By Asso Ahmed in Kirkuk and Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2011

BAGHDAD—A double bombing killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police, and wounded an additional 70 in a parking lot outside the main police offices the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, according to security officials.

It was the second major attack against police forces this month, after 16 people were killed in a blast outside a headquarters in the southern city of Hilla, the first week of May.  The bombings along with recent jail break attempts in Basra and Baghdad have put Iraq's forces under new scrutiny as the last of the U.S. troops prepare to leave the country at the end of the year. "This has the fingerprint of Al Qaeda," said Brigadier Jamal Tahi, Kirkuk's head policeman....

Bloomberg News, May 19, 2011

Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, making it more likely that the surge in April was caused by temporary events rather than a deterioration in the labor market.....

Also see:

Fewer Applied for Unemployment Benefits
Associated Press, May 19, 2011

(WASHINGTON) — The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply for the second straight week, suggesting the job market is slowly recovering....

By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, May 18, 2011

Why is it that we cannot read any discussion of a political sex scandal, or a sex scandal involving a politician, without pseudo-sophisticated comments about the supposedly different morals of Americans and Europeans? And why is it that this goes double if the politician is French, or if the reactions being quoted are from Gallic sources? And when did this annoying journalistic habit become so prevalent? It must have sprung up quite recently, or at least since the time when Charles de Gaulle and John F. Kennedy were presidents of their respective countries. The first man was a strict and fastidious Puritan who never gave his wife Yvonne a moment's cause for complaint, while the second was a sensational debauchee who went as far as importing a Mafia gun-moll into the White House sleeping quarters. Yet the American culture, which regards Kennedy as a virtual Galahad, is the supposedly shockable one, while in France—ah, la France—a much more broad-minded and adult attitude prevails.

Surely France and its partisans are not saying that the attempted rape of a chambermaid would not rearrange so much as an eyebrow in the supposedly refined salons of Paris?....

"Spain's people's movement has finally awoken, la Puerta del Sol in Madrid is now the country's Tahrir Square, and the "Arab Spring' has been joined by what is now bracing to become a long "European Summer'. As people across the Arab world continue their popular struggle for justice, peace and democracy, Spain's disillusioned citizens have finally caught on with full force. Slow at first, hopeful that Spain's dire economic conditions would magically correct themselves, the Spanish street has finally understood that democratic and economic justice and peace will not come from the pulpits of the country's corrupt political elite.

Amidst local and regional election campaigns, with the banners of the different political parties plastered across the country's streets, people are saying "enough!' Disillusioned youth, unemployed, pensioners, students, immigrants and other disenfranchised groups have emulated their brothers in the Arab world and are now demanding a voice -- demanding an opportunity to live with dignity. "    

More here.

News that the GOP is creating a new "super PAC" which critics claim breaks even the already-loosened campaign finance laws.

New and unbelievably good documentary on the Freedom Riders' of 1961. If you think you know anything about what happened that year in Alabama and Mississippi you need to see this film, because you probably don't know it all. The 120 minute production has loads of video from the period and interviews with the (formerly-interviews are recent) brave young participants. It also notes this was one non-violent action that MLK was apparently either too chicken or too smart not to take part in because the black and white students, many from Fisk University in Tenn., were beaten, arrested, burned out of a bus, left on the road, and put out to labor like slaves as state prisoners in Mississippi fields..... the riders were largely ignored at first by JFK and RFK who wished they would go away, the scenes and events were touted by Moscow as counter-American propaganda, and JFK's federal representative was even knocked unconscious at one point in a riot of racist whites attacking the riders in Alabama while police did nothing.The only apparent violation of the freedom riders was leaving the buses to congregate in the 'all white' section of bus deports.

The DVD is well worth it to educate your kids or grandkids about racism and America. The south may have changed but how much?  It is noted that the southern racist politicians in the period news clips call the students 'agitators' and the baseball bat/crowbar wielding, incendiary throwing gangs of local white trash are not the 'agitators', but solid citizens, and I suppose by today's definition, Real Americans. They could just not resist congregating in mobs and beating up riders, who the white leaders said bore all the fault for the trouble for not going home, but were instead riding through Montgomery and Birmingham Alabama.

What could Dick Bove be thinking?

In a break with Wall Street tradition, the Rochedale Securities research analyst issued a very rare sell rating last week -- on Goldman Sachs, no less.

Analysts live or die by their access to corporate managements, and corporate managements, like the army in Catch-22, want to be liked. And they like to have their analysts embedded. Like journalists covering a war by traveling with the U.S. army, the analyst at the CEO's table gets a ringside seat on the corporate story. And also like the reporter, the analyst only gets to see what his hosts want to show him.

Wall Street analysts rarely go off on their own, because they live and die by corporate access -- their cherished ability to get the CEO to take their phone calls. Thus, when a high-profile analyst slaps a sell recommendation on a major firm, we have to assume it's because the relationship has outlived its usefulness to the analyst. Let's face it: nobody is so powerful that they can put a sell on Goldman Sachs (GS) with impunity.

We won't ask what tipped Bove that the game is up at Goldman. In the conflicted world of Wall Street, one does not have to have a positive outlook on a stock to maintain a buy recommendation. But there is a creeping sense on Wall Street that the game may be up in a more fundamental way. Wall Street often attracts the Best and the Brightest, but it also turns them into fatuous morons who believe no one else will be smart enough to catch them.

By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, May 23, 2011

Thomas Drake is accused of releasing top-secret defense documents to a reporter. Is he a menace or a hero?

Besides going over Drake's history in detail, Mayer's article gets heavily into the Obama adminstration having tough stances on leaks of state secrets, with plenty of negative opinions offered about that.

However, I found this one example she gives of a possible reason to be quite interesting:

On March 28th, Obama held a meeting in the White House with five advocates for greater transparency in government. During the discussion, the President drew a sharp distinction between whistle-blowers who exclusively reveal wrongdoing and those who jeopardize national security. The importance of maintaining secrecy about the impending raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was likely on Obama’s mind. The White House has been particularly bedevilled by the ongoing release of classified documents by WikiLeaks, the group led by Julian Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began releasing a vast trove of sensitive government documents allegedly leaked by a U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning; the documents included references to a courier for bin Laden who had moved his family to Abbottabad—the town where bin Laden was hiding out. Manning has been charged with “aiding the enemy.”

There is also a great deal of interesting information in the piece from interviews with Bill Binney, a former N.S.A. "crypto mathematician," about his development  of "Thin Thread" for monitoring worldwide communications, and his worries about its misuse:

Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man....Now retired and suffering gravely from diabetes, which has already claimed his left leg, he agreed recently to speak publicly for the first time about the Drake case. When we met, at a restaurant near N.S.A. headquarters, he leaned crutches against an extra chair. “This is too serious not to talk about,” he said.

Binney expressed terrible remorse over the way some of his algorithms were used after 9/11.

ThinThread, the “little program” that he invented to track enemies outside the U.S., “got twisted,” and was used for both foreign and domestic spying: “I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.”

By Salman Masood, New York Times, May 17, 2011

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani ground troops opened fire on two NATO helicopters that crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan early Tuesday morning, the Pakistani Army said in a statement. A firefight then briefly erupted between NATO forces and the troops, the statement said, and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded.

The clash took place at Admi Kot Post in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, an area that American officials have long regarded as a haven used by militants to attack coalition forces inside Afghanistan....

This is a guest post by Scott Huler, author of “On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work.”

It’s been a year since the publication of On the Grid, my book about tracing and understanding everyday infrastructure systems, so I have now spent a year talking to people about their wires and pipes — and I have terrible news. Not about infrastructure itself, which is amazing and growing only more so. No — it’s about whether we get to have any more of it.

Whenever I give a presentation, I always start with something in the news — which is easy, since wherever you go, infrastructure is in the news. Nearly every story is in some way an infrastructure story. Whatever city you live in, at least two local stories in your paper today have to do with streets or water or wastewater. Check it out — it’s always true.

But forget about local right now — let’s start with Japan.

The tsunami spent about an hour as a natural disaster, then a few days as an issue of emergency response. But the long term, the situation emerged as a pure crisis of infrastructure. Recall that Japan was already coping with the problems created by trying to run itself without the Fukishima plant. This was made even more complex by Japan’s use of both 50-hertz and 60-hertz electrical grids, caused because Japan never adopted either the North American (60-hertz) or European (50-hertz) electrical standards. Let’s not even bring up how the most serious problems were caused by decades of failure to create a long-term solution for radioactive waste, or the possibilities of thorium power generation. The point is, you start with an earthquake and a tsunami, and a cup of coffee later you’re talking about generating electricity with rare-earth mine tailings.

By Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, Guardian.co.uk, May 15, 2011

At least 13 people killed as troops clash with demonstrators in Gaza and on the borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Thousands of Palestinians and their supporters were embroiled in deadly confrontations with the Israeli army as protests erupting across the Palestinian territories, Israel and its borders with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were met with live fire, rubber bullets, stun grenades and teargas.

At least 13 people were reported killed in a day of bloody confrontations, including 10 at the Lebanese border, at least two at the Syrian border and one in Gaza. However some sources said 10 people had been killed on the Syrian border. Police also fired teargas to disperse hundreds of protesters on the Jordanian border....

Also see:

Palestinians killed in 'Nakba' clashes
Al Jazeera, May 15, 2011

Several killed and scores wounded in Gaza, Golan Heights, Ras Maroun and West Bank, as Palestinians mark Nakba Day.

and:

Scores injured at 'Nakba' rally in Cairo
Al Jazeera, May 15, 2010

Security forces disperse "Nakba Day" demonstrators after group attempts to "storm" Israeli embassy in Egyptian capital

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers, May 15, 2011

MEXICO CITY — In the worst drug-related violence in modern times in Guatemala, assailants stormed a remote jungle ranch and killed 27 people, beheading 25 of them, an army spokesman said Sunday.

As spotter planes flew overhead, Guatemalan soldiers raced along jungle tracks to cut off a nearby border crossing into Mexico to prevent the assailants from fleeing, army Col. Rony Urizar said.

News reports in Guatemala said the Los Cocos ranch in a lawless part of the Peten region belonged to the brother of one of the nation's most widely known drug bosses.

The assailants, moving in several vehicles....