It’s 8 p.m. Are your lights out?

Today cities around the globe are celebrating Earth Hour, to highlight the impact individuals can have on energy consumption.
     At 8 p.m. your local time, do your part for energy conservation by turning off your lights and lighting a candle instead for an hour. Participating cities include Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Miami Honolulu and San Francisco.
     For more information on this global event, visit Earth Hour US or Toronto Earth Hour

Wall Street jobs disappearing in wake of subprime mortgage/credit tsunami

World: The BBC is reporting that U.S. General David Petraeus is linking the bombardment of the Green Zone in Iraq Sunday to “Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards.” According to the general, “The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example… were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets.”

Living: CNN offers some useful tips on ways to beat the gas price crunch. They include not buying gas in rich neighborhoods and buying it on Wednesdays, when prices tend to settle down.

World: The Jerusalem Post reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is heading to Russia today in an effort to obtain assistance for building a nuclear facility. Egypt dropped its previous effort in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.

Science: The Sydney Morning Herald reports that doctors in the Netherlands will be selling(!) a guide on how to commit suicide quickly and painlessly.

Business: Bloomberg.com reports that 34,000 Wall Street workers have lost their jobs in the past nine months — “the most since the dot-com boom fizzled in 2001.” This time job losses are related to “the collapse of the subprime mortgage market last year and the ensuing credit contraction,” Bloomberg says. According to Jo Bennett, a partner at executive search firm Battalia Winston International in New York, “This crisis is much worse than 2001 and we don’t know how long it’s going to last” and job cuts “could be more than 100,000 in a few years.”

D.C. pastime: Passport snooping

UPDATE:  After I posted this yesterday, news came out that Sen. John McCain’s passport was also snooped upon. While the administration is scurrying to sweep this story under the rug, I have trouble embracing the “imprudent curiousity” line. (Call me cynical ~ I resemble that remark.) This is a story with legs that deserves a thorough investigation.

Election 2008: CNN is now reporting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Wright told both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton that their passports were snooped by contractors with the State Department. Sen. Clinton’s passport records were snooped on in 2007; Sen. Obama’s were snooped on at least three times this year. Yesterday State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was “imprudent curiosity” by low-level contractors. If you think about it, you could also say the Watergate “low-level” burglars were “curious,” too.

Religion: The International Herald Tribune reports that Pope Benedict XVI plans to “meditate on the persecution of Catholics in China and the need for religious freedom during a Good Friday procession at Rome’s Colosseum.” At the same time, Macedonian Radio & Television reports that the Dalai Lama in “Seeking to put pressure on China, he said he was willing to travel to Beijing in a matter of weeks if there was a “concrete indication” that the Chinese authorities were prepared to negotiate and if the protests in Tibet had concluded.”

World: The Ottawa Citizen reports that blueprints of a new headquarters for an elite Canadian Forces counter-terrorism unit were “found in a pile of garbage on Bank Street.” The blueprints were found by the director of the “left-leaning think tank” the Rideau Institute on his way back from dinner, the Citizen reports. He brought them to the attention of the newspaper. According to the “The plans also show the electrical grid scheme for the unit’s computers and details about sewer systems, areas for workshops, sea container loading docks, and offices for the unit’s various troops. There is also a blueprint for the storage bay for the unit’s robots, which are designed to detect chemical and biological agents.” The unit, according to one of its officers, “handles “Jack Bauer-24″ type scenarios.”

Nation: Environment News Service reports bad news for those states in the heartland hit hard by flooding this week. Heavy snowfall and a predicted wet spring mean “above-normal flood potential is evident in much of the Mississippi River basin, the Ohio River basin, the lower Missouri River basin, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, most of New York, all of New England, and portions of the West, including Colorado and Idaho.”

World: The BBC reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will reduce the number of his country’s airborne nuclear weapons by one third, leaving France with “half the maximum number of warheads we had during the Cold War.”

Five years on…

Nation: USA Today (via Stars and Stripes) reports that according to Air Force Col. Kenneth Cox, “The Pentagon delayed screening troops returning from Iraq for mild brain injuries for more than two years because officials feared veterans would blame vague ailments on the little-understood wound caused by exposure to bomb blasts.” Cox added “the Pentagon wanted to avoid another controversy such as the Gulf War syndrome. About 10,000 veterans blamed medical conditions on their service.”

Journalism: Editor & Publisher looks back five years to discuss which major newspapers did not support the war in Iraq — “at least one-third.” The Buffalo News editorial was prescient: “”The road to imminent war has been a bumpy one, clumsily traveled by the Bush administration. The global coalition against terror forged after the atrocities of 9/11 is virtually shattered. The explanation as to why Iraq presents an imminent threat requiring immediate action has not been clear and compelling.”

World: The Guardian wrestles with an inconvenient truth: just how many Iraqis have been killed since the war began five years ago today? After analyzing several reports, The Guardian found “The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million.”

Nation: The New York Times reports that estimates of the cost of the Iraq War “were not close to ballpark” figures. Initially, the Bush administration thought it “would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government.” The reality? “Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues.”

Nation: Bloomberg.com reports on President Bush’s speech today marking the fifth anniversary. The president “said today the extra forces he ordered into Iraq last year have increased security in the country and paved the way for a ‘major strategic victory’ in the war against terrorism. That progress has made the ‘high cost in lives and treasure” in Iraq worthwhile…”

O P I N I O N

Five years by the numbers, according to Iraq Coalition Casualties:
3,990:
Number of reported U.S. military deaths
175:
Number of reported UK military deaths
40,229:
Number of reported U.S. wounded and medical evacuations
145:
Number of reported U.S. service personnel who took their own lives
4:
Number of reported U.S. service personnel missing or captured
155:
Number of reported world journalists killed/dead of other causes covering the war
426:
Number of reported U.S. dead in California alone — the highest tally of any state
1,001:
Number of reported worldwide contractor deaths in Iraq, as of June 30, 2007
74.73%, 10.72% and 9.4%:
The percent of reported deaths that are, respectively, white, Latino or Hispanic, and black.
102:
Number of reported female service personnel deaths among Coalition Forces
82,249 – 89,760:
Number of reported Iraqi deaths, according to http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

     On April 6, 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported that despite Pentagon official Douglas Feith’s pre-war assertion that there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida (Feith called it a “mature, symbiotic” relationship), a de-classified Department of Defense report showed “the Intelligence Community never found an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda; the report specifically states that,” and “the CIA and DIA disavowed any ‘mature, symbiotic’ relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.”
     At the time, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sen. Carl Levin said in a statement that accompanied the document’s release, “It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon’s Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith’s office ‘developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,’ which included ‘conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.’ “ 
     In a report issued last week by the Department of Defense after gleaning through 600,000 of Saddam Hussein’s archives, it said that although the deposed dictator did had connections with terrorsit organizations, there was no “direct connection” with al-Qaida.
     There were lies upon lies upon lies that dragged us into this war. To date, few who disseminated them have faced any repercussions for their deeds. As many who left the Bush administration have said, war in Iraq was on the table from day one, months before the attacks of Sept. 11 that are given as the impetus for this war, to protect the homefront. The neocons were lusting after this fight before Bush was even elected. As a person who lost a friend in the attacks on New York City, I take umbrage with using his death as an excuse to protect our oil interests in the Middle East.
     What’s the most important thing to ponder on this anniversary? It is simply that the numbers above represent human life lost or altered terribly. Those numbers stand for:

Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, of Arizona, U.S. Army, 3/23/03
Enzo Baldoni, Italian freelance journalist, 8/26/04
Spc. Jonathan A. Hughes, 21, of Kentucky, U.S. Army National Guard, 3/19/05
Cpl. Marcus A. Cain, 20, of Louisiana, U.S. Army, 9/14/06
Sgt. Bryan J. Tutten, 33, of Florida, U.S. Army, 12/25/07
Cpl. William D. O’Brien, 19 of Texas, U.S. Army, 3/15/08
Let us all pause for a moment to reflect upon their lives as well as all lost through this conflict.

Obama speech a bold step

O P I N I O N

It was an issue he couldn’t ignore, one that shows the frightening power of the Internet to affect nationwide (and worldwide) opinion.Sen. Barack Obama chose the right time and perfect hour (for news cycles) to address an issue that continues to simmer in this nation: race.
     Obama was forced to address the issue now after videos of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, surfaced on the Internet recently. Wright’s sermons were brutal in tone — an “us versus them” response to the state of black and white realities in America.
     This speech today, delivered brilliantly through Obama’s compelling gift for oratory, is one for the ages. While critics will say it fell short of Obama severing his ties completely with his opinionated pastor, Obama was able to show the nuances of racial mindsets that exist in America. His own white grandmother who he loved dearly, he explained, would make racist comments in front of him about her fears of blacks. Yet there is no way he would, or should be forced, disown her.
     Obama hit on a reality about race in America, how we act one way in public, but think and say other things in private. He said what his pastor suffers from is being mired in cynicism and not acknowledging the real change that is going on. He lauded the younger generations who grew up in a post-Jim Crow America and do not have the same fears or feelings toward other races and ethnic groups that their parents and grandparents did.
     When I was a child, I remember the horrible ethnic and race jokes that were spoken openly. You don’t hear that type of “humor” often from younger generations. Thanks to what some would call the politically correct movement in America, the Archie Bunkers of this country were forced to “stifle themselves.” The change is palpable in young generations, but as Obama suggested it’s right under the surface for older people.
     In my entire grade- through high-school education, there was one student from Latin America, two black teachers and two black students. Things were quite different at the newspaper where I worked. My coworkers were white, black, Latino, Asian, immigrants, old, young, gay and straight. These differences, though, you had to remind yourself about because in the regular workday, it just wasn’t noticed or an issue. I often thought it would be wonderful if the rest of the country could co-exist like that newsroom did.
     Let’s hope this speech will inspire new, open, and probably some cases brutally opinionated, dialogue about this issue that must be addressed. As Obama said, it keeps the nation from moving forward; it’s time to make our union grow stronger.
     Here is a brief excerpt from his speech:
     “The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

     You can read Sen. Barack Obama’s speech here.

Fiddling while Gannett under-earns

Nation: WNBC reports that the Wall Street area has received a nonspecific but “time-specific” terror threat from al-Qaida. “The non-specific threat information suggests an al Qaeda terror (threat – SIC) would like to strike the city sometime this month, a security official said on condition of anonymity.” As the market plummets yet another day, maybe there’s a different terror at work we should be concerned about — the fragility of the U.S. dollar.

World: UPIreports that India has foiled a plot by two rebels to attack the Bombay Stock Exchange and Bhabha Atomic Research Center’s nuclear installation.

World: The Sydney Morning Herald reports that chaos is rocking Lhasa, Tibet, after Chinese authorities began cracking down on protesting monks. One resident told the paper “People have been burning cars and motorbikes and buses. There is smoke everywhere and they have been throwing rocks and breaking windows. We’re scared.”

Election 2008: In what seems like a daily occurrence now, another controversy has erupted among the Democratic candidates. This time it’s in Sen. Barack Obama’s court, as The Guardian reports about his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermon that has been getting a lot of play on the Web. The Guardian includes some excerpts from his sermon including this passage, “Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.” Maybe the solution to all this back and forth controversy is to put Wright and Geraldine Ferarro in the ring?

Business: Here’s an interesting perspective. Bloomberg reports that the “collapse of the subprime mortgage market will lead to record losses for insurance companies, overtaking Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.”

O P I N I O N

Gannett Blog is giving its namesake the old one-two punch today after details came out yesterday on CEO Craig Dubow’s compensation for 2007. Despite the fact that Gannett’s stock has plummeted (flirting with a $27+ finish for today), Dubow was paid $7.9 million (a 36 percent increase from last year) including a $1.75 million bonus for essentially driving this “Titanic” into a hyper-local iceberg.
     In this age of cutbacks and layoffs rattling the newspaper industry, such compensation seems downright immoral. When was the last time employees received a raise above 3 (or in some places, 2) percent? Or a bonus, themselves? When was the last time these newsrooms (or local information centers — gag) bought current Associated Press style books for the employees? When was the last time Gannett was proactive, that is hiring more staff (and replacing posts long unfilled) to handle new challenges and media platforms?
     There must be a worldwide run on grape Kool-Aid. If so, it might explain why this offensive level of compensation for shoddy work is being allowed.
     Does Dubow have a fiddle? If so, he’s been playing the heck out of it lately while his corporation burns.

‘What destroys me, strengthens me’

Nation: CNN reports that “Kristen,” the call girl who New York Gov. (until Monday) Eliot Spitzer hired in a move that lost him his career, is an aspiring singer. Is it prophetic for Spitzer that her MySpace page has the motto “what destroys me, strengthens me”?

World: The Jerusalem Post links events that might be coincidence or else they’re related. At issue is “the timing of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit here next week, coming right after Tuesday’s resignation by Adm. William J. Fallon as America’s chief military commander in the Middle East.”
     “After leaving Israel,” the Post continues, “Cheney journeys to Saudi Arabia and Oman — the latter the site of four air force bases strategically situated on the Straits of Hormuz, right across from Iran, and regularly used by the US military for refueling, supply storage and logistics. Both nations would play key roles in the run-up to any military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the timing of Cheney’s visits there, combined with Fallon’s farewell, has raised red flags in Washington and elsewhere that they may be signs Bush has taken a strategic decision to move against Teheran before leaving office.”

Business: Bloomberg.com reports that in response to the dollar reaching its lowest mark against the yen since 1995, President Bush said the dollar is “adjusting.” According to Greg Gibbs, a currency strategist at ABN Amro Holding NV in Sydney, “The dollar looks in real trouble and there is no obvious resistance level against the euro.”

Election 2008: This is becoming like a round of “I’ll see you and raise you” campaign poker. After Sen. Barack Obama’s aide resigned for calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a “monster” last week, now former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has resigned from Clinton’s camp for saying “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” The Associated Press (via Breitbart.com) reports Ferraro’s resignation letter fires a closing shot: “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”

Health: The BBC reports that kindergartens and grade schools have closed for the Easter holiday early after three children died of a flu-like illness. “Experts are investigating a link to either bird flu or Sars, a respiratory disease that hit Hong Kong in 2003,” the BBC says.

O P I N I O N

There she was again, standing by her man on Wednesday as she had done two days earlier.Puffy eyes, hair uncharacteristically messy, Silda Spitzer barely resembled the vibrant woman who was the host for a summit last summer that aimed to retain young workers called “I Live NY.” After all the shame she’d already endured, why did she have to be dragged into this dog and train-wreck show before the media?
     You look at her and wonder what the heck is Spitzer’s problem. Silda is beautiful, intelligent and a successful lawyer. He tosses her and his career aside for expensive romps with a stranger?
     It’s interesting to note the subtle shifts in how some pundits have reacted to the news. Now it’s morphing into oh, Mr. Spitzer obviously has a problem and hints are made that maybe he has a health condition that made him take such insane risks. Well that ain’t no new condition, honey, it’s been around for the ages. It’s called power, and when it is earned some think it comes with a license to act above the law.
     On a Buffalo newscast, a man interviewed about his opinion on the Spitzer situation said that every time he goes to a Sabres hockey game, he passes the same penniless guy begging for change for a cup of coffee. (Buffalo is one of the hardest-hit cities in upstate NY.) It didn’t escape the interviewee’s attention that while the state is falling apart and this poor man can’t rustle up 75 cents on his own, the governor was out spending thousands on his whore.
     Such arrogance.
     Unfortunately, it’s an arrogance that too often comes with many politicians. They’re the type that must have that “trophy wife” for the photo ops but go elsewhere to puff up their egos. Silda Wall, girl you deserve much better!

New York, New Governor

O P I N I O N

New Yorkers are going to have to get used to saying Gov. David Paterson. Within hours. Odds are Gov. Eliot Spitzer must step down today after it was disclosed he has been linked to a high-priced prostitution ring. What a yutz! Spitzer earned his reputation as being tough on crime — including prostitution — as the state’s attorney general. Many saw him as bringing refreshing, needed change to ethically-challenged Albany politics when he took office as governor.
     So much for that thought.
     It’s not his first misstep in office. Can you say, Troopergate?
     Of course this news ripples across the presidential race. Spitzer (and Paterson) have been staunch supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has already been mentioning Spitzer and Clinton in the same breath and joking there’s no proof she’s been linked to the governor’s troubles… yet! Doesn’t this d’oh-dalliance taint the whole Democratic party? It’s a real lose-lose situation.  
     One pundit on Matthews’ show said this was a victimless crime. What an idiotic thing to say. And try saying that to Spitzer’s poor wife Silda and their children.
     What’s shocking is the level of arrogance and stupidity on the governor’s part. Spitzer is charged with multiple crimes here. Power does indeed corrupt. Unbelievable…

Update: as of 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, Spitzer has not resigned. It will be hard not to, however, with screaming headlines like these:

“Twisted Spitzer – ‘Mr. Clean’ has trouser troubles”

“Pay for Luv Gov”

“Ho No!”

“Spitzer Hookergate Scandal”

Iraq legacy: U.S. wounded

Nation: The Associated Press (via Editor & Publisher) reports that the number of wounded U.S. soldiers per fatality in the Iraq conflict is markedly higher than what was seen in Vietnam and Korea. In those conflicts, respectively, the number of wounded soldiers per fatality were 2.6 and 2.8. In Iraq, for every fatality, 15 soldiers are wounded.

Journalism: Gannett Blog reports that the megamedia group has come to a startling discovery: “Print’s future is all about local news and baby boomers, those 78 million Americans with deteriorating eyesight, spreading waistlines — and a slightly perplexed expression when talk turns to avatars.” D’oh! If they’d only paid attention to the readers who’d been telling them they weren’t interested in the fluff geared to the 18-34-year-old crowd all along, perhaps they wouldn’t be trying to figure out now how to regain their thousands of canceled subscriptions.

Tech: The Guardian reports that the We7 free online music service has received the backing of giant Sony BMG.

Science: Der Spiegel writes about a British supercomputer that can forecast the weather months in advance.

Health: You are what you drink? That could be a new concern nationwide. According to a story in The Washington Post, tap water in its immediate circulation area contains six pharmaceutical medicines — “an anti-seizure medication, two anti-inflammatory drugs, two kinds of antibiotics and a common disinfectant.” Yuck!

Photogs snap great white orca

Nature: The Assciated Press (via the Anchorage Daily News) reports that a rare white killer whale has been photographed near the Aleutian Islands. “The whale appeared to be a healthy, adult male about 25 to 30 feet long and weighing upward of 10,000 pounds.”

Nation: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that 200 blank military IDs were stolen from a U.S. Army facility at Fort Snelling. Also stolen during the burglary “were 10 to 12 used ID cards and a laptop computer used to make IDs.”

Science: Want to save energy on lighting your home but you’re concerned about the mercury in fluorescent bulbs? Physorg.com reports that a new technology is emerging called solid state light bulbs, that “use low-cost silicon technology originally developed for fiber optic networks in the early 2000s” but are non-toxic. Scientists hope to have the silicon bulbs ready by 2011 at a cost comparable to fluorescent bulbs.

World: The Jerusalem Post reports that neighbors and family say the terrorist who unleashed a horrific, deadly attack at a yeshiva in the city Thursday had worked for the school as a driver.

Election 2008: The L.A. Times reports that Sen. Barack Obama’s aide Samantha Howard resigned today after candid remarks she made to The Scotsman were published. Howard is quoted as calling Sen. Hillary Clinton “a monster” and “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh.’ But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”