Entries in death (3)

Friday
Dec182009

Intelligence Squared US Debate - America is to blame for Mexico’s drug war

 

Intelligence Squared (US edition) hosted a debate (on December 1 2009) on the motion:

America is to blame for Mexico’s drug war


MODERATOR: John Donvan is a correspondent for ABC News Nightline. He has served as ABC White House Correspondent, along with posting in Moscow, London, Jerusalem and Amman.

FOR THE MOTION:  Andrés Martinez directs the New America Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program. He was the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2004-2007, and presided over the newspaper’s op-ed page and Sunday opinion section.

FOR THE MOTION: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer and director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Miron holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T.

FOR THE MOTION: Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek’s editions abroad. The magazine has an audience of over 24 million worldwide. He also writes a regular column for Newsweek, which appears in Newsweek International and the Washington Post.

AGAINST THE MOTION:  Asa Hutchinson has been elected three times to the United States Congress and has been confirmed by the United States Senate both as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as the nation’s first undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security after the 9-11 attacks.

AGAINST THE MOTION: Chris W. Cox is the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association of America. Cox oversees seven ILA divisions: Federal Affairs, State & Local Government Affairs, Public Relations, Grassroots, Finance and Administration, Research & Information, Conservation, Wildlife & Natural Resources; as well as the Office of Legislative Counsel.

AGAINST THE MOTION: Jorge Castañeda was foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003. Castañeda is a renowned public intellectual, political scientist, and prolific writer, with an interest in Mexican and Latin American politics, comparative politics and US-Mexican and U.S.-Latin American relations.

 

Transcript:

 

 

Meta-note on permission, access and economics of media such as posted here:

The video is publicly available and so is the transcript, hence this post. I’m a big fan of these debates, and I will likely become a paying “subscriber” — the problem is that I won’t be able to share anything I get access to as paying member. What a dilemma! This does raise the question: whether a “blog use permit” could exist for per-post use of generally unavailable media? It’s just a thought — a way to make money, but not “everything is free” and not “content for paying subscribers only.” I’d be happy to throw IQ² some cash for the priviledge of sharing content I find particularly compelling.

Impl. note: Using “access here only” video and document embeds, with a key generated by the content provider, sent after the one-shot payment has been received.

iq2-us-transcript-Mexico-Drug-War-120109 (.pdf media enclosure)

Saturday
Nov072009

Orlando shooting spree and Fort Hood tragedy - 4 more videos

UPDATE:

Going Postal | The Daily Beast

The office shooting in Orlando—on the same day unemployment crested 10 percent—is a deadly omen. Mark Ames on why spikes in joblessness always breed more workplace violence.

On Friday morning, it was announced that America’s unemployment had unexpectedly climbed to 10.2 percent, the highest it’s been in a quarter-century. The jobless report was released right around the time that a bankrupt, desperate, and unemployed 40-year-old man, Jason Rodriguez, attacked his former employer’s office in Orlando, Florida—one of the worst-hit states in the country.

 

 

 

 

“Orlando, Florida (CNN) — A 40-year-old man accused of killing one and wounding five in a shooting at a business where he once worked was charged Friday with first-degree murder, police said.

“I’m just going through a tough time right now, I’m sorry,” the 40-year-old suspect who had recently declared bankruptcy allegedly told police as he was taken into custody.

Authorities identified the suspect as Jason Rodriguez, a former employee of Reynolds Smith & Hills, whose offices are located in the 16-story Gateway Center building.

The incident began at 11:44 a.m., when Rodriguez entered the business’ eighth-floor reception area, said Lt. Louis Tanzi, violent crimes section commander for the Orlando Police Department.

“He produced a handgun and started shooting in the reception area and continued shooting in the entire office area until he left,” he told reporters.

According to the charging affidavit, the fatality occurred when Rodriguez entered the suite, pulled a handgun from a holster under his shirt and shot twice at an employee who was standing near the receptionist’s desk.

He then entered a common work area “firing multiple rounds and causing injuries to several other employees,” it says, citing a witness.

During the incident, Rodriguez “was recognized by numerous former co-workers,” it says.

He then left in a car, described by witnesses as a small, silver compact vehicle, the affidavit says.

Police went to his residence where they found a 2001 four-door silver Hyundai, it says.

Asked by a reporter why he allegedly committed the crime, Rodriguez, escorted by police, said, “They left me to rot.”

Paraded in front of reporters outside the police station, he said, “Innocent.”“ 

 

 

Tanzi said he was “very comfortable” that authorities have the right man. “We’re positive; we have eyewitnesses who have identified him,” he said, adding that Rodriguez will be facing other charges as well.

Tanzi said other employees of the architectural and engineering firm where the attack occurred have described Rodriguez as a “disgruntled former employee.”

A company spokesman said Rodriguez had been let go from the company two years ago for “performance issues.”

 


 

Lee says Hasan made “outlandish” comments six months ago, calling for Muslims to stand up against the aggressor (meaning the U.S. of A.)

 

Nidal Hasan’s Cousin Nader did not know about imminent deployment, Hasan’s “worst nightmare.” Also mentions harassment problems for which Hasan had hired an attorney.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-07/going-postal/
Friday
Nov062009

Fort Hood Shooting Tragedy - 4 videos

UPDATE

Major Hasan’s Hidden Militancy | Daily Beast

The alleged Fort Hood gunman had revealed a hard-line Islamist streak to acquaintances in the Muslim Community Center that he made his mosque. The Daily Beast’s Asra Q. Nomani reports.

“So many time I talked with him,” said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. “I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.”

Despite all the conversations, Akther said, “I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.”

It wasn’t a label assigned lightly. Rather, it emerged after many one-on-one conservations between the engineer and the doctor in quiet spots from the library to the lobby to the prayer hall, discussing issues of interpretation like jihad, polygamy, assimilation, foreign policy, and the cutting of hands for theft. Other members of the community confirm this portrait of Hasan…

While I dread the coming fallout from the tragedy, Asra Nomani’s report gives me some comfort. The Muslim community did its part here, engaging with Hasan at the mosque. It remains to be seen whether further lines of communication should be opened, so that a “fundamentalist Muslim” serving in the military warrants a tip-off to his commanding officer.

UPDATE

See also: Fort Hood Shooting: The Aftermath | Daily Beast

See also: Murder and Mayhem at Fort Hood | Psychology Today

 

Local TV report on the Fort Hood shooting rampage. My heart goes out to the victims’ families.

A few hateful, racist and politically extreme Americans are exercising their right to free speech by commenting on a YouTube video. Ironically, this right includes equating Islam and Muslims with terrorism, insulting President Obama, betraying a lack of basic respect for government and the citizens, and attempting to use a horrible tragedy to score whatever sick political points their puny minds can imagine.

 

More information on the Fort Hood shooting tragedy is being revealed.

 

WorldNet Daily claims Hasan was an advisor to the Obama transition team.

Apparently the WorldNet Daily is not even fit to be used as emergency toilet paper.

 

Tattooed Under Fire Site - Unreleased documentary about Fort Hood soldiers

“This is Fort Hood, and it goes on for miles and miles and miles.” Director Nancy Schiesari’s riveting documentary, “Tattooed Under Fire,” about the River City parlor in Killeen, Texas, and the soldiers who patronize it, was already being hailed as one of the great unreleased films of the year when it finally got picked up to air this month on PBS. But in a grim piece of poetic timing, suddenly the world is looking to understand how the largest military base in the country could become the site of one its worst mass murders, an attack that left 13 dead and 30 injured.

Much will be written in the days to come of the mind-set of the alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist who counseled military personnel and was reportedly distressed over his own imminent deployment. Though Schiesari’s film predates the horrifying violence at the fort yesterday, it reveals a military culture rarely seen. By following both returning and deployment-bound young soldiers and the stories told on their bodies, she gets under their skin.”

California PBS broadcast stations and times:

CITY

 
STATION

 
DATE

TIME

Los Angeles
KLCSDT
11/10/2009
10:00 PM
San Diego
KPBSDT
11/11/2009
10:30 PM
San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
KQEDHD
11/09/2009
11:00 PM
San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
KQEDHD
11/10/2009
05:00 AM
San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
KCSM
11/11/2009
10:30 PM
San Francisco-Oak-San Jose
KCSM
11/12/2009
03:30 AM