March 2013 archive

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 10 is the 69th day of the year (70th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 296 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1959, Tibetans band together in revolt, surrounding the summer palace of the Dalai Lama in defiance of Chinese occupation forces.

China’s occupation of Tibet began nearly a decade before, in October 1950, when troops from its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country, barely one year after the Communists gained full control of mainland China. The Tibetan government gave into Chinese pressure the following year, signing a treaty that ensured the power of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the country’s spiritual leader, over Tibet’s domestic affairs. Resistance to the Chinese occupation built steadily over the next several years, including a revolt in several areas of eastern Tibet in 1956. By December 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, the capital, and the PLA command threatened to bomb the city if order was not maintained.

Lhasa Rebellion

On 1 March 1959, an unusual invitation to attend a theatrical performance at the Chinese military headquarters outside Lhasa was extended to the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, at the time studying for his lharampa geshe degree, initially postponed the meeting, but the date was eventually set for 10 March. On 9 March, the head of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard was visited by Chinese army officers. The officers insisted that the Dalai Lama would not be accompanied by his traditional armed escort to the performance, and that no public ceremony for the Dalai Lama’s procession from the palace to the camp should take place, counter to tradition.

According to historian Tsering Shakya, the Chinese government was pressuring the Dalai Lama to attend the People’s Congress in April 1959, in order to repair China’s image with relation to ethnic minorities after the Khampa’s rebellion. On 7 February 1959, a significant day on the Tibetan calendar, the Dalai Lama attended a religious dance, after which the acting representative in Tibet, Tan Guansan, offered the Dalai Lama a chance to see a performance from a dance troupe native to Lhasa at the Norbulingka to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s completion of his lharampa geshe degree. According to the Dalai Lama’s memoirs, the Dalai Lama agreed, but said that the Norbulingka did not have the facilities, and suggested the new auditorium in the PLA headquarters in Lhasa as a more appropriate venue. Neither the Kashag nor the Dalai Lama’s bodyguards were informed of the Dalai Lama’s plans until Chinese officials briefed them on 9 March, one day before the performance was scheduled, and insisted that they would handle the Dalai Lama’s security. Some members of the Kashag were alarmed that were not also invited to lead a customary armed procession, recalling a prophecy that told that the Dalai Lama should not exit his palace.

According to historian Tsering Shakya, some Tibetan government officials feared that plans were being laid for a Chinese abduction of the Dalai Lama, and spread word to that effect amongst the inhabitants of Lhasa. On 10 March, several thousand Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent him from leaving or being removed. The huge crowd had gathered in response to a rumor that the Chinese communists were planning to arrest the Dalai Lama when he went to a cultural performance at the PLA’s headquarters. This marked the beginning of the uprising in Lhasa, though Chinese forces had skirmished with guerrillas outside the city in December of the previous year. Although CCP offcials insisted that the “reactionary upper stratum” in Lhasa was responsible for the rumor, there is no way to identify the precise source. At first, the violence was directed at Tibetan officials perceived not to have protected the Dalai Lama or to be pro-Chinese; attacks on Hans started later. One of the first casualties of mob was a senior lama, Pagbalha Soinam Gyamco, who worked with the PRC as a member of the Preparatory Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, who was killed and his body dragged by a horse in front of the crowd for two kilometres.

On 12 March, protesters appeared in the streets of Lhasa declaring Tibet’s independence. Barricades went up on the streets of Lhasa, and Chinese and Tibetan rebel forces began to fortify positions within and around Lhasa in preparation for conflict. A petition of support for the armed rebels outside the city was taken up, and an appeal for assistance was made to the Indian consul. Chinese and Tibetan troops continued moving into position over the next several days, with Chinese artillery pieces being deployed within range of the Dalai Lama’s summer palace, the Norbulingka. On 15 March, preparations for the Dalai Lama’s evacuation from the city were set in motion, with Tibetan troops being employed to secure an escape route from Lhasa. On 17 March, two artillery shells landed near the Dalai Lama’s palace, triggering his flight into exile. On 19 March the Chinese started to shell the Norbulingka, prompting the full force of the Uprising. According to the freetibet website, on 21 March 800 shells rained down on the palace, including the shelling of the Norbulingka and Lhasa’s major monasteries, slaughtering thousands of Tibetan men, women and children. Combat lasted only about two days, with Tibetan rebel forces being badly outnumbered and poorly armed.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be: Deepak Bhargava, executive director, Center for Community Change; M. Victoria Murillo, professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University; Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue; Alejandro Velasco, professor at New York University; Michael Moynihan (@mcmoynihan), cultural news editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast; Sujatha Fernandes, associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York; Greg Grandin, professor of history at New York University; Former Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney (@bobney); Raj Date, former deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein), Occupy Wall Street activist.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Sunday’s guest former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, co-author of the new book, “Immigration Wars,” goes one-on-one with George Stephanopoulos and in this week’s Sunday Spotlight, filmmaker R.J. Cutler discusses his latest documentary, “The World According to Dick Cheney.”

The roundtable debates those topics and all the week’s politics, with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who joined GOP senators dining with President Obama this week; DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.; ABC News’ George Will; Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman; and Bloomberg News White House correspondent Julianna Goldman.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Sschieffer’s guest are New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH); and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post Columnist; Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst; David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist; and Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This week on MTP a special discussion of Washington’s partisan war with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), freshman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, fmr. Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL).

Also another interview with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The second roundtable will discuss women in the American workplace with former White House Press Secretary under President Clinton, Dee Dee Myers; Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn; former John McCain 2008 Presidential Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt; and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley sit down with  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in an exclusive interview on gridlock in Congress. In a separate interview she discusses Pres. Barack Obama’s recent meetings with  House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). She will also talk with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Her panel guests are former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, former Speaker of the House and Republican Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich, former Bush and Romney adviser Alex Castellanos and Democratic Strategist Donna Brazile.

Under cover of darkness, Afghan women head to battle

By Mandy Clark, Correspondent, NBC News

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Severely outgunned, the battle was going badly. It seemed like certain defeat. Then, from out of the crowd stepped a young girl of around 14. She grabbed the pole from the fallen flag-bearer, held it up, and called out to her brothers-in-arms to fight to the death.

Though she was shot dead, her rallying cry was seen as the turning point of the 1880 Battle of Maiwand; a triumph for the Afghans, and a devastating loss for British forces during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Her name was Malalai, Afghanistan’s Joan of Arc.

“If you go back into history, before we only had one female soldier named Malalai, but now I have a lot of Malalais in my Special Forces,” said Colonel Jalauddin Yaftaly, who heads the elite units. There are more than 1,000 women in the Afghan Army – and about two dozen have made it into Special Forces.

In this week’s segment of “What We know Now” of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes“, host Chris Hayes tell is that there has been a dramatic rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since last year, CO2 levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million, the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. Joining Chris to discuss what they have learned this week are Jeff Smith, assistant professor at The New School for Management and Urban Policy, former Missouri State Senator (2006-2009); Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice; Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion; and Dan Baum, author of “Gun Guys: A Road Trip.”

To serve and protect … banks?

by David Dayen, Salon

With mega-banks illegally foreclosing on active duty members, the penalty is jail. But, as always, there’s a catch

Wrapping themselves in the American flag is a popular pastime among our nation’s prominent institutions. But is it secretly possible for them to commit crimes against active duty members, and pay no price? [..]

This has happened at least 700 times to service members on missions overseas since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis in 2008. And it’s actually illegal; it violates the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a statute that carries criminal penalties. The nation’s biggest banks have admitted to the conduct before Congress and in regulatory filings, and they only recently acknowledged that they illegally foreclosed on 10 times as many service members as they previously claimed. Any serious effort to hold banks accountable for routine abuse of homeowners should include prosecutions of this execrable behavior. But the government rolled out settlements years before the true depth of these violations ever began to come to light.

I will let the ever eloquent Charles Pierce of Esquires have, hopefully, the last word on the pimply faces little turd, James O’Keefe:

The week ended with the journamalism moon passing retrograde into the House Of Moron. First, James O’Keefe, the noted guerrilla yacht perv, settled up a “meritless lawsuit” for $100K with an ACORN person he’d ratfcked back in the days when Democrats took him seriously enough to defund organizations for the crime of being ratfcked by a ratfcker. (H/t to the lovely Wonkette for being all over O’Keefe on this one, which is not what it sounds like, dammit.) Also, again, nice job, congressional Democrats for ratfcking yourselves on this.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Just five months after its inception, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has already fired a senior official for having an “inappropriate exchange” with the operator of a nuclear power plant.

Meanwhile, a high-ranking official at the land ministry (the parliamentary secretary for reconstruction, if you must know) mysteriously resigned, allegedly over “a relationship with a woman.” Can’t have that!

Researchers at the environment ministry believe there may be a connection between the March 11 megaquake and a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in Hokkaido last month that caused blackouts and highway closures.

It was reported that officials at the National Police Agency are making an effort to develop better aging-prediction technology out of concerns that “the faces of people on police wanted posters end up looking markedly different from fugitives.”

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

   It comes in four different grades – fine (#1), medium (#2), coarse (#3), and very coarse (#4)- and each type lends itself to a particular kind of dish. In the Middle East pilafs are made with medium, coarse, and very coarse bulgur. Tabbouleh and kibbe are made with fine bulgur. In my kitchen I use the medium grind for a delicious breakfast porridge that has the flavor of a hearty cream of wheat, and I add it to breads and other baked goods. Coarse bulgur goes into pilafs and soups, casseroles and stuffed vegetables.

   I don’t know if bulgur is going to be the next quinoa – probably not, as these days so many people shun wheat. But if I had to choose one over the other for flavor and versatility, I’d go with bulgur. One thing it has going for it is that it can be reconstituted without cooking, though you can also cook it in boiling water (the grains will be a little fluffier if you do). As for the nutritional profile, whereas quinoa has a little more protein (4 grams per 100 grams of grain compared with bulgur’s 3), bulgur is less caloric (83 calories per 100 grams compared with quinoa’s 120), higher in fiber (4 grams versus 3), slightly lower in carbohydrates (19 grams compared with 21) and sodium (5 mg compared with 7).

~Martha Rose Shulman~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Glen Ford: The Sequestration Tango: Obama and GOP Dance Through the Graveyard of the New Deal

The Obama regime has been remarkably successful – in pushing forward a Republican agenda. Obama, especially, has “moved with such elegance and poise, his fans forgot that he was dancing with a partner: the GOP.” Together, they have starved the federal beast and forged a consensus on the inevitability of austerity. Let the gruesome-twosome take a bow.

Barack Obama’s mission has always been to destroy the left wing of the Democrats in order to consummate a grand bargain – a melding – of the corporatists in both major parties. He entered national politics as a newly-minted member of the Democratic Leadership Council, which dispensed corporate campaign money to business-friendly candidates and incumbents. Ten years later, President Obama has succeeded beyond our worst fears. Black politics is in utter ruin, and the collapse of the Democratic Party’s left wing is all but complete. Austerity is the order of the day, and no one is more responsible for that catastrophe than Obama, who has waged war on so-called entitlement programs since the polls closed in 2008.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: A President Who’ll Cut Social Security – And Liberals Who Love Him Too Much

The spectacle of a supposedly liberal President repeatedly and needlessly trying to cut Social Security is enough to bring a reasonable, economically literate person to the point of existential despair. To see leading liberal lights like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein chuckle indulgently at those foolish Republicans in Congress over the subject – Don’t they know he’s already giving them what they want? – is to risk plunging into the depths of that despair.

This week the President hosted a dinner for Republicans leaders where he worked to sell his budget proposal, including his harmful plan to cut benefits through the “chained CPI.” National Security was the main course and Social Security was the dessert.  And guess who wasn’t coming to dinner: The elderly, the disabled, or any policy experts who understand the disastrous implications of the chained CPI.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 9 is the 68th day of the year (69th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 297 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1841, the US Supreme Court rules on Amistad mutiny

At the end of a historic case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules, with only one dissent, that the African slaves who seized control of the Amistad slave ship had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus are free under American law.

The Amistad, also known as United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of slaves on board the Spanish schooner Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual “freedom suit“, as it involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law.

The rebellion broke out when the schooner, traveling along the coast of Cuba, was taken over by a group of captives who had earlier been kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery. The Africans were later apprehended on the vessel near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service and taken into custody. The ensuing, widely publicized court cases in the United States helped the abolitionist movement.

In 1840, a federal trial court found that the initial transport of the Africans across the Atlantic (which did not involve the Amistad) had been illegal, because the international slave trade had been abolished, and the captives were thus not legally slaves but free. Given that they were illegally confined, the Africans were entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force. After the US Supreme Court affirmed this finding on March 9, 1841, supporters arranged transportation for the Africans back to Africa in 1842. The case influenced numerous succeeding laws in the United States.

Arguments before the Supreme Court

On February 23, 1841, Attorney General Henry D. Gilpin began the oral argument phase before the Supreme Court. Gilpin first entered into evidence the papers of La Amistad which stated that the Africans were Spanish property. The documents being in order, Gilpin argued that the Court had no authority to rule against their validity. Gilpin contended that if the Africans were slaves (as evidenced by the documents), then they must be returned to their rightful owner, in this case, the Spanish government. Gilpin’s argument lasted two hours.

John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and at that time a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, had agreed to argue for the Africans, but when it was time for him to argue, felt ill-prepared. Roger Sherman Baldwin, who had already represented the captives in the lower cases, opened in his place.

Baldwin, a prominent attorney (who was no relation to Justice Baldwin, the lone dissenter on the Court) contended that the Spanish government was attempting to manipulate the Court to return “fugitives”. In actuality, Baldwin argued, the Spanish government sought the return of slaves, who had been freed by the District Court, a fact that the Spanish government was not appealing. Covering all the facts of the case, Baldwin spoke for four hours over the course of the 22nd and the 23rd.

John Quincy Adams rose to speak on February 24. First, he reminded the court that it was a part of the judicial branch, and not part of the executive. Adams introduced correspondence between the Spanish government and the Secretary of State, criticizing President Martin van Buren for his assumption of unconstitutional powers in the case.

   This review of all the proceedings of the Executive I have made with utmost pain, because it was necessary to bring it fully before your Honors, to show that the course of that department had been dictated, throughout, not by justice but by sympathy – and a sympathy the most partial and injust. And this sympathy prevailed to such a degree, among all the persons concerned in this business, as to have perverted their minds with regard to all the most sacred principles of law and right, on which the liberties of the United States are founded; and a course was pursued, from the beginning to the end, which was not only an outrage upon the persons whose lives and liberties were at stake, but hostile to the power and independence of the judiciary itself.

Adams argued that neither Pinckney’s Treaty nor the Adams-Onis Treaty were applicable to the case. Article IX of Pinckney’s Treaty referred only to property, and did not apply to people. As to The Antelope decision (10 Wheat. 124), which recognized “that possession on board of a vessel was evidence of property”, Adams said that did not apply either, since the precedent there was established prior to the prohibition of the foreign slave trade in the United States. Adams concluded after eight and one-half hours of speaking on March 1 (the Court had taken a recess following the death of Associate Justice Barbour).

Attorney General Gilpin concluded oral argument with a three-hour rebuttal on March 2. The Court retired to consider the case.

Decision of the Supreme Court

On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court’s decision. Article IX of Pinckney’s Treaty was ruled off topic since the Africans in question were never legal property. They were not criminals, as the U.S. Attorney’s Office argued, but rather “unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel”. The documents submitted by Attorney General Gilpin were not evidence of property, but rather of fraud on the part of the Spanish government. Lt. Gedney and the USS Washington were to be awarded salvage from the vessel for having performed “a highly meritorious and useful service to the proprietors of the ship and cargo”.

When La Amistad came into Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had no intent to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onis Treaty did not apply, and the President was not required to return the slaves to Africa.

Upon the whole, our opinion is, that the decree of the circuit court, affirming that of the district court, ought to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to be delivered to the president, to be transported to Africa, in pursuance of the act of the 3rd of March 1819; and as to this, it ought to be reversed: and that the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay.

Phoebe Cates, Carrie Fisher, and Bridget Fonda.

Lately there have been some rumors about me that I feel need to addressed. Because I have more class than some people spreading nonsense about me and others, I am not going to name names or link to them, but some of you will know what I am talking about. First off, in the comments of my last diary it was rightly brought up that the President did issue a veto threats against anyone who wants to get rid of any part of the sequester.

This veto threat applied to anyone in both parties which also included the plan from Republicans that wanted to give federal agencies more leeway in how the sequester was implemented so as to spare the defense cuts instead of equal foreign and domestic cuts across the board. It’s not surprising that no one else put anything forward with that veto threat.

Obama Threatens Veto on Bid to Avoid Automatic Cuts as Supercommittee Fails

President Obama said today he will veto any efforts to get rid of the automatic spending cuts that will be triggered by the supercommittee’s failure to reach a bipartisan solution to deficit reduction.

“There will be no easy off-ramps on this one. We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure,” the president said this evening. “The only way these spending cuts will not take place is if Congress gets back to work and agrees on a balanced plan to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion.”

Only those that enable the real life terror federal employees and their families will soon feel deny that this is a debacle created by the Executive and the Legislative working together for austerity. The direct quotes up above can only be ignored by those with an agenda and not one for working people. Get real.