Peter Singer

The animal rights ethicist, unsurprisingly, agrees with me in an interview with TNR on Michael Vick:

That comparison that you just asked me to make between dog fighting and sport-hunting is interesting in itself because these are both really very minor cruelties in the terms of the scale of things. The big thing that is going undiscussed here is the industrial raising of animals for food. Just in terms of the numbers, it's so vastly greater than sport-hunting, which in turn is a lot bigger than dog fighting. We're talking literally about billions of animals each year being reared in conditions that don't enable them to have a minimally decent life and then being killed in mass-production factory ways that again often are not painless. So that's the schizophrenia, that all of this hidden suffering that's engaged in by supposedly respectable corporations and that people then buy in their supermarkets is the thing that is unspoken. It's not the recreational activities that we should be focusing on.

As a meat eater, however, I have only one morally consistent position available to me: Free Michael Vick!

Music

These guys are fun. I've been listening to their London Calling cover and it's actually quite pretty.

Weird

Perez Hilton claims they've got exclusive sources that say Fidel Castro has died. Hopefully he died without any underwear, while getting out of a car, and Perez has got the pix.

Lobbying for Kurds

A follow up...Here's what the Kurds got out of their BG&R contract (via Washington Post, 4/23/07):

On June 3, 2004, Barbour Griffith & Rogers agreed to represent the Kurdistan Democratic Party for $29,000 a month.
Qubad Talabani said the firm lobbied the White House for the $4 billion.
Twenty days later, on June 23, the U.S. occupation administration in Iraq gave the Kurds $1.4 billion in cash. The U.S. military flew the money -- brand-new $100 bills in shrink-wrapped bricks -- to Irbil on three helicopters.
Although officials with the occupation authority maintained that the payout was the Kurds' share of Iraq's 2004 capital budget and was unconnected to lobbying, Kurdish leaders insist otherwise.

FARA

Ayad Allawi's representation by Washington lobbying powerhouse Barbour Griffith & Rogers reveals Washington's slimy inner workings, as Glenn Greenwald points out.

To get a taste of the cocktail of services these lobbying firms offer foreign agents, both brutal and benign, check out these excerpts from a BG&R's Foreign Agency Registration Act disclosure forms for their work with the Kurdistan Regional Government. (click for the full documents)

Access to government officials:
Op-ed placement:
Speeches and testimony:News stories:
(notice the use of post-NYT Judith Miller, once the most dangerous lazy journalist in America, to promote the Kurdistan cause...)

As revealing as these documents seem, they provide a carefully cropped and largely incomplete picture. Ken Silverstein's Harpers expose explains:

"no one has been prosecuted for ignoring the act, so there are few risks for non-compliance. Those firms that do register generally reveal little information beyond the names of their clients, the fees they pay, and limited information about whom they contact. Because disclosure requirements are so lax, it is nearly impossible to monitor the activities of foreign lobbyists. What little knowledge we do have of lobbyist-orchestrated diplomacy—including most of the projects discussed above—has been gleaned not from FARA filings but from serendipitous revelations or investigative reporting."

Iraq Slogger got their hands on Allawi's contract with BG&R. Stay tuned for BG&R's six month supplemental filing that ought to disclose their Allawi-related activities and reveal the extent of the cynical anti-Maliki manipulations.

Justice Sans Frontieres

Via Subtopia, a bleak vision of the global imperial "justice" of the future:

"I can’t help to imagine a future global landscape slowly becoming more and more populated by this roving network of militarized tent cities, rounding up thousands of assorted “terrorist suspects” every day – linking them through some minimally publicized court system within a larger fragmented geography of “mini-Green Zones” and armored ‘Rule of Law Complexes’ perpetually on the prowl. Prodded by a so-called 'Long War (On Terror)' they become increasingly autonomous and less tethered over time, meandering in complete disregard for national and political boundaries, stealthily ballooning on strategic hilltops, in secret valleys, catching, detaining and sentencing terrorists over night. Altogether, expanding this greater amorphous Green Zone of spatial exception that creeps along in a spotty connection of spawned fortresses, temporary courtrooms, and nomadic detention sites..."

PHOTO: New York Times, A "rule of law" complex in Iraq, built to house the judges, lawyers and court officials of the embattled US-sponsored Iraqi justice system.

Post Post-Industrial

Ithaca, NY may be bidding farewell to a hulking feature of their post-industrial landscape: the Ithaca Gun factory. Long abandoned, this lead-contaminated host to many a spooky high school video project (guilty) has piqued the interest of developer Frost Travis who wants to turn the site into 33 condo townhouses and a 2 acre public access point to view nearby Ithaca Falls.

The Ithaca Gun Company, which abandoned the factory in the mid eighties, manufactured an array of relatively successful shotguns including the Ithaca 37, used by the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Deerslayer series (which gave the Field & Stream gun blogger "subdural hematomas").

The factory lies up the hill from Ithaca's Fall Creek Elementary School (where mom teaches music) and currently functions mostly to slowly contaminate the neighboring waterfall and creek with asbestos and lead. But the smokestack, which pierces the Cornell University clogged skyline with a splinter of urban blight, is a stark reminder of Ithaca's manufacturing past.

The development will require a lot of clean up, about $2.4 million worth, which Travis hopes to secure with a grant from New York State. The $200,000-$300,000 condos would be no taller than the existing factory and would enjoy a spectacular view of Cayuga lake. Ra ra, more tax revenue for the city. Ra ra, a pretty access point to Ithaca Falls.

But when the gun-victim ghosts start haunting the bobo condo dwellers, there may not be state money available.