today, D-Day is 62 years ago.

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When a war concludes, there is a clear indicator of whether the occupation of one country by another is accepted by the population of the occupied nation – and that is how those who cooperate with the occupiers are treated by their co-nationalists.

When Hitler had conquered Europe, groups like the Maquis rose up to attack his forces any way they could. The Resistance suffered fearful losses and yet never gave up the fight. They continued to fight up to the day Germany surrendered.

Contrast this with the almost complete lack of resistance on the part of the German and Japanese populations once Allied forces occupied their nations.

One of my Good Orange County (CA) Republican coworkers had been a child in Germany during the war. I have written about him before – he’s the one who told me about how Germans knew the war was going badly when each daily ‘great victory’ trumpeted by Reich officials was that much closer to Berlin.

He came to America once he became of age, only to be drafted into the American Army and stationed in – wait for it – GERMANY! To make matters even more interesting, he was stationed close enough to his home town that he could visit there on a regular basis.

Think about this for a moment. How would you feel if some kid you watched grow up left the country, only to return wearing the uniform of the nation which holds you captive after losing a war against them? Suppose – as John Walker Lindh found out the hard way – that wan’t acceptible to you? Wouldn’t you want to hurt ‘the traitor’ in some way?

This is exactly the indication of whether an occupation is successful – or not.

My friend was not ostracized for belonging to the American Army, nor was he harmed by his former neighbors in any way. He was accepted as an alumni of the town he grew up in, and up until he died, maintained relationships with his former hometown neighbors.

It wouldn’t have gone like this if he were a current-day Iraqi.

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Jack Johnson was a famous African American boxer in the early 1900′s. He caused quite a stir throughout our country which was captured by PBS in a great documentary about his life.

In December of 1912, an amendment to the Constitution was introduced to abolish racial intermarriage: “Intermarriage between negros or persons of color and Caucasians . . . within the United States . . . is forever prohibited.” These anti-micegenation laws were declared unconstitutional by The Supreme Court in 1967.

Corante: Because of Johnson’s arrogance and love for white women, many whites considered him a serious threat to racial order. After Johnson married Lucille Cameron (a white woman), two ministers in the South recommended lynching him (Gilmore, 1975, p.107). In a reaction to the Johnson-Cameron marriage, in 1911 Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia introduced a constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriages. In his appeal to congress, Roddenberry stated that

“Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery to black beasts will bring this nation to a fatal conflict” (Gilmore, 1975, p.108).

Influenced by Roddenberry and others, miscegenation bills were introduced in 1913 in half of the twenty states where this law did not exist.

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MICROSOFT executives love telling stories against each other. Here’s one that platforms vice-president Jim Allchin told at a recent Windows Vista reviewers conference about chief executive Steve Ballmer.

It seems Steve was at a friend’s wedding reception when the bride’s father complained that his PC had slowed to a crawl and would Steve mind taking a look.

Allchin says Ballmer, the world’s 13th wealthiest man with a fortune of about $18 billion, spent almost two days trying to rid the PC of worms, viruses, spyware, malware and severe fragmentation without success.

He lumped the thing back to Microsoft’s headquarters and turned it over to a team of top engineers, who spent several days on the machine, finding it infected with more than 100 pieces of malware, some of which were nearly impossible to eradicate.

Among the problems was a program that automatically disabled any antivirus software.

“This really opened our eyes to what goes on in the real world,” Allchin told the audience.

If the man at the top and a team of Microsoft’s best engineers faced defeat, what chance do ordinary punters have of keeping their Windows PCs virus-free?

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You’d think the Bush administration would have learned its lesson with James Hansen and global warming. Apparently not. Mr. Hansen, you may recall, is the NASA scientist who was muzzled — by a 24-year-old résumé falsifier, no less — in his efforts to warn about the dangers of climate change. Mr. Hansen, it turned out, wasn’t alone: Other employees working on that issue at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been chastised for speaking out and answering media questions.

Now it appears that this chilling effect isn’t just for global warming. According to a report in Wednesday’s Post by Blaine Harden, NOAA has directed that questions about endangered salmon — which the agency is responsible for protecting — are to be answered only by headquarters, and then only by three officials, all political appointees. Scientists and other agency officials who actually work on the salmon studies aren’t supposed to answer reporters’ questions.

[..]

With the Orwellian cheeriness that has become a Bush administration specialty, NOAA headquarters spokesman Jeff Donald explained that the change was made because “some folks were trying to consolidate a little bit and make sure everything we were putting out was accurate and as up to date as possible.” That’s the kind of helpfulness we don’t need.

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Close your eyes for a moment.

Imagine you’re in a place where houses sit on top of cars. Where there is nothing but devastation. Every neighborhood, every street, every home – destroyed. Imagine a place without electricity, where signs warn against drinking the water. Where an abandoned tricycle collects dust in front of a home that has been torn off its foundation. This is the heart and soul of Jazz country. This is New Orleans in May 2006 (below taken just two Thursdays ago in the Ninth Ward), nine months after back-to-back hurricanes tore through the Gulf Coast and left a path of destruction in their wake.

Much of New Orleans is still in shambles. Last week, I traveled there with 17 close friends and worked to help try to restore the lives of those who were most affected by the storms. We wanted to be on the front lines, instead of sending money from the confines of our cozy apartments. As we flew from New York to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, we could see, even from the air, that there was still much to do. Blue tarps sprawled for miles in every direction on homes that waited for roof repairs. On the drive to our hotel we passed row upon row of homes split by the force of wind and water. That wasn’t the worst of it.

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According to our DC sources, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property is planning on marking up and expediting a not-yet-introduced bill entitled the Section 115 Reform Act (aka SIRA) this coming Wednesday, June 7. Why the rush? Because otherwise someone might notice that the bill represents an unholy alliance between the major music service providers (AOL, Yahoo, Apple, Real Networks, etc.) and music publishing industry. If the bill passes, they win, but fair use loses.

SIRA’s main aim is clearing the way for online music services by revising the current mechanical compulsory license set out in Section 115 of the Copyright Act to accommodate “full downloads, limited downloads, and interactive streams.” So far so good, but the devil is in the details. This license specifically includes and treats as license-able “incidental reproductions…including cached, network, and RAM buffer reproductions.”

By smuggling this language into the Copyright Act, the copyright industries are stacking the deck for future fights against other digital technologies that depend on making incidental copies. Just think of all the incidental copies that litter your computer today — do you have a license for every copy in your browser’s cache?

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Even as Colorado is facing a dangerous wildfire season, 11 of the 12 large Colorado National Guard helicopters that can be used for backup firefighting are on their way to Iraq.

Their departure comes on top of problems with the nation’s fleet of heavy planes used to drop slurry on leaping flames. Only 16 of the country’s 46 heavy air tankers are flying this year following a series of crashes and maintenance problems.

The Guard has sent its huge double-rotor Chinooks and medium- sized Black Hawks to Texas, where crews are training for a deployment that will keep them away from Colorado for this fire season and the next.

The departed helicopters could carry nearly 17,000 gallons altogether and fly rapidly to forest fires from their base in Aurora.

With the remaining planes and helicopters under its control, the state now can deliver two-thirds less water and foam than last year.

Vietnam’s Defense Minster General Pham Van Tra and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld review the honour guards during a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry’s Headquarters in Hanoi, June 5, 2006. REUTERS/Kham

Rumsfeld now has more time in country than anyone else in the Administration.

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School districts desperate to plug budget holes are turning their buses into billboards for soft drinks, credit unions and car dealerships.

Advertisements have popped up on buses in Arizona and Massachusetts. New ones are set to appear in Michigan and Colorado.

Dozens more districts from Florida to Pennsylvania may join them.

“This will spread across the nation, because there’s so much money that will come into schools as a result of doing this,” says Daniel Shearer, director of transportation at the Scottsdale Unified School District.

The Arizona city just outside Phoenix began displaying ads on the sides of its buses last December. Advertisers include real estate agencies, a local toy store and an ambulance company. The district anticipates the ads will bring in $300,000 this year and up to $900,000 in a few years.

But some consumer groups and parents are alarmed. They say America’s children — already bombarded by ads — shouldn’t become captive audiences on their way to and from school.

“It teaches children that … they’re for sale,” says Gary Ruskin, executive director of the consumer group Commercial Alert. “They’re just a bunch of sardines packed in a bus being sold to an advertiser.”

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Soon, schoolchildren may be singing new lyrics to the classic “Wheels on the Bus.�?

“The ads on the bus go on and on, on and on . . .�?

BusRadio, a start-up company in Massachusetts, wants to pipe into school buses around the country a private radio network that plays music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed at kids as they travel to and from school.

As BusRadio’s Web site (http://www.busradio.net/) explains: “Every morning and every afternoon on their way to and from school, kids across the country will be listening to the dynamic programming of BusRadio providing advertiser’s [sic] with a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought after teen and tween market.�?

BusRadio, the Web site adds, “will take targeted student marketing to the next level.�? Marketers can advertise and sponsor contests or provide a celebrity deejay (perhaps to promote that next CD or movie). They can also use BusRadio’s Web site to conduct surveys and test songs, CD covers, packaging and ads.

and to ensure a captive audience, Many schools have banned iPods.

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The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military’s decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

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“The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people,” said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. “Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire.”

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The military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva.

So much for the “McCain anti-torture bill”… and to think the american standards were the basis for the geneva conventions, back in the ’40s…

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From a new Gallup poll, taken May 22-24, with results from an identical poll taken April 10-13 for comparison. The question was: “What one or two issues should be top priorities for the president and Congress to deal with at this time?”

	May	April
Situation in Iraq/war	42	29
Fuel/oil prices/lack of energy sources/
the energy crisis	29	13
Immigration/illegal aliens	23	20
Economy in general	14	14
Poor health care/hospitals; high cost
of health care	12	9
Terrorism	4	3
Education/poor education/access
to education	4	4
Federal budget deficit/federal debt	3	3
Unemployment/jobs	3	3
Taxes	3	2
Social Security	2	2
International issues/problems	2	2
National security	2	5
Environment/pollution	2	1
Medicare	2	2
Foreign aid/focus overseas	2	2
Poor leadership/corruption/dissatisfaction
with government/Congress/politicians/
candidates	2	1
Poverty/hunger/homelessness	1	1
Ethics/moral/religious/family decline;
dishonesty; lack of integrity	1	1
Natural disaster relief/funding	1	*
Trade deficit/foreign trade	1	*
High cost of living/inflation	1	1
Unifying the country	*	1
Judicial system/courts/laws	*	1
Abortion	*	1
Lack of money	*	1
Gap between rich and poor	*	1
Other	1	2
No opinion	4	3
Percentages add to more than 100% due to multiple responses.

via

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A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.

“The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said.

“A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”

The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an “animal island” protected by thick concrete blocks.

Well then… I’m glad we cleared that up…