Change sometimes isn't so fast

Angel Franco/The New York Times

Yes, the Ill Will Can Be Subtle. Then, One Day, It Isn’t.
By DAN BARRY
Published: January 21, 2007

GREENWOOD, La.

Bullets shattered the peace in the home of Ernest Lampkins, mayor of Greenwood, La. Who did it remains unknown. To Mr. Lampkins, the motive is clear.

Midnight in a handsome one-story house on Waterwood Drive. Hours after Ernest and Shirley Lampkins say goodnight to their teenage daughter, Brett, and to the first Sunday of the new year, a Sunday of churchgoing and turkey and chili and some of those sweet frozen grapes that Ernest likes so much. Two bullets pay a call.

They explode through the living room window. They tear through the soft-yellow curtains that Shirley ordered from a catalog. They rocket past the Easter basket containing family snapshots, past Brett’s bedroom door, past Ernest’s antique upright piano, past the framed portrait of father, mother and daughter in serene pose.

One bullet strikes a golden candelabrum and splits: half whistles into a wall near the kitchen; half crashes through a French door — turning smooth glass into a spider’s web of shards — and into the sunroom, four steps from the master bedroom.

The other bullet slams so hard into the living room wall that it has to be pried out. “It was a piece of lead about the size of my thumb,” Mr. Lampkins recalls. “They use that for killing deer.”

There are no deer in the Lampkins home. Only Brett, 17, a high school junior, who has just learned to drive and wears slippers that look like kittens. And Shirley, 62, a retired high school English teacher and administrator, who enjoys gardening and makes a delectable fig cake. And Ernest, 78, a retired educator who has a doctorate in ethnomusicology and is known throughout Louisiana for reaching children through music.

Oh. One more thing about Ernest. He is also the mayor here in Greenwood, a quiet town of 2,600 a few miles west of Shreveport. Greenwood has a Dollar General store, a Mexican restaurant and some antebellum homes, including one once used as a Confederate hospital. It is predominantly white.

Oh. And one more thing about the Lampkinses. They are black.

On that night, Mr. and Mrs. Lampkins hear no gunshots, but their home alarm sounds, and they leave their bedroom to investigate. They stare at the shattered glass, and then at the holes in the front window. It does not register. Then it does.

As the police arrive to interview and to collect the shell casings from the street, it is hard to forget that several days earlier, the black mayor in Westlake, about 230 miles south of here, was found shot to death, and that some people there dispute findings that he killed himself.

Running for office can still be deadly for black men.

More idiocy

Another Bag of Krauthammers

Last Friday, in his Washington Post op-ed "A Plausible Plan B," neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer was more openly skeptical of the surge option.

If we were allied with an Iraqi government that, however weak, was truly national -- cross-confessional and dedicated to fighting a two-front war against Baathist insurgents and Shiite militias -- a surge of American troops, together with a change of counterinsurgency strategy, would have a good chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, the Iraqi political process has given us Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite coalition.

Krauthammer is confident that the U.S. troops will acquit themselves admirably (as am I), but that the surge effort "will fail, however, because the Maliki government will undermine it."

Krauthammer proposes an alternative "Plan B" in which we tell Maliki:

Let us down, and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad and let you jfend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province, where we are having success in our one-front war against al-Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. [Italics added.]

Krauthammer's Plan B sounds very much like Kissinger's "repositioning" plan, which sounds very much like someone else's Plan A that's been on the table for more than a year.

And the American Army will eat how? The highways go through Baghdad and Anbar, as well as the Shia South. The Turks won't help us resupply. Kurds want Kurdistan. Not a US occupation.

Yawn, Hillary's In

Clinton Says ‘I’m In to Win’ 2008 Race

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 20, 2007

“I’m in,” she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site. “And I’m in to win.”

Mrs. Clinton, 59, called for “bold but practical changes” in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding “a right end” to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

In her statement, Mrs. Clinton also squarely confronted an issue that concerns many Democrats: Whether she can, in fact, win the presidency. Some voters still associate her most with the controversies of the Clinton administration, and Republicans have long attacked and caricatured her, and plan to brand her as indecisive on Iraq.

“I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,” Mrs. Clinton said on the Web site. “After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York and two landslide wins, I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.”

If successful, Mrs. Clinton would be the first female nominee of a major American political party, and she would become the first spouse of a former president to seek a return to the White House. President Bill Clinton left office in 2000 after two terms marked by robust economic expansion and a series of investigation into his personal life and the Clintons’ business dealings.

The successes and shadows of those years will likely loom over Mrs. Clinton, who was both a hands-on adviser and a divisive presence in his administration.

Yet Mrs. Clinton has become a major political figure in her own right: She is broadly popular with women, African-Americans, and other core groups in the Democratic Party, and she is one of the party’s best fundraisers and most sought-after speakers. She is admired by many independents and Republicans in New York, winning re-election last year by 30 points. While she is not associated with any major piece of legislation, she is widely regarded as an effective, thoughtful lawmaker who has built bipartisan ties

Let's see.

Only 72 percent of Americans will vote for a woman.

Hilary Clinton is the most detested politician outside of the Bush Administration.
So detested, her name is a punchline in most of America

She can't campaign for Dems outside the Far West and Northeast.

She has zero legislative accomplishments.

She supported the Iraq war

She has no national security experience

She has no defining political philosophy.

I think the Clinton campaign is a house of cards. When she is pressed hard and expected to actually take controversal stands, she is going to falter. She is a cautious politician, who despite all of her experiences, does not gauge the antipathy she faces on the left and the middle.

There isn't a chance in hell I would support Clinton, or to be honest, Obama, in a primary at this point. Neither has done more than talk and that will not cut it when we have to salvage our reputation and foreign policy.

Bush's plan falling apart

Tom Lasseter/MCT

Iraqi Army soldiers from the Kurdish-dominated
units in northern Iraq at a base outside of Mosul,
Iraq, December 2005. The Kurdish flag, and
not the Iraqi flag, flies at the gate.

Kurdish Iraqi soldiers are deserting to avoid the conflict in Baghdad
By Leila Fadel and Yaseen Taha
McClatchy Newspapers

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - As the Iraqi government attempts to secure a capital city ravaged by conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs, its decision to bring a third party into the mix may cause more problems than peace.

Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem.

The Iraqi army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, and most of the soldiers remain loyal to the militia.

Much as Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces across Arab Iraq, the peshmerga fill the ranks of the Iraqi army in the Kurdish region in the north, poised to secure a semi-independent Kurdistan and seize oil-rich Kirkuk and parts of Mosul if Iraq falls apart. One thing they didn't bank on, they said, was being sent into the "fire" of Baghdad.

"The soldiers don't know the Arabic language, the Arab tradition, and they don't have any experience fighting terror," said Anwar Dolani, a former peshmerga commander who leads the brigade that's being transferred to Baghdad from the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

Dolani called the desertions a "phenomenon" but refused to say how many soldiers have left the army.

"I can't deny that a number of soldiers have deserted the army, and it might increase due to the ferocious military operations in Baghdad," he said.

"This is the biggest performance through which we can test them," said Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan, the commander of land forces for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The Kurdish soldiers will be using translators, and they'll start off doing less dangerous tasks, such as manning checkpoints with Arab soldiers, he said.

In interviews, however, soldiers in Sulaimaniyah expressed loyalty to their Kurdish brethren, not to Iraq. Many said they'd already deserted, and those who are going to Baghdad said they'd flee if the situation there became too difficult.

"I joined the army to be a soldier in my homeland, among my people. Not to fight for others who I have nothing to do with," said Ameen Kareem, 38, who took a week's leave with other soldiers from his brigade in Irbil and never returned. "I used to fight in the mountains and valleys, not in the streets."

Kareem said he knew that deserting was risky, but he said he'd rather be behind bars in Kurdistan than a "soldier in Baghdad's fire." Without the language and with his Kurdish features, he was sure he would stand out, he said. He's a Kurd, he said, and he has no reason to become a target in an Arab war.

Now he drives a taxi in Sulaimaniyah, eking out a living and praying that he doesn't get caught.

Other soldiers in Sulaimaniyah also said they didn't want to be involved in someone else's war.

Farman Mohammed, 42, celebrated the Muslim Eid holiday with his family last month and didn't go back when he heard that he might be deployed to Baghdad. Afraid for his life, he found a new job and settled in with his family.

"The fanatic Sunnis in Baghdad kill the Shiites, and vice versa. Both of them are outraged against the Kurds. They will not hesitate to kill us and accuse us of being collaborators with the occupiers," he said. "How can we face them alone?"

Scumbags in action

Iraq Security Contractor Countersues

By MIKE BAKER
The Associated Press
Friday, January 19, 2007; 9:42 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Private security contractor Blackwater USA is seeking $10 million from the attorney representing the estates of four employees killed and mutilated in Iraq, arguing their families breached the security guards' contracts by suing the company for wrongful death.

Blackwater also has asked a federal court to move the dispute into arbitration, having failed so far in its ongoing efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Arbitration is necessary "in order to safeguard both (Blackwater's) own confidential information as well as sensitive information implicating the interest of the United States at war," attorneys for Blackwater Security Consulting, a unit of Moyock-based Blackwater USA, wrote in a petition filed December 20.

Dan Callahan, a California-based attorney representing the families, called the claim "appalling."

"This is a shock-and-awe tactic," Callahan said Friday. Blackwater's attorneys declined to comment.

The four families, represented by estates administrator Richard Nordan, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005 in state court. Family members argue Blackwater broke contractual obligations and used cost-saving measures that ultimately led to the deaths of the four men.

Blackwater's counterclaim for $10 million specifically names Nordan and not the estates or the men's families.

Or so their illegal activities can't be exposed in a court of law. The last place Erik Prince wants to be is under oath.

The battle of the exploding pigs

Exploding pigs and volleys of gunfire as Le Pen opens HQ in virtual world


Violent clashes have erupted in an online world over the arrival of Le Pen's national front

Oliver Burkeman in Porcupine
Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian

The streets of Porcupine were tranquil yesterday; a handful of locals strolled through its shopping malls, the sun was shining, and a light breeze blew in from over the hills. There were few hints of the fact that, only days before, the neighbourhood had been the scene of violent clashes between rightwing extremists and anti-Nazi protesters - running battles involving gunfire and bombs that might easily have cost lives were it not for the fact that Porcupine does not, in most commonly accepted senses of the term, exist.

A lesson you quickly learn upon entering the online virtual world of Second Life, however, is that non-existence is less of an impediment than might be supposed.

It hasn't stopped the development of a fully-featured alternative universe in which Second Life's 2.4 million registered users build houses, set up businesses, form clubs and societies, hold parties and have sex. And it did not prevent protest from spilling over into aggression when the Front National, the far-right French group led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, became the first European political party to open a headquarters within Second Life.

"The first night I arrived at the protest ... it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute," wrote James Au, whose website, New World Notes, reports on events in Second Life. "By the second night I came ... the conflict had become more literal, for many residents had armed themselves. Multi-coloured explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine." Some activists threw exploding pigs.

"This nationalist idea that Front National is advocating is something that has spread all over Europe like a virus," a protester, using the name Ichi Jaehun, told Mr Au. "It's [as if] the history of the 20th century has already been forgotten. It is time to say enough!"

A group calling itself Second Life Left Unity issued press releases explaining that it had purchased land next to the Front National office, and would be "manning a protest there until FN go or are ejected. Wherever fascists are, we will ensure they get no peace to corrupt and lie to decent people".

A few days later, the Front National building had vanished altogether, leaving only a few protest placards showing Mr Le Pen - who made it through to the final round of the last real-world French presidential election in 2002 - wearing a Hitler moustache.

It was probably inevitable that political confrontation would arrive in Second Life in the end. It is already home to one of the most potentially revolutionary developments on the internet in recent years - a vibrant economy in which residents use a virtual currency, Linden dollars, to buy and sell goods and services, including clothes for their online characters, works of art, buildings, and financial advice.

Because users retain legal ownership of the things they create, and because Linden dollars can be turned into US dollars via an exchange operated by Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the virtual-world businesses have real-world value. Numerous real firms have opened outlets in Second Life, and a woman living in Germany has reportedly become its first dollar millionaire - from the property development business she runs inside Second Life.

Racial Row on UK show

Jade Goody is interviewed by Davina McCall
following her eviction from the Celebrity Big
Brother house.
Photograph: Timothy Anderson/Channel 4/PA

Jade evicted as poll reveals public anger with Channel 4

Karen McVeigh and Jeevan Vasagar
Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian

Jade Goody was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house last night in a vote which could be seen as a public stand against racial intolerance. An overwhelming majority - 82% - of viewers voted against her. In a post-eviction interview, Goody said she was "embarrassed and disgusted" by her own behaviour.

The 25-year-old from Bermondsey, south-east London, was up for eviction against Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actor and the alleged victim of racist abuse from several housemates, especially Goody.

Before her departure was announced, an unprecedented 40,000 complaints were made to broadcast regulator Ofcom and the public were urged to "vote for tolerance" by a number of politicians including the chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Public anger over the racism row is underlined today by a Guardian/Marketing Sciences poll which shows most people believe Channel 4 should have intervened to stop the abuse of Shetty.

The public does not believe the housemates' behaviour is representative of the country, the poll shows, with 55% believing the insults directed at the Indian housemate were not typical of modern Britain. A quarter say it did reflect society, with more than half of people believing Channel 4 had engineered the clashes to gain viewing figures.

Mr Brown, who was yesterday visiting a Bollywood film studio in Mumbai during his visit to India, presented the choice between Goody and Shetty as one that would shape how the rest of the world sees Britain. "I know that people in India say that Britain is generally a country of tolerance," Mr Brown said. "It is up to people to cast their votes, but a vote for Britain is a vote for tolerance."

Goody left the house to an eery silence after Channel 4 banned the usual crowds from the eviction show. For once she appeared to pause for thought when presenter Davina McCall told her of the political and diplomatic storm her words had provoked and played back footage of her behaviour. She said that when her comments against Shetty, who she referred as "Shilpa Poppadom", were read back to her, she thought "Oh my God, maybe I am racist".

She added: "I look like a complete and utter nasty small person - the sort of person I don't like myself," but continued: "I am not a racist and I sincerely, with my hand on my heart, apologise to anyone I have offended out there."

If Goody was unaware of the effect her words would have, Shetty was not. In one exchange before the eviction, she told Goody she did not think her a racist, but added: "You said it, its going to be out and a lot of Indians heard it. Trust me, it's not going to go down well."