Another Angle 9 - March - 2006

ANOTHER ANGLE
News others won't tell you



NATIONAL:



Third elections worker indicted over presidential recount
A third board worker has been indicted on six counts alleging that Ohio laws were not followed in the selection and review of ballots for the recount. The other two board employees were indicted in August. They're scheduled for trial in May



Fields: cancel N.O. elections; record absentees expected
A state senator from Baton Rouge has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to cancel the city elections in New Orleans, claiming black voters would be disenfranchised because so many cannot vote in their own neighborhoods. Democratic Sen. Cleo Fields filed the written appeal Wednesday with John K. Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section. "I cannot sit by and let an unfair election take place. It's just wrong and it's illegal."



Frist Blocking vote on Port deal



Nation of Islam officials offer reply
Farrakhan’s chief of staff, Brother Leonard Muhammad, said on the radio Tuesday that the Nation of Islam forgave the people who left the commission because “you left out of confusion. You misunderstand what the commission is all about. Come back to the commission and debate your point.” He later issued a stronger challenge to them to return. “They need to come back or shut up,” Leonard Muhammad said. “And leave me alone,” Claudette Muhammad chimed in.



Little Manchurian Candidates
I was determined to get to the bottom of things. Since they didn't send books home with students in the younger grades, I went to the school the following day and spent a couple of hours reviewing the elementary readers. As I read, my eyes opened wider and wider. I had assumed the purpose of the reading curriculum was to stimulate the juvenile imagination and teach reading skills. Instead, I saw material saturated with, to borrow another parent's language, "an unadvertised agenda promoting parental alienation, loss of identity and self-confidence, group-dependence, passivity, and anti-intellectualism."



Spike Lee To Secratary Of State: 'Condi That Stop Smokin' Crack'
"People say, 'She's so successful' and 'Look at her position as a black woman.' She is a black woman who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and said that she never experienced a day of racism in her life." "Condi, stop smoking that crack!



John Bolton Does AIPAC
It should be obvious, considering the photo to the left, who John Bolton, the Straussian neocon “representative” to the United Nations, works for—the American-Israel Political Action Committee. “U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, speaking at a convention of Jewish-Americans, said it is too soon for the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran but other countries are talking about doing so and Washington is ‘beefing up defensive measures to cope with the Iranian nuclear threat,’” in other words the Pentagon is preparing to shock and awe Iran, maybe later this month, but probably down the road, sooner before later



Obituary: Gordon Parks, chronicled African-American life
Perhaps his best-known photograph, which he titled "American Gothic," was taken during his brief time with the agency; it shows a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Parks wanted the picture to speak to the existence of racial bigotry and inequality in the U.S. capital



INTERNATIONAL:



Challenging the mighty dollar
In 2004, Iran decided to do what Iraq did before it -- start the process of eventually selling its oil and natural gas in euros instead of the globally mandated US dollar. Yet, Iran is 'one-upping' Iraq by starting its own energy exchange, labeled the Iran Oil Bourse, which would rival the aforementioned exchanges in London and New York.
Shock and Awe; the sequel
'US Cannot Use Gansi Base for Iran'



DM: Israel Will Have to Act on Iran if UN Can't
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was asked whether Israel was ready to use military action if the Security Council proved unable to act against what Israel and the West believe is a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. "My answer to this question is that the state of Israel has the right give all the security that is needed to the people in Israel. We have to defend ourselves."



Netanyahu would control more territory
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would move Israel’s security barrier deeper inside the West Bank. The Likud Party leader was the third of the three candidates in Israel’s March 28 elections to address this year’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.



Missiles 'fired towards China' by mistake



BUSH CRIME FAMILY:



Abramoff tattles on Bush, DeLay, RNC chair
Vanity Fair is set to publish a tell-all interview with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, noting that his plea-bargain sentence can be "substantially reduced" by co-operating with investigators. The piece makes much of many prominent Republicans' denials of having worked with Abramoff. Abramoff reminisces about jokes President Bush, who now claims not to remember him, made about his weight training program. Abramoff also recalls discussing the Bible, opera, and golf with Tom DeLay.



OP-ED:



Dear Howard, I'm writing to say goodbye
I'm out of here Howard, gone. Wish I could say it's been fun. Starting well before Bill Clinton the Democrats had become GOP Lite. Today the Republic is reeling toward a completely totalitarian fascist state. In truth we've become a foreign invader seeking conquest and empire, the mortal enemy of a peaceful Earth. So I'm off to find political leadership that's got some true moral integrity and courage fight left to fight with.



HEALTH&FITNESS:



Hypertension Drug May Help African Americans
Ohio University scientists say Nebivolol, a European high blood pressure treatment drug, may restore damaged cardiovascular functions in African Americans. Tadeusz Malinski and colleagues in the OU department of chemistry and biochemistry, found the drug -- currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- acts on the level of oxidants lining the cardiovascular system and can restore levels of nitric oxide and reduce oxidative stress.



REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS:



Guinier: The Meritocracy Myth
Lani Guinier became a household name in 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed her to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and then, under pressure from conservatives, withdrew her nomination without a confirmation hearing. Guinier is currently the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard University where, in 1998, she became the first black woman to be tenured at the law school. This past summer, she offered a glimpse of her upcoming book in this interview with D&S intern Rebecca Parrish.



Stepin Fetchit, Hollywood's First Black Film Star
Seen through a modern lens, Perry's "laziest man in the world" character can be painfully racist.
"The lazy man character that [Perry] played was based on something that had come from slavery," Watkins says. "It was called 'putting on old massa' -- break the tools, break the hoe, do anything to postpone the work that was to be done."
Finally, the white characters would become exasperated and do the work themselves. "And blacks understood it perfectly, and laughed heartily at it,"



HUMOR?:



Tom Toles