Eideard

A Pentagon investigation has found insufficient evidence that General Stanley McChrystal, the former US and Nato commander in Afghanistan sacked by Barack Obama last year, violated military policy.

McChrystal’s dismissal came after publication of an article in Rolling Stone, The Runaway General, which portrayed him and his inner circle as being out of control, and making contemptuous and dismissive remarks about the US civilian leadership…

The investigation expressed doubts about the version of some events reported in the article, written by Michael Hastings, who spent several days with McChrystal and his team. The investigation added that it could not substantiate some of the quotes.

The investigation, carried out by the Pentagon’s office of inspector general, concluded: “The evidence was insufficient to substantiate a violation of applicable department of defense standards with respect to any of the incidents on which we focused. Not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article…A polite way of saying Hastings is a liar and Rolling Stone is opportunist and unconcerned with journalistic standards.

The article, published in June last year, suggested that McChrystal was unimpressed with Obama at their first meeting, and that one of his team viewed the White House national security adviser, James Jones, as a clown. His team was also alleged to have been dismissive of vice-president Joe Biden and the late state department envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

At the time, McChrystal apologised after the piece, saying it was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. He flew back to Washington to see Obama, who dismissed him, saying: “The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general.”

The investigation’s conclusions open Obama to charges that he was too hasty in dismissing McChrystal.

The former general, though no longer in the army, was partially rehabilitated last week when the White House invited him to join a panel to try to improve the life of military families. The report reached the White House 3 days before the job offer.

The new investigation is more favourable to McChrystal than an initial one published in August last year.

There are lots of details in the report. Mostly boring high dudgeon over situations and context as unimportant than who gives the finger to whom in your daily commute.

It probably explains the how and why of Obama inviting General McChrystal into the Administration, last week. As admission that our news-as-entertainment-media prompted the removal of a significant military leader from the South Asian theatre. The only surprise is that the Kongressional Klowns didn’t follow through with their usual opportunism, sound bites and slapstick. Yet.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
The latest photo of corporate meat puppets

House Republicans have hired a prominent conservative attorney to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a pending lawsuit, legal sources say, and will make an effort to divert money from the Justice Department to fund its high-profile fight. House Speaker John Boehner disclosed the legal and political strategy in a letter Monday to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi…

“The burden of defending DOMA, and the resulting costs associated with any litigation that would have otherwise been born (sic) by DOJ (The Department of Justice), has fallen to the House,” Boehner said. “Obviously, DOJ’s decision results in DOJ no longer needing the funds it would have otherwise expended defending the constitutionality of DOMA. It is my intent that those funds be diverted to the House for reimbursement of any costs incurred by and associated with the House, and not DOJ, defending DOMA…”

Paul Clement is a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, serving from 2005 to 2008. It was his job to defend federal laws and executive actions in court, similar to what he will be doing now as a private lawyer on retainer. He was mentioned at one time as a possible Supreme Court nominee. He would have fit in perfectly with the other reactionary liars appointed by Bush.

Separately, he also is representing more than two dozens states in their lawsuit against the administration over the sweeping health care reform law passed by Congress last year. That case is pending in a federal appeals court in Atlanta.
In the Defense of Marriage Act dispute, groups on both sides of the issue noted the highly charged political aspects.

“Not only are House Republican leaders defending the indefensible, they’ve brought in a high-priced attorney to deny federal recognition to loving, married couples,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “Speaker Boehner appears ready to go to great lengths, and the great expense of a high-power law firm, to try to score some cheap political points on the backs of same-sex couples…”

President Barack Obama on February 23 ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the law. “The president has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. The key provision in the law “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional…”

These bigots have a perfect right to maintain their fight against the tide of progress and civil rights. Hate-mongers are a protected species under our Constitution.

There’s no good reason why American taxpayers should pick up the tab for their revanchist politics. There’s no shortage of wealthy thugs like the Koch Bros around to pay the bill for rightwing politicians running for office. Let ‘em pay for the fightback against the 21st Century.

Istanbul is renown as the place where east meets west, the only city in the world to straddle Europe and Asia. But it may soon lose this unique status if the Turkish government goes ahead with a plan to divide it in two.

The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor, has announced what he described as a “wild project” to split the city into European and Asian sides to make it easier to govern. “We will build two new cities in Istanbul due to high population,” Erdogan said, announcing his party’s manifesto for June elections.. “One on the European side and one on the Anatolian side.”

Istanbul’s official population is soon expected to reach 17 million, with thousands more unregistered people living in the city.

Tahire Erman, an urban planning expert at Ankara’s Bilkent University, said this caused significant problems for authorities: “[Istanbul] is already overgrown, and there are already many problems in the provision of infrastructure and municipal services to the city.”

Should the plan go ahead, the two cities would be well connected by transport links promised by the ruling party, including a third bridge over the Bosphorus, the strait that divides the European and Anatolian sides of the city, and two tube tunnels for cars and rail transport under the water. Two bridges and frequent ferries already connect the two sides of the city…

Plans have been announced to build a new financial district in Atasehir, a booming district on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, as part of a government pledge to increase Turkey’s global stature by 2023, the centennial anniversary of the Turkish republic.

The politicians in power think it’s a wonderful idea. The politicians out of power think it’s a silly idea. The concept does make sense. If anyone had their brains switched on after World War Two, the same might have been done with London, Tokyo or Los Angeles.

Measuring roughly 500 x 250 meters, this land formation in Canada provides one of the biggest images you’ll likely see of someone listening to their iPod.

See on Google Maps.

Melanie Beacham, who had fallen behind in her car payments, wanted debt collectors to leave her alone.

MarkOne Financial representatives had emailed her, texted her and called her at home, on her cell and at work — 23 times in one day, according to a lawsuit she filed in Pinellas Circuit Court.

And, a MarkOne employee going by the name of Jeff Happenstance sent a message to the St. Petersburg woman and her friends on Facebook, the suit said.

That turned out to be a precedent-setting no-no. A judge ruled last month that MarkOne can no longer contact Beacham, her family or friends on Facebook or any other social-networking site.

It’s the first court decision of its kind and serves as a warning for debt collectors to tread lightly when using social networks to recoup money owed. The suit, in which Beacham alleges harassment, is still pending in court…

Debt collectors’ use of social media has become a major issue for the industry…

“This is a new age of harassment,” Beacham’s lawyer, Billy Howard said. “A couple of key strokes you can use one of the oldest debt collectors’ tricks there is … that is, to contact family members and friends. Most harassment is one-on-one, but when you bring in family members and friends that’s when you really turn up the psychological pressure on people.”

No one with MarkOne returned a message left in its Jacksonville office.

Leave a message for them on their Facebook page.

 
To be fair, I’m not sure if all Republicans love Sharia law, but they certainly do love talking about it.

Republicans Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum don’t agree on everything, but they all concur that we must stop Sharia law from being imposed upon America.

And Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, winner of a Tea Party convention straw poll in February, went a step further when he recently declared that he would not even nominate an American-Muslim to his Cabinet because in his words, Muslims “are trying to force Sharia law on the people of this country.” (Although to be honest, Charlie Sheen has a better chance of “winning” the 2012 presidential election than Cain.)

Add to this mix Republican state legislators in more than a dozen states who have introduced legislation to ban state court judges from considering Sharia law. And in Tennessee, Republican state Sen. Bill Ketron has upped the ante by proposing a law that would make it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison for any person who knowingly supports Sharia law.

To warrant this hysterical call to arms by these Republicans, American-Muslims must certainly be aggressively pushing for Sharia law to be imposed upon all Americans — which would be an especially amazing feat considering only about 2% of our nation’s population is Muslim.

So I began looking into the issue of which American-Muslims are calling for this. I started out simply enough by asking the Muslims in my family and my Muslim friends if they wanted Sharia law to be the new law of America. After they stopped laughing, they all responded “no.”

This isn’t surprising to me because I have never met an American-Muslim who has commented: “America is great, but you know what would make it even better? More laws like Afghanistan.”

RTFA for the details you should expect. Perhaps not – if you’re from the Kool Aid Party or someone who joined up for the chance to hate people on a larger scale by voting for your role model in a Republican primary.

Maybe that’s why so many are now ex-Republicans?

 
Har.

A transgender employee hired to oversee urine tests administered to men has filed a discrimination lawsuit against a Camden drug treatment center that fired him after it confronted him about his gender last summer…

When his employer asked about his gender after he began work, El’Jai Devoureau responded, “I am a man, and I can do the job. They said, ‘You’re fired.’”

According to the lawsuit, Devoureau, of Gloucester County, was hired in June to observe men depositing urine in cups for drug analysis. The supervision is to assure that the sample is fresh and not from a different person. The employer may require male workers for such a job, Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund said.

In documents filed in January, after Devoureau filed a discrimination complaint with the state, the treatment center stated that it fired Devoureau because he was not a biological male. But it disputed that the termination was discriminatory…

After Devoureau began work, according to the lawsuit, an acquaintance recognized him and passed along to supervisors that Devoureau was physically female at birth and was transgender.

A day later, the lawsuit alleges, Devoureau was confronted by the program’s director, identified as Van Macaluso. She allegedly told Devoureau that he was fired because she had been told “he was not a man, that he did not have the parts of a man, and that the job called for a biological male,” according to legal documents…

“New Jersey is a national leader in transgender equality, and New Jersey is a worldwide model in protecting transgender people from discrimination,” Steven Goldstein, chairman of the civil rights organization Garden State Equality, said Monday.

“We’ve never seen or heard of such a brazen disregard for the law,” he said.”

New Jersey law recognizes Mr. Devoureau as male – hence his driver’s license. The U.S. government recognizes Mr. Devoureau as male – his Social Security account identifies him as such. Following the guidelines from New Jersey, Georgia changed his birth certificate to read “male”. As far as employment law in the United States is concerned – Mr. Devoureau is a man.

All other discussion pivots on whether a court of law should allow an employer to discriminate on the basis of their subjective viewpoint – not the law. I would hope the law prevails.

Eight doctors from the U.S.-based Physicians for a National Health Program visited Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital for an inside look at Canada’s single-payer health care system. Hosting the trip was family physician Danielle Martin, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

New York dermatologist Elizabeth Rosenthal, board member of the New York metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, spoke to The Globe and Mail about what she learned during her visit…

What is the most surprising thing you have learned so far?

I learned that doctors are compensated much better than what we presumed they were here and their work lives are very nice. In the U.S., most doctors are afraid of two things with a single-payer system: they will lose money – of course, they won’t say that – and that they are going to lose autonomy.

What is work life like for an American doctor?

You spend so much time hassling with insurance companies, you just can’t imagine. You have to fight with them to get paid…

The U.S. system spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, yet it still leaves more than 50 million without health coverage. Why has reform been so difficult?

We’re always racking our brains and always bemoaning the fact that it shouldn’t be so hard. Part of it is cultural. With Canadians, it’s a community – we’re all in this to help each other. In the U.S., it’s the frontier – I’m going to take care of myself and you can’t tell me what to do…

There’s lots of ways to improve the health care system. The first thing we have to do is get rid of the private health insurance industry because the administrative costs that they entail, we say it adds costs but no value to the system. We don’t think health care should be an opportunity for profit, we think health care is a human need, like the fire department. But in our country, it’s treated as how you make a buck. And we will be mandated to buy their lousy health insurance.

If I was comparing operating costs as if I have to choose between investing in Medicare or investing in private health insurance the decision ain’t exactly difficult. Operating costs for Medicare run less than 3%. The typical American insurance company walks away from any market that only allows 20% for management costs. Not too difficult choosing which is more efficient.

Thanks, Cinaedh

Tresa VanWinkle struggled to hold back tears as she glanced at family photos perched on her desk among the clutter of her downtown office. “I look at what has happened to members of my family, and I wonder if we are the children of the bomb,” said VanWinkle, 53, director of the Alamogordo-based Cancer Awareness, Prevalence, Prevention and Early Detection center…

“The bomb” was the 19-kiloton plutonium device nicknamed “The Gadget,” detonated just before dawn July 16, 1945, on the northwest end of what is now the White Sands Missile Range. The explosion, the product of the Manhattan Project, was the first-ever detonation of an atomic device and is considered the dawn of the nuclear age.

Now, more than six decades after the United States launched what some consider, in essence, a surprise nuclear attack on the citizens of south-central New Mexico, many feel they have been abandoned by their government and left to deal on their own with three generations of radiation-induced illnesses and deaths…

In the past 15 years, VanWinkle said, 14 members of her and her husband’s family, including two of her sisters, have been diagnosed with a variety of cancers; eight of them, including her sisters, have died…

A recently formed group known as the Tularosa Downwinders Consortium is attempting to raise awareness of the increase in cancer and autoimmune diseases in four counties adjacent to the Trinity Site (Otero, Lincoln, Sierra and Socorro) — up to nine times higher than nationwide figures — and to push for inclusion of the Trinity downwinders in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990…

The compensation act, initiated in great part by former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, father of U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., offered mea culpas and monetary compensation to uranium miners and residents of Nevada and other Western states who were downwind from above-ground atomic-weapons testing in the 1950s and early ’60s.

The legislation, administered through the Justice Department, authorizes lump-sum compensation payments and sometimes medical coverage to individuals in three categories who contracted any of 27 types of cancer or other radiation-related diseases…

Despite numerous amendments and expansion of the coverage over the years, the Trinity downwinders have never been included in the legislation.

RTFA. None of this is a surprise to folks in my neck of the prairie.

Some of what folks face is the American tradition of denial in the face of responsibility. Doesn’t matter which disaster we confront, Americans are always supposed to be the Good Guys – our government even more so. It’s easy to refuse compensation if you convince yourself nothing happened, nothing’s wrong in the first place.