Musical Innerlube: Bill Cosby and Quincy Jones

1. Hikky Burr

2. Jive Den

BRIC foreign ministers to meet again in fall

From Novosti :

The foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC countries, have agreed to hold another meeting in September in New York, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The agreement to meet in September on the sidelines of the 63rd UN General Assembly session was reached by the foreign ministers during their meeting on May 14-16 in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

"The ministers agreed to continue quadrilateral cooperation, including within the framework of international organizations and forums," the Russian ministry said in a statement.

The term BRIC was first used in 2003 in a thesis published by the Goldman Sachs investment bank that named Brazil, Russia, India and China as the most rapidly developing economies in the world.

According to the thesis, by the year 2050, BRIC will overtake most of the present richest countries in the world. The overall gold and currency reserves of the four BRIC countries are estimated at over $1.3 trillion.

The first meeting of BRIC took place in 2006 in New York within the framework of the UN General Assembly session.

Anti-War Vets Testify for Hill Panel

Iraq Veterans Against The War's effort to document what it considers systemic abuses in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars took a major step forward Thursday as five Iraq veterans related their firsthand experiences to members of Congress.

Five members of the anti-war veterans group told a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- not an official House committee but a group of the House's rising left-wing representatives -- about underreported or manipulated statistics concerning U.S.-caused civilian casualties, disproportionate fire and perceptions encouraged by their commanders that Iraqis are "subhuman." Presenting the results of months of inquiry into conditions in the two wars, Kelly Dougherty, Geoffrey Millard, Kristofer Goldsmith, Scott Ewing and Jason Lemieux were the first members of the Winter Soldier project to testify before members of Congress. The last time any such organization presented similar findings was in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War -- and the testimony Thursday was familiar to anyone in attendance with memory of that earlier conflict.

 

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Don't forget the F-word - by Erica Jong

We have spilled oceans of ink, cut down forests of trees, blazed through the internet in light, and the world is still dominated by the sex-bearing appendages rather than clefts. Why? That is the subject for a future book. But I can say that the hope I felt in 1968 has evaporated. Last week, a woman commentator on a supposedly progressive network called Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro "whores". She was suspended, but she'll be back. Women columnists still make their fortunes by attacking other women, as in the age of Clare Boothe Luce. It is, in fact, a time-honoured way to get a book contract or a political appointment. Trashing one's own gender remains a path to advancement.

There was a moment - 1968 to 1975, let's say - when it seemed that everything would change for women. We were studied, promoted, advanced like a trendy minority. Then came the backlash. "Is feminism dead?" screamed the cover of Time magazine. We were declared dead before we were even half born. The backlash against feminism has lasted longer than the brief flaring of feminism itself.

This has been the course of the movement for women's equality. Born in the 18th century with other movements for equality, our movement has ebbed and flowed with changing generations. We were scarcely enunciated before we became "the F-word" - the word that can't be articulated lest we sound too much like our hated mothers.

In the US, there has been a real ebbing of reproductive rights, equality of pay and equality at law. And women have assisted in their own demise, demonstrating against abortion and "for life", though they don't seem to care so much for the children already born as for those unborn. There has also been a flood of privileged women with law degrees and prosperous husbands returning to housewifery - albeit a housewifery aided by nannies and caterers. I have nothing against that. But I am astounded by the flight back to the nursery. In 1968, anti-feminist scolds used to predict that the pill would stop women from having babies in the future; quite the opposite has happened. Our daughters are having three, four and five children - if they can afford them. Good for them. But here is what amazes: even the most dependent years of childhood take up only a fraction of women's lives, and the cost of early childhood education, preschools, crèches and such would come nowhere near the cost of war, yet there is no political will in the US to make life healthier for childbearing women and children. That is the ultimate cost of the backlash - and once again, it targets the most vulnerable among us.

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'You have fired the first shot in our endless war against the favelas of the world'

From: Spreading Comfort and Succor to the Poor of the World (satire)

 

I bring this up as our brave troops are engaged in some constructive urban renewal in Sadr City, a blighted and unproductive slum in Baghdad. Rather than risk the lives of our brave boys by storming militant strongholds, the Pentagon finds in more cost effective to call in airstrikes and destroy the buildings all together.

A military spokesman contrasted our humanity with the enemy's inhumanity when he pointed out that, "The sole burden of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the militants who care nothing for the Iraqi people" because they insist on defending their homes that are located in the crowed slum, thus making it necessary for the U.S. military to level their homes in order to pacify the area. The spokesman then went on to ask, "What does that say about the enemy? He is heartless and evil."

Unfortunately, the author of the above article fails to understand the rationale behind our assault on Sadr City when, in speaking of our troops, he says, "Now, they are headed for nowhere, for the heart of a slum city which they cannot hold in a guerrilla war where the taking of territory and the occupying of neighborhoods is essentially beside the point. They are headed for oblivion, while trying to win the hearts and minds by shooting missiles into homes and enclosing people in giant walls which break families and communities apart, while destroying livelihoods."

What this writer fails to understand is that you are a thinker who thinks the big thoughts. And one big thought you've thought is the dilemma that is now facing humanity: the world population is growing as its resources are shrinking. There is no longer enough to go around. Humanity is afloat in an overcrowded lifeboat. Sacrifice is called for.

There is but one solution to this dilemma, and that is to reduce world poverty by euthanizing it.