row, with 31 dead, one fewer than a year ago. Somalia was second with seven dead in 2007, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka each recorded five deaths.”

Matt found a good excuse to post Generation Chickenhawk.  Definitely worth watching, and only 8 minutes long:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGit_tZDqs&eurl=http://www.rifuture.org/frontPage.do?nextDiaryId=1]

I feel compelled to update my post from yesterday, Governer Carcieri <3 Our Troops, with this photo. How could I let this slide? It’s too good to be true.

Thanks to William Pierce for slammin’ this baby up on the Facebook.

Rhode Island’s dear own Governor Donald Carcieri is in Iraq today as part of a three-governor delegation. The trip, arranged by the Department of Defense, has provided Carcieri with a chance to meet General Petraeus and to visit our troops. He arrived in Iraq yesterday, flanked by Governors Bill Ritter (D-CO) and Michael Rounds (R-SD). The ProJo reports:

The governors were briefed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, and by U.S. Ambassador Patricia Butenis, Carcieri then met with members of the Rhode Island National Guard.

“I’m very excited by the opportunity to meet with members of the Rhode Island National Guard and to learn firsthand about their mission in Iraq,” Carcieri said in a statement. “Since 2001, hundreds of Rhode Island National Guard members have been deployed in Iraq. As Governor, I want to better understand the hardships our soldiers are enduring.

[...] In the statement released today, Carcieri said he wanted to personally thanks the troops “for their willingness to endure so many sacrifices for the benefit of all Rhode Islanders and America.”

I would say more, but I think this news speaks for itself.

Scott Ewing is in the unusual position of having gone to fight in Iraq after he’d already been active as a campus anti-war activist:

What are things really like in Iraq? How do the military and media filter information disseminated to the American public? Scott Ewing spent a year in Tall Afar, a city that President Bush described in 2006 as “a key base of operations for al Qaeda that is today a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq.”

Ewing will share images from the war and his personal experience on the ground as a combat soldier. Students from all political persuasions are encouraged to attend this educational presentation.

Tonight at Brown (8:30 in MacMillan 115, on Thayer St, just north of George St.)