Accounts of a Haditha Massacre, Saved From Junkyard Flames

A Massacre in Jamaica

Most cemeteries replace the illusion of life’s permanence with another illusion: the permanence of a name carved in stone. Not so May Pen Cemetery, in Kingston, Jamaica, where bodies are buried on top of bodies, weeds grow over the old markers, and time humbles even a rich man’s grave. The most forsaken burial places lie at the end of a dirt path that follows a fetid gully across two bridges and through an open meadow, far enough south to hear the white noise coming off the harbor and the highway. Fifty-two concrete posts are set into the earth in haphazard groups of two and three. Each bears a small disk of black metal and a stencilled number. The majority of these mark the unclaimed dead from the last days of May, 2010, when the police and the Army assaulted the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, in West Kingston. The rest mark the graves of paupers...

Continue reading

Mattathias Schwartz @'The New Yorker'

dangillmor Dan Gillmor
Great news: journalists finally are grasping threat of #SOPA. Newspaper editors group denounces it bit.ly/vWOTHY (pdf)

DOJ Report: DEA Needs To Be More Covert About Their Undercover Airplanes

News of the World ex-head of legal says he held up key email to James Murdoch

The News of the World's former head of legal has said he held up the front page of an email that suggested phone hacking went beyond a single journalist at the paper during a critical meeting with James Murdoch to discuss how best to settle a legal action.
Tom Crone told the Leveson inquiry into press standards that he went into the 10 June 2008 meeting with Murdoch, who was chairman of the paper's owner News International, armed with documents that appeared to show that hacking was not the work of a "rogue reporter".
"I think I took a copy of the 'for Neville' email," Crone told the inquiry on Wednesday. "I can't remember whether they were passed across the table to him but I'm pretty sure I held up the front page of the email. I am also pretty sure he already knew about it." Colin Myler, the paper's editor at the time, was also at the meeting.
The email in question contained transcripts of voicemails intercepted from a mobile phone belonging to Gordon Taylor, who was suing the News of the World. It was sent by one of the journalists on the title, Ross Hall, to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for the attention of "Neville", which is understood to be a reference to the paper's former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck.
It emerged on Tuesday that Murdoch was sent an email by Myler ahead of the June meeting which referred to and included a message from Crone referring to the email and the existence of the transcripts. The email chain was published by the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee yesterday along with a letter from Murdoch in which he insisted he had not read the "for Neville" email.
Asked on Wednesday by inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC about the 10 June meeting, which was called to discuss how to respond to Taylor's claim, Crone told the Leveson inquiry: "I certainly took a copy and possibly spare copies of the [legal] opinion." The legal opinion was drawn up by Michael Silverleaf QC and warned there was evidence of a culture of illegal information gathering at the paper. Murdoch told parliament in October that he had been told about the email and the legal opinion but insisted he had not be shown either document.
Murdoch told MPs he had been advised by Myler and Crone to settle the Taylor case because the PFA chief executive had obtained evidence from Scotland Yard that proved his phone had been hacked by the News of the World. He denies he was told that hacking went beyond Goodman and that this was the reason he authorised a six-figure pay-off to Taylor.
At the time, News International was insisting that only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, had hacked into mobile phone messages, and that he had done so secretly with Mulcaire without the company's knowledge.
Crone said of the 10 June meeting: "What was certainly discussed was the email… the damning email and what it meant in terms of further involvement in phone hacking beyond Goodman and Mulcaire." He added: "This document clearly was direct and hard evidence of that."
Cone said: "I left that meeting knowing that Mr Murdoch was prepared to settle the case if necessary for a bit more than … £350,000."
Myler is likely to be asked about the meeting with Murdoch and Crone when he gives evidence to the inquiry this afternoon. Myler told parliament earlier this year that Murdoch was told about the contents of the "for Neville" email.
James Robinson @'The Guardian'

New Challenge to a Murdoch Over Hacking

Spaceboy - This one's for you!!!

Mention of the word 'loving' doubles charitable donations

attackerman attackerman

Wanted: national-security wonks/musicians to record a Johnny Thunders-style LP titled AUMF.

Israel Leader Sets New Curbs on Violent Settlers

In Wake of Disputed Election, Russian Middle Class Finding its Voice

TIME Person of the Year - The Protester

Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news — vivid, important, often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the '70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the '80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means. And then came the End of History, summed up by Francis Fukuyama's influential 1989 essay declaring that mankind had arrived at the "end point of ... ideological evolution" in globally triumphant "Western liberalism." The two decades beginning in 1991 witnessed the greatest rise in living standards that the world has ever known. Credit was easy, complacency and apathy were rife, and street protests looked like pointless emotional sideshows — obsolete, quaint, the equivalent of cavalry to mid-20th-century war. The rare large demonstrations in the rich world seemed ineffectual and irrelevant. (See the Battle of Seattle, 1999.) There were a few exceptions, like the protests that, along with sanctions, helped end apartheid in South Africa in 1994. But for young people, radical critiques and protests against the system were mostly confined to pop-culture fantasy: "Fight the Power" was a song on a platinum-selling album, Rage Against the Machine was a platinum-selling band, and the beloved brave rebels fighting the all-encompassing global oppressors were just a bunch of characters in The Matrix. (See pictures of protesters around the world.) "Massive and effective street protest" was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.
Prelude to the Revolutions
It began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match...

Kurt Andersen @'TIME'

Project Prokhorov

Examining links between Judaism and the Grateful Dead

First Listen: John Zorn - A Dreamer's Christmas

A Dreamer's Christmas is one of those albums that'll make you smile from the very first notes. Listening on the drive to work, it made me want to be nice to everyone. Those who know me will immediately say, "Yeah, right." But it did, even to the jerk in the Audi tailgaiting me through the park. I got a sweet smile from a young woman in an SUV — hate 'em — whom I let slide in front of me in a traffic jam. 'Tis the season. And this music will definitely put you in the mood.
That may come as a surprise to those of you who associate John Zorn with challenging, even dissonant music; remember Colbert's facile attempt at humor — yes, I chuckled — when Zorn won a MacArthur Genius grant? But keep in mind that he's released hundreds of varied albums on a number of labels, from the electric jazz of his early band Naked City to the haunting Jewish melodies he's composed for diverse Masada ensembles to The Dreamers, whose music Zorn's label Tzadik describes on its website as, "Perfect for the early morning, late at night, at home or in the car..."
It turns out that Zorn has wanted to make a Christmas record for years. The Dreamers is the group he chose to make it: Marc Ribot, guitars; Jamie Saft, keyboards (that's his killer piano solo in "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"); Kenny Wolleson, vibes, chimes and (what would Christmas music be without a) glockenspiel; Trevor Dunn, basses; Joey Baron, drums; Cyro Baptista, percussion; and guest vocalist Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle) in "The Christmas Song."
One of the highlights of A Dreamer's Christmas is a bittersweet interpretation of Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here." It perfectly captures not only Charlie Brown's holiday angst, but also the mixed feelings a lot of us have around this time of year. John Zorn has given us an album of standards — plus two originals — that we can all enjoy.
Which brings me back to my commute. I got to a green light, and traffic was backed up a few cars through the intersection. I could have slid into the oncoming lane and made an easy left turn. But I was grooving to the holiday sounds, so I was happy to wait. Good thing: Up the oncoming lane cruised a police car. That would have been a hefty ticket. Thanks, John Zorn!
Tom Cole @'npr'