Tom Avril
Philadelphia Inquirer

Is fossil a new little human or a deformed human?

The great hobbit debate lives on, and it’s coming to Philadelphia.

Do the fossils of a 3-foot-tall, small-brained creature represent a new humanoid species, or don’t they?

The scientists who first found those remains on an Indonesian island in 2003, including an 18,000-year-old skull, published their latest evidence last week in favor of a new species.

The other side, which includes Robert Eckhardt of Pennsylvania State University, remains skeptical.

Both Eckhardt and Florida State University’s Dean Falk, a leader of the pro-new-species team, plan to be in Philadelphia in March for the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Eckhardt maintains that the “hobbit” is merely a deformed human with some type of microcephaly, resulting in a brain one-third normal size. The fossils were found next to some advanced tools; Eckhardt says no creature with a brain that small could have made such tools, so they must have been made by the hobbit’s fellow humans.

In the latest paper, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Falk’s team used CAT scans to create a virtual model of what the new creature’s brain looked like. They compared that with the brains of both normal humans and microcephalics. Their conclusion: the hobbit – a nickname taken from the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien – is different from both.

Some participants in the debate have been less than civil; one has accused Falk’s team of being scientifically “naughty.” Eckhardt and Falk say they anticipate a collegial exchange in March, yet both hint that they may accuse the other side of errors.

“It will be a great, fun time,” says Eckhardt.

Adds Falk: “I can’t wait.”

White House Quietly Retracts Entire State Of The Union Address:

January 31, 2007 | Issue 43•05 WASHINGTON, DC—

In a brief statement faxed to major media outlets at approximately 11:50 p.m. Friday, the White House retracted the entire 5,600-word State of the Union address delivered by President Bush last Tuesday. “This includes all components of the address, and is not limited to the president’s congratulations to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or his plan to give more Americans affordable health care through tax cuts, which has since been deemed infeasible,” the statement read in part. “Furthermore, the president’s urge for bipartisanship as well as his final statement about the state of the union being ‘strong’ are hereby stricken from the public record.” Like the State of the Union address itself, the White House’s retraction has not yet become a significant national news story. © Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.

Crooks and Liars:

Henry Waxman: The Watch Dog of the Taxpayers
John Amato

 WAXMAN: It seems to me our top priority as the chief investigative and oversight committee is to make sure that taxpayers’ funds are no being wasted, that there’s no fraud and abuse. These are the taxpayers’ dollars, and what we’ve seen so far in Iraq, according to the government’s own auditors, is billions of dollars that have gone to waste and corruption and graft. We’re going to look into that more carefully. Only a small part of the money spent in Iraq has been audited, but what we’ve seen is very, very frightening. And that’s not only a problem in Iraq. When we look at the spending on homeland security, when we look at the spending on Hurricane Katrina, we see the same pattern of hiring big contractors, having them overcharge for the work they do. We’ve got to be the watchdog for the taxpayers.

Int’l Herald Tribune:

It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.

At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret
documents will be instantly declassified, including many FBI cold war
files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist
sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies
behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006
means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their
classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless
agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains
secret.

Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.

And every year from now on, millions
of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they
reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of
releasing just what scholars request.

Many historians had expected President George W. Bush to scrap the deadline. His
administration has overseen the reclassification of many historical
files and restricted access to presidential papers of past
administrations, as well as contemporary records.

[..]Gearing up to review aging records to meet the deadline,
agencies have declassified more than one billion pages, shedding light
on the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War and the network of Soviet
agents in the American government.

[..]J. William Leonard, who oversees declassification as head of
the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives,
said the threat that secret files might be made public without a
security review had sent a useful chill through the bureaucracy.

“Unfortunately, you sometimes need a two-by-four to get agencies
to pay attention,” Leonard said. “Automatic declassification was
essentially that two-by-four.”

Read full article here

Technorati Tags: McCarthy, communist witchhunt, F.B.I.

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All Spin Zone

Followup: WaPo Ombudsman Responds to Haditha Photo Controversy

I received an unexpected phone call late yesterday afternoon – Deborah Howell, ombudsman for the Washington Post, rang me in response to my article on WaPo’s editorial decision to not run or print some graphic photos from the Haditha, Iraq massacre.

The conversation was quite cordial. I reiterated the concerns that I raised earlier. And I also explained that I understood – truly understood – the desire to avoid controversy with WaPo’s readership, were the photos to be published. However, I explained that the decision would be more understandable if the images were out in the wild, ala Saddam’s hanging. If the images were accessible in some other location, then it would truly be an editorial decision not to offend readers. The problem is: that’s not the case. The Washington Post is apparently the only media organization which has possession of the Haditha massacre photos.

My original arguments stand. Without photographic evidence, how easy would it be for the David Duke contingent & Holocaust deniers to make a credible case that the Holocaust didn’t really happen? The iconic photos from Vietnam that I published in my original article helped change public perception (and by extension, the course) of the Vietnam war. All of these pictures are graphic and horrifying – but they make a point and record history in a way that mere words can not.

Let’s revisit the words from page A14 of this past Sunday’s Washington Post:

…Among the images, there is a young boy with a picture of a helicopter on his pajamas, slumped over, his face and head covered in blood. There is a mother lying on a bed, arms splayed, the bodies of three young children huddled against her right side. There are men with gaping head wounds, and a woman and a child hunkered down on their knees, their hands frozen around their faces as if permanently bracing for an attack.

While the words above provide a graphic description, they are easily forgotten and do not carry the weight of pictures. Page A14 becomes birdcage liner and we move on.

Ms. Howell called me back a second time in the early evening, and told me that she has requested that she be allowed to view the photos. In speaking with her editors, she was told that the pictures are not iconic in nature, and are closer to “morgue shots”. The point is: it doesn’t matter. The pictures were taken in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, and bear witness to a heinous crime in a war that is so very distant from our national psyche. So, almost by default, the pictures become iconic if they impact our perceptions of and conversations about the war in Iraq.

I don’t doubt for a moment that images of a young boy with half his head blown off would be disturbing. Images frozen in time of a murdered mother huddling in fear with her murdered children would make anyone cringe. The images become a Pompeii-type record of the atrocities committed in our country’s name.

On the day that George Bush will be committing tens of thousands more troops and untold billions of dollars in an effort to salvage his legacy and rectify his prior mistakes, we need to cringe as a nation. We need to see what Bush’s commitment is buying. We need to fully understand why the insurgency exists, and why the hatred of U.S. policy runs so deeply with a large segment of the Iraqi population.

As we closed our conversation, Ms. Howell promised me that she would get back to me and give me her opinion after she has viewed the pictures. (It’s also important to note that Ms. Howell doesn’t have the ability to make an editorial decision, but in her position, she can champion for the release of the photos.)

I truly hope that our collective voices on this issue will make a difference. If WaPo’s editorial decision stands, then they should consider, at a minimum, releasing the photos into the wild since the Post is (again, apparently) the only news organization that has the pictures.

If you’d care to express your opinion, Ms. Howell can be reached at:

Deborah Howell
202-334-7582
ombudsman@washpost.com

If you call or write her, be nice, and build a logical case for publishing some or all of the pictures. And when (or if) Ms. Howell gets back to me, I’ll post a followup.
Richard Blair | Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

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“Pajamas Media: The Movie“

Technorati Tags: tool, bush apologists, right wing talking machine, war criminals

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MyDD :: McCain Hires Blog Sockpuppet

by Matt Stoller, Thu Dec 21, 2006 

McCain keeps hiring smart staffers (hat tip Bluejersey).

Jill Hazelbaker, battle tested in New Jersey this year as Tom Kean Jr.’s Communications Director, is headed to John McCain’s presidential campaign. She will serve as Communications Director for McCain’s campaign in New Hampshire.

Jill Hazelbaker it seems has a little penchant for posting on liberal blogs and lying about it. Bluejersey is the site that caught her, and the New York Times had the story:

The Internet postings came from people calling themselves “cleanupnj,” “usedtobeblue” and “AmadeusNJ.” They said they were concerned Democrats, “lifelong liberals,” and they were troubled by the United States senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez…

But the liberal Democratic hosts of BlueJersey.com, the Web log where such comments were posted, smelled something fishy about the postings, and said they traced them to a computer inside the campaign headquarters of Mr. Menendez’s Republican opponent, Thomas H. Kean Jr.

Read this post documenting how often she lied to the press about what happened. It’s actually kind of amazing. There were even blog sockpuppets defending her personally.

My favorite is this one.

Also, you guys are upset about the attacks on Menendez, but isn’t it a little bit hypocritical to then attack his press secretary. Not to mention, Kean is winnng so she must be doing something right. Just my thoughts.

Ah, the last honest man hires the last honest press secretary.

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Published Online

A university historian finally forced the FBI to turn in the last 10 documents they had on John Lennon. Jon Weiner, who has waged a 25-year legal battle, immediately posted the documents on his website on Wednesday.

Though some files were released on Weiner’s initial request, the FBI held 10 documents back on national security grounds, claiming that they “can reasonably be expected to … lead to foreign diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the United States,” according to a government brief filed in 1983.

“The content of the files released today is an embarrassment to the US government,” said Wiener, 62, who has written two books on the late Beatle, “Come Together: John Lennon in His Time” and “Gimme Some Truth: the John Lennon FBI Files.”

“I doubt that Tony Blair’s government will launch a military strike on the US in retaliation for the release of these documents. Today, we can see that the national security claims that the FBI has been making for 25 years were absurd from the beginning,” said Wiener.

The now-released files reveal that then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover wrote to HR Haldeman, former president Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, that “Lennon had taken an interest in ‘extreme left-wing activities in Britain’ and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England.”

Another document revealed that Lennon had been courted by British left-wingers but resisted joining any organization and rejected requests for funds to open a book shop “despite a long courtship by Blackburn and Ali.” It had been totally blacked out on the grounds of national security when Wiener obtained it more than 20 years ago through litigation.

Lennon “apparently resisted the attempts of any particular group to secure any hold over him,” the document said. Another page states that there was “no certain proof” that Lennon had provided money “for subversive purposes.” Another describes an interview with Lennon published in 1971 in an underground London newspaper called the Red Mole. “Lennon emphasized his proletarian background and his sympathy with the oppressed and underprivileged people of Britain and the world,” the document says.

Wiener first requested the documents in 1981, several months after he decided to write a book about Lennon following the singer’s murder. Wiener sued the government and received a number of files in 1997 as part of a settlement with the FBI. Wiener lost the initial court skirmishes, but in 1991 he won a major victory in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that declarations filed by FBI agents provided inadequate grounds for keeping the material secret. From that point forward, the court ruled, the FBI had to file “affidavits containing sufficient detail” to allow Wiener to “intelligently advocate” for their release and for a trial judge “to intelligently judge the contest,” reports LA Times.

Justice Department lawyers continued to withhold the final 10 pages until a federal judge in 2004 ordered their release, reports AP. Only one document alludes to Lennon’s music, saying he has “encouraged the belief that he holds revolutionary views […] by the content of some of his songs.”

“Give Peace a Chance”, recorded in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War, marked Lennon’s transformation from loveable mop-top to anti-war activist, and began a process that culminated in 1972, when the Nixon Administration sought to silence him by ordering him deported from the US.

While his deportation battle was going on, Lennon spoke often against the Vietnam War, appearing at rallies in New York City and on TV shows, including a week hosting the Mike Douglas Show in February 1972, where Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale appeared as his guests. He was tailed by a team of FBI agents, who concluded “Lennon appears to be radically oriented however he does not give the impression he is a true revolutionist since he is constantly under the influence of narcotics,” according to Wikipedia.

In the end, Nixon left the White House in the Watergate scandal, and Lennon stayed in the USA, winning his green card in 1975.

The FBI files on John Lennon were published at http://www.lennonfbifiles.com

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Jon Stewart tracks Bush’s clear and consistent message on Iraq
and throws in a Tony “I Don’t Know” Snow instant classic for good measure.

Video WMP  |  Video MOV 

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