Tony Snow - Black Underclass Is “Most Dangerous Thing In Our Lifetime”

From democracy now Black Underclass Is “Most Dangerous Thing In Our Lifetime”

Tony Snow is already coming under scrutiny for a series of controversial comments he’s made on his radio program. Just last week, he shared these views: "People like Jesse Jackson who have committed themselves to a view that blacks are constantly victims, have succeeded in creating in the United States the most dangerous thing that we’ve encountered in our lifetime; which is, an underclass that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere." Tony Snow went on to criticize what he described as: "the idiotic culture of hip-hop”: "You have people glorifying failure. You have a bunch of gold-toothed hot dogs become millionaires by running around and telling everybody else that they oughtta be miserable failures and if they’re really lucky maybe they can get gunned down in a diner sometime, like Eminem’s old running mate."

"The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney"

David Vest in guerilla news network

"A Washington press corps that stood idly by while Bush and Cheney plundered the country, wrecked the environment, spied on Americans without a warrant, tortured civilians and lied the country into a war that will only get worse, woke up one morning and collectively decided: “Let’s all play Get Cynthia!”
Let’s get her for being too outspoken, bringing up the wrong issue at the wrong time, failing to get with the program, becoming a distraction, leaving House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi beside herself with rage.

Let’s get her because, hell, she practically volunteered for it, and besides, she’s an easy target, standing practically alone, fired upon at will by Republicans—who seem to think her story cancels out DeLay, Abramoff, Katrina and Iraq—and virtually undefended by Democrats, except by the rolling of eyes heavenward, as though to say, “Oh, please! We’re not responsible for HER!”read more

"Eight Months After Katrina"

Bill Quigley in common dreams

On Monday, April 17, 2006, two bodies were found buried beneath what used to be a home in the Lower 9th Ward. Their discovery raised to 17 the number of Hurricane Katrina fatalities that have been discovered in New Orleans in the past month and a half. Katrina is now directly blamed for the deaths of 1,282 Louisiana residents. Eight months after Katrina, the state reports 987 people are still missing.

Chief Steve Glynn, who oversees the New Orleans Fire Department search effort that found the latest two bodies told CNN: "You want to put it to rest at some point. You want to feel like it's over and it's just not yet."

Eight months after Katrina, there are still nearly 300,000 people who have not returned to New Orleans. While we can hope that our community is nearing the end of finding bodies, the struggle for justice for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people continues.read more

"Hell on Earth"

John Vidal in The Guardian

Twenty years ago today, Konstantin Tatuyan, a Ukrainian radio engineer, was horrified when Reactor No 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power complex exploded, caught fire, and for the next 10 days spewed the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima bombs' worth of radioactivity across 150,000 sq miles of Europe and beyond. He was just married, and he and his young family lived in the town of Chernobyl, just a few miles from the reactor.

Like 120,000 people, the family was evacuated, but Tatuyan volunteered to become a "liquidator", to help with the clean up, believing that his knowledge of radiation could save not just him but many of the 200,000 young soldiers and others who were rushed in from all over the Soviet Union. "We felt we had to do it," he says. "Who else, if not us, would do it?"

Tatuyan spent the next seven years in charge of 5,000 mostly young army reservists - drafted in from Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Chechnya, Kazakhstan and elsewhere in what was the Soviet Union - working 22 days on, eight days off, digging great holes, demolishing villages, dumping high-level waste, monitoring hot spots, testing the water, cleaning railway lines and roads, decontaminating ground and travelling throughout some of the most radioactive regions of Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia.read more

"Despite Crisis, 'Duke Lacrosse' Apparel Sells Like Hotcakes"

I can't find the source for this. I think it's the Chronicle of Higher Education
April 20, 2006

Despite Crisis, 'Duke Lacrosse' Apparel Sells Like Hotcakes

Duke University has gotten a load of bad publicity in the last month over allegations that members of its men’s lacrosse team raped a stripper they had hired to perform at a party, and this week two of the players were indicted (The Chronicle, April 14 and April 19). Why, then, are sales of merchandise carrying the name and logo of “Duke Lacrosse” going through the roof?

ESPN’s Web site is reporting that sales have tripled or quadrupled in the last month, and local store owners are having trouble keeping the hats, T-shirts, and jerseys in stock. One obvious reason for the boom is the success of Duke’s women’s lacrosse team, currently the No. 1 team in the country. The gear, after all, doesn’t say “Duke Men’s Lacrosse.”

But that can’t be the only reason. Is it possible that the buyers are using their purchases to show solidarity with the men’s team at a time of legal peril, moral crisis, and institutional danger? Americans have been known to make political statements with their purchases before, from “Buy American” campaigns that stretch back to the 1970s to the many people who bought copies of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1989 without any intention of reading the book after Ayatollah Khomeini called for the novelist’s death.

Whatever the reason, someone is making a lot of money on that “Duke Lacrosse” apparel.

"Call to Escort Service Began a Night of Trouble at Duke"

DUFF WILSON and JULIET MACUR in NY Times

The Duke University lacrosse team's troubles began with a phone call. A team captain using an assumed name called an escort service to hire two exotic dancers for a party on March 13. Last week, two Duke players were indicted on charges of first-degree forcible rape, first-degree sexual offense and the kidnapping of one woman hired that night. Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y., and Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J., both sophomores, are each free on $400,000 bail. read more