As Israeli warplanes were preparing an attack on Lebanon Thursday afternoon, and a Lebanese militia was aiming a rocket at the ancient Israeli city of Safed, President George W. Bush was bantering with reporters in Germany about a pig.

Bush kept bringing up the roast wild boar he was about to dine on at a banquet that night, even when asked about the swelling crisis in the Middle East, where pig meat is forbidden to religious Jews and Muslims.

"Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?" a reporter asked. "And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?"

"I thought you were going to ask me about the pig," Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again -- for the fifth time -- before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself.

"He was asked a serious question," said Ian Lustick, a Middle East expert now at the University of Pennsylvania, and his answer "epitomized his disengagement in the Middle East."

In the past, Arab-Israeli hostilities usually came to an end only when the United States signaled the Israelis in private to stop. But Bush, more than most if not all of his predecessors, has kept a largely hands-off approach -- in part, his aides have said, because he saw former President Bill Clinton's embarrassing failures to bring about peace in the region.

Bush's pig tales show disengagement

If movie trailers are supposed to cause a reaction, the preview for "United 93" more than succeeds. Featuring no voice-over and no famous actors, it begins with images of a beautiful morning and passengers boarding an airplane. It takes you a minute to realize what the movie's even about. That's when a plane hits the World Trade Center. The effect is visceral. When the trailer played before "Inside Man" last week at the famed Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, audience members began calling out, "Too soon!" In New York City, where 9/11 remains an open wound, the response was even more dramatic. The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. "One lady was crying," says one of the theater's managers, Kevin Adjodha. "She was saying we shouldn't have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong ... I don't think people are ready for this."

So the question is is the US ready for this film. Since this started my question has been what do you mean "ready"? If the answer is that it won't hurt then the answer of course is no and will never be yes. But we can't just not address the issue because it hurts. I was reminded of this question last night as I was watching Family Stone with my family. If you have not seen the movie there are issues about the mother having breast cancer and her imminent death. This was a painful movie for me to watch because I was there and it brought back all of those feeling of anguish and sorrow. I am sure this movie about Flight 93 has the same effect but that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. If I hadn't seen the family stone until 10 years or more after the ordeal with my mother I doubt the reaction would be any different. So I think the U.S. is as ready as it will ever be. In other words in order to move on you have to accept the past and use it to move forward

'United 93- Is U.S. ready for a 9/11 film? .........Will the U.S. ever be ready????

"My gut feeling is that it's destroyed," said Bob Bernstein, the owner of Bongo Java coffee shop, where the bun had been on display for nearly 10 years. "Someone took it, destroyed it and it's the last we'll hear of it."

Someone broke into the Belmont Boulevard coffeehouse yesterday morning, apparently with the sole purpose of stealing the pious pastry. Bills and loose change in charity-donation containers near the bun's glass display case were untouched, Bernstein said.

"They went right for the bun," he said. "What the heck they are going to do with it, I can't imagine. It's sure not something anyone would eat. I hope they do eat it. It will teach them a lesson."

"It's weird," Bernstein said. "You laugh about it a little bit, but it's an empty feeling. It's like the end of an era."

This story was on the Today show this morning including an interview with Bob. Was kinda wierd to wake up to.

BongoJava Nun Bun stolen!

ibenez wrote:

What is the problem here? Can someone tell me what the problem is with beating the f@#$king shit out of people?

As long as they don't dismember or kill the prisoners, they are enemy - treat them as such. I'm sorry but the first HEAD they chopped off threw the Geneva conventions right out the fucking window.

There are many problems here, my bloodthirsty friend.

The first of which is that the Geneva conventions don't apply to loosely bound terrorists with no national affiliation. They *do* apply to signatory nations who agreed to abide by certain rules for some minimal civility in the conduct of military actions. They apply to us, or should, because we believe that certain actions are morally reprehensible and that performing them reduces us to the same base level as the butchers we're fighting. It may be that you belive that the end justifies the means, and that anyone's actions justify an equal, or even more severe, reaction, in which case, feel free to continue believing so... just don't make the assumption that the rest of America agrees with you.

Second, you describe torture as "beating the fucking shit out of people", which I think minimizes the reality of the situation. We're not talking about a beating. We're talking about long term physical and mental anguish. These are not the same, and if a person is not cabable of facing the reality of what we mean when we say "torture" then they're in no position to advocate for it. I don't say that's your situation, mind you... I have no trouble believing you both know and favor exactly the kinds of duress implied by torture. This at least makes you not hypocritical.

The most serious problem, though, with this particular case, is the secrecy of it all. McCain has some knowledge of POW camps, and believes that America should not the kind of place that condones or engages in similar activity. Likewise, I imagine, he feels that the American public agree, and regard torture as a repugnant and immoral activity. We can't really know, of course, because most of the public doesn't bother to face up to the issue. They have some vague notion of what torture is and base an opinion on that knowledge. The administration well knows that the american public, who *ought* to be in charge of this country, wouldn't stand for it if they knew the details, so the details are classified and tacked onto the Army field manual so as to comply with the letter of the law, but completely defeat the spirit of it.

My fundamental belief is that we shouldn't be afraid to be honest about our practices. America is the greatest and strongest nation on earth... if the people of this country support torture, then lets say so, and tell our enemies exactly what they can expect if they're so foolish as to fall into our hands. If the people *don't* support it, then we shouldn't do it. But lets not tuck it away and feed everyone more pabulum about "achieving victory". We were founded on the notion that humans are capable of applying Reason to their own self-governance. Transparency is freedom's best friend... without it we are lost.

I think McCain believes that America should be a nation that leads by example and, as such, doesn't engage in the same horrific activities as it's enemies. To do so requires more strenth and more resolve than acting on animal urges. Meeting torture with torture, hate with hate, and rage with rage ought to be below us. Rather than accepting this, the administration gave McCain a patronizing nod and then subverted his efforts without a blink. *That's* why McCain should be pissed.

RE: New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue - New York Times

"I don't know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl," that early post continued. "But I'm sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I'm most likely the only party member among them."

Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China's ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control.

Under China's current leader, Hu Jintao, the government has waged an energetic campaign against freedom of expression, prohibiting the promotion of public intellectuals by the news media; imposing restrictions on Web sites; pressing search engine companies, like Google, to bar delicate topics, particularly those dealing with democracy and human rights; and heavily censoring bulletin board discussions at universities and elsewhere.

"The new bloggers are talking back to authority, but in a humorous way," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "People have often said you can say anything you want in China around the dinner table, but not in public. Now the blogs have become the dinner table, and that is new.

A Party Girl Leads China's Online Revolution

The Bush administration brought terrorism charges on Tuesday against Jose Padilla in a criminal court after holding him for three and a half years in a military brig as an enemy combatant once accused in a "dirty bomb" plot.

The decision to remove Mr. Padilla from military custody and charge him in the civilian system averts what had threatened to be a constitutional showdown over the president's authority to detain him and other American citizens as enemy combatants without formal charges.

"President Bush has directed his administration to utilize all available tools to protect America from acts of terrorism," Mr. Gonzales said. "This case, which began as an intelligence investigation, is a classic example of why the criminal justice system is one of those important tools."

"The Justice Department cannot continue changing course each time action from the courts is imminent," said Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee. "If Congress refuses to act, our judicial policies will continue to be cobbled together in a piecemeal fashion."

In Legal Shift, U.S. Charges Detainee in Terrorism Case

William H. Luers, the current president of the United Nations Association of the United States, offered a dark assessment of the current clash. "I think that there is a morning-after effect that's resulted in polarization between the U.S. on the one hand and the Group of 77 on the other," he said. "This is a time for diplomacy, and we don't have the diplomatic capacity to do it."

This is a scary but possibly true statement

U.S. Press for Reform Prompts Talk of Showdown at the U.N.

On a July evening in the Capitol, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned three Republican senators to his ornate office just off the Senate chamber. The Republicans - John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - were making trouble for the Bush administration, and Mr. Cheney let them know it.

The three were pushing for regulations on the treatment of American military prisoners, including a contentious ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The vice president wanted the provision pulled from a huge military spending bill. The senators would not budge.

"We agreed to disagree," Mr. Graham said in an interview last week.

That private session was an early hint of a Republican feud that spilled into the open last week, as Senate Republicans openly challenged President Bush on American military policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism. In the center of the fray, pushing Congress to reassert itself, were those same three Republicans.

In the Senate, a Chorus of Three Defies the Line

PYONGYANG, North Korea — While watching child gymnasts tumbling in unison across the field of Kim Il Sung Stadium in a performance heralding the miracle of the North Korean economy, Hwang Seon felt a sharp cramp in her abdomen.

Within minutes, the 32-year-old South Korean tourist was whisked by ambulance across town to Pyongyang's maternity hospital. There, doctors delivered a 7-pound, 6-ounce girl who has become an instant celebrity and rare source of optimism in this often-forlorn North Korean capital.

The baby is the first born in the North as a South Korean citizen.

...............

Hwang Seon, the baby's mother and a former student radical, served 34 months in South Korean prisons largely because she made an unauthorized trip to North Korea in 1998.

"The last time I came back [to South Korea] from North Korea, the National Intelligence Service was waiting for me to arrest me," Hwang recalled. "This time, I held my baby in my arms and was welcomed back with flowers."

Hwang's husband was not able to meet his wife and new daughter upon their arrival home. He is in hiding, wanted by South Korean authorities on charges of pro-North Korean activities.

'Unification Baby'

WASHINGTON — With no fanfare, the Supreme Court this summer granted a last-minute reprieve to a man who had spent the last 17 years on death row in Pennsylvania. Convicted of stabbing a tavern owner to death and setting him on fire, Ronald Rompilla had run out of appeals when the high court stepped in.

By the narrowest of margins — 5 to 4 — the court vacated the death penalty and returned the case for resentencing. It marked the third time since 2000 that a loose coalition of liberal and swing-vote justices has struck down death-penalty cases because of poor work by defense lawyers.

Of broader importance, the court in the Rompilla case overturned a lower ruling written by U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the same man who appears likely to replace one of those swing voters on the Supreme Court early next year.

Alito and the Death Penalty