Our man on the spot XIII – by SPE
Our man on the spot – by SPE
Translation by Nikki Carter
BRADLEY MANNING’S LONG SECOND ACT
(Photo): Bradley Manning, US Army, courtesy of Wikipedia.
(Jon Carroll, S.F. Chronicle, August 2, 2013)
‘Seymour Hersh wrote the article that led to the unraveling of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. He did what Bradley Manning did, as far as exposing secrets, he brought journalistic rigor to the enterprise, but the offense was the same. Hersh was never arrested, never charged – and Manning is looking at life. Hardly seems fair, does it?’
EX-MADAM, CANDIDATE FOR COMPTROLLER, IS ARRESTED
(Benjamin Weiser, N.Y. Times, August 7, 2013)
‘Kristin Davis, 38, is a former madam who spent several months at Rikers Island. In 2008 for running a prostitution ring – she also said that she supplied escorts to Eliot Spitzer who resigned as governor that year after admitting that he had patronized a prostitution ring [but not that ring he contends]. Mr. Spitzer is also running for comptroller…’
THE A-ROD PROBLEM [THE PERILS OF SELF PREOCCUPATION]
(David Brooks, N.Y. Times, Op-Ed, August 6, 2013)
‘I think of this (the perils of A-Rod), because of the news on Monday about Alex Rodriguez’s suspension from baseball through the 2014 season. Judging from the outside, the rest of us are pikers of self-preoccupation next to A-Rod. When you see him standing on deck or running off the field at the end of an inning, you see a man who seems to be manufacturing his own persona, ingenuously crafting a series for behaviors designed to look right…but someone at the park said the Yankees don’t care as long as he continues to fill the seats for their slumping team.’
GUN MANUFACTURERS GO TO WHERE ITS FRIENDLY
(Nelsen D. Schwartz, N.Y. Times, Business, August 6, 2013)
‘Magpul, a Colorado maker of ammunition magazines and other accessories, says it will relocate more than 200 workers after the state banned magazines that had more than 15 bullets. Two days before the law went into effect on July 1, Magpul organized a giveaway of 1,500 soon-to-be forbidden 30 round magazines attracting thousands to a gun rights rally in Glendale, Colorado…’
INVITATION TO A DIALOGUE: ART IN HARD TIMES
(Letters to Editor/ Frank Robinson, former museum director, N.Y. Times, August 7, 2013)
‘We claim to be moral institutions, open to all, providing the best to the most, and we all work hard to do just that. But is that really our audience? Don’t we for the most part, serve the affluent, the educated, the converted those who are on our side of the income and education gap…’
[STILL IN OBAMA TIME] DYING LAWYER
ASKS JUDGE TO RELEASE HER FROM PRISON
(Benjamin Weiser, N.Y. Times, August 6, 2013 )
‘In court papers, Jill R. Shellow, lawyer for Lynne F. Stewart, outspoken former defense lawyer, says that the circumstances of her clients’ imprisonment – having to use a walker to get around, now 73-years-old and dying from cancer in a prison hospital in Texas, and being placed in shackles and belly chain and hand cuffs when she is transported to an outside cancer center – are cruel, unusual and excessive punishment…’
THE “WATCHTOWER” MUDAR ABU ALI LEADER OF SYRIAN REBEL SPOTTERS
(C.J. Chivers, N.Y. Times, August 7, 2013)
‘”We are surprised what the world is silent about the massacres. Are the Syrian children a Grade C product?” he asked. “What makes us wonder is that if this happened in Israel…what would the international reaction be then?” He was not expecting a reply. His radio was busy. Mudar returned to work.’
OLD TIME NOTES
(Mendocino Beacon, August – compiled by Debbie L. Holmer – 125 years ago, July 21, 1888)
‘The Mansion House stage had a runaway last Sunday when coming down the Pullen Grade between Albion and Little River. The brake gave a way, and the horses being unable to hold back the heavily loaded stage, started down hill at a break next speed. A short distance down the grade was J.D. Johnson, the undertaker, and a driver with a hearse containing the body of J.J. Ward… Unable to get out of the way in time the runaway horses and stage went crashing into them…Just a short time before this accident, a carriage containing a load of people attending the funeral of J.J. Ward was tipped over a grade by a defective brake. This accident was also free of unfortunate results.’
GANGPLANK TO A WARM FUTURE
(Anthony R. Ingraffea, N.Y. Times, Op-Ed, July 29, 2013)
‘As a longtime oil and gas engineer who helped developed shale fracking techniques for the Energy Department, I can assure you that this gas is not “clean.” Because of leaks of methane, the main component shale deposits is not a “bridge” to a renewable energy future – it’s a gangplank to more working and away from clean energy investments.’
FAST FOOD, LOW PAY
(Mark Bittman, N.Y. Times, Op-Ed, July 26, 2013)
‘The median age of today’s fast-food worker is over 29, and many are trying to support families. One estimate claims that a family of four needs nearly $90,000 a year to get by in the Nation’s capital. That’s six minimum wage jobs. Explain to me, please, how you can be pro-family and anti-living wage simultaneously? [Many republicans in Congress seem to mange.] We can afford to pay these workers: a petition titled, Economists in Support of a $10.50 U.S. Minimum Wage, estimates that McDonald’s could recoup half the cost of such an increase simply by hiking the price of a Big Mac from $4.00 to $4.05 one item, – 1 percent.’
THE CHARITABLE – INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
(Peter Buffett, N.Y. Times, Op-Ed, July 27, 2013)
‘As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundry,” – feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity. But this keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over.’
RULING BY JUSTICES FREES FLORIDA TO SCREEN VOTERS
(N.Y. Times, National, August 8, 2013)
‘Last years (Florida’s attempt at unearthing non-citizens, which initially began with a pool of 2,600, those named were sent to election supervisors, who found that many were in fact citizens. Ultimately, the list of possible non-citizen voters shrank to 198. Of those, fewer than 40 had voted illegally.’
CLEARING KITCHEN FUMES [BETTER DO IT]
(Andrey Smith, N.Y. Times, Science section, July 23, 2013)
‘Emissions of nitrogen dioxide in homes with gas stoves exceed the environmental Protection Agency’s definition of clean air in an estimated 55% to 70% of those homes… A quarter of them have air quality worse than the worst recorded smog [nitrogen dioxide] event in London. Cooking represents one of the single largest contributors, generating four times greater than major haze events in Beijing.’
Pelican Bay photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
CLIMBING OUT OF THE HOLE
(Jesse Wegman, N.Y. Times, Notebook, July 21, 2013)
‘At Pelican Bay [California’s “supermax” prison] the overwhelming majority of the men in solitary [in 8×10 windowless cell 23 of 24 hours a day] don’t even have a record of violence: they are placed in solitary [for many years usually] for their gang associations…The little hope these inmates have of leaving solitary lies mostly in what prison officials call “debriefing” or snitching on others gang members.’
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